Global Research

Christmas is an ancient feast that has many positive associations for people around the world. While the bible places the birth of Christ in Bethlehem it does not say when, but by the 4th century the Churches in the East were celebrating it on January 6 and the Churches of the West on December 25. 

One thing is certain about Christmas is that it is rooted in many traditions and superstitions relating to nature that existed long before Christmas and many have continued in one form or another to the present day. The many strands of Christmas can be seen in the variety of different traditions associated with, or originating in, places all over Europe. These strands are, inter alia, the solstice, the Nativity, Saturnalia, Yuletide, St Nicholas, Father Christmas, and Grandfather Frost (Ded Moroz).

The association of Christmas with its earlier midwinter nature worship traditions declined as the Church exerted its power and authority over pagan practices and in more recent centuries as the industrial revolution took people away from the land and into the cities and factories. Since then industrialisation has taken over many aspects of people’s lives as they shifted from being producers to consumers.

As direct contact with nature declined and scientific knowledge was applied to production, our lives were made easier by an abundance of relatively cheap goods and food. These benefits have come at another price though as industrialisation and technology the world over pushes nature further and further into ecological crises. There is much discussion and debate about the potential for a tipping point as the destruction of ecosystems and climate change move headlong towards irreversible damage of the Earth’s biosphere.

This has come about, partly due to our alienation from nature, but also due to a system which blinds us to the excesses of production through mass media, and Christmas has become the vehicle for the worst excesses of industrialisation, commercialisation and commodification. However, this is a gross distortion of its roots in respecting nature and nature worship which was ultimately about a heightened awareness of survival in an unpredictable world.

Sex

The predominant figure of Christmas has become Santa Claus (Dutch: Sinter Klaas) and originated in the stories around St Nicholas, the 4th century Bishop of Myra (Turkey), giving anonymous gifts to help people in need or trouble.[1] In many European regions St Nicholas came door to door with a bishop’s mitre and crosier on his feast day, December 6. He was accompanied by his helper Ruprecht or Krampus as he is known in the Alpine regions. Krampus is depicted as half goat and half demon and punished misbehaving children with a rod. 

​Image: Krampus

It is believed that Krampus derives from the much earlier pre-Christian Norse mythology and that he was the son of the god of the underworld Hel. While the name  Krampus is believed to originate from Krampen meaning ‘claw’, Ruprecht is believed to be from “Hruodperaht” meaning “gloriously shining one” another name of Wotan. Their negative status is likely the result of Christian attempts assert dominance over the pagan peoples of the time, in the same way that the Celtic goddess Bridget was demoted by the Christian church to St Bridget. Krampus is an evil fertility demon who scares children (reversing his earlier role as fertility god) with his hazel wood rod:

The hazelnut was holy to Donar, the God of marital and animal fertility. The hazel wood rod was considered a great rod of life. With this symbol of the penis, women and animals were beaten “with gusto” in order for them to become fertile.[2]
This fertility rite has continued to the present day on Easter Mondays in the Czech Republic when young women are whipped with a braided rod of willow called a pomlázka to “assure womankind with good health, fresh look and keep fertility. The girls then give coloured or painted eggs to boys and men as a sign of their thanks and forgiveness.”

Image: Pomlázka

During the 12th century the church tried to end the Krampus celebrations but it seems that, like with many popular traditions, they re-surfaced and were re-integrated back into church traditions. Unlike the ‘demonised’ Krampus, the Christian St Nicholas distributed typical gifts of nuts, dried fruits, chocolate, spices and toys.[3] These gifts were also symbols of fertility. Hazelnuts helped people survive winter as they could be easily stored and were rich in fats and vitamins. Apples were associated with the Tree of Paradise and dried fruits such as oranges and lemons served as fertility symbols in the Mediterranean countries as they were the first fruit of the year and thus herald a good harvest.[4]

Drugs

Another major association of Norse mythology with Christmas is the reindeer pulling the Santa’s sleigh. The first mention of St Nicholas in the air in popular mythology is of him “riding jollily among the tree-tops, or over the roofs of the houses, now and then drawing forth magnificent presents from his breeches pockets and dropping them down the chimneys of his favourites” is by Washington Irving in his satirical work, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). At this point St Nicholas was not associated with Christmas and presents were exchanged on the night before his feast day on December 6.

However, in a poem written in 1822, Clement Moore has St Nicholas arrive with his presents on the night before Christmas and in “a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer” who “would mount to the sky […] with a sleigh full of toys” and then go down the chimneys to deliver his gifts thus shifting celebrations of St Nicholas in the United States from his feast day on December 6 to Christmas Eve on December 24 instead.[5]

The phenomenon of flying animals has long been associated in Norse mythology with Wotan and his flying eight legged horse Sleipnir, and with Thor and his flying goat-drawn chariot. 

Image: ​”Odin and Sleipnir” (1911) by John Bauer

Wotan is depicted as one-eyed and long-bearded in Old Norse texts and is a fierce god associated with wisdom, healing and war. Children would leave straw in their boots for Sleipnir by the hearth and Wotan would exchange it for a gift in return for their kindness. Thor was also depicted as a fierce god of thunder and lightning, storms, oak trees and fertility. Another god, Morozko, the powerful and cruel Slavic god of frost and ice could freeze people and landscapes at will, became known as Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) but was eventually demonised by the Russian Orthodox Church. As our fear of nature declined and Christmas became more of a child-centered celebration, the depictions of these gods became less fierce over time.

Image: Thor

The flying aspect of Santa’s reindeers is believed to refer to the reindeers’ fondness for Fly Agaric mushrooms associated with Old Nordic Shamanism. The Shamanic ‘flight of the soul’ was part of the culture of people in arctic Europe and Siberia who would communicate with the souls of their ancestors in an altered state of consciousness helped along by the hallucinogenic mushrooms.[6] Like the Church attempts to eradicate the earlier fertility traditions and the gods associated with them, shamanism has been considered mere superstition and attacked by both Churches and governments alike.

It seems that what shamanism and fertility rites have in common is the idea of directly engaging with nature to secure desired material or spiritual goals. Both Krampus and Shamanism have been associated with Satan who “uses deception and demonic spirits seeking our destruction” yet their popularity has ebbed and flowed over the centuries without disappearing altogether.

Rollickin’ Roles

Similarly the Bacchanalian aspect of Christmas celebrations is a survival of Saturnalia, the Roman celebration of Saturn the “god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation” which could also be described as an engagement with the cycles of nature. Saturnalia was “a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving and revelry” held on December 17 of the Julian calendar and was subsequently extended to 23 December. Saturnalia originated as a farmer’s festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season in honour of Saturn (satus means sowing).According to Justinus, the 2nd century Roman historian, these celebratory aspects of Saturnalia derived from, and were explained by, its origins with pre-Roman peoples of Italy who:

were the Aborigines, whose king, Saturnus, is said to have been a man of such extraordinary justice, that no one was a slave in his reign, or had any private property, but all things were common to all, and undivided, as one estate for the use of every one; in memory of which way of life, it has been ordered that at the Saturnalia slaves should everywhere sit down with their masters at the entertainments, the rank of all being made equal.

Once again the association with nature and the Golden Age (when people lived in peace and harmony) forms the basis of a celebration which was to be co-opted by the Church and eventually attacked for its excesses. According to a Puritan minister in 17th century England, Increase Mather, Christmas occurred on December 25 not because “Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphosed into Christian [ones]. Stephen Nissenbaum, in his book The Battle for Christmas, writes:

“Puritans believed Christmas was basically just a pagan custom that the Catholics took over without any biblical basis for it. The holiday had everything to do with the time of year, the solstice and Saturnalia and nothing to do with Christianity.”

Presumably the masters could not cope with the concept of equality and saw Saturnalia instead as a role reversal. In pre-industrial England people would elect a Lord of Misrule who would be in charge of Christmas festivities and who even had license to poke fun at the nobility.[7] Yet the Lords of Misrule were an important aspect of Christmas as the reversal of traditional social norms was a safety valve for class tensions in England. It was around this time that the personification of Christmas as Father Christmas began to appear. 

Image: ​Father Christmas 1848

He was associated not with children, presents, chimneys or stockings, but with adult merrymaking and feasting. During Christmas ‘great quantities of brawn, roast beef, ‘plum-pottage’, minced pies and special Christmas ale were consumed’ and people enjoyed singing, dancing and card games resulting in ‘drunkenness, promiscuity and other forms of excess.’ Thus when the Puritans took over government in the 1640s they tried to ‘to abolish the Christian festival of Christmas and to outlaw the customs associated with it’. The satirical Royalist poet, John Taylor, wrote in The Complaint of Christmas:

All the liberty and harmless sports, with the merry gambols, dances and friscals [by] which the toiling plowswain and labourer were wont to be recreated and their spirits and hopes revived for a whole twelve month are now extinct and put out of use in such a fashion as if they never had been. Thus are the merry lords of misrule suppressed by the mad lords of bad rule at Westminster.

However by the 1650s it was reported that the taverns were full on Christmas day, churches were decorated in rosemary as usual, Christmas Boxes had been given out, presents exchanged and mummers paid despite the bans. Worse still violence broke out in London when:

a large crowd of Londoners gathered to prevent the mayor and his marshalls removing the Christmas decorations which some of the city porters had draped around the conduit in Cornhill. The confrontation ended in uproar, with arrests, injuries, and the bolting of the mayor’s frightened horse.The Christmas celebrations returned with Charles II in 1660 and showed once again the attempt to impose a narrow religious view on the multifaceted ancient traditions of people had failed.

Trees

Somewhat earlier, in the 14th and 15th centuries in Germany, craftsmen began to decorate their guild halls with trees and adorning them with fruits and nuts. This eventually led to the German, Charlotte, who married King George III in 1761, potting up and decorating a yew tree and initiating the custom in England. Legend has it that in Germany, St Boniface, an historical figure from the 7th century, saw a group of people honouring the sacred tree, Donar’s Oak (sometimes referred to as Thor’s Oak) somewhere around Hesse, became angry and chopped the tree down (and added insult to injury by using the wood to build his church). 

Image: ​St Boniface chopping the oak tree

Sacred trees and sacred groves were very important to the Germanic peoples and were too important to be cut down. Again we can see that the earlier traditions of pre-Christian society revolved around revering nature:

some were wont secretly, some openly to sacrifice to trees and springs; some in secret, others openly practiced inspections of victims and divinations, legerdemain and incantations; some turned their attention to auguries and auspices and various sacrificial rites; while others, with sounder minds, abandoned all the profanations of heathenism, and committed none of these things.Over time, cutting the evergreen tree and bringing it indoors became an important part of Christmas traditions [see my previous article on Christmas trees] despite church proscription, because of its shamanic-pagan past.

Another early nature-based tradition is the wassail in England. Wassailing is a very ancient custom that is referenced in history as early as the eighth-century poem Beowulf. The word ‘wassail’ is believed to be derived from the Old Norse ‘ves heil’ and the Old English ‘was hál’ and meaning “be in good health” or “be fortunate.” The wassail had an important significance for farmers:

In parts of Medieval Britain, a different sort of wassailing emerged: farmers wassailed their crops and animals to encourage fertility. An observer recorded, “They go into the Ox-house to the oxen with the Wassell-bowle and drink to their health.” The practice continued into the eighteenth century, when farmers in the west of Britain toasted the good health of apple trees to promote an abundant crop the next year. Some placed cider-soaked bread in the branches to ward off evil spirits. In other locales, villagers splashed the trees with cider while firing guns or beating pots and pans.

Image: ​Wassailing the apple tree

The Apple Tree Wassail lyrics anticipate the next year and a good crop:

(It’s) Our wassail jolly wassail!

Joy come to our jolly wassail!

How well they may bloom, how well they may bear

So we may have apples and cider next year.

Solstice and the Unconquered Sun

Our awareness of mid winter and the solstice (‘sun stands still’) is shown to go back to the late Neolithic and Bronze Age with Newgrange in Ireland and Stonehenge in England. In both cases the monuments have been aligned to the solstice, sunrise at Newgrange and sunset at Stonehenge. It has been the occasion of celebrations, rituals and gatherings as the sun appears to be reborn and the days start getting longer again. After this time food became scarce (January to April) which were known as the ‘famine months’. It was the last feast of the year as cattle were slaughtered and wine and beer were ready for drinking. The ‘rebirth’ of the sun was known as Sol Invictus or the ‘unconquered sun’ god during the Roman Empire in the 3rd century CE and the Emperor Aurelian dedicated a temple to Sol to be celebrated on December 25. Solar deities have been represented as both gods and goddesses in different cultures and are particularly important in mid winter when the sun is low in the sky. In many countries in Europe the tradition of the Yule log burning was an important festival to help strengthen the weakened sun.

Image: ​Yule log

A large log, big enough to burn for the 12 days of Christmas, was brought into the houses and burned. It was believed to have originated with the Norse and the Celts who had large bonfires to welcome the return of the sun. The log was thought to have magical properties and the ashes were then used as fertiliser and as cures for both people and animals and would protect them for the year to come.

 

Throughout the world there have been many forms of nature worship demonstrating that people respected and feared nature in equal amounts over the millennia. We have a complex relationship with nature, indeed we are an important part of nature. We have to negotiate every aspect of that relationship, be it food, water, reproduction, climate (storms avalanches, floods, droughts, fires), the seasons, the geophysical (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes), light (length of day, sleeping during hours of darkness) etc.

In the past people hoped and prayed that in the next year nature would allow them to live well again and consequently treated nature with respect. To do that people were careful not to over-exploit nature in various ways: by leaving land fallow, having food taboos, allowing areas to regenerate by moving on, by not over-using a food resource, thus creating the basis of sustainability into the future. Their respectful attitude to nature was reflected in what we call superstitions and paganism but it allowed them to celebrate Christmas without guilt in the knowledge that they had treated nature well and that nature would reciprocate with a bountiful harvest the next year. 

Today, on the other hand, we are alienated from this way of thinking and living to the extent that people have lost direct control of their relationship with nature. The ever increasing industrial overproduction of meat, over-fishing, over-fertilisation, deforestation, air pollution and extractivism is pushing nature to extremes and already we are seeing the catastrophic results of this in climate change. Maybe as climate change brings ever fiercer storms and destruction of food production we will learn to respect and fear nature again.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country at http://gaelart.blogspot.ie/.

Notes:
[1] Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus, by Jeremy Seal, p28
[2] Pagan Christmas: the Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origin of Yuletide, by Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller-Ebeling, p33
[3] Pagan Christmas, p36
[4] Pagan Christmas, p52/3
[5] From Stonehenge to Santa Claus: The Evolution of Christmas, by Paul Frodsham, p164
[6] Pagan Christmas, p46/47
[7] Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony, Richard Heinberg, p107

Eleven years after his death, a second trial chamber at the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has concluded that Slobodan Milosevic was not responsible for war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Gazing at the politics of a vassal state is interesting in one acute, and jarring sense.  Voices of presumed independence are often bought; political opinions that seem well informed are, in fact, ventriloquised.  The origin is always elsewhere. 

Australia’s politicians represent this more starkly than most.  Supposedly representatives of the people who elect them, they become the servants of different masters once in office.  Whether it is the large party machines that often back them, drawing and quartering their individuality, or a powerful lobby that threatens and cajoles them, the Australian politician is at the mercy of various earthly and often nasty powers.  The one judge of the matter, the public, is left out.

The fall of Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, who had become a distraction of such proportion as to drive opposition leader Bill Shorten potty, constitutes the first conspicuous casualty of this dilemma: that of the bought politician. But it all seemed so convenient, and easy.

“Today, after much reflection,” concluded Dastyari, “I’ve decided that the best service I can render to the federal parliamentary Labor Party is not to return to the Senate in 2018.”  His “Labor values” had told him like a high gospel power that his continued presence in the party room had detracted “from the pursuit of Labor’s mission”.

Dastyari had certainly bumbled and bungled his way into a corner so narrow that no tomfoolery could extricate him.  Excuses that had been made in the past (oh, cheeky Sam; or what a lark) had run out of steam. 

The list of grievances against him had become a lengthy one. Over a year ago, it was revealed that he permitted a company owned by Huang Xiangmo, with claimed links to the Chinese communist party, to foot a legal bill for his office.  Such a donation, as it was termed, saw him resign from the front bench.  (It is worth noting that Huang had donated generously to the Liberal Party as well – a far from negligible $50,000 to the Victorian branch in November 2014.)

Then came the revelation, scenting of a targeted intelligence leak, that the senator had been cautionary to the billionaire prior to a meeting: leave the phones behind, he suggested, as they were surely surveillance targets.

But of all such detractions and transgressions, an umbrella theme of sorts had emerged. Dastyari was to be crucified for being too close to a power that is both boon and bugbear for Australia. His behaviour had revealed a dark future, one of Chinese influence edging out US suasion.  In Australia, this has assumed something of a binary idiocy, the either or of allegiance.  If you are to be bought, be bought by a power that is approved by the Canberra mandarins.

In an age where the snippet and tweet comprise narratives and the basis of whole worlds of presumed knowledge, Dastyari was probably best off coming clean from the start.  A mole hill, in time, became a mountain of immense proportion.  His flirt with China became an embrace, then a sordid tryst. 

The news cycles and social media buffoons did the rest: he had become, according to cartoonish villain and immigration minister Peter Dutton, a double agent.  Attorney-General George Brandis claimed the senator had been “suborned or compromised” by China.  He was pro-Chinese, going against the line of his party and that of government policy on the South China Sea.

A reading of his now notorious speech on the subject suggests that he was buying into a heresy Australia’s politicians will never be forgiven for: stepping away from the teat of an approved empire.  Rather than coddling a Chinese view in any specific sense, he was, more importantly, insisting that Australia stay out of any future territorial disputes China might have over the territories.  But to not have a view on the subject was very much the same as having one. 

This would effectively mean a form of what international relations theorists like to term decoupling, a removal from a future US-China confrontation, a distancing from the tight grip of the Washington establishment. 

Dastyari might have left it at that. The sin had been committed. Shorten insisted that the Turnbull government stop its relentless haranguing, which included a threat to bring Dastyari before the privileges committee to explain a congenital problem of Australian politics: the influence of foreign donations.

But being the figure that he is, a misjudgement was lurking behind the corner.  Dastyari went further, obviously showing that he believes the Chinese case to have legs.  Rather than wishing to be a heretic, he began showing signs that he was becoming a devotee.

This devotion came in the form of pressuring colleagues within his party to avoid meeting certain activists in Hong Kong concerned with Beijing increasingly rough hand.  According to Fairfax media, he “repeatedly” warned Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek that her meetings with pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong in 2015 “would upset figures in the Chinese community in Australia”. 

What then, of the other stone throwers in Parliament?  There are strong pro-US views held without equivocation, and not even a volatile president in Washington will shake them.  There are also firm views, not to mention allegiances, for Israel.  Both powers have vast portfolios of purchased, and assured opinion, among the country’s parliamentarians. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has certainly made a degree of hay from this crisis. Hypocrisy has been concealed by legislative acumen.  “Foreign powers,” he explained on announcing new proposals banning foreign donations and making politicians declare their non-Australian loyalties, “are making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process, both here and abroad.”

The legislation is modelled on the US Foreign Agents Registry, placing the onus on individuals to declare whether they are in the employ or acting on behalf of, a foreign power.  “If you fail to disclose your ties,” explained Turnbull, “then you will be liable for a criminal offence.”

The case of Dastyari might well have been made a more universally applicable one.  Instead, both major parties are now burying it, believing themselves to be high minded and, worst of all, independent.  The suggestion by Turnbull that foreign influence and meddling lurk as rising menaces errs in one crucial respect: presuming that the present is exceptional.  With a state like Australia, the past, and the future, is in the pockets of other powers, declared or otherwise.

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

Recent developments in South African politics; such as the unexpected second cabinet reshuffle this year in which Former State Security Minister David Mhlobo was moved to the energy portfolio and his ever more strident pro-nuclear announcements amongst others; have fuelled speculation that momentum for the government’s nuclear energy plans is building once again. Coming after suffering what was widely perceived to be a series of setbacks this year; such as April’s High Court ruling which ruled that the agreements the government struck with a number of nuclear vendor countries (including Russia) was illegal and Finance Minister Gigaba’s pronouncement that nuclear power was unaffordable right now; the speed with which these developments have occurred and the noticeable swagger about nuclear supporters of late has caught many observers off-guard and has alarmed others besides. As a result, questions have been raised as to why the government has suddenly acted with such urgency with respect to the nuclear deal.

According to the most popular view doing the rounds, this urgency is born of uncertainty about the ruling party’s nuclear stance after nuclear champion President Zuma steps down as leader of the African National Congress (ANC) after its upcoming electoral conference which is to be held later this month (between 16 and 20 December 2017). For good measure, an added impetus is that President Zuma is reportedly anxious to push the nuclear deal through before the end of his term of office as president in 2019 as President Putin of Russia is rumoured to be growing impatient with the tardiness with which he (President Zuma) has been carrying out his side of the secret agreement to award the nuclear contract to Russian energy giant Rosatom they are alleged to have reached. The explanations proffered tend to attribute this flurry of activity to the personal motives of certain key individuals involved in the deal and are based on the presumption that changes in personnel could spell a change in the ruling party’s (and by extension the South African government’s) nuclear policy.

There is little, however, to suggest that this might be the case, no matter how popular they are or how plausible they appear given the topicality of the notion of ‘state capture’. By way of support for this assertion, it is pointed out that the government’s nuclear policy was approved by a full sitting of Cabinet back in 2015 whilst the government has remained steadfast in its nuclear policy choices despite numerous staffing changes at Treasury, the Department of Energy and electricity parastatal Eskom or the identity of the incumbent in the Union Buildings for that matter. This suggests that more systemic reasons may lay behind the government’s commitment to nuclear power and the haste with which it appears to be acting at the moment.

To get an indication thereof, in an earlier piece, one argued that South Africa’s commitment to nuclear power could be explained in terms of its foreign policy objectives (Boyce, 2016; pending). More specifically, it was contended that the government’s nuclear plans constitute a key part of South Africa’s bid to court Russian and Chinese support for a greater role in world affairs in general and African affairs in particular. Entering into a long term contract with key allies for sensitive technology is not merely an administrative decision but represents a shared vision and a commitment to a long-term strategic relationship. From a South African policymakers’ point of view, solidifying this relationship would bestow long-term diplomatic pay-offs especially should, as many in the upper echelons of power in South Africa already believe, the geopolitical axes of world power be inexorably tilting in favour of the emerging BRICS alliance of countries. The nuclear deal would provide the ideal opportunity to increase collaboration and cooperation with key allies Russia and China. Both these countries are likely to be keenly interested in South Africa’s nuclear plans for their own reasons. The Russians to showcase their nuclear technology and increase their earnings from the sale and transfer of Russian nuclear technology. The Chinese in the provision of financing for this deal for, though the Russians may well be the preferred provider of nuclear technology, the only way they and South Africa, already downgraded to junk status, would be able to finance this deal is through securing outside financing.

Although the proposition that the South African government might want to use its nuclear plans for the purpose of advancing its global position can be used to explain why the government remains keen on nuclear power, and possibly why Russia is the preferred nuclear technology supplier, this explanation cannot be used to explain the sudden urgency with respect to nuclear power it has shown. To make sense of this haste, one may have to look closer to home. Specifically, one may have to look to two developments on the national and continental political scene. On the African front, Russian company Rosatom recently struck deals with Nigeria and Egypt for Rosatom to build two and four nuclear reactors respectively. South African policymakers may well interpret these deals as diplomatic overtures towards the Russians by these continental powerhouses in their bids to usurp South Africa’s perceived preeminent position as Africa’s representative on the global stage and enlist Russian support for their own legitimate aspirations, as Africa’s biggest and second biggest economies, thereto. Local policymakers may thus conclude that it is crucial for South Africa to speedily advance its own dealings with the Russians to avoid being diplomatically out-manoeuvred by continental rivals Nigeria and Egypt.

Domestically, the scandal engulfing energy parastatal Eskom threatens to broach awkward questions about the competence of governance, levels of maladministration and mismanagement at public enterprises as a whole and the public sector in general. Concurrently, Koeberg nuclear power station is rapidly approaching that time by which hard questions will start being asked about its decommissioning. All indications are that Eskom has not made sufficient provision for this eventuality nor, judging from the latest news reports and revelations at the ongoing parliamentary inquiry into state-owned enterprises, will the cash-strapped entity be able to undertake this task without requesting another government bailout. Awarding additional funds to Eskom to undertake an exercise it was supposed to have set funds aside for is likely to be politically costly given the reputational damage this parastatal has suffered of late. This has not been helped by its current application to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) for another significant electricity tariff increase. Fears of the fallout associated with bailing out Eskom yet again may lead pro-nuclear policymakers to conclude that it would be prudent to force the nuclear agenda through now, before questions about the costs of decommissioning come to the fore, lest they jeopardise the government’s nuclear plans.

Taken together, these factors rather than looming personnel changes in the makeup of the ruling party’s leadership may better serve to explain what is driving the flurry of activity around nuclear of late. They may also explain the new-found confidence of nuclear supporters, who realise that the government must act now if it wishes to realise its larger vision for South Africa on the global stage. It is therefore asserted that nuclear power will remain firmly on the government’s Christmas wish-list regardless of the changing of the guard that will result from decisions taken at the ruling party’s upcoming electoral conference.

Gerard Boyce is an Economist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban). He writes in his personal capacity.

References:

Boyce, G. 2016. Behind South Africa’s nuclear ambitions: A foreign policy perspective. Pambazuka News, 29 September 2016. Web address: https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/behind-south-africa%E2%80%99s-nuclear-ambitions-foreign-policy-perspective

Date accessed: 3 December 2017

Boyce, G. forthcoming. Nuclear endgame: The geopolitical calculus behind South Africa’s nuclear energy programme. Alternation.

Back during the admittedly brief shock and awe period that immediately followed on the Trump electoral victory, it appeared that there might be an actual realignment of American foreign policy. The neoconservatives virtually unanimously had opposed Donald Trump in the most vile terms, both in the GOP primaries and during the actual electoral campaign, making clear that Hillary was their choice for a future full of unrelenting, ideologically driven warfare to convert the world to democracy. By that metric, one would assume that Trump would prefer to be roasted on a spit rather than have neocons on his national security team, and many in the punditry did agree with that analysis and went on to share that view.

At the time, I agreed, but I did note that the neoconservatives have proven to be remarkable resilient, particularly as many of them have remained true to their Democratic Party values on nearly everything but foreign policy, where they are irredeemable hawks, hostile to Russia and Iran and always reliably in the corner of Israel. In short, many neocons can be unmasked as Hillary Clinton Democrats if one looks at them issue by issue, which certainly helps to explain some subsequent developments.

Some Washington observers who actually care about such things have been writing how there has been a kumbaya process going on between self-described conservative neocons and liberal interventionists. Katrina vanden Heuvel describes the progressive hawks as “the essential-country crowd,” borrowing a phrase from ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

There are inevitably minor disconnects between the two groups based on their motives for aggression – Democrats claim to do it to bring democracy and freedom while Republicans say they do it to enhance national security. Both are lying in any event as it all comes down to great power rivalries, with big powerful nations pushing smaller weaker nations around because they are able to get away with it and feel more comfortable if everyone lines up behind them.

So everyone in Washington and New York’s financial services industry agrees that a more assertive America is a better America even when the reality is that no one winds up with either democracy or security. Which brings us to the latest shuffle in the Donald Trump cabinet and what it is likely to mean down the road. Multiple sources are predicting Tillerson out and Mike Pompeo in at State Department with Pompeo replaced at CIA by Senator Tom Cotton. The White House is denying the story, calling it “fake news,” but it is clear that Trump is uncomfortable with the current arrangement and Tillerson will be gone sooner or later.

Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State replaces a somewhat bumbling businessman adept at dealing in energy futures contracts who has been struggling with reducing State’s enormously bloated payroll. Pompeo, a real hard-nosed political hardliner who tends to see complex issues in fairly simplistic ways, has become a presidential confidant, briefing Trump frequently on the state of the world, most recently pushing for the horrific decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In a recent speech , Pompeo criticized the CIA, observing that it had both forgotten how to spy, which is almost certainly true, while adding that it will have to become “more vicious” to accomplish its mission of making the United States “safe.” Pompeo would like to turn the United States into an unleashed wrecking ball directed against the enemies of the American Way and he appears intent on starting that process in the Middle East.

And Pompeo will be replaced as CIA Director by Tom Cotton. The less said about Tom the better, but I will attempt to summarize in 8 words here: Tom is completely owned by the Israel Lobby. In his 2014 election as junior Senator from Arkansas, he received $1 million from the Emergency Committee for Israel headed by Bill Kristol as well as additional assistance from the Republican Jewish Coalition. In March 2015, Tom paid those supporters back when 47 Republican United States Senators signed a letter allegedly written by him that was then sent to the Iranian government directly, warning that any agreement over that country’s nuclear program reached with President Barack Obama would likely be overturned by the Congress. The letter, which undercuts the authority of the American president before an international audience, was signed by the entire Republican Party leadership in the Senate and also included then presidential contenders Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

I do not wish to imply that Cotton and Pompeo are somehow stupid, but they do tend to see the world in a very monochromatic fashion, just like their boss.

Pompeo was first in his class at West Point and Cotton graduated from Harvard as an undergrad and also from the Law School. Trump claims to be the smartest person in the room no matter where he is standing. But for all the academic credentials and other posturing, it is hard to imagine how the new choices could possibly be worse from a common-sense perspective unless one includes Nikki Haley, who is, fortunately, otherwise engaged. Haley really is stupid. And ambitious. And is also owned by the Israel Lobby, which appears to be a thread that runs its way through all the Trump foreign policy appointees.

What is wrong about the whole Trump team is that they all seem to believe that you can go around the world kicking the sh**t out of everyone without there being any consequences. And they all hate Iran for reasons that continue to be obscure but may be connected to their relationships with – you guessed it – the neoconservatives and the Israeli Lobby!

Yes, the neocons are back. I noted back in October that when Pompeo and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster wanted a friendly place to drop by to give a policy speech that would be warmly received they went to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), whose marketing masthead slogan is “Fighting Terrorism and Promoting Freedom.” FDD is currently neocon central, used like the American Enterprise Institute was when Dick Cheney was Vice President and needed a friendly audience. It is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz, whose passion in life is making sure that sanctions on Iran are enforced to the letter. Unfortunately, it is not easy to deport a Canadian.

Neocon watchers will undoubtedly note that big names like Brill Kristol, the Kagans, Michael Chertoff and Max Boot will not be showing up in government. True, but that is because they will instead be working through their foundations, of which FDD is only one. The Alliance for Securing Democracy, which has recently sprung up in lobby-land, markets itself as “bipartisan, and transatlantic…” but it actually is pure neocon. Its goal is to “expose Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States of America and Europe.” It includes the usual neocon names but also has the loyal Democratic opposition, including ex-CIA Acting Director Mike Morell and Jake Sullivan, both of whom were top level advisers to Hillary Clinton.

The replacement of former political appointees in the government has been so slow in Trump’s first year that it has actually benefited the neocons in their recovery. Many survivors of the two previous administrations are still in place, nearly all of whom reflect the hawkishness prevalent during 2001-2016. They will be supplemented by second and third tier neoconservatives, who will fill in the policy gaps, virtually guaranteeing that the neocon crafted foreign policy that has been around for the past sixteen years will be here for some time longer.

What all this means is that, now that the Palestinians have been disposed of and the Israelis rewarded, we can expect armed conflict with Iran within the next year, followed by increased hostility towards Moscow as Russiagate continues to play out. I do not even want to guess at what kind of insanity the gang in the West Wing Situation Room will come up with for dealing with North Korea. The good news is that the builders of home bomb shelters, a booming enterprise when I was growing up back in the 1950s and 1960s now used to cultivate mushrooms, will be back in business.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

An explosion yesterday forced operator Gas Connect Austria to shut down a major European gas hub at Baumgarten, taking one life and injuring 21 others. Italy depends on gas deliveries via Baumgarten and declared a state of emergency – although gas supplies are expected to be guaranteed by storage for the time being. Nonetheless, Italian gas price almost doubled to Eur45/MWh following the blast.

The fatal accident in Austria follows Monday’s shutdown of the key North Sea Forties Pipeline System (FPS) after the discovery of a widening crack. UK gas prices rose immediately and the price for Brent crude oil jumped over $65/barrel – its highest level in more than two years. The FPS was recently bought by Ineos, and feeds the company’s Grangemouth, Scotland petrochemical plant. Ineos transports fracked gas liquids from the United States to produce plastic.

Both incidents feed new fears about the energy security supply of Europe and rising gas prices in the middle of a winter that has just begun.

In response, Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement:

“The explosion at Europe’s gas hub in Austria and the shutdown of the Forties Pipeline System in the North Sea shows Europe’s true vulnerability – it’s strong and systemic fossil fuel addition. The only way to gain its independence and to guarantee access to abundant clean energy for Europe’s citizens is to swiftly move off of fossil fuels and finally put major investment and public money into 100% renewables and energy efficiency measures.

“But instead of identifying centralised, big fossil fuel infrastructure as a security problem, EU policy makers are going all out for gas, with around 90 new gas infrastructure projects planned. Some of this gas is being exported from fracked communities in the United States. This is taking both continents in the wrong direction at a time when climate chaos lingers at our doorsteps.”

Food & Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people’s lives and protects our environment. Food & Water Europe is the European programme of Food & Water Watch.

Here’s a thought on the financial asset bubbles and Bitcoin-Exchange Traded Funds toxic derivatives today in historical context to 2008 events:

Is Bitcoin the new ‘Subprime Mortgage Bomb’? Just as subprime mortgage bonds precipitated a crash in the derivative, Credit Default Swaps (CDS), at the giant insurance company, AIG, in September 2008, setting off the global financial crash that year—will the Bitcoin and crypto-currency bubble precipitate a collapse in the new derivative, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in stock and bond markets in 2018-19, ushering in yet another general financial crisis?

