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Capitol Hill arm-twisting failed to enact Trumpcare – so far at least. It succeeded overnight Friday for passage of grand theft Senate legislation – the misnamed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

House and Senate versions of the measure have nothing to do with economic growth or jobs creation – everything to do with grand theft and public betrayal.

It continues the longstanding transfer of the nation’s wealth from ordinary Americans to corporate predators and super-rich households – thirdworldizing the country, already unfit to live in, serving its privileged class exclusively.

Commenting on last night’s Senate passage, an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) email press release said:

“Senate Republicans just voted to hand tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires and corporations on the backs of working families.”

“They claim that their tax plan will boost wages for American workers. But real-world evidence suggests otherwise.”

“Cutting corporations’ taxes is not a recipe for increasing workers’ wages. It’s a recipe for exacerbating income and wealth inequality.”

Ballooning the federal deficit over the next decade will mean “higher interest rates, an overvalued US dollar and growing trade deficits.”

“US manufacturing and other traded goods industries (including agricultural products and other traded commodities) will be hard hit by the Republican tax plan, because it is financed through a large increase in the government budget deficit.”

Cutting taxes for corporate predators and high net worth households won’t contribute to economic growth. Nor will the GOP scheme create jobs or boost worker wages.

It’ll “simply redistribute income from the bottom up…(a) Robin Hood-in-reverse plan…disast(ous) for most working families…a payoff to the Trump family and the the wealthy individuals and big business that helped put him in office,” EPI explained.

It’s a slap in the face to millions of voters who elected Trump, expecting better, betrayed instead.

Expecting either wing of America’s duopoly governance to serve everyone fairly is wishful thinking.

Americans for Tax Fairness said the following about passage of the Senate tax cut bill:

“All but one Republican in the Senate just voted to raise taxes on 87 million middle-class families, add a trillion dollars to the deficit, and trigger automatic cuts to Medicare. All so that their corporate campaign donors and billionaire benefactors can get massive tax cuts.”

“Medicaid, education and other critical services will soon be on the chopping block. Corporations will be encouraged to ship more jobs and profits offshore, while their foreign shareholders will see a windfall. That’s anything but America First.”

“It’s no coincidence that corporate sources contributed massive amounts to the campaign coffers of members of Congress who sit on the tax committees. Corporations and wealthy businesses get most of the tax breaks given by this bill.”

“That’s quite a return on investment. Meanwhile, Donald Trump will personally save millions of dollars in taxes each year while working families will continue to struggle to make ends meet.”

“This fight is not over. We will fight tooth and nail to protect working families from this wealth grab. And every single member of Congress who voted for this sham will answer to their constituents.”

If the GOP tax cut becomes law, social justice in America will be the big loser, especially Medicare Medicaid and education, followed by Social Security later on.

They’re essential programs, fundamental for everyone besides the nation’s privileged class, benefitting hugely from capital gains and other investment income.

They’ll get more ahead from a GOP agenda of putting ordinary Americans last, privileged ones alone first.

House and Senate tax cut legislation made America’s deplorable state worse, a race to the bottom for the poor and eroding middle class – the nation’s wealthy doing better than ever under a system rigged to serve them exclusively.

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].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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The Hollywood Accusations of Sexual Harassment: A City on a Hill, or The Weinstein Effect

December 3rd, 2017 by John Steppling

Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams—a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told—sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. — Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 1964

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both. — Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1843

The accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against celebrity (mostly Hollywood) men by women who, mostly, worked under them in some capacity, or were trying to further their career with acting roles or writing jobs, etc. have created a public response not reached since the *Recovered Memories* epoch of judicial debacles and mob hysteria a couple decades back. But two things have struck me about the rise in fervor, as it’s experienced on social media and in mass media, and that is that almost none of these celebrities is accused of rape (Weinstein is accused of rape in one case, which he denies). And yet the topic of rape is argued all the time from both genders.

A *Teen Vogue* writer suggested that locking up a few innocent men was a small enough price to pay to get rid of (her words) *patriarchy*. Never mind, I know. But still, it’s out there, the zeitgeist. And the second thing is that race mediates this discourse in ways that are largely invisible. The vast majority of women commenting on social media, that I have read, are white. Almost all are educated. The celebrity accusers are almost all white.

Now, there seems to be two hidden aspects to this public phenomenon; one is race, as I say, and the other is the normalizing of punishment as a principle — and more, an amnesia regarding civil liberties, the rule of law, due process, the 6th Ammendment to the Bill of Rights, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. All of which stipulate the presumption of innocence. As well as the right to a speedy trial and the right to face and question one’s accuser.

Every person accused of a crime should have their guilt or innocence determined by a fair and effective legal process. But the right to a fair trial is not just about protecting suspects and defendants. It also makes societies safer and stronger. Without fair trials, trust in justice and in government collapses.

— Jago Russell

But then, this idea of presumed innocence, along with unanimous verdicts and the like, are gradually being phased out of Western legal practice. The EU, for example, is embracing *Corpus Juris*, a system friendly to things like the Inquisition. It will reach the shores of North America, rest assured. And this trial by twitter is the front edges of that migration of draconian anti democratic autocratic jurisprudence. The canary in the mine shaft as it were. Almost all of the men accused in the fallout from the Weinstein story have left their jobs. Most deny the accusations. But almost all have had careers ruined.

Now, in the US, close to 4000 black men were lynched in the U.S. between 1887 and 1950. Most in the South. With Alabama and Mississippi leading the way.

Terror lynchings were horrific acts of violence whose perpetrators were never held accountable. Indeed, some “public spectacle lynchings” were attended by the entire white community and conducted as celebratory acts of racial control and domination. ( ) Large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands and including elected officials and prominent citizens, gathered to witness pre-planned, heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment, and/or burning of the victim. White press justified and promoted these carnival like events, with vendors selling food, printers producing postcards featuring photographs of the lynching and corpse, and the victim’s body parts collected as souvenirs.

— Stewart Tolnay and E.M. Beck, A Festival of Violence, 1995

A good many lynchings were precipitated by accusations of rape. In fact, the entire psychological underpinnings of white supremacism carries a sexual connotation.

Make any list of anti-black terrorism in the United States, and you’ll also have a list of attacks justified by the specter of black rape. The Tulsa race riot of 1921—when white Oklahomans burned and bombed a prosperous black section of the city—began after a black teenager was accused of attacking, and perhaps raping, a white girl in an elevator. The Rosewood massacre of 1923, in Florida, was also sparked by an accusation of rape. And most famously, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered after allegedly making sexual advances on a local white woman.”

— Jamelle Bouie, The Deadly History of “They’re Raping our Women“, Slate, June 18, 2015.

Now, again, to return to the current climate of white feminist outrage at, not rape, but what legally passes for in most states, ‘sexual assault’, or ‘sexual harassment’. To be clear, sexual harassment is defined as:

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment, submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individuals, or such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. (29 C.F.R. § 1604.11 [1980])

In most cases under scrutiny by media, there is no work related causation, other than the implicit coercion that authority carries with it. And this is very much to the point. Those white educated mostly affluent women outraged over unwelcome advances, are not asking for compensation in relation to missed work. They are just angry at the indignity and humiliation of white patriarchy and obnoxious and even, often, threatening white bosses. And sometimes not even bosses. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about cat calls and subtle looks and touches that are all borderline legal problems for the perpetrators. There is only partially submerged or hidden trope in the public narrative around this celebrity misconduct. And that is race.

Whites could not countenance the idea of a white woman desiring sex with a Negro, thus any physical relationship between a white woman and a black man had, by definition, to be an unwanted assault.

— Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, January 2003.

Now, there is something else being obscured in all this hashtag outrage. And that is the criminality and coercion of all labor under capitalism. Remember, too, that there is silence thus far from the most vulnerable women working in the West; au pairs, maids, factory workers and the like. Many of whom are immigrants or from immigrant families. Also, the most acute violence directed at the working class can be found in the near servitude of citrus pickers and migrant workers in states like Florida, California and Texas. There is very little media attention given to this.¹

And one could also examine the actual rape conditions of American prisons and county correctional facilities (see below). The clear rape by proxy of young people intentionally put into cells with sexual predators. This is the disciplining of the underclass via sexual violence.

But back to celebrity wrongdoing. The Kevin Spacey saga is interesting because Spacey is gay and the conditions and cultural signs are not really the same. The long standing marginalization of the queer community and the history of closeted movie stars is all pretty well known. Gay men were, historically, highly vulnerable and provided with almost no legal protection. So it is worth pondering the chorus of condemnation directed at Spacey. I have no doubt Spacey is guilty, at the very least, of being a powerful white man who abused his position and maybe worse. Maybe much worse given his history of familiarity with Jeffrey Epstein and the Clintons.

But that is not today’s topic. The ever more conservative culture of white gay America is clear. And it is a reaction to those decades and decades of violence directed against it. But as in straight America, the most vulnerable are the poor, and much of the trans community. The affect and influence of physical beauty plays into these narratives in a profound way. As does the commodification and fetishizing of youth and beauty in the society overall. The selling of seduction. And in Hollywood, sex is the currency driving the industry. There is a massive business in personal trainers and cosmetic surgery. And in youth. So, one is talking about a country in which Puritan values run into their flip side in the selling of sex, both literal and figurative. But then the most repressive countries of the world, and historically, also have the most incidents of sexual violence.

It is useful perhaps to revisit Marcuse’s notion of repressive desublimation. The 1% (or ruling class) are there to distract the populace from the growing economic chasm between themselves and the rest of us. And this is done by providing cheap satisfactions. The system grants the illusion of reform but simply repackages the same. White male power will now adjust to present itself as caring and sensitive to causing offense. Or will there be genuine structural and substantive change? The odds are against change if it challenges the ruling class. I also have noticed a new sort of white male subject position that insists on being the most feminist man in any discussion, and publicly self lacerates as evidence of his personal evolution. The confessional element in public discourse today looms over all of this.

But I want to return to race a moment, here. Black male artists and performers were killed for having sexual or romantic relationships with white women (Sam Cooke comes to mind, or the well known story of Sammy Davis Jr. and Kim Novak). America was a slave owning society. It was built by slave labor, and to an only slightly lesser degree by immigrant labor. White men control the seats of power. They did in colonial America and they do today. There is an indelible psychoanalytical theme buried in American history and it turns on the vicious lynch mobs and race riots of the last century and before, and on the genocide of Native Americans. And it can seen in the history of the so called *Indian Schools* that forcibly took young native Americans from their families and placed them in boarding schools where the intention was to beat the *Indian* out of them (see Dennis Banks, who died just this last month). For there is something that had to be pacified and neutralized in indigenous peoples, just as there was in the former slave communities that were black America. And this is the narrative of White Supremacism. And it goes back to the first European ships landing on the shores of North America. The Puritan zealots, repressed and anal sadistic, and all the various sub categories of dissident Protestant sects that settled what is now the United States, shaped the identity of authority in this new country. They instilled a sense of superiority and purity — of moral cleanliness.

The Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony outnumbered Plymouth’s Pilgrim settlers by about 10 to 1 and absorbed them in 1691. It is mainly the Puritans and their descendants, such as the Minutemen of Concord, who form the popular image of America’s early settlers. Ronald Reagan, for example, famously borrowed the wish that “we shall be a city upon a hill” – to be a “new Jerusalem,” God’s light to the nations – from the speech leader John Winthrop gave aboard the Arabella, the ship taking the first Puritan settlers to the New World.

— Claude S. Fischer, Made in America, University of Chicago Press, 2010

Cotton Mather, the quintessential Puritan public servant, saw his congregation as a ‘chosen people’ and the elect of God. And their role was to clear space for the second coming of Christ. The Puritan sermon was not without clear instruction to beat the Black Devil back — as allegory and in daily life. Blackness was associated with Satan. It is interesting that as early as 1760 there are court records of severe brutal and sadistic punishment for white women caught having sex with black men. The woman caught with a white man usually paid a fine. The woman caught with an African was whipped, stripped naked, shunned and driven out of the settlement. Again, the ideological insistence on White specialness goes back to the founding fathers. And the sexual prohibitions placed on the women of the colony, who were second class citizens but still far more legally secure than black or Native women, were carefully codified.

The piety of Antebellum America was one driven by the sadism and sexual panic associated with the *wildness* of the native or slave. And while one can accuse me of simplifying what is obviously complex, the point in context here is that the sexual repression of American puritanism ran through the society from its founding and it has never left. From the Scottsboro Boys to the Central Park Five, the stories share certain clear sensibilities. And today, in an age of electronic media and mass marketing of everything, including lingerie for five year olds (see Victoria’s Secret) this eruption of anger and outrage at the behavior of privileged white men, feels oddly linked to that shadow guilt and resentment of the white ruling class.

The white patriarchy needs to abuse the help. And if the slave is now too much of a threat, then women will suffice. And, this is Capitalism after all, where everything is for sale. And much of the language of this anger at white patriachy takes on the quality of self help books and the therapy culture that favors empowerment over organizing. It also manufactures a kind of theatre of grief, in which the word “feelings” is used quite a bit. This is anger predicated upon an identity consensus. And the massive hashtag response speaks to a shared world view. There is a progressive aspect to it all, and that is clear. I think, anyway. The boorish and abusive and humiliating — a key word — behavior of men like Harvey Weinstein, and their default belief that they can do what they want, with women, with anyone under them, is being exposed. And that is good. (a side bar note…Richard Dreyfuss’ son gave an account of Spacey’s ugly behavior, but it’s interesting that the nepotism of this man even having an acting job passes without comment). But it is also reinforcing class distinctions. And it is somehow exclusionary — as identity based correctives always are. And in a culture of celebrity, some might suggest change will come only through cases involving the famous. Perhaps. But again, these accusations, many of them relatively minor, need to be placed in a context both of history and of class.

None of the public discourse includes the fundamental coercion and exploitation of unprotected workers at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. There is little doubt that far worse occurs daily to less visible women than those working in media and mass culture. Just as, again, the U.S. Military is a shockingly out of control environment for female soldiers. But those without visibility, those whose abusers are not well known, they may or may not benefit anything from all this. But these women are less telegenic, and often uneducated.

And then there is the violence against trans-women of color, which is well documented and of a severity and pervasiveness that amounts to a national disgrace. And yet, again, there is little discussion of it. It is simply a topic unsuited for mass media, and the selling of commodities. The outrage is, then, selective. This doesn’t mean many or even the majority of accusations are not legitimate. That’s the difficulty. But legitimate does not grant blanket condemnation. Cases are unique. Another factor that is being blurred. Everything is collapsed into rape, usually. And I’ve even heard the throwing about of the term pedophilia — something totally unrelated, actually.

There is something curious and unsettling in not seeing the dangers of a mass enjoyment of punishment. For that is what disturbs me the most. The pleasure of the mob. For the issue here is to contextualize white male power and to contextualize the nature of selectivity in caring. And to unpack the frisson and selling of what is coming to be labeled ‘The Weinstein Effect’. Lynchings had vendors and souvenirs. This is not the same, and yet there are similarities. And the manufacturing of the survivor identity (which originated with the Pre School cases) is handed out even if all that was survived was an unwelcome advance. What will be the effect down the road on sexual choices that may be seen as non-mainstream? The public narrative so far is linked with Hollywood. That should provide a moment of cautious hesitation for everyone.

The decline of support for liberal approaches and the inability of liberals to solve the apparent paradoxes created by their beliefs left the crime issue to the conservatives. Conservatives pointed to the failures of liberal programs and emphasized that crime was a matter of individual choice and wickedness. They adhered to the “crime control” model of criminal justice that emphasizes “efficiency” in the criminal process. The model envisions a summary process, much like an assembly line, with reliance placed on administrative rather than judicial decision making. Central to the ideology of the crime control model are “the presumption of guilt.

— Lynn N. Henderson, “The Wrong’s of Victims Rights”, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 1985.

So, at the center of this, legally, is the victim’s rights movement. Now, partly this came from the quite correct lobbying from women’s movements regarding mistreatment of rape victims in court proceedings, and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But the changes, legally, were quickly appropriated by conservative forces. Lynn Henderson again…

Victim’s rights proponents have succeeded in inducing the adoption of preventive detention laws in at least nine states. Victim’s rights advocates have played a role in bringing about other changes in criminal law and procedure. Partly as a result of victim’s rights advocacy, the number of laws requiring mandatory restitution to victims by offenders has also increased. Most of the victim’s rights activity has been far from dispassionate, and currently, the victim’s fights “movement” has a decidedly conservative bent. Although “victim’s rights” may be viewed as a populist movement responding to perceived injustices in the criminal process, genuine questions about victims and victimization have become increasingly co-opted by the concerns of advocates of the “crime control” model of criminal justice.

— Lynn N. Henderson, “The Wrong’s of Victims Rights”, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 1985.

The image conjured by the phrase *victim* is that of an innocent victim. Again, the totalizing logic at work. The image for most of white America is again racially mediated. Victims are those hit by stray bullets from drive by shootings in gang wars (black and brown gangs). Victims are those nice folks mugged in public parking garages, and etc. The image is that of the non-provoking actor in a public morality play. Henderson (and others) have noted, too, that nobody can allow themselves to be seen as anti-victim. Hence the defendant is robbed of even more of his or her rights. And additionally, there is a rather large discussion to be had regarding the psychological damage from what are called *core crimes* (strong arm robbery, kidnapping, murder, rape, and aggravated assault). These are those traumas that force the victim to confront mortality. And such events are life altering. So, again, it is important not to conflate unwelcome come-ons with actual forcible rape.

One thing is clear, though, and that is that the erosion of The Bill of Rights (something Obama helped shred) will accelerate now and these revelations on the guilt of the famous will help fast track new intrusions of privacy with added surveillance and police powers. Proof of guilt will soon seem a quaint idea if asked for, and due process a historical artifact, just as are habeas corpus, and double jeopardy.

One should read the case histories of those freed by the Innocence Project. Many are rape (or include rape) cases. And the desire for shared victimhood is a powerful intoxicant. And the media bestowing terms like *heroic* on those coming forward seems oddly complicit in ruling class intentions to fully control the populace. For that IS the goal. Those in power, in positions of authority, feel immune to penalty. And largely they are immune. Just as police are rarely prosecuted for shooting black men and women. Prisons are not for the rich. They are for the poor. The questions about history and context are important and should be what the discussion focuses on. Rather than sanctioning white bourgeois grief and anger.

I will end with a short anecdote. When I was in my early twenties I was arrested for robbery. I later beat that charge in a jury trial. It was not my first arrest, nor to be my last. But it was the first hold in custody that lasted longer than overnight. During my two week stay at L.A. County Jail I was in the general population. And LA County is one of the most overcrowded jails in the world. One night a guy came up to me right as the buzzer went off to return to your cell. I think you had ten or eleven seconds to get back to your cell before the doors closed. If you were caught outside you went to the hole. This guy was big. Very big. And he said, ‘I been watching you. I like your eyebrows…how they curve’. (yeah, well, that’s what he said). And then he said he had arranged with the trustee to have me spend the night in his cell (with six other guys). I said no, man, I don’t fuck around. But he started dragging me toward his cell. I yanked free and hit him as hard as I could in the face. He barely blinked. But time was short so he just said very calmly…’OK youngster, tomorrow night then’. And he ran down to his cell. I stepped into my cell and sat down. This old speed freak was across from me on the other bunk. I remember his name was Dino. I said, man, did you see that? He nodded. I said, what’s gonna happen? He said, well, your gonna get fucked. I lay there that night in a cold sweat. At 4 AM a guard came by and yelled…” Steppling, roll em up….”. I had gotten bailed out. What might have happened had someone not posted bail? I’d have been raped. And probably badly beaten for not going quietly.

John Steppling is an original founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, a two-time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwrighting. He has taught screenwriting and curated the cinemathique for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. He is artistic director of the theatre collective Gunfighter Nation.

Note

1. Nobodies, The New Yorker, April 21, 2003.

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Flynn’s Devastating Confessions: Trump Colluded with Israel, Tried to Fulfill Campaign Promises

December 3rd, 2017 by Moon of Alabama

The anti-Trump “resistance” campaign alleges that the Russian government tried to “influence” the U.S. election. It insinuates that Trump “colluded” with the Russians in these alleged attempts. It has no evidence for any of its claims. The intent of this campaign is to handicap the Trump administration as much as possible and to prevent better U.S. relations with Russia.

A witch hunt was launched in which the Mueller investigation in the alleged election manipulation as well as Congress hearings are used to throw as much dirt as possible into the direction of the Trump administration to then see what might stick.

While retired army-general Michael Flynn worked for the Trump campaign he was also a lobbyist for a rich person near to the Turkish government. He made $600,000 off that gig. The Trump campaign did not know about this. Flynn also attended an anniversary celebration for Russia Today in Moscow. He had been hired as a paid speaker for the occasion and his speaker agency charged $40,000 for it.

Flynn was fired from the job as National Security Advisor 24 days after Trump#s inauguration. He had been stupid enough to announce that he wanted to reform the CIA and the other intelligence agencies. Those agencies made sure that such would not happen.

Flynn was questioned by the FBI in connection with the Mueller investigation into alleged Russian influence on the 2016 election campaign. He lied to the FBI about some diplomatic contacts he had made on request of the then incoming Trump administration. The FBI managed to prove that he had lied. In the U.S. lying to the FBI is a serious crime. (I am not aware of other country that has such a stupid rule.) Flynn was offered a plea deal. He is supposed to tell Mueller what Mueller wants to hear in exchange for a lower penalty for his “crime” of lying to the FBI.

But look what the real issues were Flynn lied about:

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and authorities indicated in court he was acting under instructions from senior Trump transition officials in his dealings with the diplomat.

Flynn contacted the senior Russian diplomat in Washington DC. He was surely aware that the NSA and CIA notice and listen in to all such contacts. Flynn had no reason to believe that such contacts were out of norm because they ain’t. Incoming administrations need such contacts to prepare their polices.

There are two different issues about which Flynn contacted the Russian ambassador:

In one of the conversations described in court documents, the men discussed an upcoming United Nations Security Council vote on whether to condemn Israel’s building of settlements. At the time, the Obama administration was preparing to allow a Security Council vote on the matter.
…
Mr. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Mr. Flynn and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, took the lead in those efforts. Mr. Mueller’s team has emails that show Mr. Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said.

The Security Council vote was on December 23 2016. The Israeli government lobbied the incoming administration to influence that vote in the Israeli government’s interest. The Trump administration in-waiting could not influence the Obama administration which had decided to abstain. It contacted the Russian ambassador to influence the Russians to block the vote in the UNSC. The Russian’s did not do such.

The “collusion” here is between the Israeli government and the Trump campaign. The “influence” is two part. A successful Israeli attempt to influence the incoming Trump administration and an unsuccessful attempt by Trump people to influence the Russian UNSC vote. The issue has absolutely zero to do with the U.S. election.

Now onto the second issue:

In the other discussion, according to court documents, Mr. Flynn asked Mr. Kislyak that Moscow refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions announced by the Obama administration that day against Russia over its interference in the presidential election. And Mr. Kislyak told Mr. Flynn that Russia “had chosen to moderate its response,” the documents said.The following day, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said Moscow would not retaliate against the United States in response to the sanctions.

Mr. Trump praised the Russian leader in a Twitter post.

“Great move on delay (by V. Putin) — I always knew he was very smart!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Throughout his election campaign Trump had loudly argued for better relations with Russia. He said it would be easier to solve global problems if the U.S. and Russia cooperate.

The Obama administration had a generally hostile attitude towards Russia. It walked the relations towards a new cold war. Clinton’s loss of the election which she blamed, without evidence, on Russia amplified his moves. According to the book ‘Shattered’, which describes the Clinton campaign, the decision to blame Russia for her loss was made a day after Trump’s victory:

That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.

At the end of 2016 Obama sanctioned Russian officials over allegedly influencing the U.S. campaign. No evidence was ever presented that such “influencing” was attempted or happened. Obama just willfully tried to worsen the relations with Russia.

The incoming administration tried to prevent more damage in the relations between the U.S. and Russia by contacting the Russian ambassador. It was a smart and well reasoned measure. There was no “collusion” in this. The “influence” was again from the Trump campaign into the direction of the Russian government, not the other way around. It had nothing to do with the election.

The Clinton fan-boys and girls seem happy with the Flynn’s plea deal and are fretting about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. But how this is supposed to show that something nefarious was going on is not discernible. How the issues Flynn lied about (for whatever stupid reason) are supposed to prove “Russian influence” on the election or “collusion” with Trump during the election campaign is beyond me.

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Will Trump Launch a Nuclear Holocaust? US Hysteria Blooms in Wake of North Korean Missile Splashdown

December 3rd, 2017 by William Boardman

Suppose an opportunity for peace arrived – could the US see it?

The most dangerous thing about the North Korean missile launch is the reaction of the unprincipled, under-informed, white identity extremist sitting in the Oval Office. If there’s a nuclear war coming out of this manufactured “crisis,” the buck will have stopped with him. Not that President Trump doesn’t have other fools egging him on to risk global chaos and destruction in response to an imaginary, inflated threat from an impoverished nation of 25 million people. Sadly, this is not a surprising development after more than sixty years of aggressive US behavior toward North Korea.

But first, what about that November 29 missile launch, widely and dishonestly played as showing that that North Korea could hit any point in the US, even Washington or Mar-a-Lago? That meme is a speculative fear-tactic. In the fine print, none of the experts, not even hawkish defense secretary General Jim Mattis, one of the last supposed grown-ups in Trumplandia. The North Korean missile went higher – roughly 2,800 miles – than any previous North Korean missile, but it didn’t go very far, about 600 miles, landing in the ocean short of Japan.

Based on this scant information, mostly provided by the North Korean government, experts like David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists extrapolated the missile’s potential range from the actual 600 miles to an estimated 8,000 miles. This is not a scientific measurement but a speculative conjecture based on science as well as the unknown assumptions that the tested missile was carrying an actual warhead. Wright allowed for the possibility that the missile’s high performance was because it carried a dummy warhead of almost inconsequential weight. Wright concluded, according the New York Times, that “the distance traveled, while impressive, does not necessarily translate into a working intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver a thermonuclear warhead.” That’s something of a non-threat threat lurking in a hypothetical future. For General Mattis, the projected possible threat, free of historical or strategic context, was all too real in his hyperbolic projection:

The bottom line is, it’s a continued effort to build a threat — a ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace, and certainly, the United States.

This isn’t General Mattis prematurely overreacting to just one unevaluated missile test. General Mattis engages in the standard military operating procedure of threat-inflation on a regular basis, which does not distinguish him from two generations of other official military and executive branch fearmongers scaring us with apparent North Korean intentions, even while driving those intentions with real, constant American threatening. As General Mattis put it in late October:

North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programs…. I cannot imagine a condition under which the United States would accept North Korea as a nuclear power….