The US and global economy are approached the latter stages in the credit cycle, during which financial asset bubbles begin to appear and the real economy appears to be at peak performance (the calm before the storm).

This scenario was explained in my 2016 book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy”, Clarity Press, 2016. And in my follow-on, just published August 2017 book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, in which I predict should the Federal Reserve raise short term US interest rates another 1% in 2018 (1.25% now),that the rate hikes will set off a credit crash leading to Bitcoin, stock, and bond asset price bubbles bursting by late 2018.

Today, in testifying to Congress, outgoing Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen, announced the Fed will raise interest rates today another 0.25%,bringing them to 1.5%, with three more raises in 2018. That will mean an additional 1% rate hike–and beyond the 2% threshold I predict that will set off another credit crunch a year from now. Recession 2019 is growing increasingly likely.

Several news articles were published in early December indicating that Zambian President Edgar Lungu has agreed to host a summit meeting between African Union (AU) member-states and the State of Israel. (See Jerusalem Post, Dec. 3, 2017)

These reports first surfaced during the inauguration ceremony for Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi. President Lungu attended the second induction into office by Kenyatta who is the leader of East Africa’s largest economy.

Lungu met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the Kenyatta inauguration events. The Zambian leader was photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu during the meeting.

Image: Zambian President Edgar Lungu meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu

A similar summit was scheduled earlier in 2017 in the West African state of Togo. However, mass demonstrations by Togolese opposition parties and coalitions demanding the resignation of the government of President Faure Gnassingbe for undemocratic practices, forced Lome to postpone the announced summit.

Zambia’s largest newspaper the Lusaka Times reported on December 5 that:

“President Edgar Lungu, who met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week at the re-inauguration ceremonies for Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi, told ZNBC that ‘For whatever reason, we have been given the mandate to host this summit which will bring its own benefits to Zambia.’ President Lungu said Prime Minister Netanyahu had asked Zambia to host an Africa-Israel summit that was originally scheduled for Togo in September.”

Despite this claim of mystification by President Lungu, it is quite obvious that there were definite reasons why Zambia was targeted to host the meeting. The Southern African state is one of the few countries within the AU which has a military attache stationed in Israel where it opened an embassy in 2015. Israel does not have an embassy in Zambia.

Lungu paid a state visit to Israel in February 2017. The president was accompanied by a large delegation of ministers from his administration.

After his return to Zambia, Lungu was quoted in the Lusaka Times as saying:

“Israel is a pacesetter in survival instinct because it has a desert; but they have a thriving education, agriculture and information and communication technology sectors and we can explore and learn from them. A lot of benefits are expected out of this trip.”

Unfortunately, no statement was recorded in the same publication which cites the plight of the Palestinian people who share a similar history with Africans as it relates to colonialism and imperialism. Israel under successive leaders since 1948 has collaborated with the same white supremacist forces which conquered, exploited and oppressed African people and their descendants throughout the world.

The Lusaka Times then quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while he was in Kenya for the inauguration of Kenyatta as emphasizing in regard to Zambia that Tel Aviv’s aim was to:

“deepen its cooperation with the country, which I think is important for both our countries and both our peoples. I know that you’re opening a Jewish history museum in Zambia and soon a synagogue in the capital city. I hope one day I have the opportunity to visit those institutions and to visit Zambia.”

Africa and Israel: A Comparative History

Although Jewish people have been subjected to national discrimination in Europe and the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, today since the recognition of the State of Israel by the United Nations in May 1948 most people do not consider them to be an oppressed people.  However, it is important to make a distinction between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as an ideology and political movement.

Image: Nelson Mandela with PFLP leaders

In fact when the founders of the World Zionist movement began in the later years of the 19th century, its leaders specifically sought to align themselves with the rising tide of colonialism throughout Asia and Africa. During the early phase of the Zionist movement Palestine was not the only location examined for the establishment of a Jewish state. (See Weizmann and Smuts: A Study in Zionist-South African Cooperation. (Institute for Palestine Studies Monograph No. 43, 1975)

Other areas considered by the Zionists included territories in Africa such as modern-day Madagascar, Uganda and Libya. By 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour issued his famous declaration which mandated the creation of a state for the Jewish and Arab peoples in the-then colony of Palestine. Most historical literature on this territory prior to 1948 referred to the area as Palestine. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/palestine-israeli-foreign-policy-and-the-pan-african-movement/5333199)

Nevertheless, when the State of Israel was recognized by the UN it was done so as exclusively a Jewish state where millions of Palestinians had been forcibly removed and disenfranchised. In 1948, the UN was dominated by the European colonial powers and the U.S. The Soviet Union, whose military had made the greatest contribution to breaking the expansionist program of the Third Reich under Adolph Hitler, also voted in the UN to recognize the Jewish state in Palestine.

The overwhelming number of colonies in Africa did not gain their independence from European imperialism until after World War II with the upsurge of national liberation movements in Sudan, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Algeria, Tunisia, Kenya, Angola, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southwest Africa (Namibia), etc. After the century-long existence of the Atlantic Slave Trade which uprooted millions of Africans from the continent to Europe, North America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America, the advent of classic colonialism was imposed on the continent.

During 1884-85, the Berlin West Africa Conference was held in Germany. This gathering carved up Africa among the imperialist powers. It would take over a century to bring about the independence of the continent with the Republic of South Africa overthrowing the racist apartheid system in 1994. At present only the Western Sahara, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), remains under the colonial control of the North African monarchy of Morocco.

Africa and Palestine Solidarity Has Grown Since the Post-Colonial Period

After the 1956 Suez Canal war when Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in order to retake control of this strategic asset, the political sympathy of most African states has shifted solidly in the direction of the Palestinian and other Arab people.

Later, as a result of the Egypt-Jordan-Syria wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973, a majority of independent African governments and national liberation movements broke relations with Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is viewed by progressive forces throughout Africa has the de facto representatives of the people. After the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993 which gave rise to the Palestinian Authority, there has been a period thawing in relations related to Tel Aviv and some African states.

Image: Abayomi Azikiwe Speaks at Palestine-African American Solidarity Forum in 2009

However, African solidarity with Palestine remains strong. The Republic of South Africa under the ruling African National Congress (ANC) continues to be a bulwark of sentiment in favor of the recognition of an independent Palestinian state. This mood has existed in the Republic of Zimbabwe as well during the 37-year presidency of Robert Mugabe, the former leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front Party (ZANU-PF).

When on December 6, U.S. President Donald Trump issued his executive order to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem mass demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people have been held throughout the world. The three leading alliance partners in South Africa, the ANC, South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have all issued statements decrying the policy decisions of Trump.

The U.S. government is the staunchest supporter of the State of Israel providing billions of dollars in assistance and military hardware on an annual basis. Egypt, due to military and political considerations ranks as the second largest recipient of direct aid from Washington. However, Africa as a whole can in no way compare to the economic, military and diplomatic support which is received by Israel irrespective of the fact that people of African descent in the U.S. are numbered in excess of 40 million inhabitants.

Consequently, the holding of an Israel-Africa Summit in Zambia would represent a tremendous setback in the progressive legacy of independent states on the continent. At this critical stage in international relations AU member countries should be intensifying their cooperation with other fraternal governments and peoples on the continent and indeed throughout the world.

Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the country, unleashing “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” 

He called diplomacy a waste of time, rejecting it while holding provocative military exercises with South Korea and Japan – Pyongyang calls rehearsing for war.

His administration leaked plans for a “decapitation strike,” a saber-rattling move, not something likely to announced if initiating it is coming.

Since an uneasy armistice ended Korean war, Washington refused to formally end it with a peace treaty, never engaged in responsible diplomacy with the intention of normalizing relations.

Each time initiated, talks ended in failure. Washington refuses to respect DPRK sovereignty. Time and again, it proved its untrustworthiness, lacking good faith, breaching deals made.

It’s why North Korea and other countries are leery of negotiating with a duplicitous partner, an imperial country seeking global dominance, wanting all other nations subservient to its interests – an agenda assuring endless conflicts and chaos.

Last spring, addressing Security Council members, Rex Tillerson blasted North Korea, turned truth on its head, claiming years of US “well-intentioned diplomatic efforts to halt (North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile) programs have failed,” adding:

“It is only by first dismantling them that there can be peace, stability, and economic prosperity for all of Northeast Asia.”

“With each successive detonation and missile test, North Korea pushes Northeast Asia and the world closer to instability and broader conflict.”

“The threat of a North Korean nuclear attack on Seoul, or Tokyo, is real. And it is likely only a matter of time before North Korea develops the capability to strike the US mainland.”

Washington never negotiated in good faith with North Korea since the Truman era. Its permanent war agenda threats world peace.

Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic weapons are solely for defense, genuinely fearing US aggression, these capabilities its best deterrent.

Has Tillerson changed his mind? “We’re ready to talk anytime they’d like to talk…without precondition(s),” he said during an address to the hawkish Atlantic Council.

At the same time, he killed any chance for serious diplomacy, explaining Washington’s regional regional agenda remains unchanged, adding:

“Our policy with respect to the DPRK is really quite clear and that is the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

On the same day, US and Japanese forces engaged in one of their most provocative military exercises, simulating war on the DPRK, escalating tensions, more evidence of Washington’s true agenda.

Tillerson’s diplomatic outreach was pretense, a smoke screen, clearly understood by Pyongyang, knowing the futility of negotiating with a duplicitous partner, hostile to the country since the 1940s.

Nothing in prospect suggests responsible change, notably with neocon hawks in charge of Trump’s geopolitical agenda, Tillerson sidelined on policymaking, the most impotent secretary of state in memory.

Regional tensions haven’t abated. The threat of possible US aggression compels the DPRK’s leadership to continue developing the most potent deterrent possible, perhaps its only chance for survival.

Anything less would be irresponsible. The duty of all sitting governments is protecting their nations and people from hostile threats.

Washington poses a major one, North Koreans bearing the burden since WW II ended.

A Final Comment

On Tuesday evening, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement, saying Trump’s position on North Korea remains unchanged, stressing talks are pointless, rebuffing Tillerson’s overture.

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

Truth is stranger than fiction. Israel and Saudi Arabia deplore peace and stability – perhaps a tie that binds them, along with uniting against Iran, the main reason for their alliance.

According to Saudi state-run media, Israel invited militant crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to broker peace talks with Palestinians – dead-on-arrival each time initiated, further out-of-reach following Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, igniting a firestorm in Occupied Palestine.

Last month, Abbas met with MBS in Riyadh. He received an offer designed to be rejected – statehood without sovereignty, comprised of isolated bantustans on worthless scrubland, surrounded by expanding settlements encroaching on their land, stealing it, barriers they’re forbidden to approach, ghettoizing them.

Salman and Netanayhu (right)

Jerusalem would become Israel’s exclusive capital, East Jerusalem increasingly off-limits to them. Diaspora Palestinians would have no right of return.

Israel would be free to exploit Palestinian resources, they way things are today. MBS’ proposal reflects Palestinian impotence under longtime Israeli collaborator Abbas.

Yet the idea of Riyadh involvement in peace talks adds an implausible element to the fraudulent process, Israeli intelligence minister Yisrael Katz, saying:

“This is an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to take the initiative upon itself and come to the Palestinians and offer its sponsorship,” adding:

“In such a situation of Saudi leadership, I’m ready to have negotiations. I’m calling on King Salman to invite Netanyahu for a visit and for the Saudi crown prince to come here for a visit in Israel.”

The Saudis can “lead processes and make decisions for the region, as well as for the Palestinians.” They’re “weak and unable to make decisions.”

Washington and Riyadh lack credibility in negotiating peace. Both countries reject equity in justice for Palestinians, their own populations, and elsewhere.

They’re warrior nations, rogue terror states. Regional peace and stability defeat their agendas.

Days earlier, Netanyahu turned truth on its head, defying reality, saying “(t)he sooner Palestinians (recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital), the sooner we will move towards peace” – his notion pushing for unconditional Palestinian surrender and subjugation under endless occupation.

Separately, in response to rockets fired from Gaza, injuring no one, one alone causing minor damage, Israeli warplanes have been terror-bombing Gaza for days, including overnight, targeting Hamas positions even though its military wing had nothing to do with what’s happening.

Israel waged three wars of aggression on Gaza since December 2008. The risk of a fourth looms.

According to an IDF spokesman, “(a)nything less than total calm (in Gaza) is simply unacceptable…We will not allow (rocket) fire to continue.”

Sderot major Alon Davidi said he expects Netanyahu, defense minister Lieberman, “and the IDF commander to strike (Gaza) without mercy.”

In the wake of Palestinian rage in response to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, Mike Pence postponed his visit to Israel, scheduled for early next week.

Abbas’ diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khaldi said “(t)here will be no meeting with (him) in Palestine. The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem declaration.”

Palestinian UN envoy Yiyad Mansour said he’s working on a draft resolution to “reaffirm the positions of the Security Council (on Jerusalem) and asks the Americans to rescind” Trump’s declaration.

US veto power assures nothing adversely affecting Israeli interests becomes a Security Council adopted resolution.

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

Iranian media has cited a statement from Behrouz Hassanolfat, the director of Europe and Americas Department of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, indicating that Iran will formally join the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in early 2018.

The EAEU was formed in 2014 to create a common market, free of trade barriers among the major economies of Eurasia. The Russian initiated trading bloc also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The body is considered a vital component of what is known as the BRICS + format which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa working in tandem with trans-continental partners.

In addition to facilitating free trade, the bloc also initiates collaborative investment projects with an emphasis on streamlining transport infrastructure and energy production and distribution.

Currently, the EAEU has a free trade agreement with Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Moldova with negotiations in the process to create agreements with Thailand, Indonesia and Serbia. There is also a possibility that in the future, Philippines could join as part of Russia’s project to enhance cooperation with the ASEAN bloc countries.

Iran has long been in talks to join the group. As a substantial Eurasian power and partner of Russia, Iran’s membership would help facilitate a streamlining of trade between Iran and Russia who are already vital energy and security partners.

Additionally, Iran’s apparently forthcoming membership of the EAEU is a big blow to the US led sanctions racket against Iran. As part of a larger Eurasian wide free trading bloc, Iran will be automatically exposed to new trading opportunities with countries whose economies are far better suited to trade with Iran than western economies have ever been.

Furthermore, as the EAEU looks to the future, the possibility to incorporate a monetary union could help ween the entire region off Dollar dependence. With agreements between Iran and Turkey, Iran and Russia and Russia and Turkey to trade in domestic currency baskets already being finalised, the wider Eurasian space could foreseeable be largely Dollar free within a decade.

While Turkey is not yet in the EAEU, after Iran’s ascension, Turkey is the next logical step. Turkey’s expanding relations with both Iran and Russia make this an ever more immediate possibility, not least because Turkey has formally given up on the long discredited attempt to join the European Union.

The neoliberal world order has been in crisis for some years now, with no signs of recovery. Trump’s victory is an expression of a breach of trust between the American people and the national elites.

The perfect storm. This is what the situation in the Middle East looks like. More and more events in the region seem to be leading towards an epochal change in the delicate balance of power.

The balance of power in the Middle East was quickly altered following the victory over terrorism in Syria by Damascus and her allies. Moscow’s new role guarantees Iran virtually unlimited space to manoeuvre in the region. The new Iranian military bases in Syria match the agreement between Russia and Egypt for the creation of common areas of cooperation against terrorism.

In this complicated context, Donald Trump emerges as a destroyer of US interests in the region. Observing the cooperation between the Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces (SDF) and the Americans in Syria, we can see the genesis of all the problems between Ankara and Washington. Turkey used to employ political Islam (Muslim Brotherhood) as a way of destabilizing the Middle East and North Africa, once one of the central strategies of Obama and the State Department as well. Turkey now gravitates towards the multipolar milieu of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. The role conferred by these three nations allows Erdogan to manoeuvre skilfully between allied nations as well as fomenters of Islamic extremism like Qatar.

Turkey is just an example of the delicate balance upon which the region rests. Moscow has become the sole mediator for all parties, and does not appear to have bad relations with any of them. The Saudis are going to buy the S-400 system from the Russians; Netanyahu is forced to try to influence Moscow in order to retain some kind of leverage over Iran, but to little avail. Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) has gone further, thanks to Trump and the green light of his son-in-law, arresting dozens of Saudi authorities and financiers (very close to Clinton and Obama), undertaking a genocide against Yemenis, arming Wahhabist Islamist terrorists in every corner of the region, and cutting off all relations with Qatar in a quasi-war that is turning out to be manifestly ineffective.

In this uncontrolled chaos, and among the factions loyal to the United States, Netanyahu is seeing Israeli missiles, launched from uncontested Lebanese airspace, being shot down in Syria. MBS cannot even force his pupil Hariri to resign; and even Saleh in Yemen was killed after betraying and abandoning the Houthis. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are finding themselves coming under fire from Houthi forces, facing the consequences of their senseless military choices closer to home. In Israel, the Netanyahu government is drowning under a sea of corruption scandals, demonstrators on the streets demanding his resignation. Are coloured revolutions returning to bite the master’s hand? In order for Saudi Arabia to avoid a similar scenario, made worse by a dearth in welfare as a result of the drop in oil prices as well as the coffers being emptied by wars, MBS has decided to arrest and rob all of his opponents. Trump does not seem to care about the consequences of these actions, taking care to coordinate events at the highest levels with Xi Jinping in Asia and Putin in the Middle East.

Trump has made a wise choice by renouncing the impossible goal of achieving global hegemony, aiming instead to sort out domestic problems. He is committed to the cause of his electors, and to this end seeks to extract as much money as possible from his allies in order to restart the US economy, aiming for re-election in 2020.

In this sense, the lack of interest from the Trump administration in certain areas of the globe is emblematic. While the chemistry between Trump and Modi appears to be good, the tensions between India and China, heightened by border disputes, seems to have nevertheless dissolved. Following on from the failure of the neocons to divide Russia and China, even the border tensions between India and China seem to be now dissipating. In addition, in Ukraine, even the decision to send lethal weapons to Kiev has been downplayed, and the country now faces a counter-coup led by Saakashvili (yes, him again). Ukraine is a country in a mess, experiencing first-hand the consequences of an evil Atlanticist posture with its vicious anti-Russia policies.

The rest of the world, with mounting bewilderment, watches on while all manner of decisions are made with no rhyme or reason, such as the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The only ones to lose in this scenario are naturally the closest allies of the United States: Israel and all the Arab countries united behind the Saudi (money) state that are now obliged to stand up for the Palestinian cause. Whether out of incompetence or a strategic inability to take a position, it matters little why these decisions are being made. Donald Trump, MBS and Netanyahu are exactly what the region and the world needed. Why? Because these three figures, thanks to their actions, have reunited the axis of resistance in the Middle East, fortified the Russian presence in the region, and opened the door to Asian money for reconstruction, focused on integrating the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. These three stooges have open the door to total defeat thanks to their reckless decisions.

New technologies, like the blockchain, as well as the revaluation of the importance of gold, accompany an inexorable competition to diversify from the US dollar. American military power is in crisis, but the US dollar remains the main reserve currency of the world. In addition to solidifying alliances with opponents by turning them into friends, Moscow and Beijing are aiming to create a new economic environment based on real value ​​(currencies supported by gold) to undermine the financial speculative bubble brought on by the dollar, central banks, and all those financial systems that have created a totally fictitious economy completely disconnected from reality.

Trump is focused on the United States and appears uninterested in global affairs, which is a boon for global stability in the long term. In the meantime, Russia, Turkey and Iran are trying, with new economic and military solutions, to govern a region that is the epicentre of global chaos. Cooperation in disputed areas could reach a new level with Egyptian and Chinese soldiers working as peacekeepers. This seems to be another Russian masterpiece to accelerate the pacification of the region and widen the spectrum of nations involved militarily in the new multipolar world order.

The crisis of the neoliberal-neocon system is evident, although its media, ever useful for propaganda, tries to portray a false and artificial reality. The sense of despair intensifies when mainstream media tries to sell to the world audience the fairy tale of evil Russians trying to influence American elections. Nevertheless, other defamatory claims made, with no evidence offered, involve the Russian national Olympic team and allegations of doping. Their small victories, such as censorship against RT, show the true evil face of the old neoliberal world order.

MBS, Netanyahu and Trump represent all that is wrong in the West and the Middle East. The more they try to survive, the more they harm the interests of the neoliberal elites, only serving to reveal their true genocidal face (as in Yemen or Palestine) or even publicly admitting that their every political move is intended to favour the United States (Trump’s doctrine of “America First” lays it out quite openly and clearly).

The neoliberal order is based on a deception knowingly perpetrated by the mainstream media. They cloud the news to give a specific, partisan view of events. For those firmly opposed to such a warlike and dehumanizing drift, advantage must be taken of the opportunity presented by the unlikely trio of MBS, Trump and Netanyahu. By sweeping away the neoliberal hypocrisy, it is easier to show the brutality of the West’s ruling elite. This unlikely trio even achieved the more than unexpected effect of uniting almost all forces opposed to this warmongering world order, consolidating alliances and friendships in various geographical areas.

From North Africa to the Middle East, passing through South America and Asia, Washington is no longer the unique voice dictating all the decisions. Unlike in the past, Washington no longer chooses for others but instead prefers not to participate in order to avoid making plain its military and economic weakness. Even the withdrawal from the world stage is a strategy, especially if it is promoted as being done of one’s own volition, rather than being forced by circumstances.

In response to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proposing direct talks with North Korea without preconditions, Jon Rainwater, Executive Director of Peace Action, released the following statement:

“At long last, the administration has dropped the unattainable precondition that North Korea agree to denuclearize prior to negotiations. This more realistic posture could be just what we need to deescalate tensions and jumpstart the diplomatic process. North Korea would be wise to accept this olive branch and agree to come to the negotiating table without delay.

“The successful Iran nuclear agreement was only possible because the U.S. and Iran were willing to come to the negotiating table without preconditions. The Iran agreement also couldn’t have worked without a mutual effort to set aside past differences and work step by step to find common ground. The same could be said for any future nuclear agreement with North Korea.

“While this is a critical step towards deescalation and a diplomatic process to address the crisis, both the U.S. and North Korea need to show restraint. Threats, insults, and aggressive military posturing must be left by the wayside as we continue to pursue good faith negotiations. The administration should accept South Korea’s request for a delay in joint military exercises, which could widen an opening for talks.”

Founded in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States’ largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid members and nearly 100 chapters in 36 states, works to abolish nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to international conflicts.

The public may learn more and take action at http://www.PeaceAction.org.

Inside Syria Media Center’ sources report on personnel changes and on the renewal of ISIS leadership. Senior officials in hiding are trying to optimize the management of their structure and continue to carry out illegal subversive activities in a number of  countries.

According to the sources, ISIS leadership is still under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The representatives of ISIS military council are Iyad Abdulrahman al-Abadi, who is known as Abu Saleh al-Haifa, and Abu al-Harith Bashar Ismail al-Jarjar. For all the security issues Iyad Hamid Khalifa al-Jamili, known as Abdulrahman Ansari, and Abu Ali at-Turkmeni from Turkmenistan known as Abdul Bin Waheed Bin Khader Bin Ahmad are responsible. One of the high-ranking field commanders is Mustafa Sat Marim al-Nasr, also known as Masib As-Suri. The coordinators and official representatives, as well as spokesmen of the radical group, are Abu Hajir al-Sufi and Abu Hasan al-Muhajir. Besides, Abu Salah (Mustafa Mohamed al-Jarmusch) runs the financial management of ISIS.

There are also a number of specific posts in the jihadi caliphate. For example, Abu Muhammad is in charge of all the prisons on the IS-controlled territory, and Abu Saji, known as Khairi Abd al-Khumud at-Taiami, is responsible for the social policy of the jihadists. Abu Shimaa, also known as Faris Riyad al-Naimi, is engaged in all the kinds of weapons supplies while a citizen of Tunisia Tariq bin al-Tahar bin al-Falih al-Awni al-Harzi, known as Abu Umar al-Tunisi, is in charge of the operations with the use of suicide bombers in Syria. According to some sources, he wasn’t killed in a U.S. drone strike at Shaddadi in north-eastern Syria on 16 June 2015, but this has not been confirmed yet.

In addition, Abu Qasim, known as Abdallah Ahmad al-Mashhadani, oversees the meeting from abroad and training of new militants, as well as the brainwashing of the suicide bombers. The chief editor of IS affiliated ‘Dabiq’ magazine, Ahmad Abu Samra, is engaged in propaganda and interaction with mainstream media, and the social engineering and the organizational engineering in Twitter is conducted by Mahdi Saidi. Subversive activities are concentrated in the hands of Abu Amr al-Kardash and his assistant for distant mining is Abu Amr al-Malcum.

It is also noticed that the ISIS economy is concentrated in the hands of the Minister Haydar al-‘Abadi (Ahmad al-Salih) and his deputy named Abu Hazma. ISIS emir in Western Kalamun is Muafik al-Jarban Abu as-Sus, and in the south of Damascus is Abu al-Dahman. Military operations in the south of Syria are led by Abu Samir al-Urduni, Jordanian by nationality. The sources also report that the head of the ISIS-affiliated Jaysh Khalid ibn al-Walid Army in the south of Syria is Nadir al-Zeyab (Abu Ali), and her military leader is Abd al-Karim al-Misri.

That might be kind of weird for you to run accidentally into the above-mentioned FB-accounts when searching. Be prepared to see the photos of quite respectable citizens. Unfortunately, it is too far from the reality. The latest Inside Syria Media Center’ investigation of the so-called “White Helmets” FB-accounts showed that they are playing a double game on Facebook often disguised as everyday people.

The more so, some of the high-ranking radicals managed to survive, although, in the U.S. reports they appear killed as a result of drones’ attacks or coalition’s airstrikes, eyewitnesses report. Does a mock take place here? It seems a conspiracy is prepared. You may be quite surprised to know that some high-ranking militants like jackals have fled recently to the territory of neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq at the first sign of threat against their lives.

Many of the terrorists managed to deceive their allies on jihad. Together with their family, they took along their bloody looted property leaving the rest of the radicals to the mercy of fate. Among the most famous militants who took advantage of the situation, are the head of the so-called ‘Islamic Police’ in the province of Deir-Ezzor, Mahmoud Jaber Haij Rujuk, known as Abu Al-Jude, as well as Abu Laidan al-Iraqi responsible for the city of al-Mayadin. The others include the IS Minister of Agriculture, Abdulrahman Akal al-Araf (Abu al-Haras) along with his father, and the Secretary-General for Real Estate in the province of Deir-Ezzor, Abu Hazif al-Dashish.

At the same time, the information about some previously appointed commanders remains unclear. It is known, for example, that the head of intelligence in the province of Deir Ezzor, Abu Firas Ash-Shahil, and his assistant have not been able to cope with their duties. But their fate is unknown at the moment. Many known ‘White Widow’ Sally Jones was responsible for suicide operations in the province of Raqqa. She was close to the border between Syria and Iraq when was allegedly killed by a U.S. drone strike in Syria in June 2017. This ‘office’ as well as many others in ISIS structure are vacant now or have been ‘reduced’ as a result of the Syrian Arab Army’s successful activity.

Furthermore, there are no such positions as ‘a person responsible for Deir-Ezzor defense’. This position was earlier occupied by now escaped Ahmad al-Dunham and Abu Didjan al-Zor. Some more ranks unavailable now like ‘a person responsible for the Tunisian detachments in ISIS’ and ‘a person responsible for al-Bukamal defense’ were held by Syrian Saddam al-Jamal. Such posts like ‘responsible for the security in Deir-Ezzor’ occupied by Iraqi native Abu Tawfiq al-Iraqi, as well as ‘responsible for finances in the province of Deir-Ezzor’ occupied by Abu Arif al-Iraqi were also relegated to the dustbin of history with their chiefs fled.

It seems that ISIS days are numbered.

The Syrian Arab army with the help of its allies broke the back of the powerful earlier structure and is now finishing off its remains. No personnel changes or other transformations in its ranks can help ISIS to rise from the ashes. The scattered ISIS-Islamists are still present on the Syrian soil, but they will have been dealt with in the end.

After the first decade after the Cold War, it became obvious that an idea of global governance is going to be impossible primarily due to an aggressive US foreign policy as Washington intended to become the world hegemon and global policeman. A turning point in the post-Cold War IR became the Kosovo War of 1998−1999, which resulted in the NATO’s occupation of the south-western region of Serbia based on an idea of „Just War“,[1]but in practice for the creation of the mafia state of the Kosovar Muslim Albanians.[2] As a direct consequence of the NATO’s aggression on Serbia and Montenegro in March−June 1999,  the patriotic establishment in Moscow around, at that time, PM Vladimir Putin decided to remove Russia’s Western-puppet president Boris Yeltsin from the post in order to change the course of Russian foreign policy. Therefore, a new course was adopted – a course of power politics with the purpose to make post-Soviet Russia great again as one of the members of global Concert of Powers as a GP.

The term Great Power(s) (GP) is associated with the emergence of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of France and the United Kingdom (Great Britain) after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as the major and most influential European (and global) states. From that time onward, the term is applied to a state seen as playing a cardinal role in international politics and especially in world major affairs. A GP has to have economic, diplomatic, and particularly military power and influence beyond its own borders. The post-1815 European GP during the first half of the 19th century worked together in a close alliance under the agreement that is known in history as the Concert of Europe. Its work was based on the principles of power equilibrium and historical legitimacy.[3]

With Napoléon’s final military and political defeat in 1815, the major victorious European states formed the Holy Alliance that became the foundation of the later Concert of Europe that was designed to prevent the resurgence of the French imperial power and the spread of the ideas of liberalism and nationalism.[4] For the matter of protecting the principles of legitimacy, ousted monarchies were re-established across Europe. The principal power of the Concert of Europe till the Crimean War of 1853−1856 was Russia.[5] The Concert of Europe established the critical principle of collective security and demonstrated that the European collaboration was practically possible to a certain degree between the major powers at the time. Basically, the Concert of Europe was a special system of consultation that was used by the European GP who could initiate international conferences when it believed that collective security and peace of Europe were compromised.

Surely, the best historical example of the system of international Concert of Powers was the Concert of Europe from 1815 to 1853 and, therefore many experts in international relations (IR) believed that after the Cold War a similar system could be established for the fundamental purpose to protect a collective security according to the principle „one for all and all for one“.[6] In essence, both the idea and concept of collective security are attractive for studying and practical implementation for the reason that they can combine a kind of global government (the UNO) with the fundamental features of a traditional Westphalian system of IR (anarchical state system). The system of collective security has to be founded on the internationally accepted set of legal mechanisms aimed to prevent or suppress aggression by any state against any other state and to protect human rights fixed as such by different international documents. The practical measures of the implementation of collective security range from diplomatic boycotts to economic and other (sport) sanctions. The last measure used against the perpetrator is a military action under the collective (the UNSC) approval. The concept of collective security renounce the use of force to settle the disputes among the member states of the system but allows the use of force to protect the collective security of the system against any aggressor from the outside.

After the WWI, the USA became a member of the global GP club, while after the WWII together with the USSR became a global superpower state taking into consideration its mass destruction weapons capabilities. Subsequently, the bipolar global affairs during the Cold War became shaped primarily by two nuclear superpowers. After the personal dissolution of the USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, the hyperpower state became the USA, though China’s and Russia’s growing economic and military strength was going to assure their superpower position in the very coming future. Nevertheless, the USA lost its hyperpower global position already in August 2008 with the Russian military intervention in the Caucasus that was a reaction to the US-sponsored Kosovo self-proclaimed independence in February of the same year – Zero-Sum Game’s effect. At the same period of time, the UK and France have declined from their former GP status. Nevertheless, the number of GP at any time is considered as a key feature of the international system that is very important in determining the level and nature of war.

The practical influence of each GP upon another one has a direct fate together and the elimination of any one GP from the global arena of IR could, but not necessary, threaten the interests of others. For that reason, the biggest number of GP sought to prevent the domination over the European continent by any single state. That was, in particular, true in regard to the United Kingdom, which entered both world wars in order to prevent a German domination over the continent. To say by another word, the GP traditionally tried to preserve a balancing of power in IR by different means. One of them is a creation of the allying blocs with weaker states against stronger ones for the sake to protect themselves from the treats which are coming from another state(s). In many cases, the bloc alliances are fragile and of short duration that depends on the geopolitical interest of each member and the change of the balancing of power at a certain moment of history. The 18th century, for instance, experienced three wars between the great European powers as a response to one another’s attempt to impose a geopolitical domination over Europe.

The Congress of Vienna in 1815, as the framework of the first system of the Concert of Powers in history, restored the old geopolitical order at the Old Continent at least on two levels, spreading the common message that a legitimate (aristocratic-feudal) order cannot be changed by the revolution:

1. The biggest number of former dethroned monarchs received back their pre-1789 power that was the most important in the case of France.
2. The traditional practice of bestowing the land was used in order to reward the victorious actors and to punish those who lost the wars.

The Vienna settlement as well as institutionalized the supremacy of all recognized European GP to have a privileged position in dealing with continental security and international relations: the practice that is maintained up today. In other words, from 1815 up to our days, the terms of the settlement of IR and world order is based on the compromise between GP, which were all the time looking out to firstly satisfy their own particular national interests. The Concert of Europe established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was primarily designed by the great European powers to cooperate in geopolitical control of Europe in order to protect their own zones of interest, being at the same time the first global international mechanism and sort of institution designed to guarantee international security and peace. That was clearly successful in the case of the 1848−1849 Revolutions when, except in France, the monarchs and the land aristocracy won against the liberal requirements at least for the time being. The failure of the liberals was mainly due to two facts:

1. That they could not be able to maintain their original goals.
2. That they became defeated with a substantial aid by the external aristocratic-conservative powers, but mainly by the imperial Russia, who became at that time recognized as the „Gendarme of Europe“.[7]

The military intervention of Russia was in this particular case of a legitimate character, according to the principles of the Concert of Europe, as her army was officially invited to intervene by the recognized and legitimate authority in Vienna into the internal affairs of the Habsburg Monarchy against the Hungarian rebels and revolutionists. The Russian emperor accepted the invitation for the sake to prevent domestic unrest and revolution to spill over into international conflicts.

After the Cold War, it existed a wish that IR and global politics could be run and controlled by the post-1991 political, military and economic-financial GP – the USA, Russia, China, Japan, and the leading states of the EU. However, there are three fundamental differences between GP in IR from the time of the first half of the 19th century and the situation after the Cold War:

1. The Concert of Europe from 1815 to 1853 was composed of more or less five equal GP. However, after the Cold War, it is very difficult to evaluate the distribution of power in global politics.
2. The Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars was created in order to beat the potential political-military threat coming from the region of Central Europe. Nevertheless, after the dissolution of the USSR, the potential threats are not coming anymore from the heart of Europe but from the other regions of the world.
3. All five member states of the post-1815 Concert of Europe shared conservative social and political values differently as the case with the post-Cold War GP. The Concert of Europe’s members accepted the system of power balancing as the common framework of their actions, but after 1989 the same system of power balancing is rather of global nature but not of regional one. In addition, it is today very difficult to believe that China and Russia would accept the hegemonic role of the USA in the new Concert of Powers that is going to be dominated by one state.

However, exactly the members of Concert of Powers are among the first actors in global politics who are constantly violating the concept of collective security in order to secure their own geopolitical goals (for instance, the USSR’s aggression on Afghanistan in 1979, the US’ aggression on Grenada in 1983, the NATO’s aggression on the FR of Yugoslavia in 1999 or the US’ and the UK’s aggression on Iraq in 2003). A domino effect, for instance, is playing one of the crucial methodical tools for each GP in their coping with the geopolitical ambitions of the other members of the system of the Concert of Powers. It posits that the loss of control or fundamental influence over one state will lead to a domino effect – the loss of control or influence over neighbouring states. As probably the best example in contemporary history of such approach is American military support of South Vietnam as Washington feared that if this country became a communist, its neighbouring states would as well as do the same as a consequence of the domino effect, just as dominos fall one after another. Finally, diplomacy is the very practice of GP (and other states as well) by which they are trying to influence the politics of other states by different means like bargaining, negotiating, bribing politicians and other decision-makers, or appealing to the foreign public for support of a position.[11]

Notes:

[1] About an idea and concept of “Just War” vs. “Unjust War”, see in [Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, New York: Basic Books, 2015].

[2] Pierre Pean, Sébastien Fontenelle, Kosovo: Une Guerre „Juste“ pour Créer un Etat Mafieux, Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2013. A quasi-academic background for Kosovo’s separation from Serbia in 2008 was elaborated in an infamous book by Noel Malcolm [Noel Malcolm, Kosovo. A Short History, New York: New York University Press, 1998].

[3] Čedomir Popov, Građanska Evropa (1770−1871). Druga knjiga: Politička istorija Evrope, Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1989, 9−44.

[4] About the Holy Alliance, see in [William Penn Cresson, The Holy Alliance. The European Background of the Monroe Doctrine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922].

[5] The Crimean War was the first major armed conflict between GP in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars of the French imperialism. It represents the West European (British and French) Russophobic policy in regard to the destiny of oppressive Islamic Ottoman Empire [Alan Isaacs et al (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of World History, Oxford−New York: 2001, 156−157; Hugh Small, The Crimean War: Queen Victoria’s War with the Russian Tsars, London: Tempus Publishing, 2014, 7−10].

[6] Martin Griffiths, Terry O’Callaghan, Steven C. Roach, International Relations: The Key Concepts, Second edition, London−New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, 43.

[7] Čedomir Popov, Građanska Evropa (1770−1871). Druga knjiga: Politička istorija Evrope, Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1989, 229−283.

[8] Steven L. Spiegel et al, World Politics in a New Era, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004, 693.

[9] Geopolitics can be defined as “an approach to the theory and practice of statecraft, which considers certain laws of geography (e.g. distance, proximity and location) to play a central part in the formation of international politics” [Paul Cloke et al (eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, Second edition, London: Hodder Arnold, 2005, 565]. The term “geopolitics” was coined by Swedish author Rudolf Kjellen in 1899 and soon popularized by British geographer Halford Mackinder [Ibid.].

[10] Karen A. Mingst, Essentials of International Relations, Third edition, New York−London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, 316.

[11] On diplomacy, see: [Andrew F. Cooper et al (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015].

Prof. Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic. Mykolas Romeris University Faculty of Politics and Management, Institute of Political Sciences ,Vilnius, Lithuania

With ISIL reeling in the decisive battle to recapture Mosul – ISIL’s biggest urban stronghold –, Masoud Barzani president of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) declared, on June 7, that the KRG would hold an independence referendum on Sept 25. Although, Barzani’s announcement sent shock waves across the region, but what made it profoundly alarming was his determination to conduct the controversial referendum in Kirkuk – an oil-rich multi-ethnic city – and other disputed areas, which were seized by the Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga) as the Iraqi Army unraveled in the face of ISIL’s lightening advance in Jun 2014.

And while Iran swiftly declared its strident opposition to the referendum, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al Abadi initial response was muted. Turkey’s president Erdogan by contrast, scathingly criticised Barzani’s move. This was highly unexpected, since Turkey has consistently enabled the KRG to defy the Iraqi Central Government (ICG) by selling oil independently.

Even with Turkey and Iran standing by the ICG, Abadi nevertheless turned to the US to resolve this contentious issue. Washington has all along sought to persuade Barzani to postpone the referendum, arguing that it would deflect attention from fighting ISIL. However, the offensive by the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) on Aug 20, to recapture Tal Afar, without any Peshmerga participation, demonstrated that battling ISIL superseded all other priorities. In essence, the US’s chief objection was essentially the timing of the referendum –  only a few months before the parliamentary elections due in May 2018 –, which would undoubtedly torpedo Abadi’s prospects of being re-elected, as his premiership would be inextricably linked to surrendering Kirkuk. Barzani’s rejection on Sept 14, of an international proposal, prompted the US special envoy for the war on ISIL Brett McGurk, to explicitly emphasize that the referendum lacked any international legitimacy.

Consequently, Barzani vowed to press ahead with the vote, prompting Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Barzani, to dispatch on Sept 17, its Gulf affairs Minister Thamer al Sabhan, who appealed to Barzani to back down. In the eyes of Riyadh, Barzani has doubtlessly been playing an instrumental role in not merely destabilizing its arch foe Iran by enticing Iran’s Kurds to rise up, but also encouraging Turkey’s Kurds to severely undermine Turkey’s government which has emphatically backed its arch rival Qatar in the face of a tight blockade it has imposed in partnership with UAE, Bahrain and Egypt.

On Sept 21, ICG ordered the ISF including the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMFs) – consisting of mainly Shia paramilitary units  and volunteers, who spearheaded Iraq’s  fight back against ISIL – to launch an offensive to not only retake Hawija – a strategic ISIL bastion –, but also to send a stark warning to Barzani.

Buoyed by US and Saudi ringing endorsement, Abadi demanded on Sept 24, that the KRG must hand over airports and border crossings to ICG and also halt oil export. Even though, Barzani’s independence vote was overwhelmingly backed, but on Sept 29 it was abundantly clear that it has spectacularly backfired, when all international flights ceased and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson underlined that the US rejected it.

While Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria were gaining the upper hand against ISIL, came Trump’s desperate attempt to turn the tables on Tehran by refusing on Oct 13, to re-certify the nuclear deal, claiming disingenuously that Iran was violating the spirit of the 2015 accord. Iran, fired back by defiantly showcasing its significant influence, sending to Sulaymaniyah – in Kurdistan – on Oct 15, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Qasem Soleimani, who utilised his close ties with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leadership – especially Bafel Talabani –, practically securing the withdrawal of PUK Peshmerga units and enabling ISF not only to sweep effortlessly into Kirkuk on Oct 16, but also the remaining disputed areas. Paradoxically however, the collapse of Barzani’s independence dream – thanks undeniably to Iran – has been exploited by Trump and Riyadh to bolster Abadi’s inherently weak leadership by presenting him as Iraq’s National hero who crushed ISIL and foiled Kurdish independence.

Ever since 2003 when the US toppled Iraq’s ruthless dictator Saddam Hussain, Saudi Arabia has not only adamantly refused to recognize Iraq’s fledgling democracy but has been working tirelessly to derail the political process.

Against this backdrop, Obama’s administration sought to assuage Riyadh’s distrust by compelling Iraq’s ex-PM Nuri al-Maliki – who is deeply loathed by Riyadh – to step aside, despite winning the 2014 election, in favour of Abadi. Riyadh however, only appointed al Sabhan as its first ambassador to Iraq in Dec 2015. And in a stunning speech in Jul 2016, from Washington, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafri – who was well-connected to the Saudis during the nineties through his business of organising and acting as a religious guide for Iraqi Haj pilgrims in London – expressed his resounding shock at Riyadh’s relentless efforts to destabilise Iraq, acknowledging that Baghdad has persistently been covering up Riyadh’s subversive activities. So, clearly Baghdad’s expulsion of al Sabhan in Aug 2016 was an act of last resort.

Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections was beyond doubt, music to King Salman’s and his – young inexperienced – son’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) ears. He has fervently embraced Riyadh’s uncompromising stance: By considering Iran’s nuclear agreement as the worse deal ever and pledging to scrap it. Additionally,  regarding Iran’s growing influence as the primary threat to the region, while also supporting Riyadh’s vociferous yet unsuccessful campaign – given the growing chorus of highly credible US and European leaders, including ex-President Obama, ex-Secretary of State Clinton and ex-Vice President Biden, all of whom have firmly pointed the finger of blame at Saudi Arabia for funding, arming and exporting its extremist hard-line Wahhabi Salafi ideology to terrorist groups, such as ISIL, Al Qaida and Jabhet Al-Nusra – to shift the responsibility for instability and insecurity to Iran.

Although, Trump initially treated Abadi as Obama’s poodle, but apparently had a major change of heart, largely due to not only intense lobbying by Tillerson and the defence secretary James Mattis, but also Abadi’s tacit support – as revealed by Trump’s readout of his phone conversation with Abadi in Feb 2017 – to Trump’s quest to tackle Iran’s threat. This clearly laid the foundations for a new strategy spearheaded by Trump and Sponsored by MBS, aiming to prop up Abadi’s powerbase, – ahead of the May 2018 elections – ultimately empowering him to steer Iraq away from Tehran and towards Riyadh.

Yet ironically, Trump-MBS strategy has relied heavily on weaning Iraqi Shia blocs off Iran and pushing them towards Riyadh, thereby inevitably creating a Shia-dominated bloc that is ostensibly led by Abadi but in reality controlled and employed by Riyadh to combat Shia blocs aligning with Iran. To implement this strategy Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubier arrived in Baghdad in Feb 2017, and Abadi was invited to meet Salman in Jun 2017, opening the door for Iraq’s Interior Minster Qasim al-Araji – who is a leading figure in Badr Organisation, which is part of the PMFs – followed by Moqtada al Sadr – who is a highly influential cleric and head of the al-Ahrar bloc – to converge on Riyadh in Jul 2017.

Trump, has sought to shore up the new strategy by first sending McGurk in Aug 2017, to attend the reopening of the Arar border crossing between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and then Tillerson on Oct 21, to join Salman and Abadi in Riyadh for the inauguration of the Saudi-Iraqi cooperation Council. Without doubt, Tillerson’s demand – while in Riyadh – that the PMFs should go back home, was intended to consolidate MBS’s credentials as guardian of Sunni Islam, while also boosting Abadi’s image by allowing him to slam Tillerson’s remarks in a face to face meeting – the next day – in Baghdad.

So far Trump-MBS strategy has not made any significant headway, suffering its first major setback in Aug 2017, when al-Araji revealed – from Tehran – that MBS had asked him and also Abadi to mediate to ease tensions with Iran. MBS had to make a stark choice, either losing face or spoiling the perfect pretext used by Iraqi Shia leaders to justify their eagerness to visit Riyadh. Of course MBS denied making such a request.

And while Riyadh would prefer to trumpet Sadr’s bloc alliance with Ayad Allawi’s al-Wataniya coalition, which was announced in Jun 2017, as tangible evidence that its strategy is delivering, in fact it was merely an agreement to coordinate positions in parliament.  Surely, Riyadh must be disappointed that Ammar Al-Hakim, who is now leading his new Al-Hakema movement after ditching in Jul 2017, leadership of the pro-Iran Islamic Supreme Council, has so far been reluctant to openly edge closer towards Riyadh. And again, Sadr’s declaration on Nov 21, that he strongly supports Abadi’s bid for a second term is definitely not inspired by Riyadh, but instead driven by Sadr’s implacable obsession with blocking Maliki’s prospects of becoming PM. It is also in retaliation for Iran’s full-blown backing to his arch rival Qasi al-Khazali – head of Asaib Ahl al Haq.

Trump-MBS strategy constitutes a major turn around in the US outlook for post-2003 Iraq, shifting the emphasis from constructing a fragmented Iraq that could potentially break up to a more united Iraq under the leadership of Abadi, who is not merely heavily dependent on its support, but also prepared to bend backwards to tow its line on Iran. In this context, Barzani became an obstacle and Kirkuk a mere detail.

Indeed, Abadi’s declaration on Dec 9, the end of war against ISIL signals the beginning of the elections campaign. But with MBS engaged in an escalating anti-Shia confrontation against Iran and its allies, it is very hard to imagine how Shia leaders – such as al-Sadr and al-Hakim – could join a coalition hell-bent on taking the fight to Tehran.

Zayd Alisa is a writer, political analyst and commentator on Middle East affairs with numerous appearances on various TV channels (including BBC, France 24, RT TV, etc.). She has published numerous articles relating to the most recent developments in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab spring. She is a British based in London but born in New York, USA.

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Washington’s Secret Wars

By Bill Van Auken, December 13, 2017

The latest letter from the Trump administration, however, represents another qualitative step in this protracted degeneration of American democracy and the elimination of the last pretenses of civilian control over the military. Failing to even keep Congress “informed” about US combat deployments, the document, for the first time, omitted any information about the number of troops participating in Washington’s multiple wars and military interventions.

Global Conflict and Terrorism Are a Prerequisite for Lucrative Arms Deals. The World’s Major Arms Exporters

By Masud Wadan, December 12, 2017

A country’s military standing is evaluated on the basis of air power, naval power, manpower as well as nuclear bombs. There is no single power with all these strengths above others. The US, for example, is surpassing rivals on air power whereas Russia has astonishing number of advanced tanks. North Korea’s battleship force outnumbers others including the US.

Russia’s Military Withdrawal Will Prompt President Assad to “Compromise”?

By Andrew Korybko, December 12, 2017

President Putin’s surprise visit to Syria saw the Russian leader announce the large-scale withdrawal of his country’s Aerospace Forces from the Arab Republic, signifying that Moscow truly believes that Daesh is defeated and that its original mission in Syria has been accomplished. It needs to be reminded that Russia’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention was initiated by the need to destroy this international terrorist threat, although other more locally active terrorist organizations were also targeted for elimination in the course of events as well.

A Christian Christmas? The West Supported Al Qaeda Terrorists Who Killed Christians in Syria

By Mark Taliano, December 12, 2017

The hallmark of current North American society is hollow “faith”, criminal duplicity, and silence in the face of an overseas holocaust created and sustained by those who pretend to represent us.

As North Americans, our silence makes us complicit in these crimes.  It is anti-Christian and criminal, and it certainly contradicts the essence of what this “holy” season is meant to represent.

Putin Orders Russian Forces Home from Syria. ISIS is Down and Defeated, But It’s Not Out (Still Supported by America?)

By Stephen Lendman, December 12, 2017

The struggle for Syria’s soul remains to be entirely completed successfully, a long way to go to achieve it because Washington, Israel and their rogue allies want war and regime change, not peace and stability.

It’s Not Simply Jerusalem, It’s All of Palestine

By Rima Najjar, December 12, 2017

What’s going on in Jerusalem is what has always been going on in Palestine since 1948 –the forced dispossession of Palestinian Arabs of their identity, land and heritage.

Featured image: The West Bank village of Walaja with its agricultural terraces. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Israel will soon bar all access to a Palestinian village whose farmers have continued a tradition stretching back thousands of years of tending stone terraces to grow crops in the fertile uplands outside Jerusalem. 

These farmers are among the latest victims of Israeli efforts to put in place the final pieces of a Greater Jewish Jerusalem that will require “ethnically cleansing” tens of thousands of Palestinians from a city their families have lived and worked in for generations, human rights groups have warned. 

The villagers of Walaja, many of them holding Israeli papers as “residents” of Jerusalem, were warned in November that they will be penned behind a military checkpoint and Israel’s concrete and steel “separation barrier.” The terraces they have farmed for generations and a historic spring where they water their livestock will be off-limits, becoming instead attractions for Israelis in an expanded Jerusalem metropolitan park.

A brochure issued by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority describes the terraces as an “outstanding feature” that has “decorated the Judean Hills for longer than 5,000 years, since man started farming the land.” In an effort to deny Walaja’s current ties to the land, the brochure adds that “terrace agriculture was preserved in the Arab [Palestinian] villages until the [1948] War of Independence.”

The pace of physical and demographic changes in and around Jerusalem has accelerated dramatically since Israel began building a steel and concrete barrier through the city’s Palestinian neighborhoods more than a decade ago, according to the rights groups and Palestinian researchers.

Israel is preparing to cement these changes in law, they note. Two parliamentary bills with widespread backing among government ministers indicate the intended contours of Jerusalem’s future.

One bill calls for the annexation to Jerusalem of some 150,000 Jews in illegal West Bank settlements surrounding the city. As well as bolstering the city’s Jewish population, the move will give these additional settlers a vote in Jerusalem’s municipal elections, pushing it politically even further to the right.

Another bill will deny more than 100,000 Palestinians—on the “wrong” side of the barrier—rights in the city. They will be assigned to a separate local council for Palestinians only, in what observers fear will be a prelude to stripping them of residency and barring them from Jerusalem.

The scheme, say planning experts, offers a double benefit to the far-right government of Binyamin Netanyahu. It decisively reverses the strong demographic growth of the city’s Palestinians, helping to engineer a strong Jewish majority to “Judaize” Jerusalem. And it also allows Israel to covertly annex the large West Bank settlement blocs near Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, a web of harsh Israeli policies, including late-night arrests, land shortages, home demolitions and a denial of basic services, are intensifying the pressure on Palestinians living inside the wall to move out.

These measures are designed to pre-empt any future peace efforts, and effectively nullify Palestinian ambitions for a state with East Jerusalem as its capital, said Aviv Tatarsky, a field researcher with Ir Amim, an Israeli group advocating fair treatment for Palestinians in Jerusalem.

“What is going on is ethnic cleansing, without guns,” Tatarsky said. “Israel hopes to get rid of a third of Jerusalem’s Palestinian population through legislative moves alone.”

Israel’s refashioning of Jerusalem borders has hit Walaja hard because it sits half-in and half-out of the muncipality’s area of jurisdiction. The villagers have found themselves caught in the worst of both worlds.

Jerusalem authorities have issued dozens of home demolition orders, many of them over the past year, as it strictly enforces its planning regulations on the “Jerusalem side” of Walaja, where some 100 families live. There was a large stand-off between residents and municipal demolition crews in August.

The villagers say Israel is seeking to drive them out of the village by criminalizing their homes.

But at the same time, all of Walaja’s houses have been sealed off from Jerusalem by the final sections of the separation barrier wending its way through the city. Israel is also preparing to move a military checkpoint some 2 kilometers closer to Walaja to cut residents off from the agricultural terraces the villagers have cultivated for generations.

Following these changes, the village’s historic terraces will be treated as inside Jerusalem’s borders, while Walaja’s residents will effectively have been ejected outside the city limits.

Walaja’s plight has been replicated for tens of thousands of Palestinians across East Jerusalem who are being gradually cut adrift from the city.

Israel’s demographic concerns in Jeru­salem date back to 1967, when it occupied and annexed East Jerusalem, combining the large Palestinian population there with West Jerusalem’s Jewish population. It also expanded the city’s municipal borders as a way to covertly annex West Bank land.

Israel initially set an upper limit ratio of 30 percent Palestinians to 70 percent Jews in what it called its new “united, eternal capital,” but has been losing the battle to maintain that ratio ever since. Higher Palestinian birth rates mean that today there are more than 315,000 Palestinians in East Jeru­salem, comprising nearly 40 percent of the city’s total population. Projections suggest Palestinians could be a majority within a decade.

A new kindergarten inaugurated Aug. 17, 2017 in Walaja through the joint efforts of UNRWA, the Walaja Village Council and the Italian NGO Civil Volunteer Group. [UNRWA PHOTO ©2017/RAMI ABU-SA’D]

Although few Palestinians in Jerusalem have taken or been allowed Israeli citizenship, and almost none vote in municipal elections, Israel fears their growing numerical weight will increasingly make its rule in the city untenable.

“What we have in Jerusalem is an apartheid system in the making,” Mahdi Abdul Hadi, a Palestinian academic in Jeru­salem, said. “Israeli policies are dictated by demographic considerations, and that has created a huge gulf between the two societies. Palestinians are being choked.”

Fear of the demographic loss of Jerusalem provoked the launch of a high-profile campaign by political and security leaders last year: “Save Jewish Jerusalem.” Fearful that Palestinians will soon be a majority and might start voting in municipal elections, the campaign warned Jewish residents that soon they would “wake up to a Palestinian mayor in Jerusalem.”

Over the past year government ministers, including Education Minister Naftali Bennett, have aggressively pushed for the annexation of Ma’ale Adumim, a large settlement outside Jerusalem, in the West Bank. Gradually, they appear to be winning the argument.

In late October a ministerial committee was set to approve a Greater Jerusalem Bill, legislation intended to expand Jerusalem’s municipal borders to include Ma’ale Adumim and several other large settlements in the West Bank. It won Netanyahu’s backing.

The settlements would have been annexed in all but name, and their 150,000 residents become eligible to vote in Jerusalem municipal elections.

Yisrael Katz, the minister of transport and intelligence who helped introduce the bill, has said its purpose is to “safeguard a Jewish majority” in the city. A recent poll showed 58 percent of Israeli Jews support the plan.

Under pressure from the administration of President Donald Trump, Netanyahu has temporarily put the bill on the back burner. Washington is reportedly worried that the legislation will stymie a peace initiative it is reportedly about to unveil.

Ir Amim fears the legislation is likely to be revived when pressure dissipates. A position paper it published in November warned that the legislation was the “first practical move since the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967 to implement the de facto annexation of areas in the West Bank to Israel.”

After decades of implanting Jewish settlers in the midst of Palestinian areas to prevent the latter’s development and growth, Israel is beginning the difficult process of disentangling the two populations, said Tatarsky.

The effects are being felt keenly on the ground—and not just in Walaja.

In November, Israeli forces stormed the Bedouin village of Jabal al-Baba and issued “eviction” notices to its 300 residents. In August the Israeli army demolished the village’s kindergarten school.

Jabal al-Baba stands between East Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim.

“These Palestinian communities outside Jerusalem are like a bone in the throat for Israel,” said Tatarsky. “Israel is trying to make their life as hard as possible to force them to leave, and so create a territorial continuity between Jerusalem and the settlements.”

Meanwhile, Israel is tightening its chokehold on Palestinians in East Jerusalem’s built-up areas.

Those on the far side of the concrete wall have been effectively abandoned by the Jerusalem municipality, and are finding it ever harder to access the rest of the city, said Daoud Alg’ol, a Palestinian researcher on Jerusalem.

A bill by Ze’ev Elkin, the Jerusalem affairs minister, is designed to disconnect from the Jerusalem municipality Palestinian neighbouhoods such as Walaja, Kafr Aqab, Shuafat refugee camp and Anata, which lie beyond the separation wall.

They would be shunted off into a separate local council for Palestinians, instantly reducing the city’s Palestinian population by a third.

“Once Palestinians are in a separate local council, Israel will say the center of their life is no longer in Jerusalem and their Jerusalem residency papers will be revoked,” said Alg’ol. “This already happens, but now it will be on a much larger scale.”

Since 1967, Israel has revoked the residency permits of more than 14,000 Palestinians, forcing them to leave Jerusalem.

Even though their residents pay taxes to the Jerusalem municipality, Palestinian areas outside the barrier are already “twilight zones” of neglect and lawlessness.

In Kafr Aqab, for example, which is sealed off from the rest of East Jerusalem behind the wall and a military checkpoint, residents receive few services. Israel, however, has also denied the Palestinian Authority access.

“They are living in a no-man’s land,” said Alg’ol.

These areas have become a destination both for criminals and for Palestinian families caught out by Israel’s intricate web of strict residency regulations. Palestinians in the West Bank are denied access inside Jerusalem’s wall, while Palestinians in Jerusalem risk being stripped of their residency papers if they move out of the city.

Couples who have married across that residency divide have found a refuge in Kafr Aqab as Israel slowly disconnects the neighborhood from East Jerusalem. Residents say the population there has rocketed from a few thousand to tens of thousands in the past few years.

As a result, a building boom has taken place beyond the wall as Palestinians take advantage of a lack of enforcement by Israel of its building regulations. That has offered demographic gains for Israel too, said Alg’ol.

A Silent Transfer

“Planning restrictions and land shortages inside the wall have created a housing crisis for Palestinians, making it too expensive for them to live there,” he said. “They have been forced to move to areas outside the wall to find more affordable housing. Economic pressure is creating a silent transfer.”

Palestinians in neighborhoods inside the wall are being driven out in other ways, noted Tatarsky.

Traditionally, Israel has used a range of policies to strip Palestinians of land and prevent development in Jerusalem and justify home demolitions.

Those have included declaring Palestinian areas “national parks,” thereby criminalizing the homes in them; confiscating the last green areas to build Jewish settlements; and allowing settlers to take over Palestinian properties in Jerusalem’s Old City and surrounding neighborhoods as ­Israel seeks to strengthen its hold over
the city’s holy sites, especially al-Aqsa mosque.

There are now some 200,000 Jewish settlers living in East Jerusalem.

“Palestinians are never part of the planning in Jerusalem, and their interests are never taken into account—they are always an obstacle to be removed,” Alg’ol said. “Israel wants the land but not the Palestinians on it.”

Pressure has mounted on Palestinians in Jerusalem, noted Tatarsky, as their communities have been denied schools and basic municipal services. More than 80 percent of Palestinian children live below the poverty line.

Collective Punishment

The Jerusalem municipality and police have also begun stepping up “law enforcement” operations against Palestinians—or what residents term “collective punishment.” Under the pretense of “restoring order,” there has been a wave of recent late-night raids in areas like At-Tur and Issawiya. Large numbers of Palestinians have been arrested, ­demolition orders issued and businesses closed.

“Israel is using the same militarized methods as in the West Bank,” said Tatarsky. “The assumption is these pressures will encourage them to move to areas outside the barrier, where sooner or later they will lose their residency rights.

“Israel has realized that is an opportunity it can exploit,” he stated.

The office of Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, issued a statement denying that the situation of Palestinians in East Jerusalem was deteriorating. It said that there had been dramatic improvements in Palestinian areas in the provision of schools, community centers, sports fields, new roads, postal services and welfare.

It added that

Barkat had “developed a plan unprecedented in scope and budget allocation to reduce gaps in East Jeru­salem in order to address the 50 years of neglect he inherited from his municipal predecessors and successive Israeli governments.”

Alg’ol described the municipal claims as a denial of reality.

“Israel wants to create a make-believe city free of Palestinians,” he said. “Where it can, it is ethnically cleansing them from the city. And where it can’t, it simply hides them from view.”

Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is the author of Blood and Religion and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More).

The People’s Policy Project is proud to release its first formal paper. Co-authored by Ryan Cooper and Matt Bruenig and designed by Jon White, it uses data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to track the evolution of African-American wealth during the Obama presidency, and how that wealth was affected by housing policy choices made by the administration.

The paper finds that while President Obama had wide discretion and appropriated funds to relieve homeowners caught in the economic crisis, the policy design his administration chose for his housing program was a disaster. Instead of helping homeowners, at every turn the administration was obsessed with protecting the financial system — and so homeowners were left to drown.

As a result, the percentage of black homeowners who were underwater on their mortgage exploded 20-fold from 2007 to 2013.

Most middle-class wealth is housing wealth. Obama’s failure meant that while the top 10 percent of white households saw large increases in wealth due to the bank bailout restoring stock market values, almost everyone else in the country suffered serious losses.

To read the complete study (pdf) click here.

All graphs in this article are from the authors.

President Trump’s unilateral decision to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital earned him worldwide criticism and condemnation, except for Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu‘s so-called charm offensive in Brussels, where he wanted to convince the EU to follow Trump’s example, was shunt by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, saying that “this move will not come.” She stressed the support of the EU for a two-state solution with Jerusalem as the capital of both states.

By the way, Netanyahu was not invited by the EU but asked himself to read the EU the riot act. Instead of kicking him out, the EU representatives endured him and became prominent and firm after he left the stage. Community, which tries to act as a global player, would have shown such a political rascal the door. Instead, they got insulted by Netanyahu and took it with a smile.

There have been widespread demonstrations all across the Muslim world, especially in occupied Palestine. Demonstrators also went into the streets in Lebanon, Turkey, Morocco, Sweden, and Berlin, protesting before US Embassies calling anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans.

Turkish President Erdogan uttered harsh criticism about Trump’s decision and Israel in particular, calling Israel a “terrorist state” and a “killer of children” slamming the Zionist regime as an “oppressive, occupation state.” And the US is a “partner in bloodshed” in the Middle East, so Erdogan. At a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Lebanon’s foreign minister Gebran Bassil, a Maronite Christian, called for sanctions against the US.

In Berlin, two thousand demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate close to the US Embassy, shouting anti-Israeli slogans and burning a self-made Israeli flag. This childish symbolism originated out of frustration, anger, lack of power and despair, created a hype among German politicians who branded it an act of “anti-Semitism.” One can ask why the demonstrators didn’t burn the American flag too, which would have made much more sense. The burning of flags is not a crime and falls under the right to demonstrate, as long as it’s not attached to a foreign embassy, which is considered a crime in Germany.

What criticism of Israel’s criminal behavior is concerned, the exercise of freedom of speech is in great danger. Among German politicians and the fawning media, the anti-Semitism-club is always at hand to make critics silence or stigmatize any Israel critics as “anti-Semites.” It still works, although we are living in the 21st century and not in the Middle Ages. With reference to Karl Marx one can say; a ghost is going around in Germany, the specter of anti-Semitism!

Unanimously, the German political class condemned the burning of the Israeli flag as a form of “anti-Semitism and xenophobia”, how Chancellor Merkel called it. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière stated:

“We don’t accept it when Jews or the state of Israel are disgraced in this way.”

He continued saying:

Germany is “bound in a special way to the state of Israel and people of Jewish belief.”

And Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that despite understandable criticism of Trump’s decision,

“there is no right and also no justification to burn Israeli flags, incite hatred against Jews or question the right of Israel to exist.”

Not enough of this political nonsense, Gabriel claimed that such acts do not only oppose Israel but also “the constitutional order of Germany.” None of the demonstrators denied Israel’s right to exist and nobody called the “constitutional order” into question, Mr. Gabriel. Perhaps the Foreign Minister doesn’t understand democracy.

Justice and “Censorship” Minister Heiko Maas was in on it declaring

“Every form of anti-Semitism is an attack against us. There is no place for any anti-Semitism.”

Rightly so, but there has been no anti-Semitism at the Berlin rally only criticism against the Israeli occupier and its ally the US. Jens Spahn, a politician from Merkel’s CDU, wrote on Twitter:

“We have been looking at imported anti-Semitism for too long out of the misreading of misunderstood tolerance.”

One could continue this kind of political rhetoric on pages without any gain of knowledge.

The President of the Central Council of Jews in German, Josef Schuster, also added his two cents to it. According to him, the burning of the self-designed Israel flag was pure Anti-Semitism and a threat to Israel’s existence. Schuster never criticized Israel’s brutal occupation and the mistreatment of the Palestinian people. Not only the Central Council of Jews but also other Jewish functionaries are fighting tooth and nail against criticism of Israel. Even Jewish critics of Israel such as the editor-in-chief of the online magazine “the Semit,” Abraham Melzer, was slandered by the chairperson of the Jewish community in Munich, Charlotte Knobloch, as a “notorious anti-Semite.” A court in Munich has forbidden her this slander, but Knobloch appealed the judgment.

One tenor in many articles was a kind of anti-Semitism that came with the refugees from the Arab world, although it was stressed that there is a latent anti-Semitism in Germany of about 20 percent among the population. It comes to no one’s surprise that all the headlines linked the demonstrations to “Anti-Semitism.” On a regular basis, many of the anti-Semitic “scandals” are initiated by infamous Jewish journalists. Too often, the press jumps on their bandwagon and the slander of innocents take its course.

The reaction of the political class is pure hypocrisy and ingratiation to Israel. The politicians kept mum when Israel committed war crimes against the population of the Gaza Strip killing several thousand. No word against settlements, house demolitions, land theft, random killings, settler inflicted terror, demolitions of institutions financed by the EU et cetera. Across-the-board, the German political class has no empathy for the oppressed Palestinians but only for the Zionist oppressor.

Under the tremendous weight of domestic scrutiny and criticisms of his policies, President Donald Trump issued yet another executive order mandating the transferal of Washington’s embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Trump was following the sentiments of many within the United States Congress which provides unconditional support to the State of Israel. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have continued to allocate billions in tax dollars and weaponry annually to the Israeli government which is utilized to suppress the national will of the Palestinian people.

Demonstrations immediately erupted inside Palestine in numerous cities, towns and villages denouncing the decision by Trump. Clashes took place between the Palestinians and the Israeli security forces which fired rubber bullets, live ammunition and teargas at unarmed largely youthful protesters.