He said, “unnecessary.” He must know that’s absurdly Orwellian. The United States and North Korea have been in a state of war since 1950. The armistice of 1953 suspended the fighting but did not end the war. From then until now, North Korean sovereignty has been irrelevant to American leaders. So here we are, with North Korea already a nuclear power and the US refusing to accept a new reality, never mind US responsibility for creating that new reality through decades of open bellicosity. The times called the most recent missile launch “a bold act of defiance against President Trump,” which is a laughably unaware acceptance of the American assumption that it has any right to any authority over another sovereign state.

American denial of the North Korean perspective is the driving force in this largely artificial confrontation. North Korea has already been overrun by American forces once in living memory, in a war with largely unexamined American atrocities (we’ve propagandized their atrocities to a fare thee well). Overrun by Americans, only to be counter-overrun by the Chinese, North Koreans might well want to be left alone. The US and its allies, especially South Korea and Japan, have maintained unrelenting hostility to North Korea, whose best friend is an unreliable China. Why wouldn’t North Korea want a nuclear deterrent? Deterrence is the American justification for a nuclear arsenal that dwarfs all others but the Russians’.

But American leaders insist on calling North Korea a threat. North Korea was a threat in 1950. and that turned out very badly for them. Today, North Korea is a credible threat to no one except perhaps its own people. A North Korean attack on anyone would be met with overwhelming force up to and possibly including nuclear obliteration. North Korea is in check, and any honest observer knows that. Some even say so. Defense Dept. spokesman Colonel Robert Manning, in striking contrast to his shrill boss General Mattis, said:

We are working with our interagency partners on a more detailed assessment of the launch…. the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America, our territories or our allies…. We remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies from any attack or provocation.

That is so rational and basic that it should hardly need saying. We don’t live in a time when basic and rational get much attention. American arrogance and paranoia toward North Korea are longstanding, untreated pathologies that continue to worsen. As our Trump tweeted in early October, with his usual fact-free, threatening bombast:

Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid … hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!

Our Trump coyly avoided saying what he thought that one thing was, but his Secretary of State still says, “Diplomatic options remain viable and open for now.” Not that anyone pays much attention to Rex Tillerson these days as he guts the State Dept. of effective, experienced personnel. Much greater play goes to the crazy ranters who are already blaming the victims if it turns out we have to attack them (sounds like domestic violence, doesn’t it?). Case in point is Lindsey Graham, who plays a deranged Republican Senator from South Carolina, saying:

If we have to go to war to stop this, we will. If there’s a war with North Korea it will be because North Korea brought it on itself, and we’re headed to a war if things don’t change.

Or as the battering husband puts it: “She just wouldn’t listen to me!” Echoing the blame-the-victim mantra, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (famous for saying “women don’t care about contraception”) told the UN Security Council the missile launch was an act of “aggression” with serious potential consequences:

… make no mistake the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed…. The dictator of North Korea made a decision yesterday that brings us closer to war, not farther from it. We have never sought war with North Korea and still today we do not seek it.

But they just won’t listen!

In North Korea, after the missile launch, leader Kim Jong Un said that his country has “finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.” A nuclear deterrent, in other words. This may or may not be entirely true. But they may or may not be beside the point. As writers in Japan Times note, this missile launch and its accompanying official statements could be an olive branch:

[North Korea] then said its pursuit of the “strategic weapon” had been intended to “defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country from the U.S. imperialists’ nuclear blackmail policy,” and emphasized that it would “not pose any threat to any country and region as long as the interests of the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) are not infringed upon…. The DPRK will make every possible effort to serve the noble purpose of defending peace and stability of the world.”

Does it matter whether this is true as long as everyone acts like it’s true? Our Trump has a random relationship with truth, and his spokeswoman says it doesn’t matter whether his racist tweets are real or fake news. So what we have here is an excellent opportunity for the mocker-in-chief of his Asian allies to seize the opportunity to make white identity extremism great again and— oh, never mind.

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

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Anti-Netanyahu Protests against Corruption and Legislation Protecting Netanyahu From Policy Investigations

December 3rd, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE:

Contact at [email protected].

Netanyahu may be Israel’s most unpopular prime minister in the nation’s history, his far-right Likud party getting only 23.4% of the popular vote in 2015 elections.

Israeli governance is always by coalition, the party winning the largest percentage of votes forming it, if able.

Likud has 30 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, a mandate to govern only with enough coalition partners for a majority – a razor thin margin for Netanyahu to remain prime minister with 61 seats.

According to Haaretz,

“(t)ens of thousands of people rallied in protest on Saturday night in Tel Aviv against government corruption and new legislation that critics say is intended to shield Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from police investigations.”

Others rallied in Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere, protesting against the “Recommendations Law” – called the “anti-police law” or “Netanyahu law” by critics.

Protests against Israeli government corruption on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Blvd., December 2, 2017.

Protests against Israeli government corruption on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Blvd., December 2, 2017. (Source: Meged Gozany)

It prohibits police from recommending prosecution of Israel officials after conducting an investigation into their shady practices – a virtual Netanyahu protection act.

He’s been investigated for alleged bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

He inappropriately or illegally accepted lavish gifts from wealthy supporters, amounting to possible bribery.

He was caught on tape red-handed, negotiating a quid pro quo with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes for more favorable broadsheet coverage in return for legislation prohibiting distribution of the free daily Israel Hayom, YA’s main competitor, owned by Netanyahu supporter Sheldon Adelson.

On November 26, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved the proposed bill – despite strong objections from Israel’s law enforcement community.

It passed its first reading, two more required for it to become law. Likudnik MK David Amsalem introduced the measure with Netanyahu in mind.

In Tel Aviv, thousands protested against it near Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s home – under the banner “March of Shame,” carrying signs criticizing Netanyahu regime corruption.

Zionist Union opposition leader Isaac Herzog tweeted protesters were motivated by a “strong sense of unfairness, from disgust with corruption and strong moral opposition to a law tailor-made for one man.”

Herzog urged them to lay siege to the Knesset to prevent the bill’s passage, second and third readings expected early this week.

On Facebook, Labor party leader Avi Gabby urged MKs to oppose the bill, saying

“(t)he recommendations bill will determine what side of history you stand on: on the side of corruption or the side of the Israeli people.”

Amsalem fast-tracked the measure for swift Knesset passage. After several cabinet members expressed reservations, it was revised.

It now lets police continue making recommendations to prosecutors, short of explicitly calling for indictments – in all cases except ones overseen by a prosecutor, usually high-profile ones like ongoing investigations into alleged Netanyahu bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

In its current revised form, still a work in progress, police are prohibited from making recommendations based on evidence for an indictment of Netanyahu – or any other high-level Israeli official.

Mandelblit, State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan and Israel Police oppose the legislation. So do other Israelis believing no one is above the law.

Under every coalition regime in its history, Israel governed lawlessly, brutalizing Palestinians, stealing their land and resources, mass-incarcerating them for not being Jews, waging war on its neighbors, partnering with US high crimes.

Bribery, fraud, breach of trust and other civil crimes are minor by comparison – yet important enough to demand prosecution for offenders, including Netanyahu.

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].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

This video is based on the research of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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Secret Documents Reveal Mubarak’s Plan to Resettle Palestinians in Egypt

December 3rd, 2017 by Middle East Monitor

Featured image: Ousted Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak (Source: TG Post/Facebook)

Secret British documents have revealed that deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had agreed to resettle Palestinians in Egypt over three decades ago. According to the documents, obtained exclusively by the BBC following a Freedom of Information Act disclosure request, Mubarak was responding to an American request when he made his offer. The former president stipulated that in return for agreeing to the move, an agreement to end the Arab-Israeli conflict must be reached.

The documents show that Mubarak revealed the US request and his response during talks with the then British Prime Minister, the late Margaret Thatcher. The talks were held during his visit to London on his way back to Washington, in February 1983, where he met with the late US President Ronald Reagan.

The two visits occurred eight months after Israel had invaded Lebanon on 6 June 1982 under the pretext of waging a military operation against the PLO. This was prompted by an assassination attempt against the Israeli ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov.

In light of the very tense situation in the Middle East, Mubarak sought to convince the US and Israel to accept the establishment of a Palestinian entity in the context of a “confederation” with Jordan, in order to lay the foundations for establishing a future independent Palestinian state. According to the record of his meeting with Thatcher, Mubarak said that when he had been asked to accept Palestinians from Lebanon, he told the US he could do so only within the context of a comprehensive plan to resolve the conflict. The former president expressed his willingness to host Palestinians from Lebanon despite his awareness of the dangers of such a step. He also insisted that, “A Palestinian state will never pose a threat to Israel.”

Thatcher replied to this by hinting that regardless of any future agreement, the Palestinians could never return to Palestine.

“Even establishing a Palestinian state cannot lead to absorbing all Palestinians in the diaspora,” she warned.

Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, Boutros Ghali, replied to Thatcher.

“The Palestinians will have their own passports at that point,” he explained, “and they will have different positions. We don’t only have to have an Israeli state and Jewish diaspora, but also a small Palestinian state with Palestinian diaspora.”

Mubarak mentioned the Palestinians in Kuwait to Thatcher as an example.

“They would never return to an independent Palestinian state.”

According to the BBC, when the late British Prime Minister’s secretary took notes of the meeting with Mubarak, he stressed that they should not be widely distributed.

Mubarak’s political advisor at the time, Osama Al-Baz, presented a proposed future solution, noting that the first step would be a federation between Jordan and a Palestinian state, which would develop into an independent state within 10 to 15 years. Thatcher expressed reservations about the establishment of a Palestinian state independent of Jordan: “Some feel that an independent Palestinian state would be under the influence of the Soviet Union.”

“This is a mistaken idea,” said Al-Baz, “as there will be no Palestinian state under Russian influence. This state will rely economically on the oil-rich Arabs who are very opposed to the establishment of a state loyal to the Soviets in the region. Saudi Arabia, for example, would never allow this to happen.”

He also pointed out that a Palestinian state “must” be demilitarised, and therefore would not obtain Soviet weapons.

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Prolonged US Military Presence in Syria? “We’re not Just Going to Walk Away Right Now”. James Mattis

December 3rd, 2017 by Sophie Mangal

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. hopes to prolong its military presence in Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) areas in the north of Syria. Current United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the Cabinet of Donald Trump, James Norman Mattis proved this fact saying ‘We’re not just going to walk away right now.’

Officially the U.S. strength in Syria stood at approximately 500 troops, including hundreds of additional Special Operations forces, forward air controllers, artillery crews and others. They basically lend support to militants and Kurdish militias.

Besides, the Americans unlawfully set up a military base not far from Syrian-Jordan border in At-Tanf in April 2017. The military instructors from the U.S., Great Britain, and France train New Syrian Army’s radicals for fighting official Syrian government instead of eliminating ISIS there.

By setting up the military garrison the U.S. military command created a 55 km buffer zone over it that allowed them to prevent a UN humanitarian convoy from being admitted to the area in early November. As a result, 50,000 refugees from Raqqa and Deir-Ezzor in Rukban camp were left without basic necessities. The refugees living in that desert camp in southeast Syria practically are being used by the United States to shield its military base.

Today a number of mainstream media discuss a military future of the U.S. Command in Syria. In particular, British Reuters reported that the Pentagon is likely to announce in the coming days that there are about 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria.

However, the issue of subsequent deploying of the U.S. troops in Syria remains. According to some diplomatic sources, the U.S. Congress completely upholds Trump advocating early withdrawal of the troops from Syria just after ISIS is rooted. But it totally contradicts Pentagon’s initiatives.

Probably, the U.S. Congress shares not only Trump’s but also people’s point of view on the issue of illegal American presence under the international law and lack of military successes against the background of vast resources spent. The U.S. Department of State claims the US-led international coalition have already wasted $22 billion tax dollars trying to beat ISIS both in Iraq and Syria.

In such a situation prolonged U.S. troops’ presence on the territory of the sovereign state only plays into the hands of high-ranking Pentagon’s chiefs, army contractors, and neocons. It seems the U.S. DoD doesn’t take care of the money of common American taxpayers to say nothing of thousands of Syrians have been dying since U.S. presence in the country.

Last summer News Week reported more than 5 thousand civilians had been killed as a result of indiscriminate airstrikes of the international coalition form October 2014 till June 2017.

Hopefully, Washington and the Pentagon respecting the sovereignty of independent state and international law will find a common language and withdraw the contingent as Damascus calls for, at least after ISIS is completely defeated. Maybe then all those responsible for an extra-budgetary strain and international crimes against humanity would be brought to justice.

Sophie Mangal is special investigative correspondent at Inside Syria Media Center where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author.

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Long Hours and Unequal Wage Gaps in Japan: Abe Shinzō’s Campaign to Reform the Japanese “Way of Work”

December 3rd, 2017 by Charles Weathers

Prime Minister Abe Shinzō has made Work Style Reform (hatarakikata kaikaku) part of his core policy agenda, promising above all to remedy the Japanese way of work’s two greatest problems: dangerously long work hours and grossly unequal wage gaps between regular and non-regular workers. However, critics charge that the proposals will likely aggravate these problems, given that labor policymaking is dominated by conservative business and political leaders bent on deregulation. This paper examines the current Work Style Reform proposals, explaining how the work hour reduction and equal pay for equal work proposals are being promoted to the public, and why they ultimately fail as reforms from the worker point of view. Despite these serious problems, the government’s effective marketing has helped to defuse potential resistance and the reform plans may become law in 2018.

Top-down labor reform plans

Japanese business leaders have long insisted that rigidities in the Japanese Employment System are a drag on economic performance, so it was natural for Abe Shinzō to renew his long-standing commitment to labor reform as a core policy goal upon becoming prime minister for the second time in December 2012. Abe’s original labor reform agenda emphasized liberalization of agency temporary work (now accomplished), easier dismissal of regular employees, and deregulation of work hours. But the government has continuously repackaged its employment reform agenda, and last year released it as Hatarakikata Kaikaku, or Work Style Reform. The revised agenda still made addressing the nation’s long work hours one of its central objectives, but suddenly added eliminating unequal and unfair pay gaps to its priorities.

Conditions are propitious for reform. Unemployment has fallen to 2.8%, and severe labor shortages are forcing some employers to raise pay for non-regular workers, or even, on occasion, to convert them into properly paid regular employees. The list of proposed reforms is long and comprehensive, but it prioritizes the alleviation of long work hours and drastic inequality in pay and status, clearly the two biggest problems in the nation’s employment system. The former results in thousands of deaths and disabilities yearly, while structural inequality means that millions of workers and families live on the edge of poverty. Furthermore, both problems are rightly regarded as obstacles to greater gender equality in workplaces, and to raising the country’s low birthrate — long work hours make it difficult for childrearing women to pursue professional careers, and low incomes discourage many couples from having as many children as they would like.

But while the Abe Government is targeting the right problems, it is pushing the wrong remedies. Work Style Reform, if implemented as currently proposed, will almost certainly do more to strengthen the control of employers over the work force than to improve the treatment of workers. This is largely because the policymaking process continues to be dominated by business leaders and by conservative government officials strongly opposed to enhanced regulation and worker involvement in governance processes. The result is that the reforms on the two key policies head in totally different directions. The proposed reform of work hours would deregulate rather than tighten the current rules, which are already ridiculously slack. In contrast, the equal work for equal pay proposal eschews the job evaluation processes successfully utilized to promote fair compensation in other countries in favor of employers’ subjective evaluation, based on the concept of “balanced treatment,” that is more likely to increase inequality than alleviate it.

Policymaking background

Labor reform plans during Abe Shinzō’s first term as prime minister (2006-2007) failed ignominiously. Angry public criticism forced him to withdraw a proposed exemption from overtime pay, under which the 70% of white-collar workers earning over 4,000,000 yen per year in salary – millions of middle-class workers – would lose their right to receive overtime premiums no matter how long they worked. He ultimately resigned as prime minister after barely one year. However, Abe’s second term, now the third longest in Japanese history, has been far more successful, largely because of opposition party weakness but also because of much better marketing of his policies. Immediately after resuming the prime ministership, Abe announced the launch of Abenomics, an ambitious and attention-grabbing policy package to jumpstart the long-stagnant economy. The first two of the famous Three Arrows of Abenomics were monetary easing and fiscal stimulus, which at least appeared to boost growth, but benefited primarily large firms, while the third (and more painful) arrow, structural reform, did not take flight.

By 2015, the momentum of Abenomics was clearly waning, leading the prime minister to unveil a series of new initiatives, including a new Three Arrows and two initiatives intended largely to promote women’s workplace participation, the “Dynamic Society of One Hundred Million” and “Creating a Society in which all Women Can Shine” (though these programs stopped well short of implementing or even specifying an approach that might significantly move toward gender equality). Typically for this prime minister’s initiatives, the various policies and goals overlapped and fluctuated confusingly, but the major objectives included growing the economy by 20% by 2021 (from roughly 500 trillion yen to 600 trillion yen),¹ greatly expanding childcare and elder care services, and raising the birthrate from the present 1.45 to 1.8 (in order to maintain the population at the 100 million level). The keys to unleashing high growth are seen as raising productivity and encouraging stronger economic participation by women.

Advertisement for a television program about single mothers: “There’s no spare time for tears!”

Unfortunately for reform prospects, the employment system has historically differentiated sharply between regular and non-regular workers (Gordon 2017). This differentiation has helped to drive the problem of long work hours (since bona fide regular workers are promised strong job and livelihood protection in return for accepting on-demand overtime) and has also facilitated the steady development of employment segmentation since the 1970s. While employers in all countries have pursued dispatch work and other modes of flexible employment, the institutionalized use of women as complementary workers made it especially easy for Japanese managers to shift them into non-regular employment after 1985, when the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law made it formally illegal to discriminate against female employees and job-seekers. Following a sharp recession in the late 1990s, a sharp rise in the numbers of non-regularly employed young men helped to turn economic inequality into a major social issue, but the majority of non-regular workers continue to be women, and a growing number of them are single mothers, who must be breadwinners for their families (Kobayashi 2015).

Evincing awareness of the continuing unease about inequality, the Prime Minister once again strengthened (rhetorically, at least) the employment reform campaign in mid-2016. On June 1, exhibiting his penchant for sloganeering, Abe proclaimed, “We will enact equal pay for equal work, and the term non-regular work will be swept from this country.” Critics retorted that the term would be eliminated but that unequal employment conditions would continue, just under different names.² In August, with the Upper House election underway, Abe proclaimed Work Style Reform to be the “greatest challenge” facing Japan, and he established a new Cabinet level office, the Ministry in Charge of Work Style Reform, installing LDP stalwart Katō Katsunobu as minister. In September 2016 the Government launched the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform (Hatarakikata Kaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi).

In practice, the Work Style Reform agenda essentially continues the strong push for employer-friendly reform made by Abe since the beginning of his prime ministership, with the usual re-marketing and a bit of reorientation. As seen in the table below, the agenda consists of nine items with the potential to greatly change employment practices in Japan; none are truly new, but the Abe Government has arguably pressed them harder than previous administrations. At least two other important reforms demanded by the LDP’s backers in the employer community, kinsen-teki kaiketsu (monetary resolution, a scheme to enable companies to dismiss regular workers upon payment of severance) and expanded use of gentei seishain(limited regular employee, intended to be a an employment status midway between regular and non-regular employee), are not on the list, even though they are being intensively pursued outside of the work style reform framework.³

Table 1. Major Items in the Work Style Reform Action Plan

Improve the treatment of non-regular employees through Equal Work for Equal Pay and other measures.
Raise both labor productivity and wages.
Correct long work hours by limiting overtime hours and other measures.
Improve education (including re-training and re-employment schemes) to aid the movement of workers into growth industries.
Promote the use of telework and other flexible work arrangements.
Better utilize youth and women by establishing gender-neutral social insurance and tax schemes.
Help older workers to continue working.
Strengthen the childcare and eldercare systems.
Encourage employment of foreign workers.

Source: Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Japan (2016).

Despite the Government’s positive messaging, the odds of achieving reform that will benefit the average worker or lower income workers are slim because the policymaking process is controlled by business leaders and their conservative political allies. The general labor reform agenda is being spearheaded, not by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), but instead by advisory councils attached to the Prime Minister’s Office and by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). To be sure, MHLW has not always been a dependable labor ally, but its policy deliberation councils (shingikai) at least guarantee equal voice for labor unions in debating labor policies. In contrast, the two advisory councils that undertake important labor initiatives, the Council on Industrial Competitiveness (Sangyō Kyōsōryoku Kaigi) and the Council on Regulatory Reform (Kisei Kaikaku Kaigi), include no labor representatives. Moreover, METI has interjected itself into labor reform policymaking, partly in accordance with its usual concern for raising economic productivity, and partly to carve out new turf. Many of the members of the two advisory councils have important ties to METI, further buttressing the Ministry’s influence. This pattern has continued in the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform. The Council includes only a single labor representative, Kōzu Rikio, the chief of Rengo, Japan’s largest labor union federation.

Equal pay for equal work

Closing the pay gap

The Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform at first made reducing inequality between regular and non-regular workers its main objective, especially by establishing the equal pay for equal work principle. Non-regular workers currently constitute 37.4% of the working population, and the problems of this employment status mostly concern women and younger workers. Even though female job seekers are increasingly landing permanent positions, 56% of female employees are non-regular workers. Half of those non-regulars are part-timers, who constitute nearly 60% of working women (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication 2017). The predominance of non-regular, especially part-time labor, among women, is a product of Japanese management’s long-term effort to “win greater flexibility…in the context of a fully institutionalized postwar system of ‘regular’ employment for men,” which dovetailed with the cultural understanding that it is natural and ideal for female workers to be subordinate in the workplace (Gordon 2017, 13). The Abe Administration’s concern is not so much with the growth of non-regular employment among women per se but with the large pay gap suffered by part-timers. Statistics show that part-timers earn 43% less per hour than full-time workers (Japan Institute of Labour Policy and Training 2016). The Abe Administration claims that such low wages are a disincentive to women to choose to work part-time while taking care of family duties. In order to raise female labor participation, the Abe Administration considers reducing the pay gap to be a top work style reform priority.

The issue faced by younger workers is involuntary non-regular employment, which has arisen from Japanese firms’ determined effort to cut labor costs (Osawa, Kim and Kingston 2013). Since the 1990s, companies reduced recruitment of costly regular workers, which resulted in more young workers reluctantly taking non-regular jobs (Genda 2001). Research has shown that male non-regular workers find it hard to marry or start a family, which exacerbates Japan’s population decline (Nagase 2002). Even though the Abe Administration does not particularly consider the equal pay for equal work legislation a solution to young workers’ issues, it aims to “enable every worker to have the hope of a better future” (Hatarakikata Kaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi 2017, 2). Reducing the pay gap is seen as a way to stimulate and motivate every worker, and thereby raise labor productivity, which is another stated goal of Work Style Reform. However, critics of the plan are concerned that it could ultimately reduce the wage gap by enabling lower wages for regulars, while the fortunes of non-regular workers would be only marginally improved.

Prime Minister Abe addressing the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform

The Equal Pay for Equal Work Guideline, presented in December 2016, set out the first blueprint for equal pay for equal work legislation (Hatarakikata Kaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi 2016). The Guideline distinguishes between two different ideas of equal pay for equal work, and proposes to apply them selectively depending on the type and purpose of compensation. One is the idea of “equal treatment,” that is, forbidding discriminatory treatment and providing benefits equally to all workers. The Guideline aims to apply the equal treatment principle to allowances, such as transportation allowances, condolence leaves, and sick leaves. It would also ensure equal access to cafeterias and locker rooms for all workers. In other words, the principle of equal treatment is applied to allowances and benefits that are to be provided to all employees who work for the same company, regardless of their employment status or duties.

However, regarding the “core” compensations that significantly shape the workers’ economic wellbeing, i.e. base wages, bonus payments, and wage raises, the Guideline adopts the second principle of “balanced treatment.” Here, the idea is that equal pay will depend on there being no differences between workers and their work. If there are differences, their pay can reflect it. So base wages, bonus payments, and pay raises will be provided equally or differentially depending on employer appraisal of the situation of each worker and how compensations are determined in each workplace. The factors considered in assessing the similarities and differences of each worker are job content and responsibility, whether the worker is subjected to job changes, job rotation, work place transfers, and “other factors” that may include achievements, motivation, and experience.

Derived from the Guideline, draft legislation entitled Outline of the Bill to Promote Work Style Reform was presented in September 2017 (Rōdōseisaku Shingikai Rōdōjōken Bunkakai 2017). The proposal called for making revisions to the Part-Time Workers Law, the Labor Contract Law, and the Dispatched Workers Law respectively. Currently, the Labor Contract Law contains a balanced treatment clause for fixed-term contract workers, but includes no equal treatment clause. The Dispatch Workers Law contains neither of the clauses. The Part- Time Workers Law contains both clauses but without the precise wordings sought by the Council.⁴

The Outline’s equal treatment clause (entitled, Prohibition of Discriminatory Treatment Against Part-time/Fixed Term Workers Comparable to Ordinary Workers) states that the employer shall not engage in discriminatory treatment in terms of wages, bonuses, and other compensation if part-time/fixed-term workers’ job descriptions and the range in which changes in job assignment are expected to take place are equal to those of the regular workers throughout the entire period of employment (Rōdōseisaku Shingikai Rōdōjōken Bunkakai 2017, 44). The clause is relatively clear as it stands, and would not much change the existing equal treatment clause in Article 9 of the Part Time Workers Law. However, the balanced treatment clause (entitled Prohibition of Unreasonable Treatment) is rather opaque. It prohibits setting “differences that would be recognized as unreasonable” for base wages, bonuses, and other compensation (Ibid). The Guideline may once again provide readers with an idea of what this clause may exactly mean.

According to the Guideline, (un)reasonableness is to be assessed in each case by considering the rationale behind the types of compensation and how they correspond to the actual work situation of each worker. Wage systems adopted in Japanese companies are diverse, yet most workplaces consider multiple factors, such as work experience, age, ability to perform tasks, and achievement. The Guideline suggests that if a portion of the base wage is determined by experience, the employer is to equally pay the same part of the base wage to non-regular workers with the same work experience. In cases where the workers’ experience differs, the pay will reflect the difference. If a part of the base wage is decided by achievement, the employer must equally pay the same part of the base wage to the non-regular workers who have performed on equal terms and achieved the same goals. If achievement differs between the workers, the pay will reflect the difference. If a part of the base wage is calculated according to years of service, the same proportion of base wage based on years of service must be provided to non-regular workers who have been working the same number of years.⁵

More than anything else the Outline emphasizes forcing employers to explain differential treatments to workers. Upon request by the non-regular worker, the employer will be required to describe how their treatment differs from “ordinary workers,” inform the worker of factors taken into consideration in determining the differential treatment, and give a rationale for that treatment (Ibid., 46).