On December 8, two Palestinians were killed in attacks by Israeli forces in Gaza. This area of the country is considered the largest open air prison in the world which has been subject to periodic bombing operations by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Israeli authorities have accused Palestinian fighters from Hamas of firing rockets into various areas of the country during December 8-12. No casualties have been reported on the Israeli side and only minor property damage occurred.

Nonetheless, in what is described as retaliatory attacks on Gaza, several missile and airstrikes were conducted by the IDF and the Israeli Air Force (IAF). Initial claims that two Islamic Jihad combatants were killed on December 12 by an IAF strike was later modified saying the deaths were the result of the mishandling of explosives.

Islamic Jihad did acknowledge that two members of the engineering division of the Al Quds Brigades, its military wing, were killed in northern Gaza without claiming any IDF culpability in the deaths. A statement issued by the Al Quds Brigades said the two men killed were Mustafa Mufid Mohammed al-Sultan, 29, from Beit Lahia and Hussein Ghazi Hussein Nasrallah, a 25 year-old who lived in the Karama neighborhood.

Relatives of the deceased who were interviewed at the hospital where their bodies were transported relayed to the French Press Agency (AFP) that the two were affiliated with Islamic Jihad, a resistance organization that has fought in alliance with Hamas in the ongoing war against Israel. The Islamic Jihad members were riding on a motor bike when the explosion took place near the Gaza-Israeli border.

Demonstrations on the border between Gaza and Israel have resulted in additional casualties among Palestinians. Reports from the Palestine Health Ministry said that over 150 people have been injured since December 6 including at least 30 people being hit by bullets, some of whom were children.

Worldwide Response to the Trump Declaration

The Palestinians were not left alone to protest the latest provocations by the U.S. government as the world rose up to express their views on the issue. From Jakarta, Tehran, Beirut, Berlin, London, New York City, Detroit, etc., millions took to the streets under the slogan of “Free Palestine: Jerusalem is the Capital.”

Abayomi Azikiwe holding placard at Palestine Solidarity Demonstration in Downtown Detroit on Dec. 8, 2017

Even in Yemen which has been under heavy bombardment by the U.S. supported and Saudi Arabian-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for over two years, demonstrations were held in the capital of Sana’a on December 8 in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Thousands attended the protests in the capital and other areas carrying Palestinian flags and pledging to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem.

In the Lebanese capital of Beirut many gathered outside the U.S. embassy on December 8 where they clashed with security forces attempting to push them away from the entrance. Demonstrators set fires in the streets around the embassy while burning U.S. and Israeli flags.

The Indonesian capital of Jakarta was the scene of a mass protest involving thousands of people who gathered also outside the American embassy. Activists said they were not satisfied with the official statements condemning Trump’s move by the government and wanted harsher measures implemented against Washington.

Rabat, the capital of the North African state of Morocco, also witnessed large demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine. Participants repudiated the U.S. president saying that Jerusalem belonged to the Palestinian people.

Demonstrations were held as well in the Islamic Republic of Iran where students on December 11 gathered at Palestine Square to protest policies of the U.S. towards Palestine. Inside of Iran the denunciations against Trump were echoed throughout the highest levels of the state and military.

According to an article published by Press TV:

“Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’ Quds Force, has reaffirmed the Islamic Republic’s full support for Palestinian resistance movements. Soleimani made the remarks in a phone call on Monday (Dec. 11) with commanders of Hamas’ military wing, Ezzeddin al-Qassam Brigades, which has been defending the blockaded Gaza Strip against Israel’s acts of aggression, and the Islamic Jihad resistance movement. The senior IRGC commander also urged all resistance movements in the region to boost their readiness to defend the al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suggested that the efforts by Trump and the leadership of the Israeli government to win acceptance of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would fail. The Iranian leader reaffirmed the solidarity of the Islamic Republic in the struggle for the total liberation of Palestine and its people.

As it relates to President Rouhani and his support for the Palestinian resistance, Press TV reported on December 11 saying:

“In a phone call with Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, on Monday (Dec. 11), Rouhani said the ‘insulting’ move by the US President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s ‘capital’ was a vicious plan against Palestine and the Muslim world, urging all Muslims to stand against it in unison. ’The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns this U.S. move. This incorrect move further revealed the nature of the US and Zionist regime [of Israel] to the world and showed that they do not want to officially recognize the Palestinian people’s rights at all,’ the Iranian president said. Rouhani called on all Palestinian movements to give a firm response to the Israeli regime and the U.S.”

Palestine solidarity actions were held all over the U.S., whose government and ruling class have been the staunchest supporters of Israel internationally. Rallies and marches took place in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, among other municipalities.

Demonstration outside US embassy in Malaysia against US Palestine policy

In the city of Detroit, whose metropolitan area has the largest concentration of people of Middle Eastern descent in the U.S., a rally and march was held on December 8 in the heart of downtown. The demonstration was called by Palestinian American youth with the assistance of anti-imperialist activists from several organizations.

Speeches were delivered at Hart Plaza while people carried placards saying that “Jerusalem is the Capital of Palestine.” Later the crowd marched north on Woodward Avenue to Campus Martius where another speak out was held.

United Nations Security Council Holds Unprecedented Session in Response to U.S. Policy

A UN Security Council meeting was convened on December 8 where the executive order of Trump was debated. Only the State of Israel’s representative spoke in favor of U.S. policy.

Even Washington’s allies within the European Union and the Middle East objected to the declaration by the White House. This emergency session was convened by eight of the 15 members of the council being the U.K., France, Sweden, Bolivia, Uruguay, Italy, Senegal and Egypt.

Nonetheless, no resolutions condemning Washington were put forward. The U.S. has veto power as a permanent member of the UNSC.

All images in this article are from the author.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom is ready to take defective fuel from the Fukushima-1 Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), said Rosatom department’s director Andrei Ivanov on Friday.

“Different options of such cooperation were discussed,” he said, adding that no specific decisions have been made so far.

In September, Rosatom offered its services to Japan to assist in cleaning up at the Fukushima NPP and in decommissioning other unsafe nuclear power plants.

That followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russia and Japan will start joint efforts to clean up after the accident.

The countries’ “cooperation in the sphere of the peaceful atom has been growing, and we expect that by the end of the year we will announce joint projects to eliminate the consequences of the Fukushima meltdown,” Putin said after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Eastern Economic Forum.

The two leaders agreed to exchange information on experiments to get rid of nuclear waste.

The decommissioning of the wrecked Fukushima reactors could take several decades and cost $200 billion. Japan plans to restart 16 out of 45 Fukushima-type reactors, while the others will be mothballed. The country intends to reduce the share of nuclear energy from 29 percent in 2011 to 21-22 percent by 2030.

'Green light': #Fukushima operator to restart nuclear reactors https://t.co/nMJxjCo5je pic.twitter.com/eM2FH16gDz

— RT (@RT_com) October 5, 2017

The accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant occurred in March 2011 when a massive tsunami triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake overwhelmed the reactor cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan. It caused reactor meltdowns, releasing radiation in the most dangerous nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

There were two main tasks on the agenda at the congress of the left party Québec solidaire (QS), meeting in Longueuil December 1-3. One was the adoption of the party’s platform for the next Quebec general election, to be held in October 2018.

The other was ratification of a proposed fusion with Option nationale (ON), a small party originating in a split from the Parti québécois in 2011 after the PQ had put its goal of Quebec independence on the back burner for the foreseeable future. The fusion may add several hundred ON militants to QS’s membership of 18,000.

Following extensive debate, the fusion proposal was adopted by a vote of more than 80% of the 550 QS delegates. At a subsequent ON congress in Quebec City on December 10, the fusion with QS was accepted by 90% of the members who voted. Several dozen more, opposed to the fusion, walked out and did not vote.[1]

However, the QS congress lacked sufficient time to debate and adopt the bulk of the proposed platform, including some of the most important parts. It will be left to the party’s 16-member executive, the national coordinating committee (CCN), to adopt the remaining proposals in the spring of 2018, in consultation with the party’s policy commission which had created the original draft platform.

Homage to Catalonia

The congress debates were informed from the outset by the lessons of Catalonia’s militant mass struggle for independence from the Spanish state. The opening night heard powerful speeches by two leaders of the Catalan left pro-independence party, the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP), Eulàlià Reguant and Anna Gabriel, the CUP spokeswoman in the now-dissolved Catalan parliament.[2] Their presentations (in French) can be heard and viewed here. Their message of internationalist solidarity with national liberation struggles everywhere was cited by a number of participants in the congress’s subsequent debates.[3]

In a pre-congress interview, QS spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said the recent events in Catalonia had “opened up our thinking about the need for a clear and positive approach” to Quebec independence. They reveal, he said, “the profoundly revolutionary nature of the independence process, which entails a rupture with the dominant political system…. Catalonia is

a good reminder that independence cannot be achieved only from above, in the salons of Outremont, with experienced constitutional scholars. The political forces that are going to lead the Quebec people toward independence are going to have to have the potential to generate a powerful social mobilization.[4]

This thinking was reflected in the congress debate on fusion with ON, and in particular in the new centrality of the fight for Quebec independence that fusion entails.

Further clarity on Quebec independence

At its earlier congress in May of this year,[5] Québec solidaire had voted to probe the possibilities for a fusion between QS and Option nationale. In the proposed negotiations between the respective party leaders, it said, QS would “discuss in its authoritative bodies the development of political campaigns on the independence of Quebec and the means by which to accede to it.”

However, no report on these negotiations was issued to the QS membership until early October, when a joint news conference of QS and ON leaders suddenly announced they had signed an “agreement in principle” on a fusion that was to be put to the respective party congresses in December.

Québec solidaire members vote to fuse with Option nationale. (Source: Socialist Project)

The agreement — presented as a “package deal” for adoption without amendment by the party memberships — indicated that Option nationale had taken advantage of the QS leaders’ eagerness for a fusion to drive a hard bargain. I have summarized its key provisions in an appendix to this article, below. Among these provisions:

• ON is to continue to exist within QS as a “collective” with special rights not allowed to the other half-dozen or so collectives in the party. Under the QS statutes, members promoting specific orientations for the party (for example, secularism, ecosocialism, degrowth, animal rights, etc.) are allowed to organize within the party as a recognized collective, provided they comprise at least 10 members and abide by the party’s “fundamental values.” They are not given representation in leading bodies of the party, however.

Under the agreement, ON will constitute a distinct collective with its own funding and representation in leading bodies, and at least three ON members will be nominated in 2018 as candidates in electoral constituencies deemed “winnable” for QS.

• ON leader Sol Zanetti will be presented as the leading party spokesman on “issues surrounding the independence of Quebec.”
• The ON collective will organize a “university” on independence in the spring of 2018, with the right to organize this event each year, provided it is self-financed.
• The unified party will republish an ON publication, the Livre qui fait dire oui [the “Book that leads to a yes”], although the “sovereign” Quebec it advocates is totally neoliberal in its economic program and conflicts in major respects with the QS program.[6]
• A party congress after the 2018 election will review the QS program with a view to “aligning it with the ON program” — the program of a party that has always said the independence it proposes is “neither left nor right” in its political content.

As might be expected, the sudden announcement of this ON-QS agreement aroused considerable controversy in the ranks of both parties. Many QS militants, in particular, deplored the fact that they had been given no opportunity to experience dialogue or collaboration with ON as a prelude to a unification of the parties. Instead, some noted, ON had run a candidate against QS in a recent by-election in Quebec City, and (unlike the PQ, which desisted) had even run against Nadeau-Dubois when he was the QS candidate to succeed party leader Françoise David in Gouin riding last spring.

Some members protested their inability to amend the agreement with its 18 different provisions, as well as the party leadership’s insistence that it could be approved by a simple majority of votes at the congress even though it entailed some changes in the party statutes (which require a two-thirds majority for amendment).

A constituent assembly for an independent state

But the substantive criticism, the subject of the most controversy in QS, was the agreement’s inclusion of amendments to the party’s program providing that a Québec solidaire government would act from the outset as the government of an independent Quebec, and its proposed Constituent Assembly would develop a draft constitution of an independent Quebec that would then be submitted to a popular referendum for approval.

Thus the ON-QS agreement alters what has been Québec solidaire’s favoured mechanism for accession to independence. As I have noted in previous articles, since its founding in 2006 the party has insisted that the constitution to be drafted by its proposed Constituent Assembly need not necessarily be the constitution of an independent Quebec, that it could simply be, for example, a proposal for greater provincial autonomy within the Canadian constitutional regime — even though Québec solidaire itself would fight for an independent Quebec within the Assembly.

This ambiguity with respect to the Assembly’s mandate reflected in part a fear that federalist supporters — currently a majority in Quebec — would be disinclined to participate in a project aimed at founding an independent state. It also reflected, I suspect, lingering federalist sympathies among former members of Option citoyenne, the feminist and community-centered organization that was one of the new party’s founding components in 2006. (The other one, the radical-left Union des Forces Progressistes, had always advocated a constituent assembly with a “closed mandate” to found an independent and socialist Quebec.)

However, this ambivalence over the Assembly’s mandate was not universally accepted by QS members. Nadeau Dubois had indicated he disagreed with the open mandate. And only last May, QS representatives in OUI Québec, a coalition of pro-sovereignty parties (PQ, ON, QS and the Bloc québécois) working to develop a common “road map” in the fight for independence, had signed a joint statement with the other parties endorsing the proposal for a Constituent Assembly but specifying that the Assembly must develop the constitution of an independent Quebec.[7] They were then overruled by the QS leadership, who withheld that statement from the QS congress meeting soon afterwards. As the party’s national coordination committee explained in a report to the December congress, the four-party statement “completely contravened the QS program on this sensitive question.”

Thus the ON-QS Agreement in Principle, with its amendments to what the QS program says about the mandate of the Constituent Assembly, represented for some QS members a sea change in a basic part of that program. A typical reaction was that of Jean-Claude Balu, chair of the QS orientations committee. In a vigorous dissent, Balu noted that from the outset of the process of defining its program, QS had made a rigorous distinction between its support of Quebec independence and its conception of a constituent assembly that is a “fully sovereign assembly of citizens open to everyone.”

In our founding principles, we say the national question must belong to the population of Quebec as a whole, including the indigenous peoples and persons of every origin, and not to the political parties.

Moreover, if we really wish to have relations of equals, nation to nation, with the indigenous peoples throughout the constituent process, they must be invited to participate without imposing any conditions whatsoever upon them.

Option nationale, he noted, with its virtually sole emphasis on independence, had manifestly failed to win electoral support. (In fact, ON’s electoral results have barely exceeded 1% of the popular vote.)

To rally a popular majority, Québec solidaire has relied since its founding on its social agenda [projet de société] and, to counter the downturn in support for independence, on a strategy linking its social transformation project to the accession to independence through a popular and sovereign Constituent Assembly.

The QS members negotiating fusion with ON, Balu concluded, should have done a better job in defending the party’s positions.

Most of the debate over the fusion agreement took place publicly, and almost all of the key documents were published in the on-line journal Presse-toi à gauche.[8]

Does independence trump democracy?

Balu accurately expresses the reasoning behind Québec solidaire’s road map to independence, as it has been articulated up to now. However, the argument is notable for its wishful thinking. The fight for an independent Quebec necessarily confronts powerful propertied interests dominant within the existing federal state and civil society. They will bring to bear immense media and material resources to influence and if necessary sabotage the proceedings of a constituent assembly. No matter how democratically appointed, or how democratic its functioning, if it lacks the clear objective of establishing the framework for an independent state the assembly will be immensely vulnerable to such pressures. Yet any result short of the draft constitution of an independent Quebec would simply be of no effect whatsoever. As Québec solidaire has consistently said, the federal regime cannot be reformed to become an adequate framework for the party’s progressive social agenda. Yet the QS ambiguity on the Constituent Assembly mandate has undermined the credibility of the party’s commitment to independence.

In a six-page leaflet distributed to congress delegates, a self-described group of “QS members in favour of the agreement for fusion with ON” addressed the fear of some QS members that the party’s support of independence might trump its commitment to democracy:

What makes the Constituent Assembly radically democratic is precisely that it directly involves the people in the foundation of a new state, given the perspective of independence. But… it must be clear from the beginning that the question of independence will be posed in the [subsequent] referendum [to approve the new constitution]. If there is a lack of clarity during the constituent process, the debates will be confused: are we writing the constitution of a province, of a country, both at once, one or the other separately? That is why we must know clearly where we are heading.

Giving the constituent process direction or a destination does not mean it will be controlled from above, or that the people will not have an opportunity to declare themselves freely on their political future. Quite the contrary, it means leaving it to the people to democratically draft the outline of their proposed country [their project de pays] without having to comply a priori with the narrow constraints of the Canadian regime….

Furthermore, the argument for independence cannot be left to an assembly appointed after the election of a Québec solidaire government. The party must campaign even today around a progressive social program that is clearly the program of a sovereign Quebec with control over all the powers of an independent state. And it must be recognized that the party will come to power only on the strength of a massive social movement from below that challenges the capitalist logic and laws responsible for the social inequality and environmental catastrophe we are now facing — a movement for “another Quebec” that is analogous, but multiplied many times over, to the mass upsurge sparked by the Quebec students who in 2012 mobilized and won broad popular support for free public post-secondary education.

The arguments in support of the Agreement in Principle negotiated by QS and ON leaders had been amply expressed before the congress, so the debate at the congress gave greater exposure to the critics and opponents. However, in the end the delegates voted overwhelmingly to accept the agreement.

Québec solidaire leaned over backwards to accommodate Option nationale’s concerns and it remains to be seen how this will affect the party’s functioning in the near future. Clearly, the integration of those ON members who will now join QS will stimulate some useful internal debate. With the fusion, the former ON has been won to a party that proudly proclaims its progressive goals and program — and does not pretend that Quebec independence is neither right nor left.

Inconclusive debate on the election platform

The congress was unable to achieve its other major objective, the adoption of a platform for the next Quebec election. The platform, for Québec solidaire, is intended to select and highlight particular issues and demands drawn from the lengthy program that the party has hammered out over nearly a decade with a view to their immediate relevance. An initial draft is compiled by the party’s policy committee; it is then submitted to the members for amendment, following which a synthesis comprising the draft and proposed amendments by QS associations and leadership bodies is debated by congress delegates.

This has proved to be a somewhat unwieldly process. This year it resulted in a 130-page document in which the 15 topics addressed are listed alphabetically — from agriculture (Agroalimentaire et ruralité) to local democracy (Vie démocratique et régionale). And although an attempt was made to prioritize certain topics for the less than two days of debate, the proposed order, in the opinion of some delegates, did not assign sufficient importance to some urgent matters of the day.

As it was, the congress managed to get through the first six of the proposed topics, for the most part without major changes in the draft, leaving the remainder (as I noted earlier) for debate and adoption by the party’s national coordinating committee later in 2018. Topics omitted from debate at the congress include economy and taxation, education, environment and energy, justice, health and social services, and strategy for sovereignty — that is, some of the most important questions the party should address in the election campaign, key components of a coherent social agenda.

Furthermore, some of the platform proposals left for later adoption by the party executive omit important parts of the party’s adopted program. A blatant example is in the platform draft on the environment and climate change, which omits the QS program’s target of a 67% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 needed to comply with the COP 21 Paris accords, as well as the party’s opposition to carbon taxes and carbon markets, and its call for free public transit; Québec solidaire has been unique among political parties in Canada in adopting these demanding targets and demands. Incredibly, a 24-page pamphlet circulated at the QS congress by the Réseau écosocialiste[9] likewise omits these demands, as did a pre-congress article by a Réseau leader attempting to prioritize platform proposals from an ecosocialist perspective.[10]

Québec solidaire has made important progress in 2017. But the congress debates point to important challenges the party faces during the year to come, and beyond.

---

Appendix

Agreement in Principle between Option nationale and Québec solidaire

– a translated summary[11]

Preamble

This fusion should allow all progressive independentists in Quebec to work within a unified party that will spearhead the promotion of Quebec independence. This union takes place therefore on the basis of the program, the founding values (independentism, democracy, ecologism, feminism, pluralism, progressivism, global justice) and the statutes of Québec solidaire, but will preserve the spirit and visibility of the constituent aspects of Option nationale, which is summoned to become a collective in the unified party.

In the current political context, a reconciliation of the independentist and progressive forces is more necessary than ever in order to reunite the conditions for our exit from the Canadian regime and to enable the social agenda that Quebec needs. In view of the history of Quebec society and today’s reality, this unification can be achieved only around a true program for a country, freed of the limits imposed by the Canadian political system. This historic agreement creates a new pole of unification for all those who are resolutely committed to this course.

The unified party will be called Québec solidaire.

Programmatic issues

The QS program on accession to independence is to be amended as proposed in Appendix 1 hereto.

For the party program to fully reflect ON’s contribution, five proposals from the ON program will be included in the electoral platform to be addressed by QS in December 2017.

The congress following the 2018 election will, in addition to adopting the party’s program on “national defense,” as provided by last May’s QS congress, will review the entire program with particular (but not exclusive) attention to aligning it with the ON program.

Political actions

The unified party will continue its participation in OUI-Québec when it resumes its proceedings.

In the 2018 general [Quebec] election, the party spokespersons will support three candidates for nomination from ON, including at least one woman. One of these candidates will be the present leader of ON, who will be supported in contesting one of the 9 ridings considered most favourable by party’s election committee among those not already held by QS.

This arrangement will be implemented by a mediation committee formed of ON and QS members and concerned local associations.

In the 2018 general election, the unified party will present (a) a financial framework for the process of accession to independence, including the establishment of the Constituent Assembly; (b) a financial analysis showing the financial viability of an independent Quebec. And these documents will be developed by consulting economists designated by ON.

Finally, the Canadian colonial regime will be ranked equal in importance with neoliberalism in the unified party’s public communications.

Organizational adjustments

ON will become a collective within QS. Its present funds will be integrated with the party’s but may be used to fund initiatives of the ON collective provided the executive first approves, until the 2018 election.

The ON collective will have two positions on the national coordinating committee (a woman and a man) guaranteed for two years. QS will hire one person designated by the ON collective, who will enjoy the same conditions of employment as other employees of the party.

A committee will be established to advise and accompany ON and QS associations in their fusion process. Local, regional and campus QS associations must be fully functional as associations of the unified party no later than the end of April 2018 to ensure full participation of ON members in deliberations of the unified QS national council to be held next spring.

Every effort will be made to ensure that national commissions, theme commissions and working committees include members of ON who wish to participate.

Promotion of independence

The ON collective will organize a “university” on independence in the spring of 2018. ON funds may be used to finance this event. The ON collective may organize this event each year, inasmuch as it is self-financed.

The unified party will work closely with the ON collective to ensure that party members have available material promoting independence on a permanent basis, including the republication, reprinting and development of the Livre qui fait dire oui [the “Book that leads to a yes”], within the budgetary constraints of the party.

The unified party will feature the current ON leader in its public communications and activities concerning the issues surrounding the independence of Quebec, and in particular in public presentations on the matter.

Appendix 1

The Québec solidaire program concerning accession to independence will be amended as follows. All amendments are underlined or crossed out.

The Québec nation and Canadian federalism

The Constituent Assembly, an affirmation of popular sovereignty, will simultaneously reaffirm the sovereignty peculiar to the indigenous nations. The Quebec National Assembly will invite these nations to join in this democratic exercise by whatever means they decide, including, if this is their wish, granting them a major place in the very framework of the Constituent Assembly.

The Constituent Assembly will be elected by universal suffrage and will be composed of an equal number of women and men. The voting procedure will ensure proportional representation of the tendencies and the various socio-economic walks of life present within Quebec society. In the election of this Constituent Assembly, candidates of all means and origins shall be allowed equitable access to the means of communication. Members of the National Assembly may not be elected to the Constituent Assembly, as participation in it requires that they be available on a full-time basis.

After the election of the Constituent Assembly, it will have the responsibility and the means to conduct an extensive process of participative democracy aimed at consulting the people of Quebec concerning their political and constitutional future as well as the values and political institutions pertaining to it. Pursuant to the results of this process — which shall be publicized and which the Constituent Assembly will be obliged to take into account — the Assembly will develop a draft constitution.

Notes

[1] “Option nationale et Québec solidaire ne font plus qu’un,” Le Devoir, December 11.

[2] Another scheduled guest speaker, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France’s new left-wing party, La France Insoumise, had to cancel his appearance but recorded a 15-minute video message to the congress.

[3] A public meeting in Montréal December 4 to hear the two CUP leaders drew more than a capacity crowd, many of them from Quebec’s Catalan community.

[4] “L’indépendance, un processus révolutionnaire,” L’aut’journal, No. 365, GND interviewed by Pierre Dubuc.

[5] See “Québec solidaire: No to an electoral pact with the PQ, Yes to a united front against austerity, for energy transition and for independence,” Life on the Left, May 28, 2017.

[6] For a trenchant critique of the book by a Marxist economist and QS militant, see Marc Bonhomme, “Le livre qui fait dire oui à un Québec concurrentiel sur le marché global.”

[7] For a detailed account, with the text of the four-party statement, see my report on the May congress.

[8] See “Débats autour de la fusion de Québec solidaire et d’Option nationale.”

[9] See Québec solidaire: Au-delà du parlement, se donner le pouvoir de changer la société.

[10] See “En route vers un Québec indépendant, pluriel, solidaire et égalitaire,” by Bernard Rioux, Presse-toi à gauche, November 21, 2017.

[11] The full text is here (in French): https://api-wp.quebecsolidaire.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ententeqson.pdf.

Featured image is from Socialist Alternative.

It all seemed to be the rage of decency.  Everywhere, moral indignation was on the rise. Since the election of Donald Trump to the White House, advocates, activists and arm chair commentators have been subjecting the Trump administration to every analysis except the one that counts: how did actually win.

The Alabama Senate election, featuring the reddest of red states, was another chance to discombobulate and baffle.  Pundits dug into the electoral dug and found what bright trinkets they wanted to see. 

There was much to wade in, and the result was a Democratic victory, with former lawyer Doug Jones winning with 49.9 percent of the vote to former judge Roy Moore’s 48.4 percent.  As with so many features of this campaign, Moore preferred to keep the show going and refuse to concede.  Votes for write-ins and military ballots might push him across the line.

The Moore slate is certainly a heavily weighted one.  His comments and actions over the years have suggested a carnival of flesh, an enthusiastic sexual predator busy while in office.  A new term in US political discourse has been etched as a result: a case of credible allegation rather than provable conduct.  His views about US greatness are rooted in a vision of hot plantations, plentiful cotton and slavery.

In an economic sense this unpopular, and to some, monstrous view, has some merit not in terms of ethical or humanitarian value but in terms of economic reality.  The institution of slavery remains a source of confusion in the US political landscape, unsettling to those familiar with why it lasted for so long.  But Moore’s point is hot historical and economic, but lodged in the deep recesses of family relations and communities.

His sense of caricatured history assumed proportions that seemed to emulate Trump.  He took to riding a horse to the vote as a matter of electoral appeal, a point less of charming equine antiquity than his own variant of muscular values.

If there was one discernible current in this closest of contests, values, for all their vagueness, was strongest.  Beth Clayton was one of many who spoke of “Alabama values” that had supposedly won through.  It has been an election, in the words of victor Jones, about “dignity and respect”. It was a campaign “about the rule of law”, “common courtesy and decency.” 

A range of public figures and personalities rushed to the decency band wagon.  “Common sense and decency  have prevailed in Alabama,” came the observation from Robert Reich, who also claimed that it showed a loathing for sexual abuse, racism and for those “who would ride roughshod over our democratic institutions.”  Mark Ruffalo stepped out of his thespian role to politicise: “Love and decency prevails.”  To vote for Moore would have been a repudiation of those values. To have voted for the GOP candidate would have been a suggestion of deficiency and intellectual vacuity. And yet, he got close.

Any chat of such values invariably draws dangers and contradictions.  A society of values, for instance, that tolerated slavery, then grim segregation, and pernicious inequality.  Moore, in that sense, was hardly spectacular in holding views that seem, only on the surface, to be extracted from cold storage.  The world of God and settled hierarchies has also been the world of iniquitous conduct.

The GOP, having put Moore in the ring, seemed to be making an announcement of Trump-like inspiration.  It was a channelling of rage, grist to the mill of the deplorables, a blast suggesting more to come.  Moore was also the candidate preferred by Steve Bannon, who has made it his project to turn the GOP inside out. This is something he has, to a certain extent, achieved. 

As the votes started tallying, a narrow victory for the Democrats seemed evident. But another view started forming: GOP members disturbed by the influence of Bannon and even Trump chortled and condemned. The loss of Moore was less a loss for their man, but someone else’s.  The party could abandon Moore while retaining its form and credibility.  The GOP would thereby be spared, its officials washing their hands in anticipation for the 2020 contest.

The better view of this is that neither party can really celebrate the Alabama result.  The Democrats continue to walk around in a daze of denial, refusing to acknowledge that Trump is a symptom so profound it will require earth shaking, even shattering reforms. Democratic strategists on the ever remote distant CNN were attempting with blinding conviction to suggest that Trump was not even relevant, that the cold grip Hillary Clinton still exerts on her party is worthy and credible.  

The GOP, for their part, are waging a war within.  For Bannon, its members are dispensable, a vessel to be altered to shape history.  What matters is generating a base of candidates patterned on a populism that will sell, against a media stands in as the opposition.  The corporatists and marketeers are positively terrified at the ongoing influence the man of Breitbart news still exerts.

What both parties need is an outflanking altogether, something that Trump has done, to a degree, albeit in a manner so roguish and contrarian it beggars political wisdom.  A third party, one genuinely progressive, is not on the cards.  What lies in place of such a machinery are platitudes, and the notion that decency is somehow on the march.  What is forgotten, as was the case in the presidential election of 2016, is the obvious point that the candidate who lost deserved to do so.

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

In late November, the US, Canadian and British embassies along with several other European partners as well as the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Amnesty International, organised what they called the “Isaan Human Rights Festival” in northeast Thailand.

US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded media front, the “Isaan Record” in its article, “Rare human rights event gathers Isaan communities and foreign diplomats,” claims (our emphasis):

The 8th Annual Isaan Human Rights Festival brought together 17 communities from across the region, activists, scholars, and international and Thai students. Ambassadors from Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom were in attendance, as well as political officers from Canada, the European Union and the United States. National Human Rights Commissioner Angkhana Neelapaijit also attend the event. 

Hosted by Mahasarakham University’s College of Politics and Governance, the festival opened a rare space to discuss the human rights situation in the Northeast.

While the US-funded media outfit mentioned funding provided by the Germany-based Heinrich Böll Foundation, it failed to mention other sponsors whose logos were clearly visible in media used throughout the event.

Creating Space for Destabilisation and Conflict 

The foreign-sponsored “festival” takes place against the backdrop of a currently dormant Thai political crisis. In 2014, the Thai military ousted then Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, sister and publicly admitted proxy of Thaksin Shinawatra, a convicted criminal hiding abroad to evade a jail sentence and who was himself ousted in 2006 in a similar coup.

Since Thaksin Shinawatra’s ouster in 2006, he has led a campaign of terrorism, street violence, armed insurrection and assassinations. This includes riots in 2009 that saw sections of Bangkok lit ablaze and at least two shopkeepers gunned down by looting Shinawatra supporters. The following year, Shinawatra organised up to 300 heavily armed militants who fought for weeks in the streets of Bangkok against the military, leaving nearly 100 dead and culminating in citywide arson.

The most recent coup was precipitated when Shinawatra’s militants began murdering anti-Shinawatra protesters in the street. Armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers, hit-and-run attacks targeted protest camps across Bangkok and even those that sprung up in other provinces. Over 20 would die, including women and children.

Such violence is backed by complicit foreign governments, the Anglo-American and European media, and an army of foreign-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) who help cover up, spin and excuse the violence and the military’s reaction to it, portraying Thailand’s armed forces as heavy-handed and oppressive.

The November 2017 festival itself had many of the NGOs lobbying for Shinawatra and his supporters in attendance and was eagerly promoted across social media by those unable to attend.

The US-funded “Isaan Record” would go on to report:

The festival kicked off with a panel on human rights in the Northeast. Representatives of five regional non-governmental organizations voiced their concerns about the shrinking space for popular representation and the military regime’s repression of community voices.

It also claims:

After taking power in a coup in May 2014, the military junta had banned gatherings of more than five people. Violation of the ban a maximum penalty of six months in prison or a fine of 10,000 baht (about $300 US). Several northeastern activists have been prosecuted for exercising their right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech between May 2014 and September 2015, according to a report from Thai Lawyers For Human Rights.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) is another US State Department-funded front, created with direct assistance from the US Embassy in Bangkok the day after the 2014 coup.

The “activists” arrested were likewise from foreign-backed fronts opposing the coup, many of whom enjoy direct ties to diplomats from the US, British and EU missions. And while the “Isaan Record” claims gatherings of more than five people have been banned, this is not entirely true. Gatherings that have been banned are those sponsored by foreign interests on behalf of the ousted government of Thaksin Shinawatra and his proxies.

Other events and gatherings, including those petitioning the government on a wide variety of practical issues have gone forward, including gatherings by groups that have opposed government decisions, but who constructively proposed solutions to specific problems and were willing to work with the government to achieve them.

In other words, the “space” the US embassy and its European partners seek to create in Thailand’s political landscape is for supporters of the ousted government merely under the guise of addressing “human rights.”

The US Condemns “Russian Interference” as it Interferes Globally 

Even at first glance, the notion of foreign embassies “opening space” to discuss the internal politics of a foreign nation is a blatant violation of that nation’s sovereignty. That the event was held in Thailand’s northeast region, known as “Isaan,” the former political stronghold of Shinawatra, is no coincidence.

The “festival” was organized to breath life into what has been an otherwise dormant opposition since Shinawatra and his sister were both removed from power.