Criticisms from progressive labor

Progressive labor unions and lawyers’ associations have criticized the equal pay for equal work scheme pursued by the Abe Administration and the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform on the grounds that the legislation will most likely do little to redress existing inequalities, and may even serve to justify and ossify them. The critics assert that the equal treatment statute will have little impact on non-regular workers, because it uses changes in job assignment as a criterion for assessing the equivalence of workers. The Labor Lawyers Association of Japan (LLAJ, Nihon Rōdō Bengodan) and the Japan Lawyers’ Association for Freedom (JLAF, Jiyū Hōsōdan) have both suggested that the job assignment clause will deny most non-regular workers equal treatment. The majority of non-regular workers are assigned to particular jobs, and even though they may change job assignments, they are not expected to rotate among jobs on a regular basis, nor are they subject to workplace transfers. In other words, the premises behind the usage of regular and non-regular workers differ at most work places even in cases where non-regular and regular workers may be working on equivalent jobs at any given moment. In short, the equal treatment clause will not apply to many of the non-regular workers. The equal treatment clause proposed in the Outline hardly differs from the existing clause in the existing Part Time Workers Law, which has had very little effect in closing the pay gap between part-timers and regular workers. One estimate of the proportion of non-regular workers who may benefit from the equal treatment clause showed that only 21% of fixed term workers were subject to changes in job assignments, with the related figure for part-time workers falling below 3% (Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training 2011).

Regarding the balanced treatment clause, the National Confederation of Trade Unions (NCTU, or Zenrōren), JLAF, and LLAJ all oppose the phrase “differences that would be recognized as unreasonable.” These progressive labor groups call for a phrasing that is closer to European Union directives on the principle of non-discrimination, i.e., the employer shall not treat non-regular workers differently from regular workers “unless different treatment is justified on objective grounds,” such as differences in job description or performance. Such phrasing will lean more heavily towards equal treatment than balanced treatment. More importantly, the EU directives will make the employer liable in providing evidence for the “objective grounds” in treating workers differentially, while the worker concerned will only have to show that he or she is being treated differently. As the current draft stands, labor and management will both be liable for convincing the judge that the differential treatment is “(un)reasonable.” Court cases that turned on the existing wording have recognized the unequal treatment between non-regular and regular workers but have ruled that the difference cannot be recognized as being unreasonable.

One of several cases that challenge the large pay gap is the Metro Commerce case. The plaintiffs are four female non-regular workers, who worked as sales clerks at the subway kiosks operated by Metro Commerce, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tokyo Metro. These veteran workers had renewed their fixed term contracts to build up job tenure of between 7 to 10 years. Their suit demanded equal treatment with regular workers based on Article 20 of the Labor Contract Law, which prohibits unreasonable differences in treatment. Plaintiffs alleged that they were underpaid in terms of base wage, bonus, and overtime payments, and they received no family and housing allowances. So far the women have fared poorly in court. In March 2017, the judges of the Tokyo District Court dismissed the case, ruling that even though the differential treatment was due to differences in employment status, the differences in treatment could not be said to be unreasonable. Labor lawyers and union activists are concerned that the Prohibition of Unreasonable Treatment clause in the Outline provides ample room for such logic to continue to prevail (Nihon Rōdō Bengodan 2017; Ito 2017).

Finally, the Work Style Reform campaign does not include the idea of regulating the usage of non-regular workers. It rather promotes the growth of non-regular workers under the slogan “diverse work styles.” Labor law deregulation over the years has allowed for the extended usage of non-regular workers. The Labor Standards Act was revised in 2004 to extend the one-year limit on fixed term contracts to three years in general and to five years for workers with expertise knowledge, skills, or experience. The Dispatch Workers Law was amended in 2015 to lift the restrictions placed on usage and period of employment, thus allowing employers to use temporary agency workers indefinitely if the workplace does not use the same temp worker continuously for over three years on the same job. The NCTU, LLAJ, and JLAF argue that it is critical to place restrictions on the employment of non-regular workers while legislating equal treatment principles.

Discussion: Another justification for differential treatment?

How much of the Guideline will actually become law remains to be seen, but the impact on the non-regular workers will be a far cry from the goal of “expanding the middle class” proclaimed by the Action Plan (Hatarakikata Kaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi 2017). Compensation will be fully corrected only for a rather small proportion of non-regular workers who work on terms equal to those of regular workers for the entire duration of their employment. The vast majority can, at best, expect only small increases.

The tradeoff for even these modest monetary gains will be strong cultural pressure exerted on all workers to work harder and become more productive. The Action Plan claims that the Work Style Reform “will banish the term ‘non-regular employment’ from this country” (Ibid., 3). Given the nature of the proposed equal pay for equal work legislation, this implies that the Work Style Reform will eliminate the principle, “You’re paid less because you’re a non-regular worker,” and replace it with a new set of legal justifications for unequal treatment based on other factors including career tracks, achievements, motivations, and skills. The new principle will be, “You’re paid less because you are on a different career track,” “because you contribute less,” or “because you lack motivation,” which are ultimately reducible to the subjective claim, “because you lack ability in our estimation,” which could even open the door to reducing the wages of regular workers.

The bottom line is that although the equal pay for equal work legislation is intended to increase labor participation and labor productivity, in its repeated references to motivation and ability, the Equal Pay for Equal Work Guideline marks a new stage in using “equality” to legitimize unequal treatment. Historically speaking, the practice of differential treatment based on gender became subject to regulation with the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law. Employers responded to the EEOL by introducing the dual sōgōshoku (career) and ippanshoku (general, i.e., non-career) occupational tracks. Eventually, corporate efforts to minimize labor costs blossomed into the employment-status based treatment that is common today. The Abe Government’s current move to banish unequal treatment based on employment status introduces a new principle that legitimates differential treatment based on the employer’s subjective evaluation of worker ability. The Outline states that the legislation shall guarantee the employment opportunity of part-time and fixed-term workers “according to their motivations and skills….” (Rōdōseisaku Shingikai Rōdōjōken Bunkakai 2017, 43). What these passages collectively show, together with the equal pay for equal work bill, is that the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform is keen on defining “fair treatment” as “differential treatment based on worker’s ability.” If this principle is enshrined in law, workers will find it extremely difficult to challenge unequal treatment.

The message implied by the repeated reference to motivation and skill is that if the worker in question is not happy with the treatment, he or she should work harder, proactively acquire more skills, be self-motivated to be more productive, and contribute more to the work place and the Japanese economy. In other words, the Work Style Reform and the equal pay for equal work legislation will either pressure workers to accept pay differences as a reflection of their lack of ability, or push them to work harder and become deserving of equal treatment. Discrimination based on employment status is bad enough, but legitimation of class position based on a person’s ability unilaterally judged by the employer is notoriously hard to escape, and, according to Richard Sennett (2003), it injures a person’s sense of self-respect.

Reforming the working day

At the launch of the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform in the fall of 2016, the prime minister proclaimed the reduction of long work hours as a core objective, explaining, “If we correct long work hours, we will improve work-life balance, and it will become easier for women and elders to find work.” (Asakura 2017, 118) As noted above, however, the equal work for equal pay agenda was initially the first priority. That changed early in 2017 after the government awarded compensation to the mother of a 24-year-old Dentsu employee, Takahashi Matsuri, who had thrown herself from the roof of an employee dormitory late in 2015 after months of overwork, sleep deprivation, and harassment by her bosses made her depressed and suicidal.

With headlines of another overwork-induced death splashed across the front pages, Prime Minister Abe and the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform sought to mollify public anger by replacing work-life balance with the ending of karōshi, deaths resulting from overwork, as the greatest objective of the work hour reduction campaign (Asakura 2017). As part of the marketing effort, Sakakibara Sadayuki, chief of the employers’ association Nippon Keidanren, called for setting numerical limits on work hours — a measure long vehemently opposed by employers — while Prime Minister Abe sent an offering of flowers on December 25, the anniversary of Takahashi’s death, and invited her mother to his official residence for a four-hour visit in February 2017. The Prime Minister pledged to achieve work style reform so that, “her death would not be in vain.” (Mainichi Shinbun 2017)

Statutory inadequacies

In reality, the Abe Government’s remedies are cosmetic, and its proposed reforms to the Labor Standards Act, purported to bring time-saving efficiencies, are more likely to cause even greater amounts of hidden overwork. The major problem is that the centerpiece of the government work hour agenda is deregulation, yet the existing rules are already riddled with loopholes that make the current legal limits on hours meaningless. Or, regulations simply go unenforced since enforcement and inspection are inadequate.

Under current law, one working day is 8 hours and one working week is 40 hours. In principle, overtime is not permitted. However, if an Article 36 overtime agreement (saburoku kyōtei) is reached between labor’s representatives and management, and filed at the Labor Standards Office (LSO) as stipulated by the Labor Standards Act, virtually unlimited overtime can become legally permissible. The minimum overtime premium is 25% above the hourly wage, rising to 50% for overtime in excess of 60 hours per month. It is common for firms to have in these agreements a “special clause”（tokubetsu jokō）that allows unlimited overtime in emergency situations. Emergency situations may be unilaterally declared at management’s discretion. According to a review conducted by the MHLW, these overtime agreements often permit 100 or even 200 hours of overtime work per month, far in excess of the Ministry guidelines, which suggest limits of 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year (Satō 2017). A MHLW investigation of selected firms found work hour violations in 70% of them (Kisei Kaikaku Suishin Kaigi 2017). Hours exceeding the limits established by Article 36 agreements, and failure to pay overtime wages, were the most common infractions. Surveys of Japanese full-time workers consistently report unpaid overtime averaging about 240 hours a year (Morioka 2013). However critics are quick to note that even when overtime is fully compensated, the premium rate of 25% above regular hourly salary is so low that it is not a disincentive for ordering overtime. In sum, both direct control of overwork, through limits on hours, and indirect control, through high overtime premiums, are lacking in Japan (Noda 2000).

The black (square) and blue (triangle) lines of the graph show the national annual averages of both scheduled hours and hours actually worked for all workers in enterprises of five or more employees. The decline is largely due to increased use of part-time workers, whose average hours are also falling. On the other hand, the average hours of full-time workers red (diamond) line have barely declined at all, despite some forty years of policymaking, worker activism, and public education campaigns. The graph does not show unpaid overtime, which is also commonly reported by full-time workers. Between 20 and 25% of full-time employed men aged 30-45 reportedly put in 60 or more hours per week, enough to put them over the “karoshi line.” (Source: MHLW Monthly Labor Statistics)

Despite evidence of widespread violations, the MHLW cannot monitor workplaces properly. In 2016 there were 3241 Labor Standards Inspectors, responsible for supervising more than 4-million companies: inspectors are each responsible for an average of almost 1300 firms; only 3% of firms can be surveyed each year (Kisei Kaikaku Suishin Kaigi 2017). Employer participation in Ministry surveys is largely voluntary and the Ministry is wary of alienating employers because they need this important data to compile labor statistics. Consequently, on-site visits are rare and generally limited to the worst cases. The budget for hiring more inspectors is inadequate and politically sensitive. The MHLW inspectors themselves are badly overworked. An inspector showed one of the authors a cabinet overflowing with current case files. He also displayed his datebook, in which he recorded his daily arrival and departure from work so that his wife would have evidence to use if she needed to file a claim for karoshi.

This inspector’s daily bookkeeping habit points to a legal loophole that is a major cause of karoshi cases: enforcement is difficult because work hours recordkeeping requirements for employers are lax. It is especially easy to take advantage of white-collar salaried employees. Office workers who are “permanent employees” of their corporations generally accept that their work will be unlimited in terms of duties, hours, and locations. They will do whatever is asked, no matter how long it takes, or where it takes them. And courts have ruled that the open-ended demands of this kind of employment are legal. In return, employers must provide secure employment; it is very difficult to terminate employees. In this mutual employment embrace, employees are at the mercy of employers. When Japan’s economy was growing, workers benefitted because businesses invested in labor. In today’s comparatively stagnant economy, labor is increasingly devalued. Full-time workers face growing pressures from employers to work without concern for time, and the MHLW lacks the manpower to compel employers to end the widespread practices of not recording and not compensating overtime. Even when employers are caught abusing workers in high-profile cases, the fines are small, and managers are not individually punished.

Although the underlying problems are clear, some of the Abe Government’s proposed remedies for overwork come across as neoliberal comic relief. For example, take “No Overtime Day,” one day per week (typically Wednesday) when employees are urged not to work overtime. Some companies schedule semi-compulsory conviviality on those evenings, but whether workers enjoy drinks with colleagues or not, work not completed on No Overtime Day must be made up either by taking work home or doing it in the office at some other time. A recent survey revealed a trend of workers starting work earlier, before work hours officially begin (NHK Hōsō Bunka Kenkyūsho 2015).

Then there is “Premium Friday,” which the Abe government rolled out with fanfare in February 2017. On the last Friday of each month, workers are to leave work at 3PM. Premium Friday epitomizes the government’s preferred approach to regulation of work hours: voluntary, consumption oriented, and generally ineffectual (Brasor 2017). Premium Friday participation rates are in the single digits. It was momentarily good PR, but even the Prime Minister has stopped observing it. These almost laughable remedies do next to nothing to help workers and their families cope with overwork.

While “No Overtime Day” and “Premium Friday” were public relations ploys, the proposed revisions to legal regulations could put workers at serious risk. The dangers are partially disguised by nominal new protections. For example, the Action Plan calls for inserting “historic” first limits on overtime into the Labor Standards Act. A monthly limit of “up to” 100 hours, and a limit of 80-hours of overtime on average across a two to six month period are proposed. If enacted, the new provision would legalize overtime work at the exact threshold that the MHLW uses to award workers’ compensation to karoshi victims or their families. In combination with existing provisions for authorizing holiday work, as much as 960 hours of overtime per year could be allowed (Okunuki 2017).

Such long hours would be a natural consequence of the proposed expansion of self-discretionary work systems and increased use of performance-based pay. The government and business leaders have argued (especially before the Takahashi tragedy) that, unlike time-based compensation, self-discretion in work hours creates incentives for increased efficiency, allowing workers to better balance work and life. Campaigners opposed to the reforms pointedly note that workers don’t control their workloads, therefore self-discretion is a dangerous illusion. They fear that in coming years more and more workers will be dragooned into self-discretionary work, in which all responsibility for required overtime would be placed on workers (Rengo 2017).

Like self-discretionary labor, the Sophisticated Professional Labor System, a new version of Mr. Abe’s 2006 white-collar exemption from overtime and other work hours regulations, is a sort of Trojan horse. The plans call for initially applying it only to the small percentage of relatively high salaried, non-executive employees making more than 10,750,000 yen per year. The business lobby, however, continues to demand the 2006 salary threshold of 4,000,000 yen a year, a level that brought banner headlines about the “Overtime Pay Zero Law” that helped end the first Abe administration as workers realized that overtime uncounted would also mean overtime uncompensated. After Abe’s 2012 return to power, however, Labor Minister Shiozaki in 2015 tacitly agreed to increase the number of workers covered by this “zero overtime pay” proposal. He was caught on tape at a closed-door meeting responding to business leaders’ complaints about the high salary threshold, saying that the first step is to establish the principle. “Birth them small, then raise them up big. For the time being, let’s just push [the law] through” (Nikkan Gendai 2015).

Lowering the salary threshold would expand the number of workers in the Sophisticated Professional Labor System, who would thus become exempt from several other key provisions of the Labor Standards Act: the 8-hour day and 40-hour week, requirements for rest days and rest periods during the day, overtime agreements, and premiums for holiday and night work. The reforms also call for expanding employment types, making way for varied treatment and working conditions on the basis of labels, even as workplace customs promote longer, more intense, and increasingly uncompensated work for all. This is sure to add confusion to a legal environment in which workers already have difficulty understanding their rights.

Inadequate compliance with the spirit of the law

Because the Labor Standards Act was established in the aftermath of World War II, when Japan’s economy was weak, it set only minimum standards, which employers are supposed to strive to exceed. In place of close controls and punishments, the LSA favors encouragement and education. The MHLW tries to reward and promote firms that exemplify good behavior, and punishments are imposed only rarely. The benefits of ignoring the injunction to meet the minimum labor standards outweigh the risks of getting caught. The temptation to ignore regulations is especially great in tough economic times, and workers tend to cooperate for the sake of the company and their own employment security.

Japan’s enterprise-dependent unions are ineffective defenders of individual worker’s rights to rest and overtime pay. On the other hand, the business community is unified in its devotion to increasing flexibility. It has long been common to hear sentiments such as that expressed in 2011 by Toyota Managing Director, Ijichi Takehiko, “Unless we can quickly get a system introduced in which young people can work without concern for time, Japanese manufacturing will be in big trouble. […] Restrictions on overtime and other labor regulations are fetters on growth.” (Tokyo Shimbun 2012) In 2017, the business elite is near to realizing its long-cherished goal of trivializing work hour regulations.

Although employers’ attitudes and treatment of workers reflect trends evident in the historical character of time consciousness in Japanese labor-capital relations (Smith 1986), the employer benevolence that was long a counterbalancing factor is increasingly absent now. Today there are thinly veiled expectations for continuous effort, anecdotally represented by sayings such as, “If you don’t come to work on Saturday, then don’t bother coming in on Sunday.” Watanabe Miki, notorious founder of the Watami Group (and now a member of parliament), is more explicit: “Twenty-four hours a day, 365-days a year, work until you die.”

Conclusion

Despite receiving only a modest plurality of the vote in the October 2017 national election, the Liberal Democratic Party’s resounding victory and resultant control of parliament leave Mr. Abe poised to become the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history. The way is thus clear to passing the labor reform agenda outlined above. Historically, drastic workplace inequalities (Gordon 2017) and dangerously long work hours are the most troubling problems in Japanese employment system. They increasingly threaten economic growth and even the birthrate, yet Japan’s business and political leaders continue to propose measures that will strengthen management control rather than redress these serious workplace issues. The current equal pay for equal work proposal centers on a complex codification that will produce some modest improvements but leave the most important issues to management discretion; the proposed limits on overtime work enable further deregulation, although many workplaces are hardly regulated by the existing laws.

The Abe Government has attempted, with considerable success, to mask the problems its policies will cause for workers through energetic marketing (Nagai 2017). At the September 2016 launch of the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform, work hour reduction was lauded as a work-life balance measure, but messaging shifted abruptly to karoshi prevention following the overwork-induced death of Takahashi Matsuri. Nevertheless, surveys find that the message emphasizing individual differences appeals to a significant portion of young workers, who support the principle of being paid according to their workplace performance (Konno 2017). Similarly, while the equal pay for equal work legislation may do little to improve the economic wellbeing of non-regular workers, it may spread the neoliberal culture of self-blame and individualistic ethic of hard work.

Disclaimer: Unless otherwise indicated, translations from Japanese are our own.

Shinji Kojima teaches sociology courses in the College of Asia Pacific Studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. His research examines how globalization shapes inequality, with a particular focus on employment issues faced by non-regular workers in Japan and East Asia generally.

Scott North is Professor of Sociology in the Osaka University Graduate School of Human Sciences. His research and teaching are concerned with work, leisure, and family life in contemporary Japan.

Charles Weathers teaches labor relations and political economy in the Graduate School of Economics at Osaka City University Graduate School, and is presently focusing on public sector and public service labor problems in Japan.

Sources

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Brasor, Philip. 2017. “Premium Friday Is Not about Taking a Holiday.” The Japan Times.

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Hatarakikatakaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi (The Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform). 2017. “Hatarakikata Kaikaku Jikkō Keikaku (The Action Plan for the Realization of Work Style Reform).” March 28.

Ito, K. 2017. Executive Officer of NCTU, personal communication, November 9.

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Kisei Kaikaku Suishin Kaigi. 2017. “Rōdō Kijyun Kantoku Gyōmu no Minkan Katsuyō Tasukufōsu Torimatome (Taskforce Report on the Usage of Private Sector Labor Standards Inspectors).”

Kobayashi, Miki. 2015. Rupo: Boshi Katei (Report: Single Mothers). Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho.

Konno, Haruki. 2017. “‘Hatarakikata Kaikaku’ wa Naze Wakamono ni Shiji Sareru noka? (Why Do Young People Support the ‘Work Style Reform’?).” Sekai 901: 133-142.

Mainichi Shinbun. 2017. “Abe Shushō, Hatarakikata Kaikaku ni Ketsui, Takahashi Matsuri-san Haha to Menkai (Prime Minister Abe, Determined to Achieve Work Style Reform, Meets mother of Takahashi Matsuri).” February 22.

Mainichi Shinbun. 2017. “PM Abe shifts to prioritizing fiscal reconstruction over economic growth.” August 17.

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. 2017. “Shigoto to Seikatsu no Chōwa no tame no Jikangai Rōdō Kisei ni Kansuru Kentōkai (Panel to Consider Regulation of Overtime to Achieve Work-life Compatibility).”

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Data Shōsai Shukei (Labor Force Survey, Time-Series Data, Detailed Aggregate Data). Tokyo: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Morioka, Koji. 2013. Karōshi wa Nani o Kokuhatsu Surunoka (What Does Karoshi Reveal to Us?). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Nagai, Yasutoshi. 2017. “Koramu: Honebutohōshin ni Utsuru Gen’eki Sedai Futanzō no Kinmirai (Column: Increased Near future Burden for the Current Working Generation Reflected in Government’s Policy Plans).” Reuters, June 13.

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Notes

¹Strong export performance has allowed Japan to experience continuous economic growth since 2012, one of the longest periods in Japanese history, but the rate of growth has been sluggish, largely because of weak domestic consumption amid people’s economic anxieties. NEEDS, the economic thinktank for Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Japan Economic Newspaper) projects that growth will reach 1.6% for 2017, up from 1.3% in 2016, but will fall back to 1.2% in 2018 (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 2017). Abe’s insistence that he will raise the consumption tax next year suggests that he may have, once again, shifted policy priorities, this time from growth to fiscal reconstruction to mollify conservative politicians (The Mainichi 2017).

²This is not mere sarcasm. Japanese companies often confer opaque titles such as “career staff” on non-regular workers, much as America’s Walmart terms its employees “associates.”

³Expanding child and eldercare support, also major policy priorities, are largely being handled through different policymaking processes even though they are listed among the Work Style Reform items.

⁴The Outline suggests deleting Article 20 (Prohibition of Unreasonable Work Conditions) from the Labor Contract Law, expanding the application of the Part-Time Workers Law to include the Fixed-Term Contract Workers, and including both clauses in the Dispatched Workers Law. The application of the equal pay for equal work principle to temporary agency workers would be more complex than for part-timers and fixed-term workers, because it is not clear whether they should be compared with the regular workers in their workplaces or the regular workers employed by the temp agency.

⁵The same logic is applied to bonus payments and wage raises. Employers are urged to review their wage-setting principles and to be clear about how much of which type of compensation corresponds to what skill or service provided by the employee, and apply the principle to workers by evaluating the work situation of each worker.

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Long Hours and Unequal Wage Gaps in Japan: Abe Shinzō’s Campaign to Reform the Japanese “Way of Work”

December 3rd, 2017 by Shinji Kojima

Top-down labor reform plans

Policymaking background

Advertisement for a television program about single mothers: “There’s no spare time for tears!”

Table 1. Major Items in the Work Style Reform Action Plan

Improve the treatment of non-regular employees through Equal Work for Equal Pay and other measures.
Raise both labor productivity and wages.
Correct long work hours by limiting overtime hours and other measures.
Improve education (including re-training and re-employment schemes) to aid the movement of workers into growth industries.
Promote the use of telework and other flexible work arrangements.
Better utilize youth and women by establishing gender-neutral social insurance and tax schemes.
Help older workers to continue working.
Strengthen the childcare and eldercare systems.
Encourage employment of foreign workers.

Source: Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Japan (2016).

Equal pay for equal work

Closing the pay gap

Prime Minister Abe addressing the Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform

Criticisms from progressive labor

Discussion: Another justification for differential treatment?

Reforming the working day

Statutory inadequacies

Inadequate compliance with the spirit of the law

Conclusion

Disclaimer: Unless otherwise indicated, translations from Japanese are our own.

Scott North is Professor of Sociology in the Osaka University Graduate School of Human Sciences. His research and teaching are concerned with work, leisure, and family life in contemporary Japan.

Sources

Asakura, Mutsuko. 2017. “Nan no Tame no Rōdō Jikan Tanshuku nanoka (What is the Reason for Reducing Work Hours?).” Sekai 901:118-125.

Brasor, Philip. 2017. “Premium Friday Is Not about Taking a Holiday.” The Japan Times.

Genda, Yuji. 2001. Shigoto no naka no Aimai na Fuan: Yureru Jakunen no Genzai (A Nagging Sense of Job Insecurity: The New Reality Facing Japanese Youth). Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha.

Gordon, Andrew. 2017. “New and Enduring Dual Structures of Employment in Japan: The Rise of Non-Regular Labor, 1980s-2010s.” Social Science Japan Journal 20(1): 9-36.

Hatarakikatakaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi (The Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform). 2016. “Dōitsurōdō Dōitsuchingin Gaidorain (The Equal Pay for Equal Work Guideline).” December 20.

Ito, K. 2017. Executive Officer of NCTU, personal communication, November 9.

Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training. 2016. Detabukku Kokusai Rodo Hikaku 2016 nenban(Databook of International Labour Statistics 2016). Tokyo: JILPT.

Kisei Kaikaku Suishin Kaigi. 2017. “Rōdō Kijyun Kantoku Gyōmu no Minkan Katsuyō Tasukufōsu Torimatome (Taskforce Report on the Usage of Private Sector Labor Standards Inspectors).”

Kobayashi, Miki. 2015. Rupo: Boshi Katei (Report: Single Mothers). Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho.

Konno, Haruki. 2017. “‘Hatarakikata Kaikaku’ wa Naze Wakamono ni Shiji Sareru noka? (Why Do Young People Support the ‘Work Style Reform’?).” Sekai 901: 133-142.

Mainichi Shinbun. 2017. “PM Abe shifts to prioritizing fiscal reconstruction over economic growth.” August 17.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication. 2017. Rōdōryoku Chōsa Chōki Jikeiretsu

Data Shōsai Shukei (Labor Force Survey, Time-Series Data, Detailed Aggregate Data). Tokyo: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Morioka, Koji. 2013. Karōshi wa Nani o Kokuhatsu Surunoka (What Does Karoshi Reveal to Us?). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Nagase, Nobuko. 2002. “Jakunesō no Koyō no Hiseikika to Kekkon Kōdō (Nonstandardization of Youth Employment and Marriage).” Jinkō Mondai Kenkyu 58(2):22-35.

NHK Hōsō Bunka Kenkyūsho. 2015. “Kokumin Seikatsu Jikan Chōsa Hōkokusho (Report on the 2015 National Time Use Survey).”

Nihon Rōdō Bengodan. 2017. “Rōdō Rippō no Dōkō to Rōdōsha no Genjō (The Current Labor Law Legislations and the State of Workers).” Kikan Rōdōsha no Kenri 321: 2-53.

Noda, Susumu. 2000. “Rōdō Jikan Kisei Rippō no Tanjō (The Birth of Legal Regulation of Work Hours).” Nihon Rōdō Hō Gakkai Shi (Japan Labor Law Association Journal) 95: 81-112.

Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Japan. 2016. Hatarakikata Kaikaku Jitsugen Kaigi (Council to Realize Work Style Reform).

Osawa, Machiko, Myoung Jung Kim and Jeff Kingston. 2012. “Precarious Work in Japan.” American Behavioral Scientist 57(3): 309-334.

Rengo. 2014. “Shinjidai no ‘Nihonteki Keiei’ kara 20 nen (The New Age of ‘Japanese Management’ 20 years on).” DIO 27(295): 4-16.

Sennett, Richard. 2003. Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality. London: Penguin Books.

Smith, Thomas C. 1986. “Peasant Time and Factory Time in Japan.” Past and Present 111: 165-97.

The Mainichi. 2017. “PM Abe shifts to prioritizing fiscal reconstruction over economic growth.” August 17.

Notes

²This is not mere sarcasm. Japanese companies often confer opaque titles such as “career staff” on non-regular workers, much as America’s Walmart terms its employees “associates.”

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Trump May Recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital Next Week

December 3rd, 2017 by Middle East Eye

President Donald Trump may announce next week that the United States will recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a senior administration official said on Friday, a move that would upend decades of American policy and possibly inflame tensions in the Middle East.

Trump may make the controversial declaration in a speech on Wednesday, though he is also expected to again delay his campaign promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The senior official and two other government sources said final decisions had not yet been made.

The Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognise Israel’s claim to the entire city, home to Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner will make a rare public appearance on Sunday, as the president mulls whether to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

The coincidence of a policy forum, the embassy decision and an imminent trip to the region by Vice President Mike Pence has also stirred speculation that a new peace plan is in the works.

Kushner will address the annual Saban Forum, hosted by the Brookings think-tank for Israeli-American investor Haim Saban, on Sunday.

The forum, which brings together leaders from Israel and the United States, has served as a launching pad for ideas to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians in the past.

Kushner, the 36-year-old husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, has been tasked with making good on the president’s promise to find a deal that may be “not as difficult as people thought”.

Word of Trump’s planned announcement, which would deviate from previous US presidents who have insisted Jerusalem’s status must be decided in negotiations, drew criticism from the Palestinian Authority and was sure to anger the broader Arab world.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would “destroy the peace process” and “destabilise the region”.

Such a move, however, may help satisfy the pro-Israel, right-wing base that helped Trump win the presidency and also please the Israeli government, a close US ally.

The senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said details were still being finalised and could still change.

Another US official said Trump appeared to be heading towards recognising Israel’s claim to Jerusalem but that it was not a done deal.

“We’ve nothing to announce,” said a spokesperson with the White House National Security Council.

Trump is likely to continue his predecessors’ practice of signing a six-month waiver overriding a 1995 law requiring that the US embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, two officials told Reuters on Thursday.

But seeking to temper his supporters’ concerns, another option under consideration is for Trump to order his aides to develop a longer-term plan for the embassy’s relocation to make clear his intent to do so eventually, the officials said.

#BREAKING: President Trump likely to deliver speech on Wednesday recognizing #Jerusalem as #Israel's capital.

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) December 1, 2017

Trump pledged on the presidential campaign trail last year that he would move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

But in June Trump waived the requirement, saying he wanted to “maximise the chances” for a new US-led push for what he has called the “ultimate deal” of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Those efforts have made little, if any, progress so far and many experts are sceptical of the prospects for success.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, a move not recognised internationally.

Arab governments and Western allies have long urged Trump not to proceed with the embassy relocation, which would reverse long-standing US policy by granting de facto US recognition of Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital.

Visiting Washington this week, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned lawmakers that moving the US embassy could be “exploited by terrorists to stoke anger, frustration and desperation,” according to the Jordanian state news agency Petra.

Featured image is from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Flickr.

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Video: “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”; Planned US Nuclear Attack Against USSR

December 3rd, 2017 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

According to a secret document dated September 15, 1945, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas.

All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.

Below is the full text of Professor Chossudovsky’ article

Six atomic bombs were to be used to destroy each of the larger cities including Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa.

The Pentagon estimated that a total of 204 bombs would be required to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”. The targets for a nuclear attack consisted of sixty-six major cities.

One single atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima resulted in the immediate death of 100,000 people in the first seven seconds. Imagine what would have happened if 204 atomic bombs had been dropped on major cities of the Soviet Union as outlined in a secret U.S. plan formulated during the Second World War.

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

Hiroshima in the wake of the atomic bomb attack, 6 August 1945

The document outlining this diabolical military agenda had been released in September 1945, barely one month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August, 1945) and two years before the onset of the Cold War (1947).

The secret plan dated September 15, 1945 (two weeks after the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri, see image below) , however, had been formulated at an earlier period, namely at the height of World War II, at a time when America and the Soviet Union were close allies.

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

It is worth noting that Stalin was first informed through official channels by Harry Truman of the infamous Manhattan Project at the Potsdam Conference on July 24, 1945, barely two weeks before the attack on Hiroshima.

The Manhattan project was launched in 1939, two years prior to America’s entry into World War II in December 1941. The Kremlin was fully aware of the secret Manhattan project as early as 1942.

Were the August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks used by the Pentagon to evaluate the viability of a much larger attack on the Soviet Union consisting of more than 204 atomic bombs?

“On September 15, 1945 — just under two weeks after the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II — Norstad sent a copy of the estimate to General Leslie Groves, still the head of the Manhattan Project, and the guy who, for the short term anyway, would be in charge of producing whatever bombs the USAAF might want. As you might guess, the classification on this document was high: “TOP SECRET LIMITED,” which was about as high as it went during World War II. (Alex Wellerstein, The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945)

The Kremlin was aware of the 1945 plan to bomb sixty-six Soviet cities.

Had the US decided not to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Soviet Union, the nuclar arms race would not have taken place. Neither The Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China would have developed nuclear capabilities as a means of deterrence.

The Soviet Union lost 26 million people during World War II.

The USSR developed its own atomic bomb in 1949, in response to 1942 Soviet intelligence reports on the Manhattan Project.

Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe two bombs worth of fissile material on hand? At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466. This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Of course, in true bureaucratic fashion, they provided a handy-dandy chart (Alex Wellerstein, op. cit)

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

Source

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

This initial 1945 list of sixty-six cities was updated in the course of the Cold War (1956) to include some 1200 cities in the USSR and the Soviet block countries of Eastern Europe (see declassified documents below).

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

Source: National Security Archive

“According to the 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Major Cities in the Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings. (William Burr, U.S. Cold War Nuclear Attack Target List of 1200 Soviet Bloc Cities “From East Germany to China”, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538, December 2015

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

Excerpt of list of 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive

In the post Cold War era, under Donald Trump’s “Fire and Fury”, nuclear war directed against Russia, China, North Korea and Iran is “On the Table”.

What distinguishes the October 1962 Missile Crisis to Today’s realities:

1. Today’s president Donald Trump does not have the foggiest idea as to the consequences of nuclear war.

2, Communication today between the White House and the Kremlin is at an all time low. In contrast, in October 1962, the leaders on both sides, namely John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev were accutely aware of the dangers of nuclear annihilation. They collaborated with a view to avoiding the unthinkable.

3. The nuclear doctrine was entirely different during the Cold War. Both Washington and Moscow understood the realities of mutually assured destruction. Today, tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity (yield) of one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb are categorized by the Pentagon as “harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”.

4. A one trillion ++ nuclear weapons program, first launched under Obama, is ongoing.

5. Today’s thermonuclear bombs are more than 100 times more powerful and destructive than a Hiroshima bomb. Both the US and Russia have several thousand nuclear weapons deployed.

Moreover, an all war against China is currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon as outlined by a RAND Corporation Report commissioned by the US Army

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

“Fire and Fury”, From Truman to Trump: U.S Foreign Policy Insanity

There is a long history of US political insanity geared towards providing a human face to U.S. crimes against humanity.

On August 9, 1945, on the day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, president Truman (image right), in a radio address to the American people, concluded that God is on the side of America with regard to the use of nuclear weapons and that

“He May guide us to use it [atomic bomb] in His ways and His purposes”.

According to Truman: God is with us, he will decide if and when to use the bomb:

[We must] prepare plans for the future control of this bomb. I shall ask the Congress to cooperate to the end that its production and use be controlled, and that its power be made an overwhelming influence towards world peace.

We must constitute ourselves trustees of this new force–to prevent its misuse, and to turn it into the channels of service to mankind.

It is an awful responsibility which has come to us.

We thank God that it [nuclear weapons] has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it [nuclear weapons] in His ways and for His purposes” (emphasis added)

Featured image is from South Front.

Order Directly from Global Research Publishers

Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War

Michel Chossudovsky

The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Pre-emptive nuclear war is portrayed as a “humanitarian undertaking”.

While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.

This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.

It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.

The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.

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“They Don’t Care About Us”. White Helmets True Agenda

December 3rd, 2017 by Guy Mettan

The “White Helmets” organization acting in Syria is hailed as heroes in some countries, and the West provides millions of dollars to these so-called saviors. However, residents of Aleppo (Syria) claim that “White Helmets” care only about money and saving rebels, but not civilians. People from Fua and Kafraya confirm allegiance of “White Helmets” to world recognized terrorist organizations like Jabhat an-Nusra or Al-Qaeda and testimony “White Helmets” participation in public executions. The videos that this organization produces are astounding Internet-users all over the world.

The briefing, according to the speakers, is designed to give “a clear view on what is the real agenda of these Hollywood so called “first responders” who received an Oscar for their performance”.

Below is the video of the entire presentation (English and French)

Below is the full video shown at the outset of the press conference:

Speakers during the press conference:

Guy Mettan , Executive Director of the Geneva Press Club

Vanessa Beeley, independent investigative journalist and photographer from Great Britain specializing in the Middle East. Associate editor at 21st Century Wire.

Richard Labévière, French journalist specializing in the Middle East and international terrorism, editor of the internet portal “Proche et Moyen Orient”.

Prof. Marcello Ferrada De Noli, Chairman of the NGO Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, editor of the online magazine The Indicter.

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Holding Uber Accountable: Litigating over Data Hacks

December 3rd, 2017 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It sent patrons and users into fits of puzzled anger. It numbed a good many more who had placed mistaken faith in its operations. Rapacious, predatory Uber, a ride-hailing company famed for its international ruthlessness, had behaved accordingly. Last week, the firm revealed that it had received a massive hack in 2016, failing to notify customers and regulators that a breach of security had taken place.

The scale of the hack was far from negligible. Some 57 million customers were affected, their data obtained and held to ransom. This was not all. Officials at Uber, having decided against immediate revelation in favour of a deep freeze approach, went for an eyebrow raising option: paying off the culprits to the tune of $100,000. A dark deal was done: pretend it had never happened. The hackers walked away delighted.

Given the nature of such information hacks, the hide and seek option was never going to last. In a blog post, the company subsequently conceded that, “In October 2016, Uber experienced a data security incident that resulted in a breach of information related to rider and driver accounts.”

The data compromised involved names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. Certain “forensic experts” were cited as claiming that no “trip location history, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers or dates of birth were downloaded.”

Incoming chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi apologised with predictable insincerity – when accepting the job in August, he already had knowledge of the hack. “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it.”

Having been exposed for being in the breach, Uber’s next step was to claim that the hacking was insipid. There had been “no evidence of fraud or misuse tied up to the incident.” Some internal window dressing was in order.

The company has overseen the resignation of three senior managers in the rattled security unit, one stacked with 500 employees. On the chopping block was Pooja Ashok, chief of staff for the now sacked chief security officer Joe Sullivan; Prithvi Rai, senior security engineer, and Jeff Jones, responsible for physical security.

The security team has not covered itself in glory. Tasked with the onerous brief of keeping the company accounts secure, it has also been accused of engaging in pilfering programming codes and trade secrets from rivals. That particular case involves a $1.8bn litigation standoff between Uber and Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle unit Waymo.

This ongoing battle has been illuminating on several levels. Uber’s approach to regulation – its evasion, that is – has come out for some testing. Presiding Judge William Alsup was in a far from affable mood to Uber’s general counsel in failing to disclose a 37-page letter suggesting the presence of a “shadow system” designed to avoid paper trails on supposedly sensitive information.

The question to preoccupy the legal fraternity now is whether the hack should have tangible consequences for Uber. In various states, customers and Uber drivers are looking at legal options over the data breach that may well be grounded in statutory form. The UK law firm Leigh Day has revealed that it had fielded inquiries from 10 disgruntled customers.

Law partner Sean Humber has certainly had his interest piqued by the possibility of a class action.

“If private, confidential information has been mishandled, that could be a breach of the Data Protection Act, and people could have a claim under the act.”

The line taken by Humber is eminently sensible: that Uber could well have facilitated a misuse of private information or, at the very least, a breach of confidence.

“If people have suffered distress or loss as a result of that data breach, in principle they are entitled to compensation.”

In Los Angeles, the Wilshire Law Firm was also keeping busy on this new frontier of litigation, filing a class action in the federal court claiming that the firm’s drivers and passengers are at risk of fraud and identity theft.

This would be fitting. Uber is a company hell bent on global reach, and is happy to undercut local regulations, not to mention the taxi market, where possible. In various locales, the company is meeting forms of resistance.

In September, Transport for London refused the company’s request for a new license, citing its app was not “fit and proper”. TfL’s reasons also included inadequate reporting procedures for serious criminal offences, the obtaining of medical certificates and the use of the Greyball software.

In other jurisdictions, the company has been banned on grounds spanning unfair competition to sidestepping local tax meters. But this is a conflict of monumental proportions waged in the courts and jurisdictions of the globe.

Uber, so far, has shown an appetite for donning its armour and going into battle. Domination does come with its fair share of bruising and flesh wounds. Importantly, as far as class actions are concerned, the company may well be able to shore up its defences in shifting the onus back to riders and drivers.

According to the 2^nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in August this year, the rider must agree to waive their entitlement to litigate in signing for the ride-sharing app. This also comes with an arbitration agreement clause activated on signing, though it does come with an option to opt-out. That very attention to detail eludes most users of the system, the cost of near instance convenience.

Such deft trickery did not bother Judge Denny Chin, who wrote the judgment assented to by Judges Reena Raggi and Susan Carney.

“While it may be the case that many users will not bother reading the additional terms, that is the choice the user makes. The user is still on inquiry notice.”

Whether such cases protect the company from cases of gross negligence regarding the handling of user data is a point that still requires a firm answer. The firm’s vast wings may well be, over time, clipped.

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

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Slave Markets in ‘Liberated’ Libya and the Silence of the Humanitarian Hawks

December 3rd, 2017 by Neil Clark

The reports that black Africans are being sold at slave markets in ‘liberated’ Libya for as little as $400 is a terrible indictment of the so-called ‘humanitarian intervention’ carried out by NATO to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

In March 2011 virtue-signaling Western ‘liberal’ hipsters teamed up with hardcore neocon warmongers to demand action to ‘save’ the Libyan people from the ‘despotic’ leader who had ruled the country since the late 1960s. “Something has to be done!” they cried in unison.

Something was done. Libya was transformed by NATO from the country with the highest Human Development Index in the whole of Africa in 2009 into a lawless hell-hole, with rival governments, warlords and terror groups fighting for control of the country.

Under Gaddafi, Libyans enjoyed free health care and education. Literacy rates went up from around 25 percent to almost 90 percent. A UN Human Rights Council report on Libya from January 2011, in which member states praised welfare provision, can be read here.

It was clear that while there were still areas of concern the country was continuing to make progress on a number of fronts.

In the Daily Telegraph – hardly a paper which could be accused of being an ideological supporter of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – Libya was hailed as one of the top six exotic cruise ship destinations in June 2010.

Libya before and after US & UK given "freedom" pic.twitter.com/dpiZ8Qy8JV

— Ian56 (@Ian56789) September 14, 2016

Cruise ships don’t have Libya on their itineraries today. It’s far too dangerous.

The only surprising thing about the return of slave markets (and it’s worth pointing out that before the CNN report, the UN agency, IOM also reported on their existence in Libya earlier this year) is that anyone should be surprised by it. Human rights and social progress usually go back hundreds of years whenever a NATO ‘humanitarian’ intervention takes place. And that’s not accidental. The ‘interventions,’ which purposely involve heavy bombing of the country’s infrastructure and the subsequent dismantling of the state apparatus are designed to reverse decades of social progress. The ‘failure to plan’ is actually the most important part of the plan, as my fellow OpEdger Dan Glazebrook details in his book Divide and Destroy – The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis.

'Three countries, three continents: One imperial Western project' (Op-Edge by @NeilClark66) https://t.co/E6MhDKpmKv

— RT (@RT_com) July 9, 2017

Libya was targeted, like Yugoslavia and Iraq before it, not because of genuine concerns that ‘another Srebrenica’ was about to take place, (note the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee report of September 2016 held that ‘the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence’) but because it was a resource-rich country with an independently-minded government which operated a predominantly state-owned socialistic economy in a strategically important part of the world.

Neither Libya, Iraq or Yugoslavia did the bidding of the West’s endless war lobby, which is why they were earmarked for destruction. The chaos which routinely follows a NATO regime change op is a ghastly experience for the locals, who see their living standards plummet and their risk of violent death in a terrorist attack greatly increase, but great for rapacious Western corporations who then move in to the ‘liberated’ country en masse, taking advantage of the lack of a strong central authority.

Love For Libya: 2011-2015 – Media Lens http://t.co/2bKRERos1Y pic.twitter.com/UagakYqnIX

— Gabrielle Verdier (@GabyVerdier) March 18, 2015

Of course, this is never mentioned in NATO-friendly media. The role of the Western elites in turning previously functioning welfare states into failed states is missing from most mainstream reports on the countries post ‘liberation.’

In his recent piece for FAIR, journalist Ben Norton noted how reports “overwhelmingly spoke of slavery in Libya as an apolitical and timeless human rights issue, not as a political problem rooted in very recent history.”

The dominant narrative is that slave markets have re-emerged in Libya ‘as if by magic,’just like Mr. Benn’s shopkeeper. The country’s ’instability’ is mentioned, but not the cause of that instability, namely the violent overthrow of the country’s government in 2011 and the Western backing of extremist, and in some cases blatantly racist, death squads. Everyone is blamed for the mess except the powerful, protected people and lobbyists who are ultimately responsible.

The French government played a leading role in the destruction of Libya in 2011, yet today the French president, the ‘progressive’ Emmanuel Macron blames ‘Africans’ for the country’s slavery problem. “Who are the traffickers? Ask yourselves – being the African youth – that question. You are unbelievable. Who are the traffickers? They are Africans, my friends. They are Africans.”

Macron, like other Western leaders, wants us to see the slavery issue in close-up, and not in long-shot. Because if we do, NATO comes into the picture.

There is similar whitewashing over Iraq and the rise of ISIS. Again, we are supposed to regard the group’s emergence as “just one of those things.” But ISIS was not a force when the secular Baathist Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq; it only grew following his ousting and the chaos which followed the occupiers’ dismantling of the entire state apparatus.

The result of intervening in Libya has been "disappointing at the very least", says Observer leader, arguing against action in Syria. Balls.

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) June 2, 2012

Six-and-a-half years on, it’s revealing to look back at the things the cheerleaders for the ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya were saying in early 2011 and what actually happened as a result of NATO’s 26,500 sorties.

“The price of inaction is too high” was the title of one piece by David Aaronovitch in The Times, dated March 18, 2011.

“If we don’t bomb Gadaffi’s tanks, Europe is likely to face a wave of refugees and a new generation of jihadis,” was the synopsis.

Guess what? The West’s military alliance did bomb Gaddafi’s tanks (and a lot more besides) and we got “a wave of refugees” of Biblical proportions and “a new generation of jihadis,” including the Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi.

But there’s been no mea culpa from Aaronovitch, nor from his Times colleague Oliver Kamm – who attacked me after I had penned an article in the Daily Express calling for NATO to halt its action.

In the Telegraph, Matthew d’Ancona wrote a piece entitled ‘Libya is Cameron’s chance to exorcise the ghost of Iraq.’

In fact, the experience of Iraq should have led all genuine humanitarians to oppose the NATO assault. In many ways, as John Wight argues here,

Libya was an even worse crime than the invasion of Iraq because it came afterward. There was really no excuse for anyone seeing how the ‘regime change’ operation of 2003 had turned out, supporting a similar venture in North Africa.

Unsurprisingly the politicians and pundits who couldn’t stop talking about Libya in 2011 and the West’s ‘responsibility to protect’ civilians seem less keen to talk about the country today.

Libya and its problems have vanished from the comment pages. It’s the same after every Western ‘intervention’: saturation coverage before and during the ‘liberation,’ bellicose calls from the totally unaccountable neocon/liberal punditocracy for military action to ‘save the people’ from the latest ‘New Hitler,’ and then silence afterwards as the country hurtles back in time to the Dark Ages.

The ‘liberators’ of Libya have moved on to other more important things in 2017, with Russophobia the current obsession. Anything, in fact, to distract us from the disastrous consequences of their actions.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

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US and South Korea Begging for War with North Korea. Preparation for Military Onslaught under Operation “Vigilant Ace”

December 3rd, 2017 by Carla Stea

On November 23, the U.S. and South Korea confirmed that they will be deploying yet another menacing military demonstration against North Korea, with 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and F-35 aircraft, 12,000 U.S. personnel, with the participation of the U.S. marines and navy. This preparation for military onslaught against the DPRK, called “Vigilant Ace,” will begin on December 4, and this “Sword of Damocles,” which the U.S. and South Korea hold over North Korea is a perpetual form of terrorism. Confronted with these constant and deadly military threats and intolerable provocations, the DPRK had no alternative but to increase its defense, and on November 28 tested another ballistic missile.

The total denial, or ignorance of historic context displayed by too many UN Security Council members, regarding the DPRK, is endangering world peace. To say, as some have at the Security Council, that the DPRK is not only a regional threat, but a global threat reveals a distorted perception verging on paranoia, and an avoidance of truth. Such reckless and irresponsible hyperbole, in the present explosive context, is itself instigation to a war which threatens the survival of humanity. Crocodile tears hypocritically shed, regarding the situation of human rights in the DPRK are shameful, particularly coming from countries whose historic records on human rights abuses are notorious.

In what should be an alarming warning to the Security Council, the New York Times displays the horrific condition of migrants sold as slaves in Libya, and states:

“The migrant crisis in Libya originated with the collapse of the government of Col. Muammar el Qaddafi six years ago. …the chaos and lawlessness across Libya has also exposed the migrants to pervasive and well-documented abuses, including forced labor, kidnapping, extortion, rape, torture and indefinite extralegal detention in overcrowded pens and other inhumane conditions.”

This monstrous tragedy is a consequence of the UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1973, which authorized the US-NATO destruction of Qaddafi’s government, the regime change of a progressive Arab country in the name of “human rights,” which began as a relentless and ruthlessly effective propaganda tactic that deviously gained the support of the Security Council, culminated in a pulverizing military slaughter in a sovereign UN member state, and spawned the epidemic of terrorism and human slavery now deplored by the NY Times. The UN Security Council has never admitted and never apologized for the fact that its intervention in Libya resulted in a disastrous murder of Libyan citizens and the demolition of their functioning government, the consequence of which is an incubation of widespread ISIS terrorism and African slavery today.

Has the UN Security Council learned anything from the devastation it caused in Libya and Iraq? No. It is repeating the same deadly pattern in an attempt to force regime change in North Korea, in particular through the imposition of criminal sanctions, the disastrous humanitarian consequences of which should ultimately subject the entire Council which supported the sanctions to indictment for crimes against humanity.

At the November 29 Security Council meeting, the representative of Sweden, Carl Orrenius Skau stated:

“The humanitarian situation remains of serious concern, underscoring the worrisome nature of recent reports that sanctions are having adverse consequences on the humanitarian situation.”

Ambassador Nebenzia of Russia stated:

“Sanctions should not be used to intentionally exacerbate the humanitarian situation.”

Ambasssador Nebenzia further stated:

“The United States and its allies had provoked and tried Pyongyang’s patience with unplanned military manoeuvres and unilateral sanctions,” and “against the backdrop of those hostile moves, there is a need to question Washington’s sincerity on a peaceful resolution.”

It is impossible to overemphasize the hypocrisy of the US Ambassador, who also sheds crocodile tears about the condition of the North Korean people’s health, while simultaneously dictating the brutal toughening of the sanctions which are the cause of the deterioration in the health of the people of the DPRK. Twenty years of sanctions, or more, are criminal. Even one year, or one day, in this context is criminal. The US Ambassador went so far as to threaten China, stating that China must stop all oil shipments to North Korea, or else, she threatened,

“We can take the oil situation into our own hands.”

It is not clear precisely how she plans to implement this, but the threat to China, and to North Korea is appalling. Her bellicose tirade added:

“If war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.”

Confronted with such violent threats, it is not surprising that the DPRK is determined to protect itself with nuclear weapons against the world’s most lawless nuclear powers, the US, the UK and France, who have repeatedly flaunted their own infamous violation of Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Security Council meeting concluded with another unambiguous threat of war by the South Korea:

“We urge Pyongyang once again to seize the rapidly closing window of opportunity to resolve its nuclear problem peacefully.”

This ominous threat of war should shock the entire United Nations. It is becoming clear that the UN Security Council is entertaining the idea of war against the DPRK and attempting to make military intervention the “new normal.” Until now, most Security Council members have stressed that only a political, negotiated solution is acceptable.

On November 17, Han Tae Song, the DPRK’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva stated:

“It is obvious that the aim of the sanctions is to overthrow the system of my country by isolating and stifling it and to intentionally bring about humanitarian disaster instead of preventing weapons development as claimed by the U.S. and its followers.”

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

His statement precisely captures the intent of the sanctions. When reference is made to “unintended” consequences of the sanctions, such as the denial of chemotherapy to cancer patients, the blocking of wheelchairs and other equipment necessary for disabled persons, one can take the word “unintended” as an insult to one’s intelligence. These disastrous humanitarian consequences are indeed intended, with the aim of breaking the morale, the will and the spirit of a heroic people, and humiliating, degrading and forcing them to subjugate themselves to the will of a hostile and exploitative adversary. The sanctions are a weapon of war, in the words of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “a blunt instrument which hurts large numbers of people who are, ostensibly, not their primary target.”