Without a constant torrent of monetary and material support, this “opposition” would atrophy and perish.

By providing this “space” with Shinawatra’s supporters condemning the Thai government from behind a line of foreign ambassadors, the lifespan of Shinawatra’s opposition is artificially extended until some time in the future when it can be once again funded, rearmed and unleashed in the cities and villages of Thailand to sow another decade of political crisis, destabilisation and bloodshed.

One could imagine the reaction from Washington should the Russian ambassador and a front of Russian-friendly nations organise a similar event in America’s Midwest and how quickly it would be condemned as foreign interference, all in attendance arrested and tried for sedition and diplomatic ties with Russia severed entirely.

The unfortunate reality for Thailand and nations like it is the prevailing geopolitical maxim of “might makes right.” Thailand lacks the ability to move against overt foreign-funded subversion conducted directly on its own soil by still powerful and influential nations like the US and the UK. Barring the event, arresting its attendees, expelling diplomats or cutting ties with those nations sponsoring such activities are not realistic options for Thailand.

Instead, patience and asymmetrical responses are required, including the reformation of Thailand’s media which is currently overrun by foreign-trained Thai journalists,  many of whom serve merely as scribes for US and European talking points. Filling Thailand’s political space with genuine Thai NGOs, thus displacing foreign-funded fronts posing as NGOs, and addressing legitimate concerns regarding everything from the environment to human rights concerns, working with the government on these issues rather than exploiting them to subvert political stability, is also a viable and constructive option.

What is perhaps most ironic of all about those involved in this brand of foreign interference in another nation’s internal affairs is that their personal social media accounts are awash with headlines about “Russian interference” in American and European politics. It is ironic because what the US accuses Russia of without evidence, is something each and every one of these diplomats and NGO workers are demonstrably guilty of on a daily basis.

US and European pressure on Thailand stems from an ongoing long-term effort to encircle and contain China with a united front of nations along its geopolitical peripheries. By replacing Thailand’s sovereign government with a reliable client state or a divided, failed state, would deprive Beijing of an economic and political partner in the region.

The current government of Thailand has forged strong ties with China, including through the acquisition of weapons to replace its ageing US-made arsenal and mega-infrastructure projects including a high-speed rail network.

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

Featured image is from the author.

In a special election Wednesday to fill the US Senate seat from Alabama vacated by President Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions, conservative Democrat Doug Jones defeated ultra-right former state Supreme Court chief judge Roy Moore.

It was the first time a Democrat won a US Senate election in Alabama since the election in 1992 of Richard Shelby, who subsequently became a Republican and remains today the state’s senior senator.

The vote count as of this writing was 49.9 percent for Jones to 48.4 percent for Moore, a narrow but comfortable margin. Despite the fact that state law triggers an automatic recount only if the margin of difference is 0.5 percent or below, Moore refused to concede the election following Jones’ victory speech and indicated that he would contest the outcome.

The Democratic victory was the result of a higher-than expected turnout of about 37 percent, with turnout particularly high, compared to previous elections, among African Americans and young people. Voter turnout was especially heavy in the major urban centers of Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville and Montgomery. Moore won, as expected, in the rural largely white parts of the state, but he lost in the black rural areas, where turnout was much higher.

Jones had a big advantage among younger voters and won overwhelming majorities among African Americans. He also won the independent vote by 9 points, an indication that Moore was abandoned by sections of affluent white voters who traditionally vote Republican. Some 22,000 voters cast write-in ballots, a higher number than Jones’ margin of victory. On Sunday, Senator Shelby had told CNN that he would not vote for Moore and he urged Alabama Republicans to write in the names of other Republicans.

The result is a serious blow to Trump, who intervened strongly in favor of Moore after the Senate Republican leadership withdrew its support following allegations that the 70-year-old former judge had made improper sexual advances to teenage girls when he was a deputy district attorney in his 30s.

Jones’ admission to the Senate will cut the Republicans’ majority to one, 51 to 49.

The election campaign itself was a spectacle of political reaction and mud-slinging. Moore is a fascistic evangelical who advocates the establishment of a theocracy in the United States. He supports making homosexuality a crime, glorifies the pre-Civil War South, has called for the deployment of US troops on the border with Mexico and promotes xenophobia as part of a pseudo-populist crusade against the “Eastern establishment.”

He was twice removed from the state Supreme Court for defying federal court rulings against his agenda of religious bigotry. The first occasion was his refusal to abide by a ruling that he take down a three-ton monument to the Ten Commandments which he had installed outside the Supreme Court building. The second was his issuing of instructions to probate court judges to continue enforcing a state law banning same-sex marriage that had been overturned by the federal courts.

In one campaign appearance, Moore was asked when he believed America was last “great.” He said one would have to go back to the period before the Civil War, i.e., during the period of slavery in the South. In 2011, he told a right-wing talk show host that getting rid of every amendment to the US Constitution after the 10th would “eliminate many problems.” That would mean overturning the amendments that freed the slaves, guaranteed the democratic rights of freedmen and granted them the right to vote.

In 2009 and 2010, Moore’s Foundation for Moral law hosted pro-Confederate Alabama “Secession Day” celebrations.

Jones and the Democratic Party virtually ignored Moore’s ultra-right policies and instead based their campaign almost entirely on playing up accusations of sexual misconduct against the Republican candidate. As Election Day approached, the national Democratic Party and its allied media sought to leverage the Moore allegations to revive charges of sexual harassment against Donald Trump that had first been raised by the media and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016. This will undoubtedly be intensified following Jones’ victory.

Indeed, USA Today published an editorial Wednesday night that cited a Trump tweet with sexual innuendos directed against Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who had called for his resignation over sexual allegations against him. The newspaper declared that Trump was unfit to remain president.

Apart from this sexual mud-slinging, Jones stressed his independence from the national Democratic Party, his support for increased military spending, his commitment to fiscal austerity and his backing for tax cuts to improve the business climate for corporations wishing to exploit the deeply impoverished working class in Alabama. He combined an appeal to black voters with an effort to win over disaffected Republicans.

Jones made no class appeal whatsoever in a state that is a byword for crushing poverty and exploitation, and offered no serious proposals to address unemployment, poverty wages or lack of decent education, housing and health care.

Nevertheless, he benefited from growing opposition to Trump and his administration’s attacks on health care and democratic rights, its push for a $1.5 trillion tax windfall for the rich and threats to unleash a nuclear war against North Korea. According to exit polls, Trump’s disapproval rating of 48 percent equaled his approval rating. This is in a state that he won last year by a margin of 63 percent to 35 percent.

In his victory speech, Jones reiterated his campaign themes of “unity” and bipartisan cooperation with the Republicans, declaring,

“We tried to make sure this campaign was about finding common ground.”

He said nothing about the pervasive poverty in Alabama, the fourth poorest state in the country, where household median income is nearly $11,000 less than the national figure. Nor did he mention, let alone criticize, Moore’s fascistic politics.

The Democratic victory, which clearly came as a shock to Jones himself, revealed the fragility of the hold of right-wing populist and nativist politics on states that have long been conceded by the Democrats to the Republicans. Alabama itself has undergone a significant development in recent years, with the entry of major firms such as Airbus, Mercedes Benz, Honda and Hyundai and the rapid growth of an industrial working class.

Manufacturing workers made up between 13 and 16 percent of the total workforce in 2015. That is the fifth highest concentration of all states, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, and a substantial increase from a decade ago.

Neither of the right-wing parties of US big business offers any policies to defend the interests of workers in Alabama or any other state. Nor was Wednesday’s election an indication of a surge in support for the Democrats. Exit polls showed that the majority of workers disapproved of both parties, and by similar margins.

Featured image is from AL.com.

A reliable scientific poll of 2,000 Americans taken during 1-6 November 2017 — just a month before US President Donald Trump announced that America’s Embassy will move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv — showed that 63% of Americans were opposed to the move, and 31% supported it. Here was the question, as asked:

Q61. Having thought about it, do you support or oppose the United States immediately moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

	Total	Rep	Dem	Ind
Support	31%	49%	15%	28%
Oppose	63%	44%	81%	60%

 

This was the latest “Critical Issues Poll” by the University of Maryland and the Nielsen Scarborough polling organization, and it showed that US President Trump didn’t actually represent the American people when he issued this historic order. He may have represented Israelis, and he may have represented American billionaires, but he represented less than a third of Americans who expressed an opinion about the matter.

As of the morning of December 11th (when this is being written), no poll yet has been published about this question subsequent to Trump’s diktat concerning it.

After such polls are published, one can identify to what extent (if any), Trump’s decision has affected American public opinion on the issue. But, as noted, American public opinion wasn’t reflected in it at the time he made this decision. Only the collective opinion of America’s 569 billionaires shaped it (as the evidence to be shown here will indicate); the collective opinion of the American public didn’t matter, and this is normal for decisions and legislation by the US federal Government. This decision by Trump is just another example of that broader phenomenon: only the very richest are actually represented by America’s federal Government; the desires  (or even needs) of America’s public are ignored, unless the billionaires happen to want the same governmental policy that the public do. But, regarding the move of America’s embassy to Jerusalem, they didn’t.

Furthermore, no poll has ever been taken (or at least none that is currently on the Web) regarding the two options “should move the US embassy to Jerusalem” and “should not move the US embassy to Jerusalem”; and, so, it’s unknown whether the majority of Americans ever did actually support ultimately moving the Embassy to Jerusalem in advance of a peace-agreement being signed between the Israelis and the Palestinians — such as previous American Presidents promised, and Trump delivered.

Another interesting finding from this “Critical Issues Poll” was the following:

Q50. Do you view Russia as an ally or foe?

	Total	Rep	Dem	Ind
Ally	11%	14%	7%	15%
Foe	42%	29%	55%	33%
Neither	47%	56%	37%	50%

Despite all of the intense propaganda that the mainstream US media (owned and controlled by billionaires) publish alleging that Russia is a ‘foe’ or ‘enemy’ of the American people, only Democrats generally believe it. Perhaps America’s mass of seculars (Democrats being by far the less religious Party) are adopting this belief (associated, as it is, with a belief that Hillary Clinton possibly lost the 2016 election on account of ‘Russia throwing the US election to Trump’, instead of her being a lousy candidate, chosen by her corrupt Party, which she then actually controlled on behalf of her billionaire-backers), as being a canon of secular faith, unchallengeable by the facts — such as by the fact that the US Government’s case for the Democratic Party’s theory is loaded with lies and cover-ups, regardless of whether or not any particular aspect of the Democrats’ case against Russia is true. And, moreover, the US did far worse to Russia, and to other nations, than is even claimed by the Democrats to have been perpetrated by Russia against ‘American democracy’.

To Read the complete article on Strategic Culture Foundation, click here

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

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America’s only enemies are invented ones to maintain a permanent state of war – so war-profiteers can gorge at the public trough, a deplorable state of affairs worsening, not improving.

Militarism and warmaking define America’s agenda, social justice on the chopping block for elimination to feed it.

Campaigns in multiple theaters are being waged, new ones certain to be launched, numerous covert and other operations ongoing secretly.

The Pentagon and misnamed Defense Department operate below the radar, the public kept uninformed, mainstream media reporting nothing. What they know, they won’t say.

Weeks after Trump took office, his administration stopped disclosing information on US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

Trump claimed it’s to maintain an “element of surprise.” The Pentagon said it won’t routinely announce or confirm information on numbers of US forces, their locations or movements in US war theaters.

Americans have a right to know if US service men and women are in harm’s way. The Trump administration believes otherwise.

The Pentagon failed to disclose thousands of airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere – by warplanes, attack helicopters and drones.

Thousands of US special forces are deployed in scores of countries on every continent. According to Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy director William Hartung,

“it is fair to say that the larger US military presence has, at a minimum, served as a recruiting tool for the growing number of terrorist groups operating in West Africa.”

The same is true in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere. So-called counterterrorism operations are more about fostering what Washington claims to oppose.

On December 7, Stars and Stripes discussed a DOD Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) report, saying about 44,000 “unknown” US military personnel are deployed worldwide.

According to Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning,

“(w)e are not at a point where we can give numbers other than those officially stated,” adding:

The Defense Department aims to “balance informing the American public with the imperative of operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.”

Commenting on his administration’s strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia last August, Trump said “America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq” in 2011, adding:

It’s “counterproductive…for the United States to announce in advance the dates we intend to begin, or end, military options. We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities.”

“Conditions on the ground – not arbitrary timetables – will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.”

It was a declaration of escalated war against fictitious enemies, in current and new theaters, without explaining Washington supports the scourge of terrorism it claims to oppose.

The DMDC report indicated US military forces operate nearly everywhere, ranging from two liaison officers in Fiji to tens of thousands elsewhere.

Manning admitted US forces in Syria are fourfold the number reported. Greater numbers are in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere than publicly known.

The Pentagon claiming it doesn’t know precisely how many US forces are deployed abroad and where is part of its culture of secrecy – refusing to disclose information about its covert and various other operations.

America spends trillions of dollars on militarism, warmaking and state terror – the public, Congress and maybe Trump kept uninformed about ongoing operations.

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

Hush! She called him,
Dusk and the first snow
Are falling, come, join me
On the deserted lake road
For a twilight rendezvous
Destined for us.

Never one to refuse her siren call,
He dressed and headed up,
Silent in the silent snow,
The noisy world shut-in for once,
His pounding heart the sole sound
Shared with thoughts of beauty’s face.

The lake was painted yin and yang,
Swirled snow on thin white ice,
Black geese floating spies on
The misty black open water.
Glowing eyes in the gathering dusk,
Searchlights on his slipping steps.
No one will see us here,
He thought, swallowing the uncanny
Sense of someone lurking near.

The crepuscular light on bright
White snow made going slow
As he side-stepped drifting mounds,
The newly ancient burying grounds
Of what he took to be
The call refusing wizened ones
Afraid to meet desire in the snow.

Stumbling spellbound mindless now,
Lost in this very moment,
He steps gingerly over the fallen
Body of a still warm life,
While the snow whirls, though fall fell
Not that long ago.  Geese honk
To jolt him wide awake.

Now slightly smiling since
The slumped down snowy body
Of this life he oversteps
On the road has been hit,
Knocked down, but not destroyed.
And though it’s wet and cold,
An abandoned child,
He knows he’ll turn in a minute,
Go back, pick up his life, slip
Into it as if it were a shirt
He had never taken off to wash.
It’s cold, he’s wet, it’s snowing.
But he sees in the image of his body
Lying down behind him
A way to take up the life that lies
Before him.

He feels she called him out of love,
So turns, his life jumps up, they run
Joyously into each other’s arms
As the snow falls upon them
For the first time, alone to face
The gathering storm.

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

Featured image: Ivan Bridgewater (Source: Facebook / WSWS)

On Saturday, December 9, Ivan Bridgewater III, a 41-year-old electrician, was killed in an industrial accident at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant (KTP) in Louisville. The company has denied initial police reports that the skilled worker was electrocuted and the incident is under investigation by Kentucky authorities.

Bridgewater, who lived in nearby Seymour, Indiana, leaves behind his wife of five years, Megan, their two-year-old son and other family members. In a Facebook post Monday, the worker’s father, Ivan Bridgewater II, wrote,

“I am preparing to leave in a few hours, to go north from Florida, and bury my son in Seymour, Indiana… He was a kind and gentle soul, and I was very proud of him.”

In his first post, the father wrote,

“Parents should never outlive their children. The pain is too great to bear.”

The sudden death of a worker in the United States is an all too common occurrence. Little more than a week before, on December 1, 31-year-old contract worker Yesenia Espinoza was struck by a falling 24-inch pipe and killed while working on a construction project at an ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont, Texas, 84 miles northeast of Houston. Two small children now have no mother. As in so many cases, family and friends have set up a GoFundMe page to pay for funeral expenses and help support the children.

Nearly 5,000 US workers die in workplace accidents every year. In addition, an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers die annually from occupational diseases. Taken together, on any given day, 150 workers die in America from hazardous working conditions.

This is the reality behind the dizzying stock market rise, the multi-billion-dollar fortunes of CEOs like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and the boasts of the Trump administration and the media of a booming economy and “full employment.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries with figures for 2016 later this month. Its most recent report found a total of 4,836 fatal workplace injuries in 2015, up from 4,821 in 2014 and the highest number since 2008.

In addition, the BLS reported, there were nearly 3.7 million non-fatal work-related injuries and illnesses in 2016. These, however, are notoriously underreported. The true toll, according to the AFL-CIO, is estimated at 7.4 million to 11.1 million injuries and illnesses each year.

The highest death tolls in 2015 were in construction (937); transportation and warehousing (765); and agriculture, fishing and forestry (570). Fatalities among immigrant workers rose to 903, the highest number since 2007. The death toll among self-employed contractors was 829, accounting for 17 percent of all workplace fatalities. Among workers 65 and older, increasingly forced by economic conditions to labor past traditional retirement age, the toll was 650.

These bare indices of industrial carnage are only a pale reflection of the miserable conditions facing workers in the final years of the Obama administration.

These figures do not include deaths resulting from addiction to pain-killing medicines, largely due to workplace injuries, lack of access to treatment, lack of health insurance and the anxiety and depression caused by job loss and low wages.

A recent study by the Akron Beacon Journal on the overdose deaths of 12,723 Ohioans between 2010 and 2016 noted:

“Multiple studies in the past 60 years have linked jobs that require little education and lots of physical labor to shorter life spans. But in Ohio over the past seven years, it’s wanting relief from their agony—often by seeking or sharing pain pills—that has likely sent hundreds of laborers to an early grave.”

The occupations with the highest levels of opioid deaths, the newspaper reported, were construction and manufacturing, where employment fell 11 percent and 36 percent, respectively, between 2000 and 2015, and wages plummeted 16 percent between 2006 and 2010.

The tragic death on October 20 of 21-year-old Jacoby Hennings, a temporary part-time employee at Ford’s Woodhaven Stamping plant just outside of Detroit, has brought to light the growing phenomenon of workplace suicides, particularly in the auto industry, with its rising proportion of temporary employees who work for half the wages of senior full-time workers and are without any job protection.

The trade unions are fully complicit in the spread of such barbaric working conditions. Any worker in a United Auto Workers (UAW) plant will tell you that the union reps function as an arm of management, cracking the whip to enforce speedup and compel workers to accept hazardous conditions. Two-tier wages, the swelling ranks of super-exploited part-time and temporary workers, forced overtime and 10-hour shifts—none of this would have been possible without the collaboration of the corporatist unions.

While the Republicans promote “self-policing” by corporations, the Democrats rely on the unions to suppress working class opposition to the bosses.

Unions such as the UAW and United Steelworkers have established health and safety “partnerships” with the employers and federal and state agencies, leading to fewer factory inspections and even lower fines. Based on the lie that the corporatist unions represent the workers’ interests, these schemes have been used to conceal health and safety violations and whitewash the companies.

Even prior to the Trump administration, federal and state occupational safety agencies did little more than issue wrist-slap fines to companies guilty of criminal negligence or worse. In Michigan, for example, out of 322 cases since 2004 where someone died and the state agency found violations, the median total penalty was only $2,800. State law makes it virtually impossible for survivors to file civil suits against employers, workers compensation laws make it difficult for relatives to collect benefits, and spouses are cut off when they remarry. Families are lucky to get funeral costs.

The Trump administration, which is preparing a $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the rich, has appointed industry frontmen to lead occupational safety and environmental agencies, repealed rules requiring employers to keep accurate injury records, and enacted an executive order requiring that for every new workplace rule, two existing safeguards be eliminated.

In August, the web site of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) removed its running list of workers killed on the job from near the top of its home page. It now hides fatality reports on an internal page on its web site, and only reports deaths for which it has issued a citation—meaning the deaths of hundreds of workers go unreported.

Anger over unsafe working conditions led to a near walkout by Fiat Chrysler workers on December 2 at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit, after workers fell ill from unexplained fumes. A walkout was prevented by UAW officials, who backed management’s threats to discipline workers if they took any action. The incident was not even covered by the local media, while the UAW and corporate management denied that it ever happened.

The daily sacrifice of workers’ lives and limbs for corporate profit hardly rates a mention by the media or either of the two big business parties. The Democratic Party is preoccupied with the concerns of upper-middle class women in the #MeToo movement and promotes the filthy, absurd fiction of “white male privilege.”

The grim reality in factories and workplaces, ignored by the official opinion-makers, is fueling immense social discontent, which will, sooner rather than later, erupt into massive class struggles. These struggles must be informed with the conscious aim of putting an end to the source of the industrial slaughterhouse—capitalism.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Democracy in America is farcical, illegitimate, more fantasy than real. Voting is an exercise in futility. Dirty business as usual always wins.

Most federal, state and local office holders in the country represent establishment interests, not the electorate, not ordinary voters.

Virtually the entire US Senate (a millionaire’s club) and most House members were chosen by powerful interest groups.

Candidates representing ordinary people have no chance to become president or hold a leadership congressional position. The same holds for states and cities. Rare exceptions prove the rule.

America is a plutocracy, not a democracy, its debauched political system money-controlled, its agenda much the same on war and peace, corporate empowerment, and police state toughness against nonbelievers no matter which wing of duopoly governance holds power.

Undemocratic Dem. establishment candidate Doug Jones defeated GOP alleged sex offender Roy Moore in the just concluded Alabama US Senate race.

Former US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Jones will take office in January. He’ll fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, chosen by Trump as attorney general.

His victory narrows the GOP Senate majority to a razor-thin 51 – 49 margin, giving undemocratic Dems a better chance to win control of the body in November 2018 elections.

He’s the first Alabama Dem. senator since Howell Heflin left office in January 1997, Republicans largely dominating the state.

Jones defeated Moore in a close race by a 49.9 – 48.4% margin – 23,000 votes separating both candidates. The race could have gone either way.

Moore is a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, removed from office in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument he installed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building.

In 2006 and 2010, he lost GOP gubernatorial primary races, was again elected chief Justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court in 2016 – suspended in May last year for ordering probate judges to enforce the state’s ban on same-sex marriages, despite it having been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

In a 5 – 4 ruling, the High Court said the ban violates 14th Amendment protections.

Following an unsuccessful appeal of his suspension, Moore announced he’d run for the US Senate.

During his campaign, nine women accused him inappropriate sexual or social conduct. Three women, aged 14, 16 and 28, said he sexually assaulted them.

Moore denied the charges, admitting he approached or dated teenaged girls. Witnesses said he had a reputation for approaching them in public, asking them out on dates.

One woman said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was aged-14 and he was 32 years old. Moore denied knowing her.

Another woman accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was aged-16, claiming Moore said

“(y)ou’re just a child. I’m the district attorney. If you tell anyone about this no one will ever believe you.”

Moore denied the accusation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan urged him to drop out of the race. He refused.

Trump initially asked him to step aside, then endorsed him in late November.

Now defeated, it remains to be seen if a narrower GOP Senate majority matters in 2018 legislative battles.

Differences between both parties are political, not ideological, each one seeking to hold power over the other, governing much the same on major issues, consistently betraying the public interest.

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

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

On Sunday, President Maduro’s United Venezuelan Socialist Party (PSUV) candidates won 308 of 335 municipal elections, a 92% triumph, including 21 of 23 state capitals and the Caracas Capital District.

“We have triumphed. Now we advance towards the triumph of national unity, the triumph of the renewal of hope,” said Maduro, adding:

“Today we can officially say that we have won 19 governorates, including Zulia, which is the most populous state in the country.”

“We’re ready to compete” in next year’s presidential election. Control over most municipalities boosts Maduro’s chance for reelection.

He blasted opposition several parties for boycotting Sunday elections, saying they disappeared from the political landscape, adding:

“A party that has not participated today and has called for the boycott of the elections can’t participate anymore.”

“That is the criterion that the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) has put forward, and I… support them.”

The proposal hasn’t yet been approved, Maduro unlikely to act unilaterally. Venezuela’s 2018 presidential election is months away, scheduled for next October.

Sunday turnout was 47%, National Electoral Council (CNE) Vice President Sandra Oblitas, saying

“(t)hese elections saw the participation of 9,139,564 voters – over a million lower than in 2013 with 10.6 million voters participating.”

Three parties in the opposition fascist coalition boycotted the vote. They’ve done it before when expecting to lose, irresponsibly crying foul.

Venezuela’s electoral process is the world’s best, shaming America’s money-controlled sham process. International observers called Sunday elections open, free and fair.

Council of Latin American Electoral Experts (CEELA) President Nicanor Moscoso said

“(w)e believe totally and absolutely in the results offered by the National Electoral Council because all the guarantees offered throughout the process were given. It’s a very good (turnout), within the (regional) average…”

Voting went smoothly nationwide, no significant irregularities reported.

The New York Times opposes Venezuelan Bolivarian social democracy, against it since begun under Hugo Chavez.

As expected, it criticized Sunday’s outcome, calling it unsurprising after Chavistas triumphed overwhelmingly in last October’s regional elections, winning 17 of 22 gubernatorial races, turnout highest in 15 years at over 61%.

PSUV candidates won a 54% majority, opposition fascists soundly defeated with 45%.

The Times: On Sunday,

“a broad but fractious alliance of opposition parties announced that it was boycotting the municipal contests to protest what it called a rigged, corrupt electoral system that favored the president and his party.”

Venezuelan elections are scrupulously open, free and fair, The Times unwilling to admit reality, instead claiming “many polling stations around the capital had barely a trickle of voters.”

9,139,564 voters nationwide is hardly “a trickle.” The Times invents reasons to denigrate Bolivarian fairness, supporting fascist rule instead – in America and worldwide, abroad under US control.

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

A new round of migration talks between Cuban and U.S. delegations was held December 11, 2017, in Washington, presided by Director General for the United States at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, John Creamer, respectively. 

The Cuban delegation expressed its deep concern over the negative impact unilateral, unfounded, and politically motivated measures taken by the U.S. government in September and October, 2017, have had on migration relations between the two countries.

The group reiterated the negative impact of the U.S. government’s decision to suspend visa services at its embassy in Havana, creating serious obstacles for families on both sides of the Florida Straits, and all kinds of exchanges between the two peoples.

The island’s delegation also reaffirmed its condemnation of the arbitrary expulsion of a group of important officials from the Cuban Embassy in Washington, which has severely affected the work of the island’s diplomatic mission, above all the Consulate and the services it provides Cubans residing in the U.S., as well as U.S. citizens wanting to visit the island.

The representation also highlighted the harmful effect canceling visits by official delegations from the U.S. to Cuba is having on migration cooperation, above all pre-arranged visits of mutual interest, noting that if the situation continues it could jeopardize exchanges in this and other sectors.

Regarding present migration agreements, the Cuban delegation urged the U.S. government to fulfill its obligation to issue no less than 20,000 immigration visas a year to Cuban citizens. The group also reiterated its concern over the continued enforcement of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which encourages irregular migration, noting that the elimination of this regulation will be vital to establishing normal migratory relations between the two countries.

Meanwhile, both parties agreed on the positive impact of the Joint Declaration on Migration signed on January 12, 2017, and specifically, the elimination of the “wet-foot-dry-foot” policy and Parole Program for Cuban Medical Professionals, to reducing irregular immigration from Cuba to the U.S.

They also agreed on the usefulness of exchanges between border patrol and coastguard services, held in July this year and the technical meeting on trafficking in persons and migration fraud which took place in September, with another scheduled December 12.

Likewise, the Cuban delegation reaffirmed its willingness to continue migration talks.

The Havasupai Tribe and a coalition of conservation groups praised today’s decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Department of the Interior’s 20-year ban on new uranium mining claims across 1 million acres of public lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon.

The court ruled that the ban, adopted in 2012, complies with the Constitution and federal environmental laws, and that the protected area was not too large, as plaintiff mining companies had argued. The ban protects the aquifers and streams that feed the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon from toxic uranium-mining waste pollution and water depletion.

The Havasupai Tribe, Grand Canyon Trust, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and National Parks Conservation Association intervened in the case in 2013. The groups and the Department of Justice won a 2014 decision by U.S. District Court in Arizona, which upheld Interior’s 2012 uranium mining withdrawal. Mining companies appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit.

Unfortunately the court also rejected a challenge to the Canyon Mine, a uranium mine located on the Kaibab National Forest 6 miles south of Grand Canyon National Park. The court’s decision allows Energy Fuels Inc. to mine without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an obsolete federal environmental review dating to 1986.

“The Havasupai people have been here since time immemorial. This place is who we are,” said Don Watahomigie, the Havasupai Tribal Chairman. “The Creator made us protectors of the Grand Canyon. The Havasupai Tribe is gratified to know that the court has recognized the validity of the mineral withdrawal and what we have always known — that this place, these waters and our people deserve protection. The lives of our children and the purity of our waters are not to be gambled with and are not for sale.”

“This is a great day for the Grand Canyon, for the Havasupai people who rely on its sacred waters, for the people who love this wonder of the natural world, and for the wildlife that call it home,” said Ted Zukoski of Earthjustice.

In January 2012 then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued the 20-year ban that prohibits new mining claims and mine development on existing claims without valid permits. The mining industry claimed that the Interior Department’s exhaustive, 700-page evaluation of environmental impacts was inadequate. Interior’s study of the mining ban showed that without a withdrawal in place, 26 new uranium mines and 700 uranium exploration projects could be developed, resulting in more than 1,300 acres of surface disturbance and the consumption of 970 acre feet of water.

Under the 20-year ban, existing mine operations are projected to have about one-tenth of the surface impacts and one-third the water usage. According to Interior’s study, new uranium mining could have major impacts on springs, wells and aquifers, including increased levels of uranium beyond the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standards and severely depleted groundwater, endangering public health and wildlife, and compromising the values of the tribes who consider the springs sacred.

“This decision rewards years of cooperation toward protecting the water, air, and people that mining near the Grand Canyon puts at risk,” said Grand Canyon Trust’s Roger Clark. “History has shown us how uranium mining can go wrong on the Colorado Plateau, we’re glad for more time to make sure the same legacy isn’t also bestowed upon the Grand Canyon.”

Uranium pollution already plagues the Grand Canyon and surrounding areas. Proposals for new mining have prompted protests, litigation, and legislation to make the ban permanent. Dozens of new mines threaten to industrialize iconic and sacred natural areas, destroy wildlife habitat, and pollute and deplete aquifers. Scientists, tribal and local governments, and businesses have all voiced support for the protections enacted by Interior.

“Sierra Club applauds this decision to uphold the limits on mining on public lands adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park and to protect the park and the greater Grand Canyon region from the hazards of uranium mining, which poses a threat to the people, lands, water, and wildlife of the region,” said Sandy Bahr, Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon chapter director. “We are disappointed that the court did not uphold the challenge to Canyon Mine, however, and we will continue to do all we can to ensure permanent protection of these lands.”

One of the great symbols of the American West, the Grand Canyon was first protected as a national monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. The canyon is surrounded by millions of additional acres of public lands that include wilderness areas, two national monuments, lands designated to protect endangered species and cultural resources, and old-growth ponderosa pine forests. The canyon area is also home to indigenous people, including the Havasupai, Kaibab Band of Paiutes, Hualapai and Navajo tribes, and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. In 2016 the greater Grand Canyon region attracted over 6 million tourists and recreationists, and Grand Canyon tourism contributed $904 million to local economies and supported nearly 9,800 jobs.

“This victory is wonderful news for a region already riddled by decades of uranium industry pollution and plunder,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “This decision is critical to protecting the Grand Canyon’s precious aquifers, biodiverse springs and surrounding public lands for future generations.”

“After an extensive review process and substantial public participation, the Department of the Interior’s decision to protect one of the world’s most enduring landscapes and the sustained health of indigenous communities that live within the watershed of the Grand Canyon was a strong and appropriate one,” said Kevin Dahl of the National Parks Conservation Association. “The court’s action in upholding this ban is commendable.”

The uranium mining companies have 45 days to seek a rehearing by the three-judge panel or by the 9th Circuit sitting en banc. The companies also have 90 days from this decision, or from a denial of rehearing (whichever is later) to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for review of the 9th Circuit Court decision. Such petitions are granted in only a tiny fraction of cases.

Download the decision here.

Featured image is from Alternet.

The Trump White House Monday issued a so-called “War Powers” letter addressed to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and the president pro tempore of the Senate, Orin Hatch, to “keep the Congress informed about deployments of United States Armed Forces equipped for combat.”

In 1973, against the backdrop of the debacle of the Vietnam War, the US Congress, overriding the veto of then-President Richard Nixon, passed the War Powers Act. The aim of the legislation was to prevent future presidents from waging undeclared and open-ended wars with little or no accountability to Congress, which under the US Constitution has the exclusive power to declare war.

It gave the president the right to use military force at his discretion for up to 60 days—itself a huge concession of power to the executive branch—but required withdrawal after a total of 90 days if Congress failed to vote its approval of military action.

While still on the books, the War Powers Act has long ago been turned into a dead letter by the quarter century of interrupted US wars of aggression that have followed the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union, all waged without a declaration of war by Congress.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have willingly acquiesced in the de facto concentration of dictatorial power in the hands of the “commander in chief” in the all-important matter of the waging of foreign wars.

The latest letter from the Trump administration, however, represents another qualitative step in this protracted degeneration of American democracy and the elimination of the last pretenses of civilian control over the military. Failing to even keep Congress “informed” about US combat deployments, the document, for the first time, omitted any information about the number of troops participating in Washington’s multiple wars and military interventions.

The letter acknowledges that the US is continuing and escalating the longest war in its history, the 16-year-long intervention in Afghanistan, stating that the American military is engaged in “active hostilities” against not only Al Qaeda and ISIS, but also the Taliban and any forces that “threaten the viability of the Afghan government” and its security forces. How many troops are engaged in this open-ended conflict is kept secret.

Similarly, the letter refers to a “systematic campaign of airstrikes” that have killed and wounded tens of thousands in Iraq and Syria, along with the deployment of ground troops in both countries. But again, their number is concealed.