On November 30 The New York Times published a remarkably reasonable article, entitled: “The North is a Nuclear Power Now. Get Used To It” by Max Fisher, stating: The ‘good’ news is that North Korea has no apparent intention of starting a war. So, no, North Korea is probably not going to nuke your city out of the blue.” In the same issue, in an op-ed entitled: “Headed toward a New Korean War?” Nicholas Kristof quoted US Senator Lindsey Graham, stating:

‘If we have to go to war to stop this, we will. We’re headed toward a war if things don’t change.’

Kristof added:

“One lesson from history: When a president and his advisers say they are considering a war, take them seriously.”

Kristof concludes:

“I also worry that North Koreans are sometimes perceived as cartoonish, goose-stepping robots – a perfect, dehumanized enemy from central casting – and that an administration beset by problems at home may be more likely to project strength, take risks and stumble into a war. The last, best hope for the Korean Peninsula is some kind of negotiated deal in which Kim freezes his nuclear programs. North Korea just may be hinting in its latest statements that it is open to negotiations. So let’s try talking, rather than risk the first exchange of nuclear weapons in the history of our planet.”

Finally, it is imperative to ask why one of the most successful negotiators in modern history, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has not been appointed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as his Special Envoy for Peace in North Korea. Carter’s immense experience working successfully with the DPRK, and his extraordinary article, “What I’ve Learned from the Leaders of North Korea,” published in The Washington Post in October, indicates that Carter is almost flawlessly equipped to handle peace negotiations involving North Korea, the United States, South Korea and Japan. If the United Nations is committed to the UN Charter, which explicitly states the purpose of the United Nations existence is to “save humanity from the scourge of war,” then the UN Secretary-General is obligated to appoint the most qualified envoy to negotiate the peace in Northeast Asia which will ensure the survival of humanity. This uniquely qualified envoy is former US President, Jimmy Carter.

Carla Stea is Global Research’s Correspondent at United Nations headquarters, New York.

Featured image is from Yonhap News Agency.

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The US-North Korean Crisis and Japan’s Responsibility

December 3rd, 2017 by Prof. Wada Haruki

1. The US-North Korean Crisis is deepening

In November 2017, US President Donald Trump visited East Asia. In Japan, the country where he first stopped, he first played half round of golf with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as if he and Mr. Abe wished to show this visit was nothing but an expression of peaceful friendship. They talked about the North Korean issue for “a great deal of time”. The content of their talks was not disclosed. In the final press conference after the Summit Prime Minister Abe stated that he and President Trump “were in complete agreement as to the measures to be taken upon the analysis of the latest situation of North Korea”. He said,

“Japan consistently supports the position of President Trump when he says that all options are on the table. Through the talks over two days, I once again strongly reaffirmed that Japan and U. S. are 100 percent together”.

What is the target? Abe said that they completely agreed to “enhance the pressure to a maximum level over North Korea through all possible means” in order to make North Korea abandon their nuclear program.

In the ROK President Trump spoke in the National Assembly to the Korean people in a full voice without any reserve or restraint. In reference to the North Korean situation, he spoke of “the prison state”, “gulags”, “a country ruled by a cult”, “the brutal regime”, “a rogue state”. He dared to say,

“The horror of life in North Korea is so complete that citizens pay bribes to government officials to have themselves exported abroad as slaves. They would rather be slaves than live in North Korea.”

He concluded that North Korea is “a hell that no person deserves”. He called North Korean leader “a tyrant” and “dictator”.

I say to President Trump:

“As a citizen you can accuse and denounce North Korean leader, government or system with all your words. But a US President armed with super military power should not talk in such a way. We Japanese remember how vehemently President Bush denounced Saddam Hussein’s regime in TV on the eve of the beginning of his Iraq War”.

This Trump address is not just a demand for surrender. It is even worse. The president is saying that he wishes from the bottom of his heart that such an evil and immoral state should be destroyed and that its people should be liberated. No compromise, no negotiation. He said,

“despite every crime you have committed against God and man, we will offer a path to a much better future. It begins with a stop to your development of ballistic missiles, and complete, verifiable, and total denuclearization”.

This means that the North Korean leader should come out with raised hands and unconditionally capitulate to the President of the United States.

The US-North Korean Crisis is deepening. Maximizing pressure will not lead North Korea to surrender. It will only strengthen the crisis and incline it towards a military phase. North Korea watchers and experts of this crisis have begun to talk about the possibilities of the US government taking military measures against North Korea.

In September 2017 a British institute, the Royal United Services Institute, published a report of its Deputy Director-General Malcolm Chalmers “Preparing for War in Korea”. Chalmers pointed to two possible ways in which war could start.

Case One. “North Korea could strike first if it believed that the US was moving towards a surprise attack”.

Case Two. “A US attack could be triggered by North Korea demonstrating new capabilities, for example through test missiles hitting the ocean near Guam or California, which might precipitate a ‘now or never’ decision by Trump. The US might then launch a preventive attack against North Korea.”

Chalmers emphasized that “given the risks involved in a limited attack, a US attack is more likely to begin on a large scale, and rapidly build to a comprehensive attack on North Korea’s military infrastructure.”

Now there is no doubt that we are facing the danger of a US-North Korean War. How can we prevent this war? We must go back to the origins of the crisis.

2. The Origins of the Crisis: the San Francisco System

The US-North Korean Crisis is a result of the US-North Korean conflict. The origins of the US-North Korean conflict can be found in the Korean War.¹ Now no one doubts that North Korean forces launched a wholesale attack across the 38^th parallel early in the morning of June 25, 1950. This war was Kim Il Sung’s attempt at unification of the country by arms. His operation was approved by Stalin and Mao Zedong, who provided substantial arms and military materials. But Kim’s attempt was finally blocked by the US armed forces, named the United Nations forces. Next, another attempt at unification of the country was tried by Syngman Rhee with the United Nations forces. But Rhee’s attempt was also blocked by Chinese Communist forces. Then a Korean civil war between two Korean states turned into a Sino-U.S. War in Korea.

When the United States entered the war to assist South Korea, Japan was a country occupied by four divisions of the US army under Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) Douglas McArthur. The whole of Japan automatically became a base for U.S. military operations in Korea. Throughout the war, hundreds of U.S. B-29 bombers from Yokota (near Tokyo) and Kadena (in Okinawa) flew ceaselessly to make bombing raids on North Korean armies, towns, dams, and other facilities. Japan’s National Railway, Coast Guard, and Red Cross all cooperated in the war on the U.S. side. Japanese sailors led the 1^st Marine Division to their Inchon landing, and minesweepers of the Japanese coast guard cleared the way for U.S. forces to land at Wonsan. The Japanese government did not decide to provide this support in accordance with any policy of its own. Rather, it was obliged to obey the SCAP orders unconditionally as a defeated and occupied country. Japan provided vital military bases to the US forces that waged war in Korea.

In the spring of 1951 it became clear that the Korean war would end in a draw. On July 10, 1951 the Korean Armistice Conference opened in Kaesong. Negotiations were difficult. The war continued, while armistice negotiations opened. Two months later a peace conference with Japan began on September 4, 1951 in San Francisco. Forty-nine nations (including Japan) signed the Treaty of Peace with Japan on September 8. Two hours later Yoshida and Dulles signed the United States-Japan Security Pact.

Here a new East Asian state system for the United States was formed. We can call it the San Francisco System.² Strictly speaking, it is the Korean War system. The United States was determined to continue the Korean War in order to block communist aggression. On the enemy side were the Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea and Communist Vietnam. On the allied side were the United States, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, South Vietnam, New Zealand, and Australia. Because the United States wished to have an independent Japan as a central junior partner with recovered economy, Japan was spared from payment of reparation. What was needed from it after independence was

1) the right to continue stationing US forces in Japan,

2) authorization for the United States to use Japan as a base for military operations in the Far East,

3) Permission by Japan for the United Nations to continue to support UN forces in Korea through Japan.

In order to refute possible criticism that the US had derogated Japanese sovereignty, Japan was increasingly encouraged to assume responsibility for its own defense. The United States was to dominate Okinawa completely as its most important military base in this region.

In the year that followed the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Yoshida government changed the Security Police Reserve into the National Security Force (Hoantai) and created the Maritime Security Force.

On July 27, 1953 the Korean War ended in an armistice near the 38^th parallel at almost the same place where Korea had been divided in 1945. The Korean Peninsula settled into a hostile standoff. The armistice stopped the shooting, but warlike hostilities persisted without the safety valve of Cold War détente. China and North Korea remained outside the San Francisco system.

In Japan after the truce of the Korean War the Self Defense Forces (ground, maritime and air) was created in 1954. But Article 9 of the Constitution was not revised. The Upper House of Parliament adopted unanimously a resolution which forbade the Self Defense Forces going abroad for war. Thus Japan remained a peculiar “Peace State” under a US security umbrella in the San Francisco system.

In the Korean Peninsula after the armistice Chinese Volunteer Army and US armed forces remained, one to defend the DPRK and the other to defend the ROK. In 1958 the Chinese army totally withdrew from North Korea, and in 1961 the DPRK succeeded in concluding Treaties of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with the USSR and China. The treaty with the Soviet Union gave North Korea a nuclear umbrella, so that North Korea could feel its position secure in the face of the San Francisco system.

Kim Il-sung (Source: NK News)

The San Francisco system worked for the United States to wage war against the Vietnamese communists from 1965. The ROK joined the US in this war. Japan backed the ROK with the 1965 Treaty and provided rear bases, military materials, and “R and R” (rest and recreation) facilities for the US armed forces. In January 1968, North Korea, seeking to create a second front in the Korean Peninsula, sent a partisan unit to kill ROK President Park Chung Hee. It was in vain. As this adventurous attempt ended in miserable failure, Kim Il sung hurriedly cancelled this policy in the following year.

The San Francisco system could not assure the United States even of a draw in the Vietnam War. In order to avoid giving the impression of a miserable defeat, the US government found a way out by coming to terms with China. Nixon visited Beijing in February 1972 to accomplish US-China reconciliation. This brought a big change to the San Francisco system.

In the 1970s the international position of China drastically changed. The Korean War had been fought between Chinese-North Korean forces and United Nations forces. The latter camp comprised the forces of 16 countries: the United States, ROK, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, France, Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Colombia. In the 1970s China opened diplomatic relations with the above-mentioned fifteen countries, excepting only the ROK. For China, the Sino-American War completely ended and the Korean War almost ended. The DPRK wanted to follow the Chinese way, but that path was closed to it. Thirteen of the 16 countries in the United Nations camp opened diplomatic relations with the DPRK in the 1970s and 1980s. But the United States, ROK and France stayed out of this process. Between South and North there were some changes, but between the United States and North Korea there was no change. Basically, military confrontation continued.

3. The Start of the New Conflict: North Korea’s Two Options and the United States

At the end of 1980s a great change in world history started with the US-Soviet reconciliation and East European revolutions. In autumn of 1989 communist governments of this region were overthrown one after the other. Then the Soviet government radically changed its political system and policy, and opened diplomatic relations with the ROK. Presidents Gorbachev and Roh Tae-wu met at San Francisco on June 4, 1990 to agree on the opening of diplomatic relations. North Koreans felt cornered.

On September 2, 1990 Soviet Foreign Minister Shevarnadze visited North Korea to inform it of the decision of his government. DPRK Foreign Minister Kim Yong-nam read a memorandum to him.

“If the Soviet Union is going to establish ‘diplomatic relations’ with South Korea, the DPRK-USSR treaty of alliance will be nominal. If so, we are obliged to take measures to procure by ourselves such weapons as were hitherto supplied on the basis of the alliance.”³

This meant that once the Soviet nuclear umbrella was withdrawn, North Korea would have to have its own nuclear weapons.

On September 24, 1990 a delegation of Japanese ruling and opposition parties headed by Kanemaru Shin and Tanabe Makoto visited North Korea. Kanemaru, former deputy Prime Minister, spoke in Pyongyang, offering deep apology for the “unbearable pain and damage caused by Japan’s deeds to the Korean people”. Kim Il Sung expressed his willingness to start negotiation of normalization of relations of both countries. On September 28 a joint statement of three parties was signed, promising normalization negotiations.

At this crucial historical turning point, in their desperate situation, North Korean leaders decided to adopt two policy options to get their own nuclear weapons and to normalize relations with Japan. The United States vehemently repulsed its nuclear program, and did not approve Japan’s normalization of relations with a North Korea that had a nuclear program. Therefore in the changing world after the end of the Cold War a new conflict started between North Korea and the United States on the basis of North Korea’s options.

Japan-North Korea negotiations on normalization opened in January 1991, continued regularly until May 1992, when the seventh round of negotiations was held, but in the next round, the eighth, in November 1992, North Korea’s representative declared the negotiations suspended. The main reason for the break was that the Japanese representative, on Washington’s advice, took the position that the clearing up of nuclear doubts was a prerequisite for normalization. The second reason was that the Japanese representative insisted that Taguchi Yaeko (Lee Eun Hye) was a victim of North Korean abduction. Taguchi, or Lee, was a Japanese abducted woman, who was said to have been a teacher of Kim Hyon Hui, perpetrator of the Korean Airlines explosion incident of 1987.⁴

The US government had been very sensitive to the North Korean nuclear program and pressed North Korea strongly to accept IAEA inspection. By the spring of 1993 disagreements between the United States and North Korea had become acute, and in the summer of 1994 the two countries came to the brink of war over North Korea’s nuclear program. This was the first war crisis between the United States and North Korea.

President Kim Il Sung receives former US President Jimmy Carter (Source: KANCC.org)

This crisis was overcome by former President Carter’s visit and his talks with Kim Il Sung. A nuclear freeze agreement was concluded in October 1994. The latter half of 1990s was the period of North Korean economic distress and the time of construction of light-water reactors under KEDO’s guidance. But the construction was not accomplished and it is not clear who is to blame.

In June 2000 ROK President Kim Dae Jung visited Pyongyang and met Kim Jong Il. And in October 2000 DPRK number two, Cho Myong Rok, visited Washington and met President Clinton. This was a time of great hope, but it did not last long. At the end of this year George Bush won the US presidential election. In September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington fundamentally changed the atmosphere of the United States and at the beginning of 2002 President Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the “axis of Evil” and expressed determination to fight against them.

Although a counter-wind was already blowing, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi visited Pyongyang on September 17, 2002 and met Chairman Kim Jong Il. This was the result of one year-long secret negotiations with a North Korean emissary. Kim admitted and apologized for the abduction of a group of Japanese civilians. Kim and Koizumi signed the Pyongyang Declaration of intent to move towards normalization of relations between the two countries. In this document Japan apologized for the damages and suffering caused by Japanese colonial rule to the Korean people and promised economic cooperation after the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Initially Koizumi’s diplomacy and the moves to normalize relations with North Korea drew a positive public response in Japan. But the leaders of the national movement for abducted Japanese began to accuse diplomats of failing to verify information about the so-called “dead abducted people” and organized a campaign against the establishment of diplomatic relations with North Korea without a complete solution of the abduction issue. Sato Katsumi, chairman of this movement, spoke to the Diet committee on December 10, 2002, saying that the Kim Jong Il regime was a military fascist regime which should be overthrown as quickly as possible.⁵ The United States government which had not been consulted by the Koizumi government, soon intervened in the negotiations. James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, visited North Korea in October and came back to tell the Japanese government that North Korea was starting a uranium enrichment program. This amounted to strong pressure on the Koizumi government to slow the normalization negotiations. Representatives of both countries met only once in October, but on that occasion they could not even decide when they would meet next.

In March 2003 President Bush started a war against Iraq. North Korea was terrified. In August 2003 in Beijing Six Party Talks opened on the North Korean nuclear program. Difficult discussion began. On May 22, 2004 Prime Minister Koizumi visited Pyongyang and met Kim Jong Il once more. Koizumi, on leaving Tokyo, issued a statement, in which he declared that he was determined to “normalize our abnormal relations, change the antagonistic relations into friendly relations and hostile relations into cooperation”. Kim’s words were recorded in the Japanese Foreign Ministry file and partly leaked in a TV program.⁶ Kim Jong Il told Koizumi,

“Today I would like to say to you, Prime Minister, that it is no use having nuclear weapons. Americans are arrogant enough to say that they put on the table their arms for a preventive attack against us. This makes us quite upset. Nobody can keep silent if threatened by someone with a stick. We came to have nuclear weapons for the sake of the right of existence. If our existence is secured, nuclear weapons will not be necessary any more.” “Americans, forgetting what they have done, demand that we abandon nuclear weapons first. Nonsense. Complete abandonment of nuclear weapons can only be demanded from an enemy state that has capitulated. We are not a capitulated people. Americans want us to disarm unconditionally, like Iraq. We will not obey such a demand. If America is going to attack us with nuclear weapons, we should not stand still, doing nothing, for if we did that Iraq’s destiny would await us.”

On the other hand, Kim Jong Il expressed his willingness to have dialogue with the United States. He told Koizumi,

“We wish to sing a duet with the Americans through the Six Party Talks. We wish to sing songs with Americans until our voices get hoarse. We ask you, governments of surrounding countries, to provide orchestral accompaniment. A good accompaniment makes a duet so much better.”

These words presumably were conveyed to the US government, but it adopted a stern attitude. This time too, the Koizumi government failed to move forward.

In September 2005 the Fourth round of Six Party Talks was held in Beijing. This round gave the most impressive document for cooperation. Under its terms, North Korea would abandon its entire nuclear program. And the United States pledged not to attack North Korea and to move toward normalization of relations. But its promising atmosphere vanished immediately, when the US Treasury imposed sanctions on the DPRK for alleged money laundering and other offenses. The last chance was crushed.

In October 2005 Koizumi appointed Abe Shinzo his Chief Cabinet Secretary, in fact nominating him as his successor in government and in the ruling party. On July 5, 2006 North Korea shot a Taepodong missile over Japan. Abe took the initiative in imposing severe sanctions on North Korea. In September Abe, now President of the Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister of Japan, stated in his first policy speech to the Diet on September 29, 2006:

“There can be no normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea unless the abduction issue is resolved. In order to advance comprehensive measures concerning the abduction issue, I have decided to establish the “Headquarters on the Abduction Issue” chaired by myself … Under the policy of dialogue and pressure, I will continue to strongly demand the return of all abductees assuming that they are all still alive. Regarding nuclear and missile issues, I will strive to seek resolution through the Six-Party Talks, while ensuring close coordination between Japan and the United States.”

By formulating this new principle of addressing the abduction issue, Abe succeeded in closing completely the negotiations for normalization with North Korea. This step was thought to fit well with US government policy.

Graphic showing seismic activity at the time of the test, 2006 North Korean nuclear test (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

On October 9, 2006 North Korea carried out its first nuclear test. The Abe government imposed a second set of sanctions on North Korea, forbidding any North Korean ship from entering Japan’ s ports and prohibiting import of any North Korean merchandise to Japan. The UN Security Council condemned North Korea’s test in Resolution 1718. On the other hand, the Bush administration was shocked by the North Korean nuclear test and tried to invite North Korea to change its policy. On October 11, 2008 the Bush administration de-listed the DPRK as a terrorist state. The DPRK closed its Yongbyong facilities. But this was not able to produce a true breakthrough in relations.

In January 2009 President Obama took office at the White House. On February 13 Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, delivered an address to the Asia Society in which she stated that the United States would move to normalize relations with North Korea, and conclude a peace treaty, if North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapon program in complete and verifiable form. This was the preparation of a long chapter in the US-North Korean Crisis.

On May 25, 2009 North Korean conducted its second nuclear test-explosion. On June 12, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1874. The Japanese government adopted new sanctions, prohibiting the export of Japanese merchandise to North Korea. Trade between the two countries totally stopped.

In December 17, 2011 Kim Jong Il died. His successor was his son Kim Jong Un, 28 years old. Without special abilities or special achievements, he was going to dominate this difficult country, supported by the party-state system. In the first two years of his rule Kim Jong Un made efforts to strengthen his power by eliminating two advisors who were appointed by his father and replacing old army and party leaders with men of a younger generation. And he tried to establish a reputation for loving the people by constructing many facilities such as hospitals, recreation parks, and a ski slope. After such preparation he was going to work in diplomacy and military affairs, leaving the task of economic reforms to the Prime Minister and his cabinet. But in 2012~2013 he could meet only one Japanese and one American – Kim Jong Il’s house cook known as Fujimoto Kenji and the former NBA star Dennis Rodman. He had to concentrate his attention on the nuclear and ballistic missile program. This was his faithful fulfillment of the late leader Kim Jong Il’s testament.

4. The US-North Korean Crisis starts

When did the US-North Korean crisis really start? I would say that the crisis started with the fourth North Korean nuclear test-explosion on January 6, 2016. The North Korean government announced that this was a hydrogen bomb test. On February 7 North Korea launched its “Kangmyongsung-4” rocket. These events gave a severe shock to the United States, ROK, Japan and China. The ROK decided to close the Kaesong industrial complex. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a Resolution of sanctions on March 2. The US-ROK military exercise Key Resolve started on March 7. In March North Korea test-fired short-range missiles continuously and on April 23 carried out a test shooting of a Submarin Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM). On June 22 North Korea test-fired two Musudang medium-range missiles and the next day test-fired “Hwasung-10”, a long-range missile.

Shooting of various missiles continued in July. On August 24 North Korea test-fired a SLBM and on September 5 it shot three missiles into the Japanese EEZ. Then came the fifth nuclear test-explosion on September 9. The high tempo of tests was striking.

This tendency did not change in 2017. On February 12 North Korea test-fired a “Pukguksung-2” missile over the Sea of Japan. On March 6, it test-fired four ballistic missiles and three fell in the Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The North Korean News Agency announced that these missiles were shot by “the artillery detachment which was to attack US bases in Japan when an unforeseen situation would occur”. On May 14 North Korea test-fired a “Hwasong-12” missile, which was estimated to be able to fly 4000 km. On July 4 North Korea test-fired “Hwasong-14”. It was the first North Korean ICBM, estimated to be able to fly 6000~9000 km, reaching Alaska, Hawaii and maybe Seattle. And on July 28 North Korea shot another ICBM, which was estimated to be able to fly 14,000 km, reaching New York. The US government was seriously frightened. Despite the presence of the US nuclear aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the seas of East Asia from April, the North Korean advances could not be stopped.

Now we come to the true US-North Korean crisis. The crisis of today can clearly be seen in President Trump’s address in the National Assembly of the ROK.

5. Japan’s possibility, Japan’s responsibility

How can we get out of this crisis? No doubt, the United States and North Korea should have a dialogue. The United States government is said to have been conducting secret contacts or preliminary negotiation with North Korea, but President Trump and Prime Minister Abe are constantly strengthening pressure against it, demanding it abandon all nuclear and missile programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner. North Korean officials are saying that no negotiation will be possible so long as the United States does not recognize North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons.

China is now proposing a double freeze of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and of the US-ROK annual joint military exercises. North Korea had itself proposed such an idea to the United States on January 9, 2015. But now it does not seem to find this idea so attractive. It wants more. It wants a positive change of US attitude.

Here I propose a Japanese way, for Japan to normalize relations with North Korea unconditionally. This implies unconditional recognition by the US government of normalization of Japan-North Korean relations. If this step is supplementary to the Chinese proposal of double freeze, a real change could take place in the situation surrounding North Korea.

To think concretely about the normalization of Japan-DPRK relations there is a good model. It is President Obama’s “unconditional establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba.” Obama overcame various hindrances and succeeded in moving toward the normalization of relations with a next door neighbor. Following his example, we Japanese can go through “unconditional establishment of diplomatic relations with North Korea”. But of course North Korea’s abstention from any further nuclear explosion for a certain period after the establishment of diplomatic relations is a natural premise, not to say a precondition.

Obama’s US-Cuba normalization model proceeded by several stages, first, opening of diplomatic relations and setting up of embassies, next, real negotiations and gradual nullification of economic sanctions.

The Pyongyang Declaration exists between Japan and the DPRK. It was signed in 2002 by Prime Minister Koizumi and Chairman Kim Jong Il. Following the Obama model, Japan and North Korea could issue a joint statement reaffirming the Pyongyang Declaration and establishing diplomatic relations, initially at least leaving the present situation basically intact. This means that North Korea would continue to possess nuclear weapons and to maintain its basic position on the abduction issue, and that Japan would maintain its own sanctions toward North Korea and keep all existing US bases in mainland Japan and Okinawa. Thus the two countries would open embassies in Pyongyang and Tokyo and immediately start negotiations. The negotiations would proceed at three tables.

Table one would be for negotiations concerning economic cooperation. This is a step which was promised in the Pyongyang Declaration as a sign of apology for the “tremendous damage and suffering” caused by Japan “to the people of Korea through its colonial rule”. A ten year program of economic cooperation should be drawn up, including agreement on implementation of each year’s project.

Table two would be for negotiations concerning North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program. Japan should convey to North Korea its grave concern about North Korean underground nuclear explosions and ask it to stop. Japan also should ask North Korea to inform ot when and where it planned to test-fire missiles. Further Japan should ask North Korea not to attack US military bases in Japan. Then North Korea might say that the US forces might attack North Korea from the bases in Japan. North Korea might demand Japan should get an official statement from the US government that US forces would never attack North Korea from their bases in Japan. Such negotiations would be very meaningful and important.

Table three would be for negotiations concerning the abduction issue. These negotiations could start from the point at which North Korea said eight abducted victims, including Yokota Megumi, had all died. Japan could point out that North Korean explanations of the circumstances of their death is not yet persuasive and could demand further explanation and joint on-the-spot investigations. North Korea may be concealing some living abducted Japanese persons, for example Taguchi Yaeko (referred to above), teacher of Kim Hyon-hui who blew up a KAL plane in 1987. To save such a victim, it is necessary to continue negotiation as long as possible, waiting for the North Korean situation to change.

With the establishment of diplomatic relations with North Korea, the Japanese government could take measures toward North Korean comfort women, following the Japan-ROK agreement of 2015. Also the Japanese government could give certificates to hibakusha in North Korea on examination by the embassy and begin to pay them regular assistance money.

Some restrictions affecting the import and export of goods between Japan and DPRK could be lifted, and restrictions affecting ship visits and chartered flights could be slowly relaxed. Cultural exchanges and humanitarian aid could be opened immediately. Concerts of the NHK philharmonic orchestra in Pyongyang, and exhibitions of people’s suffering from the US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are specially recommended.