It also mentions, for the first time, that “a small number” are deployed inside Yemen, where a US-backed Saudi force is carrying out a near genocidal war that has left millions on the brink of mass starvation.

It goes on to make reference to US military operations in Libya, East Africa, Africa’s Lake Chad Basin and Sahel Region and the Philippines, as well as deployments of forces in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Cuba.

In sync with Trump’s “War Powers letter” the Pentagon has issued a report listing the current location of fully 44,000 troops deployed across the globe as “unknown.” During a Pentagon press briefing last Wednesday, Army Col. Rob Manning declared that the US military’s aim was to “balance informing the American public with the imperative of operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.”

This was the same specious argument made by Trump last August when he announced his plan for an escalation of America’s war in Afghanistan.

“We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities,” he said. “Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.”

The Trump White House has removed caps imposed on troop levels under the Obama administration, leaving it up to the military commanders to escalate US deployments at will. Obama’s caps themselves were routinely circumvented through so-called temporary deployments that saw far more troops sent into US wars than were officially on the books.

The secrecy surrounding troop deployments has been highlighted in recent months following the October firefight in Niger that killed four special operations troops and brought out in the open the deployment of some 1,000 US troops in the central West African country and on its borders, an intervention about which leading members of the US Senate claimed to have known nothing. This was followed by the so-called slip of the tongue by the commander of US special operations forces in Iraq and Syria who told a Pentagon press conference that 4,000 US troops were on the ground in Syria. He quickly caught himself and repeated the official figure of 500. Subsequently, the Pentagon allowed that the real number was over 2,000.

Meanwhile, figures posted by the Pentagon last month—with little media attention—revealed that the number of US troops deployed in the Middle East as a whole had soared by 33 percent over the previous four months, with the sharpest increases taking place in a number of Persian Gulf countries, indicating advanced preparations for a new US war against Iran.

These deployments are kept secret or effectively concealed not out of any concern about “tipping off the enemy,” which in virtually every case is well aware of the level of US military aggression against their countries. Rather, it is aimed at keeping the information from the American people, which has no interest in continuing the ongoing military interventions in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, much less launching new and potentially world catastrophic wars against Iran, North Korea and even China and Russia.

In terms of the waging of semi-secret wars abroad, as with attacks on democratic rights and the social conditions of the working class at home, Trump represents not an aberration, but rather the culmination of protracted processes that have unfolded under both Democratic and Republican administrations, which have ceded ever greater power over US foreign policy to US military commanders. This trend has only deepened under Trump, with an active duty general serving as national security advisor, and two recently retired Marine generals filling the posts of defense secretary and White House chief of staff.

With US forces on the borders of North Korea, China, and Russia on a hair-trigger, the continuous assertion of ever greater war-making powers to the military brass massively increases the danger that a miscalculation, misunderstanding, or accident could quickly lead to full-scale nuclear war.

Trump’s further assault on the War Powers Act has elicited no protest from the Democrats in Congress. They are not opposed to the government’s domination by the military or the drive to war. Their differences are merely of a tactical character, expressed in a campaign of anti-Russia hysteria waged in collaboration with sections of the US military and intelligence apparatus in preparation for a new and far more terrible conflagration.

Both parties represent a parasitic financial oligarchy that relies ever more heavily upon militarism and war to defend its wealth and domination. These parties, along with the other institutions of the US ruling establishment, have no interest in reining in the generals or upholding constitutional government and democratic rights. Rather, they are collaborating in the emergence of a system based upon the unfettered domination of the military, working in tandem with Wall Street, in which elections, the Congress and other civilian bodies are becoming little more than window-dressing.

This article was originally published by GR on November 8, 2017

The powerful countries’ economy is now leaning to a great extent on manufacturing and exports of diverse military weapons. A government’s global status and might is now measured by its capacity to invent and fabricate outmatched and super military gears.

A country’s military standing is evaluated on the basis of air power, naval power, manpower as well as nuclear bombs. There is no single power with all these strengths above others. The US, for example, is surpassing rivals on air power whereas Russia has astonishing number of advanced tanks. North Korea’s battleship force outnumbers others including the US. 

According to studies conducted by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], the five biggest arms and weapons importers between 2010 and 2014 were India, Saudi Arabia, China, the United Arab Emirate and Pakistan.

The table below provides data for the period 2012-2016

Germany’s largest customer was the US, and France and the UK’s major export destinations were Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

In the given period, China replaced Germany as the world’s third largest arms supplier, accounting for 5 percent of international arms exports. China’s top arms purchaser was Pakistan followed by Bangladesh and Myanmar as strategic partners to counterbalance, in particular, India.

The US was the largest arms supplier with 33 percent of international arms exports compared with Russia 23 percent (2012-2016). Both of them combined represent 58 percent of all exports. Russia’s arms industry is projecting boom over bumper sales to India since many years.

Russia’s main markets are China, India and Algeria. The US’s great arms destinations are South Korea, the UAE and Australia. The US sells arms to broader range of clients unlike Russia that has fewer markets.

Source of tables : SIPRI 

The world’s disputed territories and waters claimed by two states such as Pakistan-India’s strife over Kashmir, Azerbaijan and Armenia’s row over Nagorno-Karabakh, China-Taiwan, India-China, Japan-China, Israel-Syria, among many others, remains to be a magnetic cause for arms purchase. Since arms producing powers’ economy heavily stand on this industry’s exports, the world’s leading governments would not insist on ceasefires anywhere. Russia exports arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In April 2016, Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev visited both Armenian and Azerbaijan officials following an armed fight for mediation and said that Russia had no intention of halting arms sales to any side of the conflict.

Other countries like France and Germany have slashed their defense spending and devoted great energy and cost to developing the newest and further sophisticated military systems. Israel’s arms industry grew tremendously which is distinguished for its drones. NATO members flew their Israel-made drones in Afghanistan. Israel spends almost 4.5 percent of its GDP on research and development where the culture of innovation and creativity is dominant.

The world’s top five major arms exporters are the United States, Russia, Germany, France and China which account for 75.8 percent of the entire global arms exports (2012-2016).

If one delves deep into the root causes of terrorism in corners of the world, it may be surprised to find that the real causes of the conflicts are totally different; indeed no logic lies behind as much belligerence and savagery in the name of terrorism. Each time, for instance, an ISIS fanatic’s image with covered face and arm in the hand threatening a country pops up or a missile is fired into Saudi Arabia by Yemeni Houthis, it raise angst and demands for state-of-the-art weapons.

The unrest in the Middle East is believed to have been stoked in part to establish appeal for arms among affluent Arab states. Saudi Arabia is determined to achieve the regional military hegemony by virtue of the US arms. Saudi Arabia is overwhelmed by Iran’s nuclear threats, Yemeni rebel’s resistance, row with Qatar and the ISIS’s battles in the Middle East. The rising international tensions brought Saudi Arabia up to the third largest spender followed by India. This Arab state just declared its plan to build its first nuclear reactors next year. Although it stresses that nuclear program is solely meant for energy supply and peaceful purposes, we might have learned in the past that this oil-rich country is struggling, on the one hand, to not fall behind Iran and, on the other hand, is in pursuit of winning supremacy over other Arab region states.

In early decade, the US had introduced restrictions on the sale of national advanced arms to Arab region states to enable Israel stand ahead of its inveterate foes in the region by exporting own products. A bill was approved by the US Congress in 2008 to allow Israel lead an exclusive arms clout in the region. But following the formation of Saudi-led anti-Iran Alliance, Obama’s administration resumed an earlier level of arms sales which infuriated Israeli officials. Reports reveal that Riyadh and Washington’s arms deals hit US$ 90 billion between 2010 and 2014.

The White House under the Obama administration had endorsed Saudi Arabia-led Military Alliance’s battle with Yemen in a statement. The then undersecretary of the US State Department Antony Blinken visited Riyadh on the second week of Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen and said that this country [Saudi Arabia] is sending a powerful message to Houthis and its allies in Yemen and the US is bolstering it by delivering arms.

According to Swedish SIPRI, the major arms imports have soared in the Middle East over the past few years. As of 2012 to 2016, arms imports skyrocketed by 86 percent in the region.

The US companies were the leading exporters of military equipment and services, according to HIS report.

Boeing hitting the highest of US$ 5.6 billion, followed by Lockheed Martin at US$ 5.1 billion, then Raytheon and Airbus at US$ 3.5 billion and US$ 2.9 billion respectively.

Russia’s UAC holds fifth place with a worth of US$ 2.9 billion.

Earlier in October, Saudi King Salman inked a deal worth of US$ 3 billion with Moscow to purchase S-400 surface-to-air missiles among other arms. (image right King Salman with President Putin)

On 25 October, Qatar swept to purchase the same S-400 anti-aircraft system as well as Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft system, armored vehicles and tanks. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are on the rock and investing hugely on military powers. This could possibly be a foreign conspiracy to push Arab states into purchasing multi-billion dollars worth of arms. Bahrain and Egypt are said to be next in line to strike similar deals with Moscow. This is while Trump had signed the largest single arms deal in the US history during his visit of Riyadh that amounts to US$ 110 billion.

Russia’s S-400 Air Defense System

The International Institute for Strategic Studies released a report in 2017 that put powerful militaries on the order of largest manpower. The world’s most populous nation, China, remained unparalleled in number of military forces. First established way back in 1927, China has an army of 2,183,000, followed by India’s 1,395,100 forces. The US is in third place which is nearly followed by archenemy North Korea with 1,190,000 forces, but the US’s army is said to have been best-equipped than every other on the list.

On the other hand, the Global Fire Power’s 2017 study provides a new look into relative strengths and weaknesses of global superpowers. The US overtakes others on possessing far more aircrafts which is put at 13,762. Russia runs only 3794 followed by China and India. On tanks, Russia tops the list with 20,216, then China at 6,457 and the US in third place followed by North Korea and Syria.

The United States adversary North Korea has something to catch up with others and it is battle force ships including frigates, destroyers, corvettes, torpedo boats, patrol boats and others. North Korea has 967, China 714 and then comes US with 415 followed by Iran and Russia.

The aircraft carrier viewed as a nation’s “symbol of strength” on the ocean is the most expensive military system that countries like China and Turkey are scrambling to own. The US leaves others far behind in possession of aircraft carriers that reach 19 in number. (USS Theodore Roosevelt left) France hold second place with 4 carriers followed by Japan, India and the UK with 4, 3 and 2 carriers respectively. Russia and China each has only one.

There is one more thing North Korea surpasses the US and it is submarine force. However, it is believed that NK’s submarine is a lower-cost and less-complicated force. It is limited to coastal waters and has fewer capabilities. The list place North Korea first with 76, the US 70, China 68 and Russia 63 submarines followed by Iran, the UK and France.

The US’s defense spending budget is the highest of all, so is its external debt. China, the world’s leading economy, is behind the US in military spending, perhaps, due to its largest manpower. Saudi Arabia is not lagging and holds third place with US$ 56 billion and then there is India which has emerged as a potential arms market for Russia and the US. The list of external debt, regarded as a downside, first reads the powers deeply plunged into global conflicts. These are the US, the UK, France and Germany while China and Russia fall in ranks 14 and 20.

Every arm producing country is strict to expose the secrets of super features of aircrafts and other military hardware developed uniquely. In 2011, when the US assault team raided on Osama Bin Laden’s compound near Islamabad, it used radar-evading helicopters. The helicopter was damaged while landing and later blown up by the US forces. Reports just revealed that Pakistan had allowed China to examine the wreckage in a bid to discover the critical technology used in the aircrafts that not only escaped radar but also muffled the noise.

In Dec 2011, a US spy drone crashed 140 miles into Iranian soil and later displayed by Iranian state television. As a surprise for technology-hungry Russia and China, the two allies immediately asked Iran to get an insight into the advanced intelligence asset to build a prototype of their own.

In a separate episode in 2001, China managed to get hold of P-3 Orion reconnaissance aircraft operated by the US Navy when it was forced down after a mid-air collision. This allowed China to develop counter-measures to the surveillance systems carried by the Orion which compelled the US to upgrade its entire fleet.

I first understood the power of the documentary during the editing of my first film, The Quiet Mutiny.

In the commentary, I make reference to a chicken, which my crew and I encountered while on patrol with American soldiers in Vietnam.

“It must be a Vietcong chicken – a communist chicken,” said the sergeant. He wrote in his report: “enemy sighted”.

The chicken moment seemed to underline the farce of the war – so I included it in the film.

That may have been unwise.

The regulator of commercial television in Britain – then the Independent Television Authority or ITA – had demanded to see my script.

What was my source for the political affiliation of the chicken? I was asked. Was it really a communist chicken, or could it have been a pro-American chicken?

Of course, this nonsense had a serious purpose; when The Quiet Mutiny was broadcast by ITV in 1970, the US ambassador to Britain, Walter Annenberg, a personal friend of President Richard Nixon, complained to the ITA.

He complained not about the chicken but about the whole film. “I intend to inform the White House,” the ambassador wrote. Gosh.

The Quiet Mutiny had revealed that the US army in Vietnam was tearing itself apart. There was open rebellion:  drafted men were refusing orders and shooting their officers in the back or “fragging” them with grenades as they slept.

None of this had been news. What it meant was that the war was lost; and the messenger was not appreciated.

The Director-General of the ITA was Sir Robert Fraser. He summoned Denis Foreman, then Director of Programmes at Granada TV, and went into a state of apoplexy. Spraying expletives, Sir Robert described me as a “dangerous subversive”.

What concerned the regulator and the ambassador was the power of a single documentary film: the power of its facts and witnesses: especially young soldiers speaking the truth and treated sympathetically by the film-maker.

I was a newspaper journalist. I had never made a film before and I was indebted to Charles Denton, a renegade producer from the BBC, who taught me that facts and evidence told straight to the camera and to the audience could indeed be subversive.

This subversion of official lies is the power of documentary. I have now made 60 films and I believe there is nothing like this power in any other medium.

In the 1960s, a brilliant young film-maker, Peter Watkins, made The War Game for the BBC. Watkins reconstructed the aftermath of a nuclear attack on London.

The War Game was banned.

“The effect of this film,” said the BBC, “has been judged to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting.”

The then chairman of the BBC’s Board of Governors was Lord Normanbrook, who had been Secretary to the Cabinet. He wrote to his successor in the Cabinet, Sir Burke Trend:

“The War Game is not designed as propaganda: it is intended as a purely factual statement and is based on careful research into official material … but the subject is alarming, and the showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent.”

In other words, the power of this documentary was such that it might alert people to the true horrors of nuclear war and cause them to question the very existence of nuclear weapons.

The Cabinet papers show that the BBC secretly colluded with the government to ban Watkins’ film. The cover story was that the BBC had a responsibility to protect “the elderly living alone and people of limited mental intelligence”.

Most of the press swallowed this. The ban on The War Game ended the career of Peter Watkins in British television at the age of 30. This remarkable film-maker left the BBC and Britain, and angrily launched a worldwide campaign against censorship.

Telling the truth, and dissenting from the official truth, can be hazardous for a documentary film-maker.

In 1988, Thames Television broadcast Death on the Rock, a documentary about the war in Northern Ireland. It was a risky and courageous venture. Censorship of the reporting of the so-called Irish Troubles was rife, and many of us in documentaries were actively discouraged from making films north of the border. If we tried, we were drawn into a quagmire of compliance.

The journalist Liz Curtis calculated that the BBC had banned, doctored or delayed some 50 major TV programmes on Ireland. There were, of course, honourable exceptions, such as John Ware.

Roger Bolton, the producer of Death on the Rock, was another. Death on the Rock revealed that the British Government deployed SAS death squads overseas against the IRA, murdering four unarmed people in Gibraltar.

A vicious smear campaign was mounted against the film, led by the government of Margaret Thatcher and the Murdoch press, notably the Sunday Times, edited by Andrew Neil.

It was the only documentary ever subjected to an official inquiry — and its facts were vindicated. Murdoch had to pay up for the defamation of one of the film’s principal witnesses.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Thames Television, one of the most innovative broadcasters in the world, was eventually stripped of its franchise in the United Kingdom.  

Did the prime minister exact her revenge on ITV and the film-makers, as she had done to the miners? We don’t know. What we do know is that the power of this one documentary stood by the truth and, like The War Game, marked a high point in filmed journalism.

I believe great documentaries exude an artistic heresy. They are difficult to categorise. They are not like great fiction. They are not like great feature movies. Yet, they can combine the sheer power of both. 

The Battle of Chile: the fight of an unarmed people, is an epic documentary by Patricio Guzman. It is an extraordinary film: actually a trilogy of films.

When it was released in the 1970s, the New Yorker asked:

“How could a team of five people, some with no previous film experience, working with one Éclair camera, one Nagra sound-recorder, and a package of black and white film, produce a work of this magnitude?”

Guzman’s documentary is about the overthrow of democracy in Chile in 1973 by fascists led by General Pinochet and directed by the CIA.

Almost everything is filmed hand-held, on the shoulder. And remember this is a film camera, not video. You have to change the magazine every ten minutes, or the camera stops; and the slightest movement and change of light affects the image.

In the Battle of Chile, there is a scene at the funeral of a naval officer, loyal to President Salvador Allende, who was murdered by those plotting to destroy Allende’s reformist government.

The camera moves among the military faces: human totems with their medals and ribbons, their coiffed hair and opaque eyes. The sheer menace of the faces says you are watching the funeral of a whole society: of democracy itself.

There is a price to pay for filming so bravely. The cameraman, Jorge Muller, was arrested and taken to a torture camp, where he “disappeared” until his grave was found many years later. He was 27. I salute his memory.

In Britain, the pioneering work of John Grierson, Denis Mitchell, Norman Swallow, Richard Cawston and other film-makers in the early 20^th century crossed the great divide of class and presented another country.

They dared put cameras and microphones in front of ordinary Britons and allowed them to talk in their own language.

John Grierson is said by some to have coined the term “documentary”.

“The drama is on your doorstep,” he said in the 1920s, “wherever the slums are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.”

These early British film-makers believed that the documentary should speak from below, not from above: it should be the medium of people, not authority. In other words, it was the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people that gave us the documentary.

Denis Mitchell was famous for his portraits of a working-class street.

“Throughout my career,” he said, “I have been absolutely astonished at the quality of people’s strength and dignity”.

When I read those words, I think of the survivors of Grenfell Tower, most of them still waiting to be re-housed, all of them still waiting for justice, as the cameras move on to the repetitive circus of a royal wedding.

The late David Munro and I made Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia in 1979.

This film broke a silence about a country subjected to more than a decade of bombing and genocide, and its power involved millions of ordinary men, women and children in the rescue of a society on the other side of the world.

Even now, Year Zero puts the lie to the myth that the public doesn’t care, or that those who do care eventually fall victim to something called “compassion fatigue”.

Year Zero was watched by an audience greater than the audience of the current, immensely popular British “reality” programme Bake Off. It was shown on mainstream TV in more than 30 countries, but not in the United States, where PBS rejected it outright, fearful, according to an executive, of the reaction of the new Reagan administration.

In Britain and Australia, it was broadcast without advertising – the only time, to my knowledge, this has happened on commercial television.

Following the British broadcast, more than 40 sacks of post arrived at ATV’s offices in Birmingham, 26,000 first-class letters in the first post alone. Remember this was a time before email and Facebook.

In the letters was £1 million – most of it in small amounts from those who could least afford to give. “This is for Cambodia,” wrote a bus driver, enclosing his week’s wages. Pensioners sent their pension. A single mother sent her savings of £50.

People came to my home with toys and cash, and petitions for Thatcher and poems of indignation for Pol Pot and for his collaborator, President Richard Nixon, whose bombs had accelerated the fanatic’s rise.

For the first time, the BBC supported an ITV film. The Blue Peter programme asked children to “bring and buy” toys at Oxfam shops throughout the country. By Christmas, the children had raised the astonishing amount of £3,500,000.

Across the world, Year Zero raised more than $55 million, mostly unsolicited, and which brought help directly to Cambodia: medicines, vaccines and the installation of an entire clothing factory that allowed people to throw away the black uniforms they had been forced to wear by Pol Pot. It was as if the audience had ceased to be onlookers and had become participants.

Something similar happened in the United States when CBS Television broadcast Edward R. Murrow’s film, Harvest of Shame, in 1960. This was the first time that many middle-class Americans glimpsed the scale of poverty in their midst.

Harvest of Shame is the story of migrant agricultural workers who were treated little better than slaves. Today, their struggle has such resonance as migrants and refugees fight for work and safety in foreign places. What seems extraordinary is that the children and grandchildren of some of the people in this film will be bearing the brunt of the abuse and strictures of President Trump.

In the United States today, there is no equivalent of Edward R. Murrow. His eloquent, unflinching kind of American journalism has been abolished in the so-called mainstream and has taken refuge in the internet.

Britain remains one of the few countries where documentaries are still shown on mainstream television in the hours when most people are still awake. But documentaries that go against the received wisdom are becoming an endangered species, at the very time we need them perhaps more than ever. 

In survey after survey, when people are asked what they would like more of on television, they say documentaries.

I don’t believe they mean a type of current affairs programme that is a platform for politicians and “experts” who affect a specious balance between great power and its victims.  

Observational documentaries are popular; but films about airports and motorway police do not make sense of the world. They entertain.

David Attenborough’s brilliant programmes on the natural world are making sense of climate change – belatedly.

The BBC’s Panorama is making sense of Britain’s secret support of jihadism in Syria – belatedly.

But why is Trump setting fire to the Middle East? Why is the West edging closer to war with Russia and China?

Mark the words of the narrator in Peter Watkins’ The War Game:

“On almost the entire subject of nuclear weapons, there is now practically total silence in the press, and on TV. There is hope in any unresolved or unpredictable situation. But is there real hope to be found in this silence?”

In 2017, that silence has returned.

It is not news that the safeguards on nuclear weapons have been quietly removed and that the United States is now spending $46 million per hour on nuclear weapons: that’s $46 million every hour, 24 hours a day, every day. Who knows that?

The Coming War on China, which I completed last year, has been broadcast in the UK but not in the United States – where 90 per cent of the population cannot name or locate the capital of North Korea or explain why Trump wants to destroy it. China is next door to North Korea.

According to one “progressive” film distributor in the US, the American people are interested only in what she calls “character-driven” documentaries.

This is code for a “look at me” consumerist cult that now consumes and intimidates and exploits so much of our popular culture, while turning away film-makers from a subject as urgent as any in modern times.

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” wrote the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

Whenever young documentary film-makers ask me how they can “make a difference”, I reply that it is really quite simple. They need to break the silence.

This is an edited version of an address John Pilger gave at the British Library on 9 December as part of a retrospective festival, ‘The Power of the Documentary’, held to mark the Library’s acquisition of Pilger’s written archive.

Featured image is from RT.

More than 70 residents of Grenfell Tower flats in London’s North Kensington were burnt to death and/or asphyxiated by deadly cyanide gas, six months ago, as a result of the gross criminal negligence of officials and professionals who deliberately ignored the known danger and toxicity of polymer foam insulation.

This potentially deadly, flammable material was specified and installed in a multi-story, high rise tower block when it was well known to be a fire accelerant that would also emit deadly hydrogen cyanide gas when in contact with flame.

It was specified and used when there was a non-toxic, inert mineral wool insulation readily available, in a criminal attempt to cut costs at the expense of human life.

The architects, surveyors, contractors and building inspectors who specified and fitted dangerous polymer foam to a residential building in the full knowledge of its threat to human life, should now be in custody after a public trial.  Instead, no one individual – no architect, no surveyor, no contractor and no building inspector has as yet been charged with criminal negligence and/or manslaughter that led to the horrific deaths of more than seventy people on the 14 June 2017.

Whatever is the alleged conflicting advice of building or fire regulations, all the professionals concerned would have known well the danger inherent in using a polymer foam on or in a residential building. There is substantial documented evidence of multiple deaths worldwide as a result of polymer foams over a period of at least 30 years which has led to the banning of its use in other countries.*

This completely unnecessary tragedy is an indictment of criminal negligence, conspiracy and cover-up by the authorities that must now be uncovered and brought into the glare of public opinion and the searchlight of justice.  Nothing less will suffice.

Note

*The extreme toxicity of this family of chemical isocyanates goes back as far as 33 years, to1984, to the world’s worst industrial disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Sunday, December 10, was Human Rights Day, commemorating the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in Paris.

Its 30 articles affirmed fundamental human rights for everyone, embodied in subsequent international laws, treaties and other agreements.

At the request of Washington, Britain and France, the world’s most egregious human rights abuser and two of its leading accomplices, the UN Security Council met on Monday to bash North Korea’s human rights record – a shameful display of imperial arrogance, inflaming regional tensions more than already.

Russia and China argued against the session to no avail, a counterproductive meeting, followed by a side event, held by Washington, Britain, France, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia, discussing repatriation of North Korean women, rubbing more salt in an open wound, pushing things closer to direct confrontation.

Perhaps it’s what Washington intends, goading the DPRK, seeking a pretext to attack the country, madness if initiated, risking unthinkable nuclear war, Russia and China possibly intervening to protect their security if launched.

“Council members and relevant parties should engage themselves with finding ways to ease tensions on the Peninsula,” China’s Deputy UN Ambassador Wu Haitao stressed during Monday’s session, adding:

“They should avoid mutual provocation and words or actions that might further escalate the situation.”

“(D)iscussion of the human rights issue in (North Korea) runs counter to the above objective and is counterproductive.”

Like his predecessor Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Jordanian prince Zeid bin Raad disgraces the office he holds, breaching his mandate, serving imperial interests.

Via video link from Paris, he bashed North Korea’s human rights record on Monday – failing ever to denounce longstanding US, NATO and Israeli high crimes.

He admitted never having visited the DPRK, having no firsthand knowledge about events in the country, relying solely on sources hostile to its government, his disturbing remarks entirely one-sided, including no mention of provocative US actions risking war on the peninsula, or unacceptable sanctions harming ordinary North Koreans most.

US UN envoy, geopolitical know-nothing, Nikki Haley used Monday’s session to bash Pyongyang gratuitously, disgracefully saying its government “does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”

No nation matches America’s global human rights abuses, waging war on humanity at home and abroad, raping and destroying countries, responsible for millions of post-9/11 casualties alone, millions more earlier, yet unaccountable for its high crimes.

A statement by Pyongyang’s permanent UN mission called Monday’s session and same-day follow-up event “a desperate act of the hostile forces which lost the political and military confrontation with the DPRK that has openly risen to the position of nuclear weapon state” – adding his country won’t cave to pressure.

Washington’s rage for dominance risks nuclear war against one or more countries, humanity’s greatest threat.

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

Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), one of the most prominent human rights organizations, announced the open letter to the government of the Republic of Korea to grant pardon to all prisoners of conscience including Lee Seok-ki, former lawmaker, and Han Sang-gyun, chairperson of the KCTU on December 10, 2017.
FORUM-ASIA said

“On the International Human Rights Day, today, we, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM‐ASIA), are writing to request the unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience who have been unjustly charged under laws that restrict fundamental freedoms and stifle political dissent. Among those are: Mr. Lee Seok‐ki,   a former Member of the National Assembly; and Mr. Sang‐gyun Han, a leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). This request echoes the voice of 58 member organisations of FORUM‐ASIA from 19 countries across Asia.”

Further it emphasized, expressing concern that

“Over the years, the National Security Law, enacted in 1948, has been a widely used instrument of repression against any ‘anti‐government’ activities, or anyone voicing dissent against the elected Government. In most cases, if not all, charges under the Law have resulted in guilty verdicts, including that of Mr. Lee Seok‐ki (right). The application of the Law is fundamentally incompatible with the Republic of Korea’s international human rights obligations on the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.

The Assembly and Demonstration Act, although considered to be in line with the Constitution, grants broad power to the authorities to determine the ‘lawfulness’ of assemblies, allowing them to be banned if deemed unlawful. This contradicts the Republic of Korea’s positive obligation to facilitate and protect peaceful assemblies. The Law, read in conjunction with Article 185 of the Criminal Code on General Obstruction of Traffic, has been frequently used to pre‐emptively ban assemblies or criminalise organisers and participants of assemblies.”

FORUM‐ASIA urgently calls on the Government of Republic of Korea to:

1. Grant pardon to all prisoners of conscience who have been unjustly charged and sentenced to prison terms, including lawmaker Lee Seok‐ki and the six other former UPP members, as well as Sang‐gyun Han, the leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. The Government must stop all continuing investigations and detentions regarding these cases.

2. Stop all ongoing investigations and current detentions in similar cases ; and

3. Review and amend all laws that restrict the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in the Republic of Korea.

*6 leaders of religious groups in Korea, most civil society groups and human rights organizations are calling for unconditional release of all the prisoners of conscience.

Amnesty International demanded the release of prisoners of conscience in Korea in the 3rd UN UPR, November 2017.

*Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) also announced the open letter to the government of Korea, which is a scathing address that the government should release unjustly detained prisoners of conscience according to the international standards of human rights if the government of president Moon Jae-in respects human rights.

As we reaffirmed, the first step toward the development of human rights in the Republic of Korea will be ‘the release of all prisoners of conscience including Lee Seok-ki and Han Sang-gyun’.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

The Korean Committee to Save the Victims of ‘Lawmaker Lee Seok-ki Insurrection Conspiracy Case’

Featured image: Sultan Abdul Hamid II (Source: Pinterest)

There are 171,306 deeds recorded in 46 registries of Jerusalem in Ottoman archive records. Of these, 133,365 are private property and 37,671 belong to foundations. In addition to this, Turkey’s archives also have records of Jerusalem between the hijri years 950 and 1917.

Among the records of private property were 139 deeds belonging to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, 137 of which were transferred to the treasury in the past. The remaining two are in Jerusalem’s Erihav region. The records show that there is a plot of land approximately 30,000 square meters in size that is recorded under the name of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

Source: Truthaholics

The deeds proving that Palestine belongs to Palestinians were handed to Palestinian officials. Israel did not ask for deed records from Turkey. Had Israel requested these records, it would mean that Israel would be accepting that it is occupying Palestine.

A memorandum was signed between Palestine and Jordan. Procedures such as the maintenance and repair of foundations in Jerusalem were transferred to Jordan. Therefore, in 2016, upon the request of Jordan, Turkey provided copies of the deeds of foundations in Jerusalem to Jordan.

What’s going on in Jerusalem is what has always been going on in Palestine since 1948 –the forced dispossession of Palestinian Arabs of their identity, land and heritage.

Because of Donald Trump’s declaration to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and the resultant global outrage regarding this decision, many people have become interested in understanding what is going on in Palestine and what the global ramifications might be.

They are finally becoming aware, after 69 years of Nakba, 69 anniversaries of Human Rights Day and 69 years of falsification of history, that the Palestinian people, like all other peoples in the world, do in fact have the right to self-determination and return.

Israel is surrounded by the Palestinians (among them 5 million UNRWA Palestine refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan) it drove out of Palestine to establish the Apartheid settler colonial Jewish state there. These people are mostly, but not exclusively, Muslim in religion. They are the indigenous people of Palestine, Arab in culture, the true owners of the land.

But at the center of Zionist mythology is illegally-annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

As Hamid Dabashi writes in Al-Jazeera:

If you want to understand the psychopathology at the root of the Zionist psychosis, you must go to the heart of their delusion, like an analyst placing a mentally sick person on a couch – and today there is no better place to see that psychotic colonial fixation at work than in an article, titled, Of Course Jerusalem Is Israel’s Capital, published (where else?) in the New York Times just hours before Donald Trump’s announcement that in his august moronic opinion, “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel….” Jerusalem has never been and will never be the capital of a racist apartheid European colonial garrison state that calls itself “Israel”. Never.

The unilateral declaration by the US president has caused so much protest because it recognizes Israel’s sovereignty over illegally annexed East Jerusalem with its ensuing residency revocation and forcible illegal transfer of many Palestinians from the city.

The declaration also goes against international law (14 of 15 Security Council members denounced it) as well as breaks with decisions on such “recognition” by every American president since Harry Truman formally recognized Israel on May 14, 1948. (See also Jerusalem as corpus separatum and its legal implications.)

But why is this happening now?

Harry Truman was swayed in his decision to recognize Israel by his political adviser, Clark Clifford, who wanted to secure the Jewish vote and funds essential for winning the US’s upcoming presidential election.

Donald Trump was also influenced in his decision by influential American Jews like Sheldon Adelson, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and US envoy to Israel David Friedman and by right-wing Christian evangelicals.

Today in US domestic politics, despite the disillusionment with Israel of the younger generation of American Jews, support for Zionism is loud and powerful among the traditional base of Zionism, as well as among Evangelical Christians and neo-fascists. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) continues to have a death grip on both parties.

Shamefully, on this issue, as Stephen Zunes writes, “there is no real opposition party” in the US.

The Palestinian Authority is impotent, shackled by Oslo and the fraudulent promise of a “two-state solution”. It has zero leverage other than to dissolve itself and leave Israel and the US to foot the bill for the occupation.

Arab countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are American allies and heavily dependent on the US. These countries are not expected to act against their political self-interest. There is no “Arab supremacy” doctrine to parallel or counter the “Jewish supremacy” doctrine of Zionism.

When Palestinians say that Jerusalem or Palestine is Arab, they are referring to Palestinian Arabs of any religion, and not to a generic supremacist notion of Arabness in the political sense, the way Israel refers to Jews and Jewishness.

Arab countries are not likely to come to the rescue of Jerusalem, but Muslims (who are largely non-Arab) are – not least because of Jewish encroachment on al-Aqsa Mosque in Haram al-Sharif compound (see also Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: The Hoax of the Millennium! by Mike M. Joseph, 2011). And that’s where, unfortunately, the Islamophobic West’s anxieties are focused – not, as they ought to be, on warmongering Israel (See After Israel: Towards Cultural Transformation by Marcelo Svirsky 2014).