If the Chinese proposal and a Japanese proposal along the above lines are put in one basket and presented to North Korea, the US-North Korean crisis may be relaxed. It is Japan’s responsibility to strive to the utmost to prevent a US-North Korea war.

This paper was presented to the conference on “Civic Engagement and State Policy for Peace in Northeast Asia: Beyond the San Francisco System,” held on December 1–2, 2017 at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania. English text by the author, slightly edited for the Asia-Pacific Journal.

Wada Haruki is Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Social Science, Tokyo University and a specialist on Russia, Korea, and the Korean War.

Notes

¹See Wada Haruki, The Korean War: An International History, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014

²There are several concepts of the San Francisco system. My idea was described in my article. Haruki Wada, “Historical legacies and regional integration”, The San Francisco System and its Legacies, edited by Kimie Hara, Routledge, 2015, pp. 252-263.

³Asahi Shimbun, 1 January 1991.

⁴Takasaki Soji, Kensho Nittyokosho (Japan-Korean Negotiations Revisited). Heibonsha, 2004, pp. 42-65.

⁵Wada Haruki, “Sato Katsumi Kenkyu” (A study of Sato Katsumi), Shukan Kinyobi, No. 476, September 19, 2003, p. 17.

⁶NHK Special, Hiroku Nittyokosho (A Secret Story: Japan-Korean Negotiations), November 8, 2009. Wada Haruki, Kitatyosen Gendaishi (A Contemporary History of North Korea), Iwanami, 2012, pp. 215-216.

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Shifting Spheres of Influence: The Next Phase of the Russia-Pakistan Rapprochement

December 3rd, 2017 by Andrew Korybko

The next logical phase of the Russian-Pakistani rapprochement is the comprehensive expansion of people-to-people ties via the creation of a Russian Friendship Center in Islamabad and other creative outreach initiatives.

The Russian-Pakistani rapprochement is proceeding at a comfortable pace on the state-to-state level, with both Great Powers achieving win-win outcomes in regards to their Afghan peace initiative and transregional energy cooperation, but their recently renewed relations are fast approaching the point where it’ll be necessary to expand them to the crucial realm of people-to-people ties in order to develop the incipient partnership into a strategic one. To that end, it’s suggested that the following interconnected set of proposals be initiated by the Russian side in order to assist with this task:

Build A Russian Friendship Center In Islamabad

Moscow needs to show Pakistanis that Russia serious about its rapprochement with their country, and there’s no better way of doing this than to build a Friendship Center in Islamabad. This facility is envisioned to function as the cornerstone of Russian-Pakistani relations due to its multidimensional purpose in comprehensively serving as the bridge between these two Great Powers’ Eurasian civilizations. There will of course be a cultural wing that’s become the standard in these sorts of institutions, but the center should also importantly include a registrar of Russian and Pakistani businesses in order to better pair one up with the other and therefore accelerate economic relations.

More will be said about the means through which these new partners are expected to trade with one another in the next section, but for now some additional words need to be said about the other suggested features of the Friendship Center.

Apart from its cultural and economic components, it should also include hands-on scientific and technological exhibitions showcasing the most impressive inventions in Russia’s Imperial, Soviet, and post-communist history and the brightest minds behind them, which could thus allow the institution to become a field trip destination for Pakistani students. Speaking of which, the proposed center should also be partnered with Russian and Pakistani universities – or perhaps be accredited as its own with official recognition in both countries – in order to cultivate a new generation of elite to cement the partnership between these two states. Accordingly, Russian language classes could naturally be offered to interested individuals of all ages, which would help Pakistanis communicate with their Central Asian civilizational cousins once CPEC enables their integration with time.

Lastly, a conference center should be built on the premises, too, and it should be understood by Moscow that this Friendship Center isn’t just Russia’s interface with Pakistan, but its de-facto headquarters for engaging all of CPEC’s partners, including its Mideast and African ones who will predictably conduct more of their Chinese-destined trade through this corridor.

Connect To CPEC Via Kazakhstan, Siberia, And Iran

The enhanced trade relations that were mentioned above can only occur if Russia and Pakistan are connected to one another through CPEC, no matter how indirectly due to the geographic distance between them and Moscow’s reluctance to officially endorse this trade route in order to preserve its strategic “balancing act” with India. The second part of this conditional implies that the private sector needs to drive these two countries’ CPEC connectivity since the Russian state isn’t going to do so because of delicate political reasons, which thus allows one to envision three possible solutions, all of which are inclusive of one another and could in theory exist concurrently.

The most probable of the three is that Russia could connect to CPEC via the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan, which his already a member of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union and through which a lot of bilateral trade already traverses. Furthermore, the Eurasian Land Bridge between East Asia and Western Europe is expected to pass through this international corridor as well, so it’ll probably be easiest for Russia and Pakistan to trade across this route by linking up at CPEC’s Urumqi hub in China’s Autonomous Region of Xinjiang.

Considering that Xinjiang’s capital city is located closer to Russia’s southern Siberian border than to CPEC’s terminal Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, there’s also the chance that a more direct north-south trade route could be established between Russia and Pakistan via this avenue. After all, Russia’s “Pivot to Asia” (which is officially referred to as “rebalancing” in Moscow’s political parlance) isn’t just international but also internal, and it aspires to develop resource-rich Siberia just as much as it aims to chart new international partnerships. With this in mind, there’s no reason why southern Siberia couldn’t one day be connected to CPEC via the nearby Urumqi juncture.

Lastly, Russia’s already building a North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) through Azerbaijan and Iran in order to facilitate trade with India, so the opportunity exists for it to simply use this route’s overland transport infrastructure to reach Pakistan in the event that the Iranian terminal port of Chabahar is ultimately linked with nearby Gwadar. Even if that doesn’t happen, then there’s still nothing preventing private Russian businessman from using Chabahar or even the more developed port of Bandar Abbas as their base of operations for conducting maritime trade with Gwadar or Karachi. This would in effect make India’s “brainchild” the ironic basis for Russian-Pakistani economic relations.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

Encourage Trade Between Tatarstan And Pakistan

Russia’s historically Muslim region of Tatarstan has traditionally functioned as the country’s point of contact with the international Islamic community, or “Ummah”, ever since the end of communism, and this oil-rich autonomous republic could also help spearhead bilateral trade with Pakistan too. For reasons of civilizational similarity and cultural comfort, it might be easier for Tatars to make deals with Pakistanis than it could be for ethnic and Orthodox Russians, which has already proven to be the case at least when it comes to the successful business relationship between Tatars and their Arab counterparts in the Gulf.

The focus needs to be on Tatarstan driving non-energy investments and trade ties with Pakistan that involve the commercial, industrial, and service dimensions of the real-sector economy in order to add a tangible substance to Russian-Pakistani relations that the average citizen in both countries could experience. Moreover, the diversification of economic relations between these two Great Powers and increased Russian investment in Pakistan could give Moscow a more comprehensive physical stake in the South Asian state that could in turn serve as the plausible pretext for it to get more diplomatically involved in “balancing” regional affairs.

Medical Diplomacy

One of the most ingenious moves that Moscow could make in adding a personal touch to its rapprochement with Pakistan would be to engage in “medical diplomacy” as a complement to its existing “military”, “energy”, and “nuclear” diplomatic toolkits. In this context, Russia could coordinate with Pakistan in either dispatching teams of doctors to the Afghan border or building a Russian-operated hospital in the frontier city of Peshawar to care for the populations there and provide humanitarian assistance to some of the millions of Afghan “refugees” (migrants) who inhabit the nearby environs.

Not only would Russian soft power surge in Pakistan, but it could virally spread across the border into Afghanistan by word of mouth after countless numbers of its citizens inform their family and friends about how Russian doctors treated them with dignity for little or no cost prior to their repatriation back home. Kabul has been incensed at Islamabad’s insistence on returning Afghan “refugees”, but if these individuals were given decent medical care by Russia before their departure, then it might help sooth some of the simmering resentment between the two neighbors and ultimately break the ice between them.

Russian mobile hospital in Syria

Film A CPEC Documentary

The most effective way to inform the masses in each country about the fast-moving rapprochement between their governments and the seriousness with which they’re dedicated to making it as all-inclusive as possible is for popular Russian and Pakistani journalists to film a CPEC documentary. This wouldn’t be about the mega projects underway in the country like mostly every other similar initiative is geared towards, but would see the program hosts take a road trip through Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia (or via the reverse route) in showing their audiences the connectivity potential of CPEC.

Along the way, they could film the most noteworthy tourist sites and conduct interviews with the locals, all with the intent of demonstrating how CPEC is driving continental integration and fulfilling President Putin’s recently announced grand strategic vision of the Greater Eurasian Partnership between the Eurasian Economic Union and China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. Furthermore, the journalists could visit the Russian Friendship Center in Islamabad, report on Tatar investments in Pakistan, and even do a feature on the prospective Russian hospital in Peshawar, to say nothing of covering complementary Pakistani projects inside of Russia.

The end result of this information product should made available in Russian, Urdu, Mandarin, Farsi, and English versions so that as wide of a relevant audience as possible can become acquainted with it.

Cordially Compete With China

Russia and Pakistan are both high-level and full-spectrum strategic partners with China, and all three countries are in the same “Community of Common Destiny” with one another, as Beijing likes to frame its OBOR relationships nowadays, but Moscow and Islamabad are a lot closer to one another in a structural sense than initially meets the eye because they’re in the same position relative to Beijing. Each of them is involved in a signature OBOR project, be it CPEC that traverses Pakistan or the Eurasian Land Bridge that will eventually do the same with Russia (and Kazakhstan), and both Chinese-neighboring Great Power transit states have similar concerns about playing “second fiddle” to the Middle Kingdom in the future.

Whether unfounded or not, the fact remains that this somewhat convincing narrative has become an issue in Russia and especially Pakistan, and that it’s no longer possible for the authorities to completely ignore it. Instead of caving in to the demagogic-driven and US-encouraged reaction of “condemning” China or pulling out of various elements of their OBOR partnerships with it, these two countries could much more constructively utilize any intensification of their bilateral economic relations in order to boost the other’s negotiating leverage and help them bargain for a better win-win deal with Beijing. The proposed approach is mostly applicable to the third-party role that Russia could play in Pakistan, whereby the cordial competition that it could engage in with China on some projects would give Islamabad more options than it has at present.

This isn’t anything different than what China is already doing in Russia’s traditional “sphere of influence” in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe, where Beijing sometimes offers up better terms to the local stakeholders than Moscow does and accordingly wins the deal instead. The final outcome is to everyone’s benefit, especially the host state’s, because it drives down costs and increases quality as a result of the cordial competition between these two strategically aligned Great Powers. This is a dynamic that Pakistan could leverage for its own domestic political reasons if it succeeds in incentivizing Russian businesses (possibly beginning with those based in Tatarstan) to enter its marketplace, and both Islamabad and Moscow would gain by cooperating with one another in working to equalize their Silk Road relationships with Beijing.

This article was inspired by a week of detailed brainstorming with Major Ahmad Rauf during the author’s latest visit to Pakistan.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Is the Honduran Election Being Stolen Eight Years after U.S.-Backed Coup?

December 3rd, 2017 by Sonali Kolhatkar

Eight years after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, a new election, held Sunday, offered hope for a fresh political chapter. According to early results released by the Honduran electoral tribunal on Monday, former sportscaster and television reporter Salvador Nasralla had, surprisingly, taken the lead in the presidential vote. With about 60 percent of the votes counted at the time, Nasralla hovered five points above incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández of the right-wing National Party. This lead has disappeared, according to the latest results, but Nasralla’s stunning showing nonetheless demonstrates that Hondurans are ready to rise up against an era marked by corruption, violence and dictatorship in the post-coup years.

Zelaya, who has remained firmly in the public eye, backs Nasralla and his broad coalition, called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. But, with incumbent Hernández now in the lead, many worry that Hondurans are facing yet another coup, this time at the ballot box.

Just a day after she returned from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula as an official election observer, Honduras expert and Pitzer College assistant professor Suyapa Portillo told me in an interview that there was great enthusiasm among Hondurans who had voted Sunday.

“This election was really important, people felt that they needed to show up and vote,” she said. “The voting centers were historically packed,” she continued, because “it was critical for the nation to repair what happened in 2009.”

When the National Party’s Porfirio Lobo Sosa won the first post-coup election in late 2009, the United States wholeheartedly backed him. The Obama administration, according to Dana Frank in The New York Times, “quickly recognized Mr. Lobo’s victory, even when most of Latin America would not.” Frank labels Lobo’s government “a child of the coup,” asserting that “the coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and … unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression.” In 2016, Lobo’s son Fabio, along with half a dozen Honduran national police officers, were charged with narcotrafficking when they were found to be smuggling cocaine into the U.S. This September, the younger Lobo was sentenced to 24 years in a U.S. prison. According to a recent investigation, also led by The New York Times, there is evidence to suggest that the “former president, Porfirio Lobo, took bribes to protect traffickers, and that drug money may have helped finance the rise of the country’s current president, Juan Orlando Hernández.”

Hillary Clinton, who was U.S. secretary of state at the time of the Honduras coup, last year defended the military’s removal of President Zelaya during her presidential campaign.

“The national legislature in Honduras and the national judiciary actually followed the law in removing President Zelaya,” Clinton said, going on to reaffirm her position of allowing U.S. aid to flow to the post-coup regime—a regime that was marked by rampant violence against human rights activists, journalists and others.

The most high-profile victim of the U.S.-backed post-coup government in Honduras is Berta Cáceres, the famed prize-winning indigenous environmental activist who was brutally murdered in March 2016. New evidence emerged last month linking Cáceres’ murder to agents of the Honduran government and executives of Desarrollos Energéticos, or Desa, the company whose dam project she was leading a movement against. Cáceres’ daughter Olivia ran for a seat in the National Congress to keep her mother’s legacy alive (the results of her district election, also held Sunday, are still being counted). Her party, Libre (or the Liberty and Refoundation party), is also backing Nasralla’s coalition. According to Portillo, indigenous communities in Honduras remain “skeptical” of elections, but in this race, “the vote was about getting this pseudo-dictator [Hernández] out,” because it is his government that is actively trying to kick many indigenous communities off their lands to make way for development.

Portillo went on to tell me that, in many Hondurans’ eyes, Hernández has acted like a “pseudo-dictator” and a “ ‘yes-man’ to the United States.” It is tragically ironic that the U.S.-backed leadership in Honduras is the one directly linked to drug smuggling, repression and violence, while the Trump administration targets ordinary Honduran immigrants and refugees fleeing the post-coup regime, even unfairly labeling them as narcotraffickers and murderous gang members.

Also ironic is the fact that Hernández decided to run for a second term, even though Zelaya’s attempt to legalize running for a second term in office via a national referendum was used, in part, to justify the 2009 coup against him. The Honduran Constitution forbade an incumbent from seeking re-election—until 2015, when the nation’s Supreme Court overturned that law. Portillo contextualized that decision, telling me that Hernández has engaged in rampant nepotism. “He has his entire family in his cabinet, very similar to what Trump is doing in the United States,” she said. “We call that an ‘oligarchy’ in Latin America, by the way.” Hernández’s government has faced so many accusations of corruption that the Organization of American States eventually forced him to give in to oversight via an anti-corruption panel made up of non-Honduran prosecutors.

But Hernández is Washington’s guy in Central America, and, according to Foreign Policy, “Washington has invested significant money in Central America to help turn the security and economic situation around … with bad interlocutors in Guatemala and El Salvador, losing Hernández would be a real setback.” Educated in the U.S., Hernández reportedly has a close relationship with White House chief of staff John Kelly. Two State Department officials speaking to Reuters explained that his second “victory would be cheered in Washington” because the “United States had few steadfast allies among Central America’s current crop of leaders.” It is precisely because of this that a Nasralla victory over Hernández would be critical.

Portillo and others worry that with the stakes so high, the incumbent president and his allies may attempt to steal the election. “Regular citizens are scared; they’re saying, ‘They’re going to steal this [election] from us, they’re going to try to rig the election in some way,’ ” Portillo said. While the presence of thousands of international election observers at the electoral tribunal could protect that body from committing fraud, the fear of tampering arises when the marked ballots are shipped by military envoy to the capital Tegucigalpa, given that the military is aligned with President Hernández. Hernández showed great reluctance to accept defeat, citing exit poll results as proof that he was the winner.

With latest results having reversed Hernández’s loss even though Nasralla had maintained a five-point lead with 58 percent of votes counted, Hondurans’ fears may be coming true. On Thursday, protesters angry about potential election fraud were tear-gassed by police in Tegucigalpa. What happens in the next few days is not just a measure of how much influence the U.S. continues to wield in Latin America, but a test of the strength of Honduran democracy.

Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV.

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Netanyahu and CIA Director Pompeo Threaten Iran

December 3rd, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE:

Contact at [email protected].

Washington, Israel and Saudi Arabia comprise a sinister alliance against Iran, risking greater regional war than already.

Last month, Netanyahu vowed to prevent Iran from using Syria “as a base from which to destroy Israel” – invoking the long ago discredited canard.

Iran threatens no one, not Israel or any other countries. The Big Lie persists to justify unjustifiable US/Israeli/Saudi hostility toward the Islamic Republic.

Following Israeli warplane terror-bombing of a Syrian military target overnight Friday, naked aggression by any standard, Netanyahu released a disinformation statement, roaring:

“Let me reiterate Israel’s policy: We will not allow a regime hell-bent on the annihilation of the Jewish state to acquire nuclear weapons.”

“We will not allow that regime to entrench itself militarily in Syria, as it seeks to do, for the express purpose of eradicating our state.”

Iran has no intention of “eradicating” Israel. Its nuclear program has no military component. It has no bases or large military presence in Syria – small numbers of advisors and other personnel only, operating from Syrian bases, its help in combating US-supported terrorism requested by Damascus.

Reports of an Iranian base under construction in southern Syria near Israel’s borders were fabricated. So are Israeli claims about Iran wanting a permanent military presence in the country to expand its regional influence.

America has multiple illegal bases in northern Syria, at least one near the Syrian/Iraqi border in the southern part of the country – intending to retain them once conflict ends, strongly opposed by Damascus and Moscow.

Lavrov earlier said “after terrorism is defeated, the first step should be the pullout of those who stay illegitimately in Syria” – his remark aimed at Washington.

According to Israeli Channel 10 television, an unnamed Trump administration official said “(w)e’ve made it clear to Israel that we are not pulling out of Syria,” adding:

“The ceasefire agreement is the first stage. We will try to widen the buffer zone and push the Iranians back, 20 kilometers at first, and later perhaps as far as Damascus.”

Iranian advisors and other personnel will likely stay in Syria as long as Assad requests their presence. US forces operate illegally in the country, part of Washington’s regime change strategy.

Separately, hardline CIA director Mike Pompeo warned Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani by letter that Washington will hold Tehran accountable for any attacks on US interests in Iraq – an unacceptable hostile threat.

Iran has no intention to attack any other country – a US specialty, the Islamic Republic a staunch supporter of regional peace, free from nuclear weapons.

Pompeo lied saying he “sent a note…because (Soleimani) indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten US interests in Iraq,” adding:

“What we were communicating to him…was that we will hold (him) and Iran accountable…and we wanted to make sure that he and the leadership of Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear.”

Soleimani refused to open the letter for good reason. Everything US officials say about Iran is unacceptably hostile, false accusations repeatedly made.

In Late October, Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi visited Tehran, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani telling him at the time:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, in the path of fighting terrorism, strengthening unity and solidarity in Iraq, and preserving the territorial integrity of the country, has always been and will be alongside the Iraqi government and nation,” adding:

Iran “is ready to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Iraq and stand with its government and nation.”

Pompeo and other US hardliners consider mutual cooperation between Iran and Iraq and any other countries hostile to US interests.

Longstanding US hostility toward Iran persists, intensified under Trump, regime change America’s objective.

US-led aggression on the country remains an ominous possibility.

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].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

www.edumontesanti.skyrock.com

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Neocolonial Kleptocrats with Clinton Connections. Rwanda’s Links to Wall Street Billionaires

December 3rd, 2017 by Ann Garrison

On 18 November, Rwandan President Paul Kagame honored seven and one medical doctor into his “National Order of Outstanding Friendship,” presenting them with medals for “exemplary service” to the nation, meaning himself and his ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

Kagame is a modern day exemplar of French King Louis XIV’s theory of government: “L’état, c’est moi.” His list of honorees showcases the skill sets that keep any neocolonial kleptocracy in business. Agility with shell companies and offshore accounts are highly valued, and a boundlessly self-righteous sense of entitlement is absolutely required. As with all things Kagame, connection to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation are an added plus. Here’s some of what’s known about the Kagame Eight:

1. Hezi Bezalel, Israeli businessman and Rwanda’s Honorary Consul in Israel. Kagame’s newspaper, The New Times of Rwanda, praises Bezalel for building ties between Israel and Rwanda over the years, and says that “he arrived [in Rwanda] in the middle of 1994, a time when most international figures turned away.” Hard to know just what that could mean because on July 27, 1994, after Kagame had won the war that led to the massacres, the New York Times ran the headline U.S. Is Considering A Base In Rwanda For Relief Teams, and reported that:

“The United States is preparing to send troops to help establish a large base in Rwanda to bolster the relief effort in the devastated African nation, Administration officials said today.

“Setting up a staging area in the capital, Kigali, would mark an important new phase, committing American troops in Rwanda for the first time. Military officials said 2,000 to 3,000 troops could be sent into Rwanda, in addition to the 4,000 that Washington has said would join relief efforts outside the country.”

Relief efforts are sort of like “evacuating embassy personnel”—always a good excuse for sending troops. But whatever, maybe Hezi Bezalel arrived a few weeks before the US troops, more precisely at the midpoint of 1994.

Hezi Bezalel with Rwandan President Paul Kagame (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In “Sex, Guns and Big Bucks,” the Israeli outlet Haaretz describes Bezalel in the context of his bid for the license to become Israel’s sixth mobile phone operator:

“Bezalel made his fortune in Africa, including through arms dealing. Bezalel represented Israeli defense companies in various African countries and reaped profits from the fees he charged. His associates say he worked only with governments, not with rebel groups. Now he wants to make himself into a legitimate businessman in Israel.”

Last April Israel’s Communication Minister granted Bezalel the license to go legit with his Xfone 018 telecomm company.

In 2014, Arutz-Sheva-Israel National News reported that Bezalel helped defeat the Palestinian Authority’s UN Security Council resolution that called for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samaria:

“The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s draft resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samaria failed in a UN Security Council vote Tuesday night – and an Israeli businessman may have contributed to the resolution being shelved.

“Businessman Hezi Bezalel has been working in the past few weeks behind the scenes to ensure that the draft resolution would fail to gain crucial support, Arutz Sheva has learned Wednesday.

“Only eight countries supported the proposal: Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxembourg, Argentina and Chile. The United States and Australia opposed. Five countries abstained: United Kingdom, Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania and South Korea.

“Bezalel operates primarily abroad, mostly in Africa, and has a special relationship with the leaders of those countries. Bezalel currently serves as honorary consul of Rwanda in Israel.

“This is not the first time that Bezalel has worked for the State of Israel in the UN and in African countries. In recent years, he has quietly helped defend Israel from foreign interests looking to harm the Jewish state.”

Israel and Rwanda have had a special relationship for more than two decades. Both benefit from the false equivalence of the Holocaust and the 1994 massacres known as the Rwandan Genocide. The late Professor Edward S. Herman and co-author David Peterson analyzed the false equivalence in “The Politics of Genocide” and “Enduring Lies: Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later.” On New Year’s Day 2016, Professor Herman explained it to Pacifica/KPFA Radio’s Project Censored, and the transcript of that conversation was published in various outlets beginning with the San Francisco Bay View.

Zionists benefit by the false equivalence, which gives them opportunity to chastise the international community for failing to keep its “Never again” promise by stopping genocide in Rwanda, while at the same time deflecting accusations that they themselves are guilty of Palestinian genocide.

The Kagame regime, in turn, uses it to bring the full weight of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and its inescapable association with the Nazi war against the Jews to “the genocide against the Tutsi,” its official, legally enforced description of the 1994 massacres. Rwandans who tell a more complex story including Hutu victims and Tutsi perpetrators are imprisoned and even extradited from nations where they’ve taken refuge.

Israel endorses Rwanda’s laws criminalizing “genocide denial,” which are modeled after European “Holocaust denial” laws but are far more harshly and frequently enforced.

2. Howard G. Buffett, multi-billionaire son of multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, philanthropist and agribusinessman. Kagame’s newspaper thanks Buffett for his “significant contribution to Rwanda’s agricultural transformation, national parks, as well as security across the Great Lakes Region.”

Buffett at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. on October 24, 2011 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

One of Buffett’s contributions to Rwanda’s “agricultural transformation” has been a $500 million investment in replacing subsistence agriculture with export agriculture—in a country where 90% of the population relies on subsistence agriculture to survive. It’s no surprise that he’s never spoken out for Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire, who called for a return to subsistence crops during her ill-fated 2010 attempt to run for president: “I would give priority to the subsistence food crops,” she said, “rather than cash crops which benefit mostly traders from urban areas. For example, if people cultivate only maize – if you ask them to cultivate only maize for export – what will they eat? This is why I will give priority to enough food to my people.”

Buffett acknowledges that his farming methods involve GMO seed and chemical-intensive, no-till farming in which chemical herbicide spraying is greatly increased to control weeds in place of tillage. He grows GMO corn and soybeans on his research farm in Nebraska, and idolatrous press actually suggest that he’s on a mission to feed the world.

After the 2012 UN Group of Experts Report that documented Rwanda’s command of the M23 militia ravaging Congo’s North Kivu Province, Western donors temporarily suspended $245 million in aid. Buffett then joined Tony Blair to pen a Foreign Policy op-ed: “Stand with Rwanda: Now is no time to cut aid to Kigali.”

He then played a remarkable role in the “peace talks” that ensued: he funded them. On December 17, 2012, the Rwanda News Group, another Kagame outlet, reported:

“The [$500,00] contribution was announced by Howard G. Buffett, President of the Foundation, upon returning from one-on-one meetings in the region with DRC President Joseph Kabila, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Uganda leader President Yoweri Museveni, who is also the facilitator of the talks.

“In a joint statement released Monday, the leaders said the grant will pay for transportation, lodging and communications costs incurred by the government of Uganda in taking on this role, with the goal of ensuring all parties engaged in the negotiations are provided the opportunity to participate in a fair and inclusive process.”

To its shame, the big corporate and state press regurgitated press releases about the “peace talks,” and even about Buffett’s generous “contribution” to them, without ever pointing to his flaming conflicts of interest. No one scanning the wires would have imagined that this multi-billionaire, self-interested, self-appointed diplomat with extensive resource interests in the region was not paying for the peace talks out of the goodness of his heart. Or that he was in fact a staunch protector of the principal perpetrator—the Rwandan president and commander-in-chief who commanded M23.

The Congolese army was reported to have defeated M23 in November 2013, but the Congolese people gained nothing in the Buffett peace process. In the end, it produced a document that promised to honor all of M23’s territorial claims in Congo’s North Kivu Province, which were actually cover for Rwanda’s.

Colonel Mamadou Moustapha Ndala, the Congolese commander who had won the hearts of eastern Congolese, was killed in an ambush less than a month later. His anguished supporters cried foul, but Howard Buffett appeared not to notice. Colonel Ndala had not only been a winning military strategist but had also refused to tolerate resource trafficking by his troops.

After the talks’ conclusion, Loyola University Professor Brian Endless told me that he thought it had all been political cover for the governments of Rwanda, Uganda, and DRC. “They’ve been trying to legitimize the conflict for years now, really, since Rwanda and Uganda put the first Kabila in charge in Congo, or what was then Zaire, and turned into Congo again. So I really think that they’re just looking to pull attention away from the fact that all of the international reports have implicated Rwanda in particular, Uganda to a next extent, and even DRC’s own government troops in a lot of the violence that’s going on there, with Rwanda and Uganda pretty clearly driving the violence. That wasn’t talked about at all in Addis Ababa. This was really a showpiece much more than anything else.”

Endless also said that the UN Security Council, which mediated between the African nations, had demonstrated no real interest in peace in DRC, where its most powerful members, like Howard Buffett, have resource interests.

Buffett’s involvements in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere in Africa could be the subject of an entire book. He even created the Howard Buffett International Women’s Media Foundation to “reshape the narrative” in conflict zones, especially DRC. Its mission statement is pure pablum about “the potential of women journalists as champions of press freedom” and “news with a diversity of voices, stories and perspectives as a cornerstone of democracy and free expression.”

Lastly, and like so many others in Kagame’s new Order of Distinguished Friends, Howard Buffett has Clinton connections. According to an August 2, 2017 Judicial Watch release, the entire Buffett family donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation and Howard in particular may then have received official favors related to his agribusiness interests:

“A number of emails show the free flow of information and requests for favors between Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation and major Clinton donors.

“For example, Howard Buffett, Jr., grandson of Warren Buffet, sought a meeting for his father, Howard Sr., with Hillary Clinton to discuss “food security.” The Buffett family, including Warren, his son Peter, and his late wife, Susan, through the Susan Buffett Foundation, all donated heavily to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. On behalf of Howard Buffett Jr., Bill Clinton aide Ben Schwerin asked [Huma] Abedin to get Howard Buffett Sr. a meeting with Clinton. He says, ‘Any chance of a brief meeting?’ Abedin replies, ‘we will take care of this.’”

3. Gilbert Chagoury, Nigerian billionaire, philanthropist, “counselor to world leaders,” major donor to the Clinton Foundation, and St. Lucia’s Ambassador to the Vatican. Kagame’s newspaper describes Chagoury as an “envoy of goodwill” who “played a great role in fostering ties between Rwanda and the Vatican at a time when relations were shaky.”

Gilbert Chagoury (Source: The Light News)

In “He was a billionaire who donated to the Clinton Foundation. Last year, he was denied entry into the U.S.,” the Los Angeles Times called Chagoury “part of a dictator’s inner circle,” meaning that of General Sani Abacha, who seized power in Nigeria in 1993, stole billions in public funds, and made Chagoury fabulously wealthy with development deals and oil franchises. Chagoury developed “a high-level network of friends from Washington to Lebanon to the Vatican” and tried to persuade the US government to think well of Abacha and take Nigeria off a US list of nations that encouraged drug trafficking.

The LA Times further reported:

“After Abacha’s death in 1998, the Nigerian government hired lawyers to track down the money. The trail led to bank accounts all over the world — some under Gilbert Chagoury’s control. Chagoury, who denied knowing the funds were stolen, paid a fine of 1 million Swiss francs, then about $600,000, and gave back $65 million to Nigeria; a Swiss conviction was expunged, a spokesman for Chagoury said.

“In the years afterward, Chagoury’s wealth grew. His family conglomerate now controls a host of businesses, including construction companies, flour mills, manufacturing plants and real estate.

“He has used some of that money to build political connections. As a noncitizen, he is barred from giving to U.S. political campaigns, but in 1996, he gave $460,000 to a voter registration group steered by Bill Clinton’s allies and was rewarded with an invitation to a White House dinner. Over the years, Chagoury attended Clinton’s 60th birthday fundraiser and helped arrange a visit to St. Lucia, where the former president was paid $100,000 for a speech. [Nomad Capitalist lists St. Lucia, a Caribbean Island, among “The five best offshore tax havens for bank secrecy.” Chagoury is the island’s Ambassador to the Vatican.] Clinton’s aide, Doug Band, even invited Chagoury to his wedding.

“Chagoury also contributed $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to its list of donors. At a 2009 Clinton Global Initiative conference, where business and charity leaders pledge to complete projects, the Chagoury Group’s Eko Atlantic development — nine square kilometers of Lagos coastal land reclaimed by a seawall — was singled out for praise. During a 2013 dedication ceremony in Lagos, just after Hillary Clinton left her post as Secretary of State, Bill Clinton lauded the $1-billion Eko Atlantic as an example to the world of how to fight climate change.”

Eko Atlantic is in fact an elite, gated, and guarded city. The Guardian wrote that it “augurs how the super-rich will exploit the crisis of climate change to increase inequality and seal themselves off from its impacts.”

John Dick (Source: Jersey Evening Post)

4. John Dick, the founder of multi-billion dollar satellite internet company, O3b, and Rwanda’s Honorary Consul to the autonomous island nation of Jersey. Kagame’s newspaper credits Dick with “connecting Rwanda with global business leaders leading to fruitful investment ties,” and calls him a “‘bridge-builder to opportunity.” Jersey made recent headlines as Apple Computer’s newly preferred tax haven.

In Tax Haven Cash Rising, Now Equal To At Least 10% Of World GDP, Forbes situates it within a web of financial networks: “a large fraction of the money held in Switzerland belongs on paper to shell companies, trusts, foundations, and personal holding companies incorporated in other tax havens. A significant percentage of the offshore wealth managed by Swiss banks belongs to people whose primary accounts, or entities, are based in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, or Jersey.”

Dr. Paul Farmer (Source: Academy of Achievement)

5. Partners in Health founder Dr. Paul Farmer. Dr. Farmer was honored in absentia “for his efforts in improving the local health sector and drastically reducing mortality rates.”

He is the author of a good book about structural violence titled “Pathologies of Power,” but in its pages on Rwanda, he repeats the legally enforced “genocide against the Tutsi” description of what happened in Rwanda, citing former UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s “The Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide” as the authoritative account. For Power, as for Kagame’s Israeli allies, Rwanda is a reminder that the US must “intervene” militarily to keep its “Never again” promise to stop genocide.

Farmer in no way criticizes Kagame, but to be fair, he wouldn’t be able to work in Rwanda if he did, or if he voiced any qualification of “the genocide against the Tutsi.”

His Partners in Health organization has received millions from the Clinton Foundation.

Alain Gauthier and his wife Dafroza Mukarumongi-Gauthier (Source: IGIHE.com)

6. Alain Gauthier and his wife Dafroza Mukarumongi-Gauthier. Gauthier and Mukarumongi-Gauthier were honored for pursuing fugitives from justice for the “genocide against the Tutsi” in France and fighting “the growing global tolerance for genocide denial.” In other words, they collaborate in the relentless witch hunts that make refugee Rwandans fearful of criticizing Kagame or voicing a dissident account of what happened in 1994, even from abroad. In March, Rwandan political asylum seeker Joseph Nwakusi was extradited to Rwanda to stand trial for denying genocide on his blog in Norway. In other cases, like that of Professor Leopold Munyakazi, anonymous Rwandan witnesses suddenly appear to accuse dissidents of genocide crime and initiate their extradition. Professor Munyakazi had dared to say that the Rwandan war and massacres were a class conflict, not an ethnic conflict, and therefore not genocide.

Linda Melvern (Source: The New Times)

7. British “investigative” journalist Linda Melvern. Kagame’s newspaper describes Melvern as an “archaeologist of the truth” and thanks her for “producing meticulously researched accounts of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.” Whenever anyone, Rwandan or not, mounts a public challenge to that description, Melvern is the first to respond, most often in the London Guardian. After the BBC documentary “Rwanda’s Untold Story, a groundbreaking challenge to the dominant narrative, she joined other writers and academics in filing a complaint alleging that it promoted genocide denial. The complaint was rejected by the BBC’s editorial complaint unit.

Belgian scholar Filip Reyntjens responded to a Melvern defender in the comments on his Twitter post about the Kigali awards, which he called “white liars’ medals.”

8. Joseph Ritchie, Chicago options and commodities trader, international businessman, Co-chair of Kagame’s Presidential Advisory Council, and former CEO of the Rwanda Development Board. Ritchie organized the first “Rwanda Day” promotional event in the US, and Kagame’s newspaper reported that he “was honored for his role in bringing multiple business people into the country to facilitate economic transformation.”

However, according to Rwandan economist and exile David Himbara, author of “Kagame’s Economic Mirage,” there’s been no transformation for Rwanda’s rural peasant majority, who live in “a world frozen in time.”

Joseph Ritchie (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“Kagame,” Himbara says, “has grossly exaggerated his social and economic accomplishments of the past 23 years. He says he has built an African economic lion – the Singapore of Africa. In reality Rwanda remains the poorest country in East Africa, except for Burundi. Its per capita income stands at $697.3 versus Kenya’s of $1,376.7; Uganda, $705; and Tanzania at $879. Burundi is poorer than Rwanda with per capita of $277. Rwanda receives $1 billion a year in foreign aid, which is half of its annual budget of $2 billion. This is hardly a spectacular success.”

Ritchie tirelessly promotes the miracle story nevertheless, and the Western press never seems to get enough of it. Reports of political repression, summary executions, assassinations at home and abroad, and flagrant election fraud are always qualified with effulgent accounts of Rwanda’s economic gains, as though they were shared nationwide.

Is it strange that a white options and commodities trader from Chicago would become Co-chair of the Rwandan President’s Advisory Council and CEO of the Rwanda Development Board? Not really. There are similar bonds in other neocolonial kleptocracies, such as Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s with Israeli diamond and mining billionaire Dan Gertler. It makes sense if the Euro partner deals in raw stuff: diamonds, minerals, commodities, options and the like, and Ritchie and Gertler are both deft with offshore instruments.

So where were the Clintons and the Blairs?

Some wondered why Tony and Cheri Blair and the family Clinton were absent at the November 18 ceremony in Kigali, despite the Clinton connection theme. They are, after all, Kagame’s most influential supporters. It may be that Kagame simply has to spread the honors around, or that the Clintons and Blairs have become shy of the attention. Especially the Clintons, now that their foundation is under investigation for corruption.

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The Not-so-Minor China Presence in Zimbabwe

December 3rd, 2017 by F. William Engdahl

Who stands to benefit from the recent military toppling of Mugabe in Zimbabwe? The military and his own party have “convinced” 93-year-old Robert Mugabe to surrender office after 37 years of iron-fisted rule over one of resource-rich Africa’s richest lands. Little discussed is the fact that the country holds some of the world’s most valuable mineral deposits and that China, USA, and former colonial power Britain all have their eyes on that wealth. The problem is that the US and Britain have soured their chances by years of severe economic sanctions, leaving China in a very positive position.

The basic facts leading up to the military intervention are well documented. Mugabe’s ambitious wife, the 52-year-old Grace Mugabe, nicknamed “Gucci Grace” by her political opponents for her lavish lifestyle in one of the world’s poorest countries, apparently persuaded her husband to fire her main rival to succeed Mugabe as president. Days before the military intervened,on November 6, Mugabe fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his long-term ally since the war of independence from British rule, who went into exile in neighboring South Africa.

The Mugabe plan was reportedly to make his wife his successor as President. Mugabe’s two sons, Robert Jr and Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, and Grace Mugabe’s son by a previous marriage, Russell Goreraza, were also being positioned to take key posts in the Mugabe regime. All sons were notorious in the country for their playboy lifestyle, sharing the lavish spending habits of their mother, Grace.

From public evidence, at that point General Constantine Chiwenga, commander of the Zimbabwe Defense Force and Chris Mutsvangwa, the head of the powerful War Veterans’ Association, in consultation with ousted Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, moved to stop the machinations of Mugabe and wife and stage the putsch. The day Mugabe fired Mnangagwa, General Chiwenga was in China and was informed that Mugabe had ordered his arrest on his return. Through aid of loyal soldiers, he managed to get back to Harare to carry out the putsch on November 12.

In a mostly bloodless operationChiwenga ordered tanks to control key government buildings and the Harare airport, which in a touch of irony had just been renamed the Robert Mugabe International Airport on November 9. Chiwenga had support of the military and of internal security forces as well as leaders of Mugabe’s own ZANU-PF party. Mugabe and his family were put under house arrest. To prevent appearance of a coup which would draw sanctions from the African Union, the military spent six days of negotiations to get Mugabe out of office via public pressure, impeachment threats and hours of cajoling.

On November 21, Parliament interrupted impeachment proceedings to announce Mugabe had agreed to resign. Although under the Constitution of Zimbabwe Mugabe should be succeeded by Vice President PhelekezelaMphoko, a supporter of Grace Mugabe, ZANU-PF chief whip LovemoreMatuke stated that former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now party chairman, would be appointed as President which was done on 24 November.

British media reports that before moving to oust Mugabe, General Chiwenga informed Washington as well as Beijing. What it did not report was the fact that several days before he ordered his tanks to surround Harare government buildings, General Constantine Chiwenga was in Beijing on a “routine visit,” where he met with senior Chinese military officials.

Notably, when Chiwenga returned to Zimbabwe and ordered the house arrest of Mugabe, the Chinese government responded with a non-committal statement that Beijing was “paying close attention to developments.” On November 17, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang officially stated that,

“China’s friendly policy toward Zimbabwe will not change. We will continue to advance friendly cooperation with Zimbabwe in line with the principle of equality, reciprocity and win-win cooperation.”

China is careful not to tie its economic relations abroad with US-style interventions into domestic affairs. In this case it would seem Beijing is interested in an orderly continuity of relations and was persuaded neither Mugabe nor his wife whom they had formerly regarded as likely successor, would be able to provide this. It’s clear the Chinese officials gave General Chiwenga the assurances that Geng Shuang made public days later. They would back the government of Zimbabwe, not side with Mugabe, even though a year earlier they indicated they would be willing to accept Grace Mugabe as successor. For China stability is sine qua non.

Washington and London Try to Gain

For its side, Washington has reacted with cautious optimism. The US State Department called for the post-Mugabe era to open the way for Zimbabwe to “rejoin the West” as before the 2000 US and EU sanctions. US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert called the Mugabe resignation “a historic opportunity” for the country’s people. She declared,

“The people of Zimbabwe have firmly voiced their desire for a new era to bring an end to Zimbabwe’s isolation and allow the country to rejoin the international community.”

The CIA-tied “private democracy-promoting” NGO, National Endowment for Democracy wrote,

“there is nothing yet to suggest that Zimbabwe is about to undergo a substantive shift toward a more democratic and open society based on the full implementation of its 2013 constitution…”

Translated from the NED Orwell-esk, that “open society”means return to IMF austerity and US and UK economic domination.

Commenting on the developments and declaring Mugabe must leave, US Secretary of State for Africa, Donald Yamamoto stated openly,

“The United States would discuss lifting multiple U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe if it began enacting political and economic reforms.” He added, “Our position has always been that if they engage in the constitutional reforms, economic and political reforms, and move forward to protecting political space and the human rights, then we can start the dialogue on lifting sanctions.”

Now we can be certain the full armamentarium of US “human rights” or fake democracy NGOs will try to reopen operations in Zimbabwe to bring the country fully into the camp of the IMF and World Bank and draw the country away from the deep ties to China.

London is also betting it can cut a better deal with Emmerson Mnangagwa in charge than with Mugabeas head of the former British colony. According to a Reuters report, hundreds of pages of documents from the Zimbabwe CIO intelligence agency state that Mnangagwa was in discussions with the British Ambassador, Catriona Laing, about leading a transitional government for five years with the tacit backing of some of Zimbabwe’s military. Mnangagwa reportedly was also in discussions with dispossessed white farmers about returning the lands forcibly taken from them in 2000 by Mugabe in a violent land redistribution that triggered western sanctions.

In 2000 for a complexity of reasons, Mugabe approved radical land reforms that encouraged veterans from the fight for liberation to occupy some 4,000 white-owned commercial farms. At least 12 farmers were murdered. Most fled. They were replaced by Mugabe cronies and

inexperienced black farmers. The agriculture-based economy went into freefall. Before 2000, farming accounted for 40 percent of all exports. By 2010 it had dropped to just 3 percent. GDP almost halved from 1998 to 2008 and hyperinflation came as the central bank printed money endlessly in a vain effort to keep the economy afloat.

In December 2001, the US Congress passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) and Zimbabwe was denied access to IMF and World Bank credit. The result of the West’s severe sanctions was dilapidated infrastructure, increased poverty, high unemployment, economic meltdown and hyperinflation.

In October 2015 in an attempt to regain access to western capital cut off by US and EU sanctions since 2001, Zimbabwe had agreed to the West’s so-called Lima Process.

The Lima Process called for the Zimbabwe government to pay off some $1.8 billion in arrears to the World Bank, IMF and African Development Bank as precondition for getting a new $2 billion IMF credit, hardly a game-changer for the embattled economy. As part of the deal Zimbabwe must agree to sharp cuts in the state budget deficit, and reduction of state sector employment, measures highly unpopular in the economically depressed country. By 2016, despite some small measures, Zimbabwe was clearly not going along with the US IMF measures. What intervened was China yuan diplomacy.

A Chinese Carrot

In December, 2015, clearly realizing it was about to be eased out of Zimbabwe by the US and UK using the IMF, Beijing sweetened the game. It prepared a $5 billion aid package independent of any IMF conditions. In July 2016 Zimbabwe’s Macro-Economic Planning and Investment minister Obert Mpofu and Agriculture, Mechanization and Irrigation Development minister Joseph Made negotiated a deal with Beijing, giving Zimbabwe $4 billion to improve agriculture productivity and $1 billion for urban low-cost housing as well as US$46 million for the construction of a new parliament building outside Harare.

Now the stakes become high, with the USA and former colonial masters UK with the IMF and its “reforms” on the one side, and China on the other.

Zimbabwe is a treasure of untapped minerals. Under the British colonial era it was named Rhodesia after British miner and occultist of the Empire, Sir Cecil Rhodes.

China is today the key trade and investment partner of Zimbabwe.

Minerals Wealth Untapped

As a result of years of Western sanctions and hyperinflation as well as a ban on western investment, the country’s mining infrastructure is operating far under potential. The country is enormously rich in untapped minerals including copper, platinum, gold, diamonds and iron ore. Only five countries in the world, for example, produce platinum, a rare metal used among other places in catalytic converters for vehicles. The leading producers are South Africa and Russia. Zimbabwe is number five. Total platinum reserves in Zimbabwe are estimated at 2.8 billion tons. Owing to lack of investment, only 2.4 million tons a year are mined.

Another major metal in Zimbabwe is chromite.Zimbabwe holds some 930 million tons of chromite, but is presently able to mine only 700,000 tons annually.The largest user of chromite ore today is China. Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke formation along with the Bushveld Complex in South Africa hold most of the world’s known chromite, the only ore of chromium suitable for making stainless steel, nichrome and superalloys used in jet engines. It is a strategic metal and one the USA produces none of.

Zimbabwe holds the world’s largest diamond mine, mainly for industrial diamonds. Marange is currently ranked the largest diamond producing deposit on earth ranging over 300 square miles in Chiadzwa. In 2014 it produced 13% of world diamond supply.

Two Chinese mining companies, Jinan Mining and Anjin Investments Ltd. were involved in Marange until Mugabe cancelled the mining licenses of Jinan and Anjin at the end of 2016 as he became increasingly incalculable. By 2017 there set in a complete chill in Mugabe relations with China. It clearly had more to do with economic desperation and politics than any Chinese behavior in the diamond area. This past August Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe ordered Zimbabwe platinum and chrome miners to surrender 80 percent of their export earnings to the central bank as a desperate move to restock dollar reserves.

When Mugabe fired his Vice President, now his successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, to prepare the way for his wife Grace to succeed him, Mnangagwa fled to South Africa in exile. From there he went to China for discussions in Beijing. The visit was organized by the influential head of the Association of War Veterans, Chris Mutsvangwa, former Zimbabwe Ambassador in Beijing. In the 1960’s as a Marxist member of the anti-British XANU liberation army, Mnangagwa was in Beijing to study at the Chinese Communist Party’s Beijing School of Ideology. Mnangagwa is no stranger to China.

The junta around newly-installed President Emmerson Mnangagwa is not known in Zimbabwe for their acts of Christian charity. In 1980Mnangagwa was Minister of State Security during the Gukurahundi massacres in which up to 20, 000 mainly Ndebele civilians were killed. In his inauguration speech he spoke of compensation for disposed white farmers and of openness to rejoin with the world community, but offered few details. It is not at all clear if his rule heralds merely a face-change or genuine new policies to lift Zimbabwe, one of the most economically endowed lands in Africa, into prosperity. This remains to be seen.

Since 2014 Russia has also entered commercial negotiations with Zimbabwe, and neighboring South Africa is Zimbabwe’s largest trading partner.

China, Russia and South Africa are all members of the BRICS group which founded the BRICS Development Bank, able potentially to offer Zimbabwe investment for needed mining infrastructure. Now the real contest for the future of Zimbabwe begins in the post-Mugabe era. We soon will see who has the real attention of the new government.

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

Featured image is from the author.

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Discriminação e Ódio em um País que Glorifica a Desinformação, a Estupidez e a Ignorância

December 2nd, 2017 by Edu Montesanti

“A hipocrisia é uma homenagem que o vício presta à virtude” François de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

Apoiando-se na grande mídia, sabidamente de desinformação e idiotização em massa, e em seus patéticos super-herois, descaradamente politiqueiros e corruptos, as classes dominantes brasileiras esbanjam discriminação, ódio e ignorância através da cega caça às bruxas petistas, baseadas não na racionalidade mas na estupidez mais evidente. Nunca a verdade dos fatos importou tão pouco neste País falido, destruído nos alicerces por sua autoproclamada “nata” intelectual e econômica, canalhada dominante escondida detrás de forte apelo moralista que insiste em jogar as cartas do Brasil, ao mesmo tempo que o joga na lata do lixo mundial. Pois onde está a indignação contra o corrupto e manipulador clã Marinho, da Globo? Os canalhas se atraem

Repassando a informação de que agora – não faltava mais nada no Brasil – o patético super-herói das classes dominantes brasileiras, Sérgio Moro, juiz de primeira instância da Operação Lava Jato, será denunciado na… Lava Jato (!), um senhor amigo, branco e da classe média “não-proletária” (eles não gostam do termo burguesia, classe a que pertencem) do Sul do País, sem me questionar de quem partia a denúncia, o que exatamente ela dizia e nem sequer me dar tempo de dizer que havia sido previamente periciada na Espanha, apenas afirmou – após apontar, ele mesmo, que o denunciado não merece confiança, justificando isso sobre um passado segudo ele (na verdade, segundo um amigo havia relatado) nada favorável ao jurista paranaense, o que deveria dar crédito à atual denúncia na mente de qualquer cidadão minimamente coerente e lúcido – não acreditar em seu conteúdo o qual, em resumo, revela uma “indústria das delações” praticada por uma “panela” de advogados em Curitiba, levando à adulteração de documentos e acusações falsas, o que inocentaria a ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff da acusação de recebimento de propina da Odebrecht na campanha presidencial de 2014, e pode fazer o mesmo em relação à acusação deque o sítio de Atibaia pertence ao ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Para logo, sabedor de que escrevo a Pravda, desviar o assunto rumo ao flanco das críticas, completamente vazias e alternadas com chacotas, à Rússia e ao presidente russo, Vladimir Putin – com direito a apelido jocoso a este, sem nenhuma base e bem ao estilo grande mídia de idiotização em massa, excedendo em ódio e faltando em conteúdo ainda que se valha da remontagem de sombrios anos de revanchismo à la Guerra Fria. Já dizia Agni Shakti: “Na falta de argumento, a ignorância usufrui da agressividade e da ofensa como modo de ataque”. Assim, no Brasil hoje, conversar sobre o quê?

Me pegou de supresa a primeira, e mais ainda a segunda postura obrigando-me a, sem entender nada daquilo do ponto de vista mais racional-humano (considerando que animais, em geral, de sua maneira raciocinam), usar a sensatez e colocar em prática a observação de Euripides, romancista grego (480-406 a.C.): “Converse com um tonto, e ele o chamará de tonto”. Assim, de maneira bem humorada e disfarçada, “peguei meu boné” como se diz na gíria do futebol, e na pequena cidade do interior do estado de Santa Catarina retirei-me elegantemente da “conversa”, joia rara no Brasil de hoje – quantas saudades de uma boa conversa!

Mas conversar sobre o quê, em um país onde Eduardo Cunha na Câmara e Renan Calheiros no Senado, o primeiro condenado e preso e o segundo, megaprocessado, lideraram o impedimento de uma presidente contra quem não há provas e de quem foram aliados até às vésperas do processo, e de quem o mesmo PT hoje se aproxima sem nada disso gerar manifestação popular? Debater o quê, enquanto o policial federal Newton Ishii, condenado e preso a 4 anos, 2 meses e 21 dias de prisão por ter facilitado contrabando, com tornozeleira eletrônica prende outros condenados sem nenhuma indignação da sociedade que, por outro lado, com tanta energia condena uns “outros” tantos, sempre pendendo a balança da raiva “anti-corrupção” para o mesmo lado?

Meu bom relacionamento com este senhor, gentil e educado, não muda (espero que não); porém, embora o Brasil de 205 milhões de criaturas humanas não se resuma a este indivíduo, em primeiro lugar sua postura certamente retrata o estado de espírito do brasileiro em geral, em relação à verdade dos fatos: glorificando a pós-verdade segundo a definição dos dicionários de Oxford, “Relaciona-se com, ou denota circunstâncias nas quais fatos objetivos exercem menos influência na formação da opinião pública, que os apelos à emoção ou à crença pessoal”. Ao brasileiro médio, o que mais importa hoje (e sempre foi assim, estando hoje apenas mais exacerbado o caótico cenário) não é se a informação é verdadeira ou falsa nem o quanto ela pode desempenhar um papel crucial na (delicadíssima) vida do País, mas se se adequa aos medos, às fobias e ideias pré-concebidas do indivíduo. Qualquer coisa que fuja disso, mexe profundamente com os espíritos fazendo manifestar o alto grau de esquizofrenia democrática e histeria justiceira do brasileiro, longe de discussões sóbrias e racionais, construtivas e equilibiradas ainda que críticas.