Through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement and other strategies for resistance, the Palestinian Authority must find a way to get rid of the racist “two state solution” concept, renounce the Oslo Accords, and come up with a democratic alternative, one that does not deny the humanity of Palestinian Arabs nor value the well-being of colonizing Jews (euphemistically called “settlers” or “immigrants”) over that of the indigenous people of historic Palestine – of any religion.

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.

Featured image is from @noraswag / Twitter.

Featured image: Vladimir Putin meeting with Bashar Assad at the Hmeimim airbase, Dec 11 2017 (Source: Oriental Review)

Russia has every right to withdraw most of its Aerospace Forces from Syria following ISIS-Daesh’s defeat, with one of the most immediate consequences of this move being that it will prompt President Assad into a “political compromise” with the “opposition”.

President Putin’s surprise visit to Syria saw the Russian leader announce the large-scale withdrawal of his country’s Aerospace Forces from the Arab Republic, signifying that Moscow truly believes that Daesh is defeated and that its original mission in Syria has been accomplished. It needs to be reminded that Russia’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention was initiated by the need to destroy this international terrorist threat, although other more locally active terrorist organizations were also targeted for elimination in the course of events as well.

Contrary to some of the expectations and misleading inferences shared across a few Alt-Media platforms since that time, Russia did not get involved in Syria in order to “save Assad”, but to protect the constitutional order of the state and prevent its Libyan-like fall to terrorists. To this end, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even once remarked that

“Assad is not our ally, by the way. Yes, we support him in the fight against terrorism and in preserving the Syrian state. But he is not an ally like Turkey is the ally of the United States”, further driving home this point in an unforgettable way.

Now that ISIS-Daesh is defeated, there’s no “official” reason for Russia’s military forces to remain actively deployed in Syria, although President Putin was clear that they’ll still continue to remain hosted in the two bases that Moscow has in the country and won’t hesitate to act if the terrorists suddenly return. It’s at this point where it’s important to clarify what Russia means by “terrorists”; unlike Damascus, Moscow’s interpretation of this term doesn’t extend to the armed “moderate opposition rebels” that are partaking in the parallel international peace processes of Astana and Geneva.

This is a crucial difference in understanding because it determines the legitimate scope of Russia’s anti-terrorist assistance to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). Although Daesh is defeated, the whole northeast of the country beyond the Euphrates is under the control of the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) who are stubbornly intent on “federalizing” the remaining two-thirds of the country with American support. Likewise, there are already four “de-escalation zones” (DEZ) active in the rest of Syria, which essentially function to separate the SAA from the armed “opposition” in these places.

President Assad once famously promised to liberate “every inch” of Syria, but there’s no way that he’ll be able to free those parts of the country now unless he “compromises” with his opponents. In hindsight, this might be why President Putin said during last month’s Sochi Summit with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts that

“It is obvious that the process of reform will not be easy and will require compromises and concessions from all participants, including of course the government of Syria.”

Russia won’t ever target the “moderate opposition rebels” that it signed DEZ deals with and invited to Astana, so Damascus will be compelled to “compromise” with them if it wants to reassert its authority over the territory that they presently occupy.

The same situation applies for the PYD-YPG Kurds, too. The 2000 US troops in northeastern Syria and 10 American bases there make it impossible for the SAA to militarily reintegrate this region, thus necessitating some sort of “decentralization” deal likely modelled off of the one that’s included in the Russian-written “draft constitution” and possibly seeing DEZs (which the Kurdish-controlled third of the country might eventually be designated) transformed into “decentralization” units. The SAA’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah allies won’t be of much help in any forthcoming liberation operation that Damascus might secretly be planning in these regions because they lack the pivotal airpower of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, which was responsible for turning the tide of war in the first place in late 2015.

They’d also be violating the DEZs that Moscow worked so hard to establish, likely earning each of them a sharp rebuke from Russia behind closed doors or even in public if the situation was serious enough to “warrant” it. President Putin is adamant that the War on Syria begins transitioning from the military theater to the political one, using his proposed “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” as the template for proceeding to the next step, and he will do whatever is reasonably possible within his and his country’s power to ensure that this happens.

The refusal of Russia to get militarily involved in what it officially views as the “civil war” dimension of the conflict between Damascus and the armed “moderate opposition rebels” following its victory in the international one between the SAA and Daesh suggests that Moscow will now intensify all of its diplomatic efforts towards reaching a “political solution”. There are a few reasons behind all of this, but they can broadly be categorized by domestic and international imperatives that share a common pragmatism.

On the home front, President Putin is delivering on the promise that he made to his countrymen to win their War on Terror, having done so in only a third of his term (~2 years) and without dragging it on indefinitely like the US has done for over 8 times as long. Neither he nor his voters want to see Russia embroiled in what they always fear could become an Afghan-like quagmire by continuing military operations during what they believe to now be a solely “civil war” context. In addition, downscaling Russia’s involvement in Syria could allow the federal government to redirect hundreds of millions of dollars to domestic projects during President Putin’s expected fourth term, which boosts his populist credentials during this election season.

The other reason behind why Russia will probably focus mostly on diplomatic initiatives at this time is because of the role that this intricate process can play in promoting Moscow’s 21st-century “balancing” act in becoming the supreme stabilizing force in the Eurasian supercontinent. By withdrawing most of Russia’s Aerospace Forces from Syria and thereby creating the conditions whereby President Assad is prompted into making “political compromises” as a result, Russia expects to enhance its strategic relations with Turkey, the Kurds, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, all with an eye on furthering the prospects of the emerging Multipolar World Order in this pivotal location at the tri-continental crossroads of Afro-Eurasia.

Furthermore, by withdrawing right after accusing the US of provocative in-air maneuvers over Syria, Russia is extending an “olive branch” of “goodwill” to its Great Power rival and signaling that it’s eager as always to normalize relations if Washington is ready to reciprocate. The much-sought-after and so-called “New Détente” could finally make progress if Russia and the US reach a “gentlemen’s agreement” with one another over the fate of the Syrian Kurdish “federalists”, as appears to already somewhat be the case with both of them encouraging their on-the-ground partners of the SAA and SDF respectively to refrain from crossing the Euphrates River border between them.

Bearing all of the above in mind, the implications of Russia’s announced military withdrawal from Syria are much larger than simply signifying Daesh’s defeat, but point to a thought-out and far-reaching plan to prompt President Assad into making “political concessions” to the “opposition” as a means of enhancing Russia’s overall “balancing” role in the Mideast, all for the “greater good” of multipolarity. While there’s hope that this process could also yield a breakthrough in relations with the US, such expectations should understandably be tempered by the reality of the “deep state’s” War on Trump, though the prospects of “constructive” US-Russian interaction via the Syrian Kurds – particularly in the event that they succeed in “institutionalizing” their self-declared “federation” in northeastern Syria – shouldn’t be overlooked.

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.

Soon Americans and Canadians will be going to Christian churches to celebrate Christmas as they and their churches support their governments’ on-going policy of support for sectarian terrorists in Syria who slaughter Christians.

At Ma’loula, Syria, for example, where the language of Christ, Aramaic, is still spoken, US (and Canada) supported Al Qaeda terrorists murdered Christians, destroyed religious icons, and sought to impose the dictatorship of sectarian despotism on the remnants of the local population.

St. Takla Shrine destroyed by Western proxy terrorists

Dr. Joseph Saaddeh, a resident of Ma’loula, explains in a video:

What happened in Ma’loula, it’s not revolution.  Groups of terrorists attacked the culture and destroyed the culture, and destroyed everything good and everything belonging to history, and they want to make of like them and they will kill us because they have the ideology of the Wahhabi and they don’t accept another.  Either you will be like them or they will kill you.  This is the essential ideology for what is called the revolution …[1]

Now that Syria and its allies have liberated most of Syria from the scourge of Western-supported terrorists, Syria’s non-sectarian, pluralist identity, reinforced by its secular, progressive governance, is reasserting itself.

Reverend Andrew Ashdown shared the following video featuring liberated Hama, with this description:

“Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Hama, Syria. Not something that will ever be experienced in areas held by western-backed terrorists!”[2]

The hallmark of current North American society is hollow “faith”, criminal duplicity, and silence in the face of an overseas holocaust[3] created and sustained by those who pretend to represent us.

As North Americans, our silence makes us complicit in these crimes.  It is anti-Christian and criminal, and it certainly contradicts the essence of what this “holy” season is meant to represent.

Notes

[1] “Dr. Joseph Saadeh of Maaloula on Syrian ‘revolution’ “ YouTube. 19 September 2016 by Jamal Daoud.  Partial transcript.( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWbLZCxCZE ) Accessed 12 December, 2017.

[2] Reverend Ashdown, Global Facebook post on December 8, 2017.

[3] Gideon Polya, “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide and US Alliance holocaust denial.” December 13, 2009,       (https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/polya-gideon) Accessed 12 December, 2017

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Russian aerial operations turned the tide of battle in Syria from defeat to near-triumph, aiding government and allied forces decisively, smashing ISIS Washington supports, combating al-Nusra effectively, defeating America’s imperial agenda in the country.

While too early to declare victory, kudos are warranted for years of valiant efforts by courageous Syrian and Hezbollah forces, along with Russia making the decisive difference by intervening in September 2015.

Putin and Assad made an unannounced visit to Khmeimim air base in Syria. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and commander of Russian forces in Syria General Sergey Surovikin joined them.

Russia’s president stopped at Khmeimim en route to talks with Egyptian President al-Sisi in Cairo, followed by meeting with Turkish President Erdogan in Ankara – discussions with three heads of state on Monday.

Assad thanked Putin before for significant help he provided in defeating US-supported terrorists in Syria, again on Monday, saying:

“The achievements that have occurred are very significant and very important for us.”

“(D)estruction (of ISIS) is crucial for the entire world…On behalf of the entire people of the Syrian Arab Republic, I express deep gratitude for this role that your Armed Forces have played. The victories that were achieved concerned both our state and the neighboring countries.”

General Surovikin explained about 70,000 square km of Syrian territory were liberated, about 32,000 terrorists killed in the last seven months alone, tens of thousands more earlier.

Addressing military forces at Khmeimim air base, Putin thanked Russian aerial and support personnel involved in counterterrorism operations, completing their mission successfully. Here are the highlights of his address:

“(Y)ou are protecting our country,” Putin stressed. “By helping the people of Syria to maintain their statehood, to fight off attacks by terrorists, you have inflicted a devastating blow to those who have directly, brazenly and openly threatened our country.”

“We will never forget the sacrifices and losses incurred in the struggle against terrorism both here in Syria and in Russia. However, it will not make us fold our hands and retreat.”

“(T)his this memory will continue to motivate us to eradicate this absolute evil – terrorism – whatever face it hides behind.”

“Syria has been preserved as a sovereign and independent state. Refugees are returning to their homes. Favorable conditions have been created for a political settlement under the UN.”

“The Russian Center for the reconciliation of opposing sides in Syria continues to operate in line with international agreements.”

“The two bases, in Tartous and Khmeimim, will continue to operate on a permanent basis. If the terrorists raise their heads again, we will deal unprecedented strikes unlike anything they have seen.”

Most Russian forces will begin returning home. Mop up operations continue. US-supported global terrorism remains a significant threat.

Much work remains to eliminate al-Nusra and other terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere regionally. ISIS may be down, but it’s not out – not as long as America supports the terror group.

The struggle for Syria’s soul remains to be entirely completed successfully, a long way to go to achieve it because Washington, Israel and their rogue allies want war and regime change, not peace and stability.

Putin erred earlier by withdrawing Russian forces prematurely, hopefully not again, but it’s too soon to know. Returning Syria to its pre-war state remains a longterm struggle.

Removal of US forces in the country remains an enormous obstacle to overcome – fundamental to win a genuine peace, along with preserving Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

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

The U.S. mainstream media’s year-long hysteria over Russia’s alleged role in the election of Donald Trump has obliterated normal reporting standards leading to a rash of journalistic embarrassments that have both disgraced the profession and energized Trump’s backers over new grievances about the MSM’s “fake news.”

Misguided groupthink is always a danger when key elements of the Washington establishment and the major news media share the same belief – whether that is Iraq’s supposed possession of WMD or the need to bring down some foreign or domestic leader unpopular with the elites.

Yet, we have rarely witnessed such a cascading collapse of journalistic principles as has occurred around the Russia-gate “scandal.” It is hard to keep track of all the corrections or to take note of all the dead ends that the investigation keeps finding.

But anyone who dares note the errors, the inconsistencies or the illogical claims is either dismissed as a “Kremlin stooge” or a “Trump enabler.” The national Democrats and the mainstream media seem determined to keep hurtling down the Russia-gate roadway assuming that the evidentiary barriers ahead will magically disappear at some point and the path to Trump’s impeachment will be clear.

On Friday, the rush to finally prove the Russia-gate narrative led CNN — and then CBS News and MSNBC — to trumpet an email supposedly sent from someone named Michael J. Erickson on Sept. 4, 2016, to Donald Trump Jr. that involved WikiLeaks offering the Trump campaign pre-publication access to purloined Democratic National Committee emails that WikiLeaks published on Sept. 13, nine days later.

With CNN finally tying together the CIA’s unproven claim that WikiLeaks collaborates with Russia and the equally unproven claim that Russian intelligence “hacked” the Democratic emails, CNN drew the noose more tightly around the Trump campaign for “colluding” with Russia.

After having congressional reporter Manu Raju lay out the supposed facts of the scoop, CNN turned to a panel of legal experts to pontificate about the crimes that the Trump campaign may have committed now that the “evidence” proving Russia-gate was finally coming together.

Not surprisingly the arrival of this long-awaited “proof” of Russian “collusion” exploded across social media. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald noted in an article critical of the media’s performance, some Russia-gate enthusiasts heralded the CNN revelation with graphics of cannons booming and nukes exploding.

The problem, however, was that CNN and other news outlets that jumped on the story misreported the date of the email; it was Sept. 14, 2016, i.e., the day after WikiLeaks released the batch of DNC emails, not Sept. 4. In other words, it appeared that “Erickson” – whoever he was – was simply alerting the Trump campaign to the WikiLeaks disclosure.

CNN later issued a quiet correction to its inflammatory report – and not surprisingly people close to Trump cited the false claim as yet another example of “fake news” being spread by the mainstream media, which has put itself at the forefront of the anti-Trump Resistance over the past year.

But this sloppy journalism – compounded by CNN’s rush to put the “Sept. 4 email” in some criminal context and with CBS and MSNBC panting close behind – was not a stand-alone screw-up. A week earlier, ABC News made a similar mistake in claiming that candidate Donald Trump instructed Michael Flynn to contact Russian officials during the campaign, when Trump actually made the request after the election when Flynn was national security adviser-designate, a thoroughly normal move for a President-elect to make. That botched story led ABC News to suspend veteran investigative reporter Brian Ross.

Another inaccurate report from Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets – that Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records of President Trump and his family – was denied by Trump’s lawyer and later led to more corrections. The error apparently was that the bank records were not those of Trump and his family but possibly other associates.

A Pattern of Bias

But it wasn’t just a bad week for American mainstream journalism. The string of errors followed a pattern of earlier false and misleading reporting and other violations of journalistic standards, a sorry record that has been the hallmark of the Russia-gate “scandal.” Many stories have stirred national outrage toward nuclear-armed Russia before petering out as either false or wildly exaggerated. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Russia-gate Jumps the Shark.”]

As Greenwald noted,

“So numerous are the false stories about Russia and Trump over the last year that I literally cannot list them all.”

The phenomenon began in the weeks after Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton as Democrats and the mainstream media looked for people to blame for the defeat of their much-preferred candidate.

So, on Thanksgiving Day, just weeks after the election, The Washington Post published a front-page story based on an anonymous group called PropOrNot accusing 200 Web sites of acting as propaganda agents for Russia. The list included some of the Internet’s leading independent news sources, including Consortiumnews, but the Post did not bother to contact the slandered Web sites nor to dissect the dubious methodology of the unnamed accusers.

Apparently, the “crime” of the Web sites was to show skepticism toward the State Department’s claims about Syria and Ukraine. In conflating a few isolated cases of “fake news” in which people fabricated stories for political or profitable ends with serious dissent regarding the demonizing of Russia and its allies, the Post was laying down a marker that failure to get in line behind the U.S. government’s propaganda on these and other topics would get you labeled a “Kremlin tool.”

As the Russia-gate hysteria built in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration during the final weeks of the Obama administration, the Post also jumped on a claim from the Department of Homeland Security that Russian hackers had penetrated into the nation’s electrical grid through Vermont’s Burlington Electric.

As journalist Gareth Porter noted,

“The Post failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post’s sensational Dec. 30 story under the headline ‘Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say.’ …

“The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed.”

The Original Sin

In other cases, major news outlets, such as The New York Times, reported dubious Russia-gate claims from U.S. intelligence agencies as flat fact, rather than unproven allegations that remain in serious dispute. The Times and others reported Russian “hacking” of Democratic emails as true even though WikiLeaks denied getting the material from the Russians and the Russians denied providing it.

For months into 2017, in dismissing or ignoring those denials, the U.S. mainstream media reported routinely that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred in the conclusion that Russia was behind the disclosure of Democratic emails as part of a plot initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin to help elect Trump. Anyone who dared question this supposed collective judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies risked being called a “conspiracy theorist” or worse.

But the “consensus” claim was never true. Such a consensus judgment would have called for a comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate, which was never commissioned on the Russian “hacking” issue. Instead there was something called an “Intelligence Community Assessment” on Jan. 6 that – according to testimony by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in May 2017 – was put together by “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies: the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

Even after Clapper’s testimony, the “consensus” canard continued to circulate. For instance, in The New York Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”

Finally, the Times ran a correction appended to that article. The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied to some of its fallacious reporting which used the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme.

After the correction, however, the Times simply shifted to other deceptive wording to continue suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies were in accord on Russian “hacking.” Other times, the Times just asserted the claim of Russian email hacking as flat fact. All of this was quite unprofessional, since the Jan. 6 “assessment” itself stated that it was not asserting Russian “hacking” as fact, explaining: “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

Even worse than the Times, the “fact-checking” site Politifact, which is part of Google’s First Draft Coalition for deciding what the search engine’s algorithms will promote as true and what information will be disappeared as false, simply decided to tough it out and continued insisting that the false “consensus” claim was true.

When actual experts, such as former National Security Agency technical director William Binney, sought to apply scientific analysis to the core claim about Russian “hacking,” they reached the unpopular conclusion that the one known download speed of a supposed “hack” was not possible over the Internet but closely matched what would occur via a USB download, i.e., from someone with direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s computers using a thumb drive. In other words, the emails more likely came from a DNC insider, not an external “hack” from the Russians or anyone else.

You might have thought that the U.S. news media would have welcomed Binney’s discovery. However, instead he was either ignored or mocked as a “conspiracy theorist.” The near-religious belief in the certainty of the Russian “hack” was not to be mocked or doubted.

‘Hand-picked’ Trouble

In recent days, former DNI Clapper’s reference to “hand-picked” analysts for the Jan. 6 report has also taken on a more troubling odor, since questions have been raised about the objectivity of the Russia-gate investigators and — as any intelligence expert will tell you — if you “hand-pick” analysts known for their personal biases, you are hand-picking the conclusion, a process that became known during the Reagan administration as “politicizing intelligence.”

Though little is known about exactly who was “hand-picked” by President Obama’s intelligence chiefs to assess the Russian “hacking” suspicions, Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been forced to reassign Peter Strzok, one of the top FBI investigators who worked on both the Hillary Clinton email-server case and the Trump-Russia inquiry, after it was discovered that he exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages with a lawyer who also works at the FBI.

Last week, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sought answers from new FBI Director Christopher Wren about Strzok’s role in clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private unsecured email server to handle official State Department communications while Secretary of State. They also wanted to know what role in the Russia-gate probe was played by a Democratic-funded “opposition research” report from ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which included unverified hearsay claims by unnamed Russians about Trump.

Wren avoided direct answers by citing an ongoing Inspector General’s review and Mueller’s criminal investigation, but Republicans expressed displeasure at this evasiveness.

The Republican questions prompted E.J. Dionne Jr., a liberal columnist at The Washington Post, to publish a spirited attack on the GOP committee members, accusing them of McCarthyistic tactics in questioning the FBI’s integrity.

Dionne’s straw man was to postulate that Republicans – because of this discovery of anti-Trump bias – would discount evidence that proves Trump’s collusion with Russia:

“if Strzok played some role in developing [the] material. … Trump’s allies want us to say: Too bad the president lied or broke the law or that Russia tried to tilt our election. This FBI guy sending anti-Trump texts is far more important, so let’s just forget the whole thing. Really?”

But the point is that no such evidence of Russian collusion has been presented and to speculate how people might react if such evidence is discovered is itself McCarthyistic, suggesting guilt based on hypotheticals, not proof. Whatever one thinks of Trump, it is troubling for Dionne or anyone to imply treasonous activities based on speculation. That is the sort of journalistic malfeasance that has contributed to the string of professional abuses that pervades Russia-gate.

What we are witnessing is such an intense desire by mainstream journalists to get credit for helping oust Trump from office that they have forgotten that journalism’s deal with the public should be to treat everyone fairly, even if you personally disdain the subject of your reporting.

Journalists are always going to get criticized when they dig up information that puts some politician or public figure in a negative light, but that’s why it’s especially important for journalists to strive for genuine fairness and not act as if journalism is just another cover for partisan hatchetmen.

The loss of faith among large swaths of Americans in the professionalism of journalists will ultimately do severe harm to the democratic process by transforming information into just one more ideological weapon. Some would say that the damage has already been done.

It was, if you recall, the U.S. mainstream media that started the controversy over “fake news,” expanding the concept from the few low-lifes who make up stories for fun and profit into a smear against anyone who expressed skepticism toward State Department narratives on foreign conflicts. That was the point of The Washington Post’s PropOrNot story.

But now many of these same mainstream outlets are livid when Trump and his backers throw the same “fake news” epithet back at the major media. The sad truth is that The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and other leading news organizations that have let their hatred of Trump blind them from their professional responsibilities have made Trump’s job easy.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

America’s super-rich are taking not only from their own nation, but also from the rest of the world. Data from the 2017 Global Wealth Databook (GWD: Table 2-4) and various war reports help to explain why we’re alienating people outside our borders. 

From 2012 to 2017, global wealth increased by $37.7 trillion, and U.S. wealth increased by $26 trillion. Thus, largely because of a surging stock market, our nation took nearly 70 percent of the entire global wealth gain over the past five years. Based on their dominant share of U.S. wealth, America’s richest 10%—much less than 1% of the world’s adult population—took over half the world’s wealth gain in the past five years.

Wealth in the Volatile Middle East Has DECLINED at the Same Time 

It’s not surprising that young men in the Middle East and Africa would harbor resentment against a country that takes the great majority of the wealth—especially considering that the most troubled areas of the world have collectively lost wealth between 2012 and 2017. That’s both average wealth and median wealth.

Although the GWD has limited data about individual nations in the Middle East and Africa, some is available. Median wealth has PLUMMETED in Syria and Iran and Yemen. It has gone down by almost half in all of Africa. Wealth levels are crashing in the areas of the world where we wage war.

We’re Bombing Nations That Aren’t Terrorist Threats 

An explosion jolted Basim awake, and he could see the night sky through the massive hole in his bombed-out Iraqi house. “Mayada!” he screamed for his wife. No response from her, or from his daughter Tuqa….In the hospital days later, Basim lifted his phone and looked at the smiling images of a wife and daughter he would never see again. He began to sob uncontrollably. 

One would think that a nation monopolizing the world’s new wealth would avoid alienating the victims of inequality. But it’s just the opposite. The U.S. dropped thousands of bombs on seven Middle Eastern and African countries in 2016. Estimates of civilian deaths by airwar monitoring groups surpass official Pentagon numbers by a wide margin.

For the desperate residents of Yemen, attacks by Saudi Arabia continue with American weapons, using American targeting data, and delivered by American jets. Power and water facilities have been destroyed. Supply lines have been cut. Hospitals have been bombed, and a cholera epidemic is raging out of control.

In Africa, the Pentagon is engaged in about 100 missions in 20 African countries. That includes Somalia, which has been the target of a wave of new U.S. bombings in 2017, even though that country is one of the Middle-Eastern states which “are not serious terrorism risks,” according to the Cato Institute. The bombing campaign in Somalia is waged with no public debate or Congressional authorization. Since 2001 the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act has been used to justify deadly attacks on any newly feared potential enemy, under the guise of taking aggressive action on any nation that might have “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks” of 9/11.

Apology to the Troops 

Big money interests have turned America into a financial machine, accumulating more and more tax-deferred wealth through the stock market, and using the media to frighten us with overblown terrorist threats. At the same time, Americans are brainwashed into believing that we’re forever fighting a war for freedom. But ‘freedom’ has become a distorted concept in our increasingly unequal nation. Young lives are put at risk to ensure that a few thousand American households are free to take most of the wealth.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago. His latest book is, Disposable Americans: Extreme Capitalism and the Case for a Guaranteed Income. He is also founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org),  and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities” (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul [at] UsAgainstGreed [dot] org.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Featured image is from DoD/flickr/cc.

Featured image: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (L), Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) shake hands prior to the Syria talks in Sochi. (Source: CreartiveCommons/www.kremlin.ru)

As 2017 comes to a close, the warring parties in Syria are moving towards reconciliation—but the U.S. is not among them.

The Islamic State is all but defeated, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies are now closing in on the few remaining pockets occupied by other extremists, and Iranians, Russians, and Turks are mapping out the peace to come.

Then there’s America. Donald Trump may have hinted at changes up his sleeve, but he’s treading the same tired path as his predecessor on Syria.

Determined to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a means to weaken Iran and re-establish U.S. regional hegemony, Barack Obama’s White House placed its bets on two pathways to this goal: 1) a military strategy to wrest control over Syria from the regime, and 2) a UN-sponsored and U.S.-backed mediation in Geneva to transition Assad out.

Washington lost its military gamble when the Russian air force entered the battle in September 2015, providing both game-changing air cover and international clout to Assad’s efforts.

So the U.S. turned its hand to resuscitating a limp Geneva peace process that might have delivered a Syrian political settlement sans Assad.

Instead, two years on, the tables have turned in this sphere, too. Today, it is the Iranians, Turks, and Russians leading reconciliation efforts in Syria through a process established in Astana and continued last week in Sochi—not Geneva. The three states have transformed the ground war by isolating key extremists, carving out ceasefire zones, and negotiating deals to keep the peace.

To nobody’s surprise, the Americans are neither part of this new initiative, nor have they offered any constructive counters. Meanwhile, the UN’s Geneva framework, after eight rounds of talks, has not once been able to bring the two Syrian sides face-to-face at the Big Table.

To illustrate, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who leads these talks, now says things like this with a straight face:

“We have started very close proximity parallel meetings. In fact, I have been shuttling between two rooms at a distance of five meters from each other.”

In short, the U.S.’s Syrian efforts have hit a brick wall, while new regional and international power brokers have stepped in to pick up the slack.

Geneva: A process designed to fail

Just one week ago, with great media fanfare, we were promised a fresh start and new twists in Syria. For the first time since the Geneva I conference launched in June 2012, we were told the opposition was “unified” and there were no “pre-conditions” that might hold up talks.

Those expectations were shattered almost immediately when various Syrian opposition members went off-message and insisted that “Assad must go” at some point during a future transition period. Unified they were not. And the Syrian government didn’t hide their disgust. They arrived a day late and scurried back to Damascus just as quickly.

And here is why Geneva negotiations will never, ever get off the ground.

Firstly, the “Syrian opposition” do not actually represent “the Syrian people.” Most of these individuals have been selected by foreign governments—until recently, mainly by U.S. allies in Riyadh, Doha, Ankara—to do their bidding in Geneva, and have been “elected” by no more than a few dozen other Syrians in foreign capitals.

UN envoy de Mistura didn’t bother to hide that fact last week when he thanked the Saudis for facilitating “the establishment of a unified opposition delegation.”

The UN-led process—like the U.S. administration—has created conditions that exclude Syria’s more independent and nationalistic domestic opposition from negotiations. These are people who have largely rejected foreign intervention and the militarization of the conflict, rail against Western-imposed sanctions, and signal actual readiness to talk to Assad’s government about the reforms they desire.

The Russians and Iranians have kept open channels to these individuals and groups, and many of them have beaten a path to Moscow over the years to strike compromises and seek solutions. A few even made the cut, for the first time, at this eighth round of Geneva talks.

Secondly, the Syrian opposition have lost the war—victors decide the peace, not the vanquished. The team sitting in Geneva seems oblivious to the fact that the Syrian government and its allies have now gained an almost-irreversible military advantage on the battlefield. These are not two parties on equal footing—and no great-power mentors in the world can change that fact.

Assad’s government has said on numerous occasions that it is willing to sit with any Syrian who comes without preconditions and negotiates in good faith. Years of “reconciliations” on the ground between the government, local citizens, NGOs, friendly foreign state-guarantors, and rebel fighters lend a proven track record to those claims. This is the format for future negotiations—it is a tested, homegrown Syrian solution, not one made-in-America-or-Riyadh.

“Ceasefires” struck in Astana

The breakthrough came in late 2016. Turkey, the main adversary state through which weapons and jihadists flowed into Syria, made a U-turn on its Syria strategy, driven by U.S. military support for Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, which Ankara views as a national security threat. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began a tactical engagement with Russia and Iran, and pulled Qatar and its respective Syrian rebel allies along with him. These moves tipped the balance on the battlefield, allowing the SAA and its allies to liberate Aleppo (a turning point in the war) and launch their ultimately successful campaign against ISIS.

Shortly afterward, delegations consisting of the Syrian government and a dozen opposition rebel factions convened in Astana, Kazakhstan, for indirect talks sponsored by Turkey, Iran, and Russia.

By early May, the three countries had signed a memorandum to establish four “de-escalation zones” in rebel-occupied areas in Syria. The zones cover key hotspots in northern Homs, southern Syria, eastern Ghouta, and Idlib province, and are renewable at six-month intervals. While some armed groups have rejected the concept, the de-escalation zones have largely succeeded at halting hostilities and, importantly, have helped create separation between extremists and rebels willing to participate in ceasefires.

Furthermore, for the more than two million people believed to reside in these zones, the Astana process also guarantees humanitarian and medical access, the return of displaced persons to their towns and homes, the reconstruction of vital infrastructure, and other benefits.

In July, the U.S. and Jordan joined Russia to broker the details of the southern Syrian de-escalation zone, with a joint command established in Jordan. And in September, Iran, Russia, and Turkey agreed to implement the fourth and final de-escalation zone in Idlib, a stronghold of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra terrorist group.

In short, within eight months, four key areas of Syria demilitarized under the watch of three countries: Turkey, a major supporter of Syrian opposition militants, and Iran and Russia, both close allies of the Syrian government.

A “political solution” in Sochi next?

Ceasefires are, incidentally, one of the two primary objectives of the Geneva process. They are the military part of a Syrian solution.

The other objective is the political settlement of the Syrian conflict, envisioned by Geneva’s architects as the establishment of a transitional government that would generate a revised constitution, prepare elections, and the like.

Last week, on the eve of Geneva-8, the three Astana sponsors convened in Sochi after an unexpected meeting there between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin that appeared to signal an official Syrian approval for what came next.

In a joint statement, the presidents of Iran, Russia, and Turkey called for a “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” to be held in Sochi in the near future, consisting of the Syrian government and “the opposition that are committed to the sovereignty, independence, unity, territorial integrity and non-fractional character of the Syrian state.”

While they were careful to point out that the initiative is intended to “complement” Geneva, not act as an “alternative,” the statement also made clear that “Iran, Russia and Turkey will consult and agree on participants of the Congress.”

Will this be another rubber-stamped opposition directed by foreign mentors? An informed source says no, “any Syrian who does not exclude him or herself can participate.”

It is highly likely that hardliners and extremists will exclude themselves from the Sochi talks—they have consistently rejected direct interactions with the Syrian government and will never accept a future with Assad at the helm. Instead, Sochi is likely to draw interest from a larger cross-section of Syrian society closer to the views of Syria’s traditional domestic opposition, who were never given a chance in Geneva.

In the end, it is altogether conceivable that a final Syrian political solution will look very similar to the reforms Assad offered up in 2011 and 2012. His proposals were never given the time or space to mature and were, at the time, rejected outright by foreign governments and their Syrian allies.

But most importantly, if Sochi can finish what Geneva could never start, we will be thrust into a genuine post-American era where alternative regional actors will be able to broker globally significant peace deals.

The resolution of a conflict of this magnitude largely outside the umbrella of a UN- or U.S.-led framework breaks with the assumption that major geopolitical solutions need be made-in-America.

The most common refrain in a disgruntled Middle East today is that “Americans don’t solve conflicts, they manage them.”

Trump this week forever dispelled the notion that America is an honest mediator in Middle East peace efforts when he unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It is not surprising that the Saudis, Jordanians, Qataris, Sudanese, Egyptians, and others are now beating a path to Moscow for some fresh thinking.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics based in Beirut.

For seven months in 1969 I hitch-hiked around the US, Mexico and Central America with my best friend from high school. Some class-mates from our school in Vancouver Canada saved their money then traveled to Europe or Australia but Ollie and I headed south. It was an eye opening experience for two middle class Canadians. We had a lot of learning experiences in the US but today I want to talk about Honduras because it is in crisis as I write this: the Honduran election took place on 26 November yet the results are still in contention. Will the current right wing government manage to retain power?

When we visited the capital Tegucigalpa in 1969 we went to the university campus to meet and hang out with young Hondurans. They told us about the recent visit of President Richard Nixon who had taken office a few months before and then traveled to Latin America. The Vietnam war was still raging in 1969 and people protested against the war and Nixon wherever he went. The young Hondurans told us that when Nixon visited Tegucigalpa there had been a big protest. Several students who had been protesting from the top of a university building had been shot dead. It made an impression as did the warm and friendly people we met, some living in shacks along the banks of the Choluteca River running through the capital.

In Nicaragua we heard more eye-opening stories from the youth there. They told us about the Somoza family dictatorship, how corrupt it was, and how they came to power through US Marines. They also told us about the death of Cesar Sandino who fought for Nicaraguan independence but was killed by Somoza’s National Guard in 1934. The Nicaraguan youth told us that when the US asked for proof of Sandino’s death, Somoza shipped Sandino’s head in a box to Washington.

Those and many other experiences changed my life. Over the coming decades I kept an interest in Central America.

In 1979, when Nicaraguans overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, it seemed like a good thing. But President Ronald Reagan did not like an independent Nicaragua. Violating international law, the US organized a mercenary army called the “Contras” to destabilize and upend the Sandinista government. The mercenaries were trained in Honduras with US funding, supplies and weapons. The US Ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte, oversaw the mercenary army attacking Nicaragua and the emergence of death squads in El Salvador. Tens of thousands of peasants and opposition activists were killed with impunity. In Honduras itself, there was widespread repression and murder of those challenging the status quo.

In 1998 Honduras was hit by Hurricane Mitch. The second worst Atlantic hurricane ever recorded caused huge destruction and death, especially in poor communities with weak infrastructure. The shacks and modest dwellings along the river bank in Tegucigalpa were all ripped and washed away. Over 7,000 Hondurans died, including people we had met three decades before.

Six years later, in 2004, I was again reminded of the US role in Honduras when the same John Negroponte who had overseen the Contra operations went to Baghdad to take over management of the Iraq occupation. Newsweek magazine said he was coming with a new strategy, which they dubbed the “Salvador option”. Over the next year, sectarian death squads emerged to provoke sectarian bloodshed. Negroponte’s right hand man in Iraq,  Robert S. Ford, was later appointed as US Ambassador to Syria in 2010 where he helped fuel the uprisings in that country. Thus there is direct connection between U.S.interference and aggression in Central America and the Middle East.

For decades Honduras was alternately ruled by two political parties representing different branches of their oligarchy. They traded power back and forth, effectively preventing alternative perspectives.

But things began to change in Honduras in 2006. President Manuel Zelaya came from the oligarchy but started to initiate changes benefiting the poor. He called for real land reform, raising the minimum wage and he questioned the need for US military bases. That was too much. In June 2009 President Zelaya was kidnapped in the middle of the night and flown from the capital to the US military air base called Soto Cano, only 48 miles away. Hillary Clinton had been in Honduras just weeks before. She disapproved of Zelaya and his policies. The coup went ahead.

After the 2009 coup, conditions in Honduras deteriorated rapidly. Tegucigalpa became the homicide capital of the world. Tens of thousands of youth have fled the country as it has been wracked by drug wars, corruption, and police or paramilitary repression. Alongside this, there has been widespread popular resistance.

In 2011, I returned to Honduras to see the conditions first hand. With a delegation organized by Alliance for Global Justice and Task Force on the Americas, I visited peasants in the fertile Aguan Valley, indigenous communities in the mountains and workers and church activists in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. We talked with a hard-working activist named Berta Caceres and others in her indigenous organization COPINH. We learned that these communities were still actively resisting the coup and forming a new political party to challenge the right wing coup government not with guns but with votes.

In 2013 I returned again to Honduras, this time as an election observer. In the contest, the new LIBRE party surpassed the traditional Liberal Party and made a strong challenge to the right wing National Party. There were many examples of election malfeasance but Juan Orlando Hernandez of the right wing National Party was anointed as the new President.

Since then social and economic conditions have not changed. The Hernandez regime governs to the benefit of rich Hondurans and international corporations. He has a strong military alliance with the US military and is very friendly with President Trump’s Chief of Staff General Kelly.

That has set the stage for the most recent events. Days before the election The Economist ran an article describing a National Party training session in cheating techniques. The election was held on Sunday 26 November . On election night, with 57% of the votes counted, the opposition challenger was ahead by over 5%. Then strange things began to happen. The election commission stopped updating the vote tally for 36 hours. On Monday the head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said they were still missing 6,000 tally sheets from different polling places. A few hours later, he said they were missing 7500 tally sheets. When they resumed on Tuesday, suddenly the existing President Hernandez was gaining votes, cutting the opposition lead and then winning. It all looks very fishy, even to the OAS monitors.

The situation is rapidly coming to a head. At this moment it is not known what will happen. Initially the opposition demanded a full and complete review of all the 18,000 tally sheets. Now they are calling for the annulment of the election and a new election under international supervision.

The Honduran government is either stonewalling or is paralyzed. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans have protested in the streets, with over twelve protesters killed. However in a dramatic change, the elite para-military COBRA security forces have started to refuse orders, saying their job is not to repress their own communities.

Just as the 2009 coup in Honduras was a setback for all Latin America, the outcome of the current crisis will have consequences far beyond Honduras. As clearly articulated in this article, “The US has a lot riding on the Honduran election”, the US foreign policy establishment wants the continuation of the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH).

Despite all the indications of electoral malfeasance and human rights abuses, the Trump Administration has praised the JOH government. Meanwhile, North American reporters, analysts and activists are doing what they can to support Honduran popular forces and stop the theft of the Honduran election. The coming days may be momentous.  I have explained why it matters to me. But this is more important than a personal connection. It should matter to anyone concerned with progress, justice, respect and international law.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist and currently president of the board of Task Force on the Americas. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: PDVSA Gas, Isla de Margarita. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Venezuelan oil industry is currently embattled in two large lawsuits that may have a very serious impact on the future of Venezuelan oil production. The situation for the industry has been precarious since the introduction of the Bolivarian revolution. The state oil company PDVSA seized (for the most part) from its links to powerful corporate interests has been a boon to the Bolivarian project of improving the livelihoods of the average Venezuelan. It has done some tremendous good, including the production of 1.7 million homes for the poor. But, in the past ten years or so, it has taken a battering from the United States in collaboration with the local elites.  

Two lawsuits threaten the already fragile situation of the state energy company.

The China Petrochemical Conglomerate Sinopec is suing the Venezuelan state oil company (PDVSA). They allege in court documents filed in a Houston tribunal that they never received full payment for an order of steel products. It was filed by Sinopec’s US subsidiary. They claim that the PDVSA has only paid half the bill which was made in 2012 and worth US$43.5 million. The order provides for 45,000 tons of steel rebar, purchased for PDVSA’s subsidiary Bariven.

China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) “is the largest oil and petrochemical products suppliers and the second major oil and gas producer in China, the largest Oil Refinery Company and the second largest chemical company in the world”

Sinopec is specifically alleging fraud. They claim that Bariven was a shell company designed to make the purchase but never deliver the full payment. Sinopec USA described Bariven as an “uncapitalised shell with the sole purpose of preventing Sinopec from having a remedy”. They claim the company was a “sham to perpetrate fraud against Sinopec.” In their claim they allege that the PDVSA “hid behind a complicated series of subsidiaries and affiliates”, and “feigned promises to make full payment”.

There has been no official comment from the Venezuelan state on the matter.

This new lawsuit adds more political pressure to an already untenable situation. As it is, the PDVSA already owes China 10 million barrels of oil that they have not yet delivered. China has already loaned the struggling Latina American country $50 billion USD, much of that in several oil-for-loan deals. The money was to be advanced in exchange for future oil products shipments from PDVSA.

Several Western oil business experts have claimed that this is a significant shakeup between two countries that have remained allies for some time. Some allege that China has lost patience with Venezuela’s economic hardships and large debts. They claim that this new lawsuit may be signalling the beginning of the end of the alliance between the two. This claim is rather extreme and unlikely to play out so dramatically on the world stage. It, however, cannot be considered bad news, and should be taken seriously.

On another front, the country is being taken to the International Court of Justice over a border dispute with Guyana. An area of dispute between the two countries became a great controversy after an ExxonMobil exploration discovered a large deposit of oil. Energy politics being the devil that they are, the two countries began a renewed struggle over who controlled the region.

To make matters worse, ExxonMobil has decided to finance the Guyanese portion of the struggle to the tune of $15 million USD. An amount that is pocket change to an international oil company. The oil giant is hoping to use their name and power to influence any decision on the matter. Of course, if Guyana wins the dispute, ExxonMobil will be the one to profit from the oil deposit.

The Guyanese government claims that the issue is one of national sovereignty. Officials said:

“Our national sovereignty is riding on this issue and it will be remiss of us if we are not prepared and all resources are not put in place. The actual amount is more than US$15M but less than US$20M. This is not the first time we are going this route as it was done with the CGX Energy and Suriname after the June 2000 incident with the Surinamese coastguard. The PPP [People’s Progressive Party] was then in office. This is nothing new. This is not a signing bonus, but rather we are garnering the resources to prepare for the case. This is a sovereignty issue.”

In truth, both sides are fighting for control over a very profitable oil patch that promises to be quite beneficial. There is very little here in the way of territorial sovereignty, this is clearly about money. On the one side you have the Guyanese government and ExxonMobil, and on the other, you have the Venezuelan state.

No doubt ExxonMobil is looking for some revenge against Venezuela for the nationalization of the oil sector. After a long legal battle, Venezuela was ordered to pay them $1.6 billion in compensation for the seizure of assets.

Eventually, that was overturned in 2017. The battle between the two has been a long war of attrition, one that will not be ending anytime soon.

These two lawsuits are serious matters that could greatly impact the PDVSA and harm their reputation internationally. They also come at a time when Venezuelan economy is in terrible shape. The stability of the country is seriously in question and threatens to fracture apart if its overseers fail to plan wisely.

Featured image: Protesters march on the streets of Tegucigalpa against Juan Orlando Hernández.

The dictatorship that rules Honduras is in the process of stealing another election, and the Canadian government is doing precisely what it has done the last two times the Honduran dictatorship stole an election: nothing.

Actually, to say Canada is doing nothing is far too generous. In fact, Canada has been arguably the biggest supporter of the de facto government of Honduras, which took over the country in a coup d’etat in 2009, and which has plunged the country into a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis in the eight years since.

As I documented in detail in my recent book, Ottawa and Empire, Canada was instrumental in undermining efforts to restore the legitimate government of Honduras after the military kidnapped the President and seized control of the state in June 2009. While most of the world responded with revulsion to the spectre of military dictatorship in the small Central American country, Canada issued statement after statement suggesting that this was not a coup but a “political crisis” and that the President himself was partly to blame.

Flash forward eight years, and the international media is filled with reports of electoral fraud and political violence in Honduras. Bolivian President Evo Morales denounced the “flagrant fraud in the presidential elections of the Central American country,” the EU and OAS have both demanded a recount and, even before the elections began, The Economist released an audio recording of Honduran officials planning to steal the election as ‘Plan B’ if they didn’t win.

But Canada’s Minister of State Chrystia Freeland has so far issued one tepid statement calling on “all parties to resolve any disagreement peacefully.” It’s an old Canadian obfuscation.

Canada and the Coup

In 2009, then Minister of State Peter Kent consistently repeated the mantra that “all parties” needed to show restraint and negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis in Honduras. If one knew nothing about Honduras, the statements sounded like classic Canadians; just another example of Canada asking people to be nice to each other and trying to build peace.

But the reality in Honduras was that the democratic system and the rule of law had been overturned by a military force doing the bidding of the Honduran oligarchy. This new dictatorship was literally killing people in the streets for demanding the restitution of democracy, and the eight years of repression that followed have been some of Honduras’ darkest. So, when Canada called on “all parties” to show restraint, it was in fact creating a deeply misleading impression of what was happening in Honduras. Over many years of research and interviews in Honduras, I met almost no one who agreed with Canada’s interpretation of events.

But in November of that year, this new dictatorship held elections to try to build its legitimacy.

Most of the international community rejected this farce out of hand. The United Nations, the Carter Centre, most international organizations refused to even send representatives to the country for the elections. As they rightly noted, opponents of the regime were being arrested, tortured, and killed. Hundreds of candidates from other parties had dropped off the ballot knowing the election would be stolen. And the Honduran people vowed to boycott the process entirely.

And yet, when the predictably fraudulent results came in, Canada was quick to “congratulate the Honduran people” on holding “relatively free and fair” elections.

The Eight Year Nightmare

Over the next eight years, the regime consolidated its position in Honduras using violence. Activist networks had their leaders targeted for assassination and disappearance; critical media outlets had equipment attacked, signals disrupted, and journalists threatened; impunity for police and military violence opened up space for unchecked activity for criminal gangs.

All of this helped the dictatorship to maintain its hold on power, and it used that power to reward itself and its allies. Austerity measures were imposed on working people, new laws were passed to give local and foreign capital even greater ability to exploit Honduran land and resources, and public funds were looted for the private wealth of the oligarchy.

How did it pull this off? With a little help from its friends, of course.

No country – save perhaps the United States – did more to facilitate the rise of the Honduran dictatorship than Canada. Canada was the first country to send its leader to meet with the regime. Canada signed a free-trade agreement with it, sent a representative to sit on a sham “Truth Commission” about the coup, and Canada argued for Honduras’ re-integration into the Organization of American States and other international organizations.

Canada heaped praise on the regime for resolving the political crisis, which was remarkable, given that the way it resolved the crisis was by killing and intimidating anyone who opposed its dominance of the country. Canadian investment in the country exploded, as companies like Gildan and Goldcorp seized the opportunity to extract profits from a country in crisis. Canada even helped to train Honduran police and military in the tactics of repression they would use against their own people.

Somewhere along the way, the dictatorship stole another election (2013), allowed Honduras to become the murder capital of the world, passed a law allowing private companies to run city-states within Honduran territory, became even more deeply entangled with large criminal networks, and saw tens of thousands of people plunged into abject poverty.

It did all of this with a wink and a nod from Canada, which is now one of the largest sources of foreign investment in Honduras.

The Rise of JOH

Throughout this period, the Honduran social movement has remained steadfast and determined in its opposition to the dictatorship.

In addition to national demonstrations against the government directly, Hondurans have fought to protect their pensions, Indigenous people have fought to protect their territories from mining companies, women have fought against sexual violence and workplace exploitation, communities have opposed privatization of public services, farmers have battled agribusiness over access to land, Garifuna people have organized to resist theft of their territory for cruise ports.

All the while, the regime has consolidated its hold on power and cracked down on this dissent. In 2012, right wing Head of Congress Juan Orlando Hernández (nicknamed JOH, pronounced “ho” in Spanish), who had supported the 2009 coup, carried out a “technical coup” in which four supreme court judges were sacked overnight and replaced by judges loyal to him. The next year, JOH became the President in another round of fraudulent elections. It was a tough blow for the social movement which had put much of its energy into trying to win the elections with its new political party, LIBRE.

That same year, JOH created a new military-police unit, and made sure it was given preferential access to resources, vis-à-vis the armed forces and the national police. It was a play to create a special force loyal to him personally, which he would need if he were to try to extend his stay in office. After all, the military had been convinced to overthrow President Zelaya in 2009 on the (false) claim that he was planning to change the constitution to stay in power for another term.

Sure enough, as JOH stacked the various branches of civilian and military authority with his supporters, he made his play in 2015, amending the constitution to allow himself to run for re-election. The irony was palpable, but Canada issued no statements about this.

This was remarkable, given how much ink Canada had spilled trying to convince the world that the 2009 coup was necessary because Manuel Zelaya planned to run for re-election. This demonstrably false claim was made by Canadian government officials on many occasions, and was repeated by Canada’s representative on the Honduran Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Interesting, indeed, that Canada was so concerned by the prospect of Honduran Presidents running for re-election in 2009 but totally disinterested in the same issue in 2015. It is especially noteworthy because, unlike Manuel Zelaya, the government of Juan Orlando Hernández had been rocked by massive national protests on several occasions, including a wave of protests called the “Torch Marches” in 2015 after it was revealed that he had stolen money from Honduran workers’ pension funds to finance his election campaign.

Power Play

The dictatorship clearly has friends in high places, but it may nevertheless be pushing its luck.

Tyler Shipley is Professor of Culture, Society and Commerce at Humber College and is the author of Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras.

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

The Third Committee of UN General Assembly voted on a resolution of condemnation about the “violation of human rights in Crimea”, as demanded by the current President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko.

We cannot state that the legal procedure was ignored, but the resolution was approved by all the European countries, that voted it unanimously.

Along with them, the United States, Israel (which took almost all the territories of the West Bank which belonged to Jordan and for some decades established an ‘apartheid regime’ against Palestinian people), Japan, Australia and New Zeland voted, plus a long list of smaller countries. All of them were compelled to follow the imperial orders. Turkey voted in favor as well, despite the recent good relations between the President of Turkey and the President of Russia and – above all -regardless of the situation of human rights for the Kurdish people, still far from being acceptable. Altogether, the countries in favor were only 71, not many compared to the majority in the Third Committee.

Indeed, 77 states abstained. Together with the 25 countries who voted against and with the vote of Russia, it makes a total of 103 countries that choose not to follow the Western instructions. That was not a great achievement for Kiev: however, Ukraine felt this as “an important step in order to defend the Patriots in the peninsula”.

The resolution strongly blames Russia for the “repression against Crimean Tatars”, [who voted overwhelmingly in favour of Russia in the referendum]  all of them identified with a group called “Medzhlis of the people of Tatars in Crimea”. However, the group doesn’t represent all the Tartars of Crimea.  It is an organization funded by the United States and – for this reason – banned by the Moscow government as extremist. And, moreover, it demands that the United Nations send “international observers” over to Crimea.

It is a remarkable “coincidence” that this demand arrives together with the pressure – put by Kiev and supported by the European governments – towards the creation of a so-called “peace force” on the contended areas, which separate the two republics of  Donbass from the territory of Ukraine. This operation could be very much more harmful and might not bring about peace at all to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Indeed, everything depends on how these “peace forces” are composed, on who is going to lead them and by whom they are formed. Chances of provocations and operations of diversion might hugely increase and get out of control.

The experience of the OSCE observers in that region already proved that their reliability, neutrality, and autonomy are everything but firm and above suspicion (as they are supposed to be). Let’s imagine what would mean to send over other armed contingents, which are only formally “neutral” and actually very involved in the dispute, by taking one side against the other. We hope that this dangerous pressure won’t work, in the interest of peace.

In any case, regarding Crimea – already part of Russia – obviously such measures won’t be taken. This country won’t accept them. Nevertheless, Europe is continuing to support a regime established by a putsch and that is violating all the International laws. It is interesting to look at the list of the countries who voted against the resolution. Beside the dissenting vote of Russia, among the countries that voted against it we find the whole alliance of the BRICS – Russia, India, China, South Africa, except Brazil (non-voter) – together with Iran, Syria, North Korea, Armenia, Belarus, Philippines, Venezuela, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Cuba, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Uganda, Sudan, Serbia, Uzbekistan, Bolivia.

Giulietto Chiesa is one of the best known Italian journalists. He was Moscow correspondent for twenty years for “L’Unità” and “La Stampa”. He is the only Italian journalist to be repeatedly mentioned in the autobiography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he has repeatedly interviewed. His own blog is http://www.megachip.info/ . He is founder and director of Pandoratv.it web tv. An expert in international politics and communications scholar, he founded the political-cultural movement “Alternativa”. 

On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission released a draft “Memorandum of Understanding” on the ways the two agencies will allegedly work together to protect internet users after the FCC guts the open-internet protections in a vote on Dec. 14.

In statement accompanying the MoU, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai falsely claimed that this joint-agency approach “protected a free and open internet for many years prior to the FCC’s 2015 Title II Order.” In reality, jurisdiction over communications networks and Net Neutrality has always rested with the FCC.

Even before the FCC rightly returned to Title II of the Communications Act as the basis for the Net Neutrality rules, the agency always retained its claim to jurisdiction over open-internet principles and the internet service providers that violated them. If the FCC adopts Pai’s proposal to overturn these rules, internet users will be exposed to blocking, throttling and paid prioritization of online content by the handful of ISPs that control access in the United States.

The MoU is available here.

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood made the following statement:

“The only thing the public needs to understand about this memorandum is that it will leave them at the mercy of AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. All this agreement shows is that the Trump FCC and the Trump FTC have no interest in protecting internet users.

“Ajit Pai’s ongoing attempt to rewrite history looks no better in this memorandum than it does in other settings where he’s tried and failed to justify his radical attack on the open internet. There are many problems with his approach, but the biggest one by far is that Pai is legalizing blocking, throttling and other forms of discrimination.

“Read the fine print: These two agencies plan to rap ISPs on the knuckles only if they fail to disclose their discriminatory practices. But as long as the ISP tells customers what it’s doing, then it’s free to block you and dictate where you can go on the internet. That’s a horrendous change, and an abdication of the FCC’s responsibility to keep communications networks open and accessible to all.

“Don’t fall for Pai’s claim that he’s restoring jurisdiction to the FTC by abandoning his own agency’s mission. All Pai could muster last week were childish taunts after consumer advocates asked him to wait for the outcome of a Ninth Circuit court case that greatly diminishes the FTC’s jurisdictional claims over phone companies that also provide broadband service.

“Pai has no interest in anything besides empowering cable and phone companies. Today’s FCC press release has the audacity to throw in a line at the end about how the FCC is responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications laws and regulations. In Ajit Pai’s warped view, that means throwing up his hands, throwing out the regulations and turning away from the law that governs the FCC.”

I governanti europei – dalla rappresentante esteri della Ue Mogherini al premier Gentiloni, dal presidente Macron alla cancelliera Merkel – hanno preso formalmente le distanze dagli Usa e da Israele sullo status di Gerusalemme. Si sta creando una frattura tra gli alleati?

I fatti mostrano il contrario. Poco prima della decisione di Trump su Gerusalemme capitale di Israele, quando già essa era preannunciata, si è svolta la Blue Flag 2017, la più grande esercitazione internazionale di guerra aerea nella storia di Israele, alla quale hanno partecipato Stati uniti, Italia, Grecia e Polonia e, per la prima volta alla terza edizione, Francia, Germania e India.

Per due settimane piloti degli otto paesi, di cui sei membri della Nato, si sono esercitati con 70 aerei nella base israeliana di Ovda nel deserto del Negev, assistiti da 1000 militari del personale tecnico e logistico. L’Italia ha partecipato con quattro caccia Tornado del 6° Stormo di Ghedi, due da attacco e due da guerra elettronica. Gli Stati uniti, con sette F-16 del 31st Fighter Wing di Aviano. Poiché tali aerei sono addetti al trasporto delle bombe nucleari Usa B-61, sicuramenre i piloti italiani e statunitensi si sono esercitati, insieme agli altri, anche a missioni di attacco nucleare. Secondo le informazioni ufficiali, sono state effettuate oltre 800 missioni di volo, simulando «scenari estremi di combattimento, con voli a bassissima quota e contromisure elettromagnetiche per neutralizzare le difese antiaeree». In altre parole, i piloti si sono esercitati a penetrare in territorio nemico per colpire gli obiettivi con bombe e missili non-nucleari o nucleari.

La Blue Flag 2017 ha migliorato «la cooperazione e prontezza operativa delle forze aeree partecipanti» e, allo stesso tempo, ha «rafforzato lo status internazionale di Israele». Emblematica – scrive il giornale israeliano Haaretz in un articolo sulla «diplomazia dei caccia» – è la vista di un Eurofighter tedesco con la croce della Luftwaffe e di un F-15 israeliano con la Stella di David decollare per la prima volta uno a fianco dell’altro per la stessa missione, o di caccia francesi che ritornano in Israele dove furono segretamente schierati nel 1956 per la campagna di Suez contro l’Egitto di Nasser.

«La Blue Flag – conclude Haaretz – è la dimostrazione che sempre più paesi sono disponibili a impegnarsi apertamente quali alleati strategici di Israele, e a mettere da parte considerazioni politiche come la questione palestinese. Mentre sta svanendo l’influenza della diplomazia tradizionale, sta crescendo il ruolo dei comandanti militari nelle relazioni internazionali».

Lo conferma l’incontro del generale Frigerio, comandante delle Forze da combattimento italiane, con il generale Norkin, comandante della Forza aerea israeliana. Esso rientra nella Legge n. 94 del 17 maggio o, che istituzionalizza la sempre più stretta cooperazione delle forze armate e industrie militari italiane con quelle israeliane.

Israele è di fatto integrato nella Nato, nel cui quartier generale ha una missione ufficiale permanente, in base al «Programma di cooperazione individuale» ratificato nel dicembre 2008 (poco prima dell’operazione israeliana «Piombo fuso» a Gaza). Esso stabilisce tra l’altro la connessione delle forze israeliane, comprese quelle nucleari, al sistema elettronico Nato. Subito dopo la Blue Flag 2017, i piloti israeliani (che si addestrano con i caccia italiani M-346), hanno ripreso a bombardare i palestinesi di Gaza, mentre il premier Gentiloni dichiarava che «il futuro di Gerusalemme, città santa unica al mondo, va definito nell’ambito del processo di pace».

Manlio Dinucci

Foto : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAFByMLqwfk

Featured image: Assad and Putin, the Khmeimim airbase, Syria, December 11, 2017 (Source: South Front)

“Despite the deaths of as many as half a million people, dozens by chemical weapons, in the Syrian civil war, the Trump Administration is now prepared to accept President Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule until Syria’s next scheduled Presidential election, in 2021, according to U.S. and European officials. The decision reverses repeated U.S. statements that Assad must step down as part of a peace process,” the New Yorker wrote in the article entitled “Trump to Let Assad Stay Until 2021, as Putin Declares Victory in Syria” on December 11.

The New Yorker says that the US administration was forced to admit that it has limited options in Syria and the influence of the Damascus government backed by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia had grown significantly. In this situation, Washington “still wants a political process that holds the prospect of Assad’s departure. But it has concluded that it may take until 2021, when the next election is scheduled, to pull it off. Depending on the outcome of the 2020 U.S. election, Assad could still be in power after Trump leaves office. U.S. officials worry that Assad could win the 2021 Syrian election, one way or the other, and remain in power for years to come.”

As ISIS’s self-proclaimed Caliphate came to its end in Syria and Iraq even the mainstream media admits that something went wrong with the US plan to overthrow Assad in Syria, which had been originally supported by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and some other powers.

Now, when this plan is failed, Washington is in a dead end. On the one hand, it cannot officially accept Assad in power. On the other hand, he has no real options but accept Assad in power. Thus, the US will likely increase its efforts aimed at dividing of Syria through supporting the separatist intentions of the US-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, which control a large part of eastern Syria. The goal of this strategy is to build a de-facto independent enclave within Syria. This enclave will be almost fully controlled by the US because without the American financial and military support it will be incapable of life.

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Willy Sutton once said he robbed banks because “(t)hat’s where the money is.”

For GOP lawmakers, the money is in the pockets of ordinary Americans to be picked for corporate predators and super-rich households.

Their tax cut scheme is a colossal heist, grand theft, designed solely to enrich America’s privileged class further at the public’s expense.

On December 11, the US Treasury published a one-page (470-word) “white paper” document on the Senate GOP plan – entirely politicized, lacking credibility, an analysis in name only using fake math, falsified mumbo jumbo to fit policy, a disgraceful exercise in deception.

Economist Stephen Stanley bashed it, saying

“(y)ou have to view this as a political document, not an economic document. The work should be viewed as advocacy rather than academic work.”

“Treasury’s statement that the tax legislation would not increase the federal government’s deficits and debt load are not credible,” economist Mark Zandi explained.

According to Tax Policy Center director Mark Mazur, Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis reports are usually around 20 – 30 pages, produced by numerous staff economists.

Weeks earlier, Goldman Sachs alum/Treasury Secretary Mnuchin lied, claiming

“(w)e believe there will be $2 trillion of additional growth. So under our plan, we believe this will cut the deficit by $1 trillion and that’s what we’re focused on.”

Fact: Tax cuts have nothing to do with stimulating economic growth and jobs creation, everything to do with increasing wealth for large investors, along with providing corporate predators with more funding for stock buybacks and acquisitions to grow larger and more dominant than already.

Fact: The GOP tax cut heist is also about continuing the transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to its privileged class, along with destroying social justice to help pay for it.

Fact: The plan will hugely increase the deficit, not reduce it. Mnuchin lied claiming otherwise.

Tax March advocates for equitable tax reform. In response to Mnuchin’s one-page document, it tweeted:

“Turns out, the bill would be great for the economy…in a world where unicorns exist, pigs fly, and Trump has released his tax returns.”

Tax attorney David Brockway said “I don’t believe in magic.” Business Economics and Public Policy Professor Kent Smetters believes the Treasury’s view of economic growth from the Senate plan is “aspirational in nature,” unrelated to factual analysis.

Differences between House and Senate measures remain unresolved so far – since passage of the Senate bill on December 2.

Asked how discussions are going, Senator John Thune said

“I don’t think you can say at this point anything is really nailed down,” adding he’s hopeful gaps will be narrowed.

Enactment before yearend or early next year seems virtually certain – testimony to governance of, by and for privileged Americans exclusively.

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

The Trump administration is preparing a frontal assault on social programs for the poorest Americans, according to a report published Monday by the Politicoweb site. This would involve “the most sweeping changes to federal safety net programs in a generation, using legislation and executive actions to target recipients of food stamps, Medicaid and housing benefits,” the web site said.

“The White House is quietly preparing a sweeping executive order that would mandate a top-to-bottom review of the federal programs on which millions of poor Americans rely,” Politico reported. “And GOP lawmakers are in the early stages of crafting legislation that could make it more difficult to qualify for those programs.”

The executive order could be issued as soon as next month. It amounts to a political conspiracy against the poorest sections of the working class involving the White House, the congressional leadership and dozens of state governments, working together to slash spending on programs for the poor through a combination of direct benefit cuts, tightened eligibility standards and mistreatment of vulnerable families to drive as many as possible out of programs on which they now depend.

The Department of Agriculture said last week it would give states greater power to limit eligibility for food stamps, which it administers, by imposing drug testing or tighter work requirements, even though the vast majority of families receiving food stamp benefits have at least one working adult.

Congressional Republican leaders indicated that the attack on domestic social spending would not be limited to means-tested programs such as food stamps and Medicaid, which are available only to low-income families. The broadest entitlement programs, which provide services to all families, regardless of income, will also be targeted.

House Speaker Paul Ryan told a radio interview last week,

“We’re going to have to get back next year to entitlement programs.”

He singled out health care, pledging not only to repeal Obamacare, an effort that failed earlier this year in the Senate, but to privatize Medicare, which he denounced as “government-run health care.”

Voicing the claim endlessly repeated by Republicans that it hurts poor families to provide them access to adequate medical care or put food on the table for their children, Ryan declared,

“We have a welfare system that’s basically trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.”

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue sounded the same theme, calling for further cutbacks in the food stamp program, officially titled the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

“SNAP was created to provide people with the help they need to feed themselves and their families, but it was not intended to be a permanent lifestyle,” Perdue said.

The measures being prepared by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, behind the backs of the American people, would effectively make the poorest sections of the working class pay for the massive tax cut for the wealthy that is now in the final stages of congressional passage.

Both the House and Senate have named members to participate in a special conference that will combine the different versions of a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich that passed the House in November and the Senate last week. All indications are that far from representing a “compromise,” the conference will choose the most reactionary measures from the House and Senate versions to produce a final bill that is substantially worse than either of the separate bills.

Last Thursday, 54 House Republicans sent a letter to the House Republican leadership demanding that they stand firm on the House plan for a full repeal of the estate tax—paid by only 5,500 super-wealthy families—rather than accept the Senate plan, which retains the tax but raises the minimum size of the estate to which it would apply from $22 million to $44 million.

Similarly, Senate Republicans are demanding that the conference committee accept the Senate version’s elimination of the Obamacare tax penalty for those who do not buy health insurance, an action that would destabilize the individual insurance market and leave another 13 million people without health coverage.

The essence of the bill, certain to be retained in whatever version is ultimately adopted, is the lowering of taxes on the earnings of capitalists and the raising of taxes on the earnings of workers. It is class legislation of the most flagrant and reactionary kind. As an analysis of the bill in the New York Timesexplained, “for the first time since the United States adopted an income tax, a higher rate would be applied to employee wages and salaries than to income earned by proprietors, partnerships and closely held corporations.”

Under these conditions, the Democratic Party has chosen to focus not on the historic nature of the attack on working people, but on a series of political scandals, first involving claims of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and now involving a hunt for alleged sexual predators in the entertainment industry, the media and politics, which the Democrats hope will undermine Trump.

Four Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, who challenged Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2016, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who is spearheading the sexual misconduct purge, have called for Trump to resign the presidency because of allegations of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women, involving incidents spread out over three decades.

It is remarkable that the Democrats do not demand that Trump resign because of the crimes his administration has committed against millions of working people—attacking social programs, slashing enforcement of safety and environmental regulations, rounding up immigrants and revoking DACA protection for nearly 1 million immigrants brought here as children—let alone Trump’s threatening the world with nuclear war in North Korea.

Their focus is entirely on Trump’s personal conduct before he entered the White House, not on the policies being pursued by his administration. That is because the Democrats largely support these policies and would do so openly and enthusiastically if the same measures were being carried out by a President Hillary Clinton.

Similarly, the Democratic campaign in the Senate race in Alabama, where voters go to the polls today, is focused entirely on allegations of sexual misconduct against the Republican candidate Roy Moore, dating back as much as 40 years, while the Democrats are silent on the appalling social conditions created by decades of Republican rule in the southern state.

According to a United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, who visited the state last week, Alabama has the worst poverty of any area in the developed world, including the prevalence of diseases like hookworm, normally found only in the poorest areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The UN official, Philip Alston, toured a rural community where “raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits,” he told an interviewer.

The United States has 41 million people living below the official poverty line and the second-highest poverty rate in the developed world—below only the state of Israel, with its large super-oppressed Palestinian population.

These issues are of no concern to the Democratic Party, which shares responsibility for the devastating conditions facing the working class, made significantly worse by eight years of right-wing policies under the Obama administration.