Nada mais patético! Seres que possuem nada menos que dona Rede Globo como outra heroína, no sentido mais amplo do termo – no mais “nobre”, hoje em dia de modo um tanto velado, é verdade, ao condenar abertamente por manipulação das informações a quem empresta irregeneravelmente a mente a fim de ser, por ela mesma, pautada, seguindo fielmente suas imposições opinativas sem o menor contrangimento. No sentido mais nocivo, heroína que anestesia a consciência: os históricos escândalos de corrupção envolvendo o clã Marinho não geram, nunca geraram a menor indignação na “nata intelectual e moral” deste País. Os canalhas se atraem.

A posição do escravo mental em questão ilustra também o ódio e a discriminação preponderantes em relação ao Partido dos Trabalhadores, dando razão à ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff quando, recentemente, disse que para as classes dominantes e grande midia, “o PT é coisa de preto”. Cresci em um bairro de classe média, e em uma escola particular da cidade de São Paulo, e me lembro bem o quanto se dizia que “PT… é coisa de baiano!”, ridicularizando, de uma só vez, o partido e os cidadãos baianos de maneira completamente inadequada, criminosa até. Alguém tem alguma dúvida se tal mentalidade ainda prepondera, até hoje, entre paulistas e paulistanos naquela cidade?

Ódio e disciminação são as únicas coisas que podem explicar essa “jurisprudência” covarde da sociedade em aceita tudo que condena o PT como verdade absoluta, e deleitar-se sobre isso, ao passo que nega apenas e tão-somente conhecer toda e qualquer posição que possa absolve o partido em questão, e condenar seus acusadores (longe, bem distantes de serem reservas morais e intelectuais, repitamos). Isso, para nem se estender aqui na jurisrpudência da própria “Justiça” tupiniquim, elitizada, raivossa, revanchista, completamente parcial, grande emblema do falacioso Estado de direito brasileiro. Em tudo isso refletida fielmente, é claro, pela sociedade.

Com todas as críticas e, se necessário, investigações em relação ao PT – e tudo isso é justo e necessário, sim -, assusta a atual aversão da sociedade baseada na desinformação vendida descaradamente pela grande mídia a indivíduos que se entregam a uma profunda cegueira mental, marcante nas classes média e alta brasileiras, as mais ignorantes, histéricas e devastadoras do mundo, segundo estudos as que menos leem entre a humanidade – muito bem representadas, aliás, por seus aloprados super-herois de péssimo nível, intelectual e moral.

Apenas não vê quem realmente não quer, que há em todos os segmentos da sociedade uma seletividade muito descarada na criminalização do PT, baseada em acusações infundadas e não na racionalidade. Trata-se do velho ódio de classe, de gênero (especialmente contra Dilma Rousseff), regional, étnico neste País fortemente colonizado culturalmente, de mentalidade agressivamente escravocrata.

Não é do interesse da sociedade nem de ninguém a busca pela verdade e o combate à corrupção, mas sim o combate às diferenças, ao “forasteiro”.

Fatos que, ao contrário dos militantes petistas, este autor não vem observando apenas agora, pós-golpe: manteve essa linha ao longo de todos os anos 2000, ainda quando esses mesmos petistas respondiam – no poder, é claro – com histeria a tais críticas qualificando-as nervosamente de síndrome de vira-latismo. Pois hoje há até fundador do PT não apenas denominando a sociedade brasileira de “gentinha”, “povinho insignificante”, como também defendendo abertamente o fuzilamento de quem não compactue com a ideia de que o golpe jurídico-parlamentar-midiático foi aplicado, em 2016, contra a ex-presidente Dilma.

Esta aberração petista não é isolada e deve-se ao ódio, à falta de conteúdo e de atitude (solidariedade, brios, capacidade de ação e reação, etc) versão “esquerda” no Brasil a qual, historicamente prepotente como poucos segmentos neste País, após anos julgando-se o último pé de alface da geladeira vegetariana, vê seu bobo da Corte (seus partidos políticos e personagens mais emblemáticos) completamente nu e mesmo seu único e patético projeto de Brasil, à beira do naufrágio, isto é, retomar o poder.

O Brasil está indialogável. Em todos os aspectos o debate, ou mesmo conversas entre e sobre as mínimas diferenças está completamente travado. Pelo ódio, pela intolerância, pela discriminação, pela escravização mental, pelo espírito fortemente reacionário mesmo à “esquerda”, e pela profunda ignorância que, desde que a primeira Missa foi rezada no Monte Pascoal, anda de mãos dadas com nossa sociedade, irmã siamesa que, de uns tempos para cá, resolveu sair do armário com mais fúria, tornando inconteste tal realidade tanto á direita quanto à “esquerda” que padece, exatamente, daquilo que sempre acusou o outro: do que chama de vira-latismo [neste sentido, observemos também “o Brasil é assim mesmo, todo mundo faz e não há outro jeito” a fim de justificar as novas (velhas) alianças com a oligarquia megaprocessada deste País, lições nunca aprendidas por gente sem caráter, que não quer progredir mas se interessa apenas pelo poder, o poder pelo poder a qualquer custo, iguaizinhos os cães de rua submetendo-se aos chutes pelas migalhas].

Nestes dias, um importantíssimo editor de determinado meio de comunicação brasileiro disse-me, pela segunda vez, que acredita estar assustador o ambiente no Brasil hoje, e que teme pelo que possa ocorrer a médio prazo no País. Recentemente, um renomado historiador brasileiro comentou comigo o mesmo, que a situação tem estado muito estranha a ponto desse intelectual retirar-se, por tempo indeterminado, da atividade escrita.

Nesta mesma cidade de Santa Catarina, em dois locais públicos a esposa deste autor, jovem acreana, morena, de ascendência indígena e com forte sotaque nortista em busca de serviços públicos, deparou-se em cada um deles com a humilhante ordem fascista de que “para quem é de fora, demora mais”. Pois é isto mesmo: a prestação de serviços “públicos” (!) em Santa Catarina tem dependido do estado de origem do desgraçado cidadão brasileiro (para nem dizer se for estrangeiro trabalhador…).

Os tais serviços nunca se consumaram conforme direito constitucional, inalienável da cidadã acreana e, diante disso, não há órgão público procurado que aja minimamente, pelo contrário e não há novidade nisto: eles se blindam descaradamente desde o topo, são indevida e indecentemente estrutuados para isso levando-os a situações de inevitável escarnecimento do cidadão indefeso, completamente refém de um Estado elitizado, putrefato, impiedoso, terrorista psicoloicamentediante do qual não há justiça, não há lei, não há Consttuição, não há absolutamente nada a não ser quando isso tudo e qualquer coisa possa ser utilizada em favor dessa canalhada dominante escondida detrás de forte apelo moralista, que insiste em jogar as cartas do Brasil ao mesmo tempo que o joga na lata do lixo mundial.

No caso específico do fascismo catarinense, casos como o relatado acima abundam em mais este estado das aparências tupiniquins, paupérrimo e insuportável; contudo, parafraseando o brilhante jornalista e editor da revista Caros Amigos, Aray Nabuco em recente editorial: sempre surge o momento em que o povo, farto de tanta humilhação e exploração neste sistema podre, levanta-se. É o que esperamos, ardentemente.

Estão assustadores os tempos atuais no Brasil. E na era da relativa revolução da informação através da Internet, a sociedade é altamente (ir)responsável por isso: conforme o caso aqui exposto vem a evidenciar, não dá mais para culpar os podres poderes somente, embora estes desempenhem papel preponderante neste festival do ódio, da discriminação e da profunda ignorância que reina soberana neste País! E cujo quadro tenebroso, o PT não fez nada para mudar… Diz o psicanalista Caio Fábio: “Não há nada mais adoecedor e imbecilizador, que o perpétuo aprendiz de um ensino que não produz efeitos práticos em sua vida”.

Edu Montesanti

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White Helmets, ‘Local Councils’ – Is the UK FCO Financing Terrorism in Syria with Taxpayer Funds?

December 2nd, 2017 by Vanessa Beeley

The UK regime is a primary player in the ostensibly US-led coalition whose objective for the last seven years, has been the removal of Syria’s President Assad and the inevitable imposition of a so called “moderate” Islamic State upon the people of Syria. This campaign has led to the destabilization of Syria and destruction of infrastructure across much of its territory. Not to mention, the wholesale suffering endured by the Syrian people under attack from NATO member state sponsored terrorism and punishing economic sanctions. It is therefore ironic that the UK Government funds the Syrian “opposition” via its Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF):

“The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) provides development and security support to countries which are at risk of conflict or instability. It’s the only government fund which uses both Defence spend and Official Development Assistance (ODA) to deliver and support security, defence, peacekeeping, peace-building and stability activity.”

Previously under the heading ‘Conflict Pool‘, the CSSF is a £1bn-plus slush fund dedicated to providing “development and security”, according to the UK Government overview.

“The CSSF has been allocated £1.163 billion for 2017 to 2018. It includes over £300 million mandatory contributions to peacekeeping operations.” ~ CSSF An Overview

From the outset, CSSF spending has been shrouded in secrecy, particularly with regards to Syria.

Following a recent Parliamentary Question from Baroness Caroline Cox, it has been confirmed that the UK FCO has financed the Syrian “opposition” for three years through the CSSF:

“The value of the CSSF for Syria is £69 million in the current financial year, was £64 million in 2016-17, and £66 million in 2015-16.” – Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, FCO

Over the period of three years the UK government has poured almost £200 million of tax payer funds into a failed proxy military intervention in Syria. However, the British government will not release the names of the recipients of this funding and make the claim that they are not providing lethal aid:

“This support to the moderate opposition has included political support and non-lethal equipment. In terms of equipment, we have provided communications, medical and logistics equipment. We have also provided equipment to protect against chemical weapons attack. For security reasons we do not disclose the names of groups supported.” – Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, FCO

Journalist, Peter Oborne, explained what this really means:

“We’ve spent £200m in Syria – for nothing. It is now clear that British backing for the ‘rebels’ in the Syrian civil war was not just a mistake, it was a disaster. The policy made a horrific war much worse, and facilitated the growth of ISIS. Though the Government said we were helping ‘moderates’, the main beneficiaries were Al-Qaeda and other jihadists…”

The Go-Betweens in East Aleppo

During my time in East Aleppo in 2016/17 with Syrian journalist, Khaled Iskef, we translated documents (in Arabic) found by Iskef, that referred to two UK organisations, Adam Smith International and Integrity Global in connection with the funding of Syrian “opposition” structures in East Aleppo.

These documents were found among the debris of the various Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) centres, East Aleppo Council buildings and White Helmet centres. It is noteworthy that these three entities operating in what was terrorist occupied East Aleppo until December 2016, always worked alongside one another, either sharing facilities and buildings or next door to one another in the various districts of East Aleppo where they centered their activities.—

Both Adam Smith International and Integrity Global are funded by the UK FCO via the CSSF to offer “assistance” to the Syrian “opposition” and this has been achieved via a variety of outreach agents, one of which is the Tamkeen Project, which claims to “build resilience in Syrian communities” and which establishes, funds and supports the “local councils” in terrorist held areas such as East Aleppo and Idlib. Appropriately, Tamkeen means “empowerment” in Arabic.

“Launched in 2013, and run by development consultants Adam Smith International, Tamkeen is different to anything else being funded by the global community in Syria. It is the first programme to combine the provision of aid – in the form of schools, hospitals and services as basic as waste management and water treatment – with the perilous job of trying to create the foundation for legitimate government in a war zone. In short, it is building democracy from the bottom up. And doing it as the bombs fall.” – The Guardian

The following video was filmed in the Ma’adi district of East Aleppo in July 2017 and shows a Tamkeen financed East Aleppo Council building opposite a former garage that was requisitioned as a Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) bomb-making factory. Watch:

This image (below) shows the black powder that Nusra Front used to pack inside shells & gas canisters, similar to what is used inside DIME or “Tungsten” bombs deployed against Gaza by Israel in 2012 and 2014. These missiles would release the metal nano-particles on explosion and the particles are transferred from the wounds to the internal organs of the victims, causing inoperable damage and eventual septicemia from which there is usually no recovery.

These deadly missiles were used on a regular basis against the 1.5 million Syrian civilians in the Syrian Government-protected West Aleppo during the terrorist & extremist occupation of East Aleppo. According to civilian testimony, after the liberation of East Aleppo, these missiles were also used against civilians in the occupied districts by the terrorist factions who then blamed such attacks on the advancing Syrian Arab Army.

Brita Hagi Hassan, “Mayor of Aleppo” with former French President, Francois Hollande December 2016. (Photo: Sputnik)

The Tamkeen Project birthed and then nurtured the “Local Councils,” operating in what was terrorist-occupied East Aleppo. According to Brita Haji Hassan, the self-proclaimed “mayor of Aleppo” 2016, in an interview with the Guardian, the programme provided (East) Aleppo city council with £ 820,000 (May 2016).

While Hassan took great pains to describe his assumed “municipality” as “liberated Aleppo”, he naturally avoided mentioning the Nusra Front dominated terrorist presence that was committing atrocities against the Syrian civilians who dared to resist their occupiers’ extremist ideology or brutal oppression. Hassan tried to reinforce the myth that very few Nusra Front fighters remained in East Aleppo in December 2016 and that they were outnumbered by the “moderates” who had elected Hassan to his post as their representative. A representative of the associated “democratic institutions“.

Democratic institutions… such as the Sharia court in the Ma’adi district Eye & Childrens Hospital compound that had been occupied by ISIS until 2014, then by Nusra Front in coordination with the Al Shameya Front & other extremist brigades. The following interview with Ahmad Aldayh was conducted in May 2017. Aldayh had been imprisoned in this particular “democratic institution”.

“The terrorists arrested a guy, the only child of his family. They arrested him because they found a picture of one of his friends carrying the Syrian flag, on his mobile phone. The terrorists tortured him for three hours, then they executed him”

Dr Nabil Antaki, an eminent gastroenterologist from Aleppo had this to say about Hassan’s delusions of grandeur:

“Returning to the subject of this pseudo-mayor, Brita Hagi Hassan, I can assure you, he is mayor of nothing. Nobody in Aleppo had ever heard of him before he was magicked out of nowhere by the West. […] I ask all my friends in the West, please don’t believe your media & government lies and I have one message for the media: Enough! Stop lying!”

The Adam Smith Scandal

In March 2017 the founders of ASI were forced to abdicate their roles when the UK government allegedly froze future contracts over questions about its ethical integrity. According to a Guardian article:

“Last month DfID cut off funding after it emerged that ASI, which has been entrusted with £450m in development cash since 2011, had tried to profiteer by exploiting leaked department documents. It was also heavily criticised for trying to “unduly influence” a parliamentary inquiry by engineering “letters of appreciation” from beneficiaries of its projects.”

A statement from ASI said three founding executives – Andrew Kuhn, Amitabh Shrivastava and Peter Young – would step down as it “completed its transition to an employee-owned company“. William Morrisson, a founding director and ASI’s executive chairman would also resign after leading the disgraced company through its “restructuring” & “reform” programme.

The DFID (Department for International Development) was further embarasssed as the Commons International Development Committee described ASI’s actions as “deplorable”, “entirely inappropriate” and said those involved had demonstrated “a serious lack of judgement”. Euphemisms for back channel corruption of the highest order.

However according to a Times article in September 2017, it appears that all promises of reform were merely paying lip service to the ASI detractors and there had been no intention of bringing an end to the ASI fraudulent & profitable procurement practices:

“The chairman of a controversial aid consultancy has been ousted after an aborted attempt to resume bidding for government contracts.

Adam Smith International (ASI), which has received hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, has been tarnished by scandals and claims that it has made excessive profits from aid contracts.

It is being investigated by the Department for International Development (Dfid) after officials found that it used “improperly obtained” government documents for commercial advantage. It has also been criticised by MPs for helping to write “letters of appreciation” submitted to an inquiry into the use of aid contracts. Four executives stood down this year and the company announced reforms after pressure from the government.” ~ The Times

Photo from Daily Mail article: ‘How Britain pours £568m of YOUR money into war-torn Somalia despite ‘certain’ risk it will be stolen by ISIS and used to fund terrorism.’

Perhaps rather naively, one might assume that the scandal that had affected DFID would be transferred over to the UK FCO CSSF managers. A quick look at the UK FCO spend ‘over £25,000’ for 2017 certainly shows continued payments being made to ASI, including in the updated entry on 29th September 2017.

In fact, in the month of August 2017 alone, ASI received £ 3.79m from the UK FCO. It appears that the FCO is happy to be using a known criminally questionable & corrupt conduit to transfer funds that will almost certainly make their way into the hands of internationally proclaimed terrorist groups and their affiliates, this time in Syria.

East Aleppo Council

Factions in east Aleppo announce formation of "Aleppo Command Council" in attempt to bring groups under 1 command pic.twitter.com/FqC4TdxEJc

— Hassan Ridha (@sayed_ridha) November 15, 2016

The Aleppo Command Council, a unification of all eastern district “councils,” was set up mid November as the fierce battles for the liberation of East Aleppo from western backed terrorist factions were drawing to a close. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) allied advance was tightening the noose around the final terrorist enclaves that included the Old City of Aleppo and the Omayyed Mosque, where these photos were taken. So the last stand by the Tamkeen established, UK FCO financed, Local Council was reaching its finale.

Seems beheading children doesn't make you a terrorist but it does qualify you to be a "moderate rebel" leader in Eastern Aleppo#Syria pic.twitter.com/4lY2NQIvYL

— the Lemniscat (@theLemniscat) November 16, 2016

A study of the photo & the nature of its subjects might give a few clues as to the terrorist affiliations of these Council members but one individual in particular stands out, Omar Salkho. Salkho (see image below) was a member of US backed “moderate” extremist group, Harakat Nour al Din Zenki & is seated in the centre of the photograph. This group’s notoriety rose to prominence after they publicly tortured and beheaded Palestinian child, Abdullah Issa in July 2016.

Did the UK FCO ‘overlook’ the terrorist activities and affiliations of the Local Councils they were financing by proxy just as they had overlooked the criminal fraud and seedy double-dealing conducted by ASI?

UK FCO-financed Terrorism

AbdulAziz Maghrabi seated centre, with Ahrar Al Sham fighters. (Photo: Maghrabi’s Facebook page)

In December 2013 a militant fighter, Abdulaziz Maghrabi (seen above) was elected President of the East Aleppo Council. At that time, aforementioned Hagi Hassan was his deputy. In an Al Araby article that focused on Maghrabi, he informed them that he had been with the Muslim Brotherhood-Qatari-backed Al Tawhid Islamist brigades when East Aleppo was first invaded in 2012. He was then elected to the presidency of the East Aleppo Council AND he helped form the “civil defence” aka the White Helmets in East Aleppo in 2013, with the backing of the international sponsors & creators of this hybrid, pseudo first-responder organisation.

According to a report in Al Monitor, al-Tawhid Brigade’s military commander, Abdul Qadir al-Saleh, made the following statement in 2013:

“Saleh recently praised Jabhat al-Nusra and “the high coordination between them and the rest of the factions fighting on the ground. … [There is] great coordination with them on the military side.” That was not the first time he made such a statement. In April, he expressed his “complete rejection to include Jabhat al-Nusra on the US terrorism list,” adding that the group didn’t engage in terrorism.”

When I spoke to crew members of the former East Aleppo REAL Syria Civil Defence who had been expelled from East Aleppo by the militant groups, they told me these groups had taken over the East Aleppo centres in 2012-2013, killing many crew members, kidnapping others and stealing their equipment. One crew member told me they had tried to force him to stay and work with them, but he succeeded in escaping to the secure, terrorist-free West Aleppo which remained under Syrian government protection throughout the Nusra Front-led occupation of East Aleppo until December 2016. In his haste, he had been forced to leave his teenage sons behind in East Aleppo.

White Helmets and terrorist factions had marked him for assassination should he try to re-enter East Aleppo via any of the terrorist checkpoints. Other crew members told me how they & their families now working & living in West Aleppo had been deliberately targeted by militant factions in East Aleppo, even during rescue missions.

Maghrabi (better known as Abu Salma) did not relinquish his terrorist connections at any point. He remained an active member of Nusra Front according to testimony from Syrian civilians & ex-fighters in East Aleppo who resumed normal life in Aleppo after the final evacuation of terrorist factions in December 2016. Maghrabi has regularly been photographed with Ahrar Al Sham and at demonstrations with Nusra Front militants.

In this photo, Maghrabi is seen being interviewed by Halab Today TV, during an East Aleppo, Nusra Front demonstration in September 2014 (Nusra Front black flag can be seen in the background):

Maghrabi posted the following video to his Facebook page in August 2017, paying tribute to the Ahrar Al Sham militants in the video – “A year ago, with one of the good guys before the launch of the Ramousie battle”. Ahrar al Sham were preparing the campaign to prevent the SAA and allies retaking the Castello Road, an arterial humanitarian supply line for Aleppo civilians and an essential weapons entry point for the terrorist groups occupying East Aleppo:

While the US and UK have steadfastly refused to designate Ahar Al Sham a terrorist organisation, it is worth noting that in October 2016, “a German court convicted four supporters of hardline Islamist group Ahrar Al-Sham, who supplied munitions and equipment worth thousands of dollars to Syria, of aiding terrorism. It may serve a precedent for further trials.” This landmark decision marked Ahrar Al Sham as an atrocity-committing, international terrorist group operating in Syria:

“Describing the radical group as “a foreign terrorist organization” that seeks to portray itself as a member of the so-called moderate opposition in Syria, the court cited the group’s public acknowledgments of mounting suicide attacks and preparing assaults on Alawite villages.” ~ Aiding Terrorist Groups

Ahrar Al Sham are included in the Fatah Al Sham (Army of Conquest) alongside Nusra Front. This terrorist “Army” is led by child-suicide-bomber-trainer, Riyadh educated Sheikh Abdullah Muhaysini. The following excerpt is taken from a video filmed in the Hama countryside earlier this year, featuring Fatah Al Sham fighters, White Helmets and Muhaysini welcoming terrorists from Daraya. Watch:

Maghrabi was therefore, undeniably, a terrorist at the same time as he was both president of the UK FCO financed East Aleppo Council & the founder of the White Helmets in East Aleppo who are also financed by the UK FCO, via the infamous CSSF, among a number of other international sponsors which include the US, via USAID & Chemonics, Qatar, Holland, France, Germany, Japan, Denmark, Canada. Those offering logistics support or training to the White Helmets include New Zealand.

White Helmet jackets with East Aleppo Council logo on sleeve, found in abandoned White Helmet/Nusra Front centres in East Aleppo. May 2017. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The close connection between East Aleppo Council and the White Helmets are demonstrated by:

1. They are both funded by the UK FCO CSSF (among other sponsors) via various intermediaries. For the White Helmets, it is Mayday Rescue that acts as the primary laundering agent for UK FCO funds.

2. Their operating centres in East Aleppo were always next door to each other and alongside Nusra Front military centres – and also alongside UK FCO funded “Free Syrian Police.”

3. The White Helmet group in East Aleppo was established by the president of the East Aleppo Council (EAC), Maghrabi, who has clear affiliations to terrorist groups inside Syria. Maghrabi is also an active militant member of those groups, by his own admission.

4. White Helmets in East Aleppo, Idlib and other terrorist occupied areas of Syria have consistently and unreservedly proclaimed allegiance to terrorists groups such as Ahrar Al Sham and Nusra Front on their social media accounts. A recent survey carried out by the Syrian War Blog has identified 65 White Helmet operatives who have professed their membership of, or alliance with, extremist groups. This survey analysed more than 200 digital media accounts belonging to individual White Helmets and the investigation is ongoing. The 65 accounts that have been highlighted are the most extreme, but all other accounts also displayed extremist tendencies.

White Helmet team leader in Idlib reveals allegiance to Ahrar Al Sham via his Facebook posts.

5. The East Aleppo Council logo was seen on the sleeve of White Helmet jackets left behind in the abandoned White Helmet centres in various districts of East Aleppo. The White Helmets were evacuated from East Aleppo in December 2016 alongside the Nusra Front-led militant and extremist factions. Photo below shows White Helmet, Ismail Alabdullah, wearing the White Helmet uniform with the East Aleppo Council logo on the left sleeve of the jacket. (Photo: Alabdullah’s Facebook page)

White Helmets receiving awards from Ahrar Al Sham with “moderate” extremist FSA flag in background. (Photo: Screenshot from AS video)

6: In the following infograph you will see that Hagi Hassan had replaced Maghrabi as president of the EAC by 2016. Hassan accompanied overall leader of the White Helmets, Raed Saleh (upper left-hand corner of infograph), to Paris in October 2016, where they were both welcomed by former French president, Francois Hollande and given access to the Assemblee Nationale. The East Aleppo “Local Council” working hand in hand with the White Helmets and terrorist groups in Syria, while lobbying for military escalation or faux-humanitarian intervention from the US coaliton, in this case, France.

Infograph by Vanessa Beeley showing funding chain from UK FCO to the terrorist-led White Helmets and the terrorist run East Aleppo Council, via ASI, Integrity and the Tamkeen Project.

A little further evidence of the UK FCO close working relationship with the Tamkeen Project can be demonstrated by UK FCO’s Special Representative for Syria (based in Turkey) Gareth Bayley and his letter to the Tamkeen team, regarding the loss of their leader, Ayman Sheikha during battles for East Aleppo in November 2016.

Unfortunately, Bayley never expressed such personal concern or condolences for the 11,000 plus civilians murdered in West Aleppo by the hell cannon gas canister missiles, mortars, grad rockets, explosive bullets, chemical weapon attacks, snipers, suicide bombers emanating from terrorist controlled East Aleppo during the 5 year siege by the very organisations the UK FCO had been financing during that time. The majority of Syrian civilians maimed or killed in West Aleppo were children.

Conclusion

On November 7th 2017, Labour MP, Emily Thornberry challenged UK Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson in Parliament. Thornberry asked Johnson to provide assurances that the CSSF funds were not going to extremist or international terrorist groups inside Syria. Johnson ignored the question.

[Editor note: Thornberry misread her brief and cited figure of £20 million instead of the correct £ 200 million]

With reference to the UK FCO funding of what are clearly terrorist controlled “opposition” groups, the most recent questions tabled by Baroness Cox have asked whether the UK Govt can be sure that funds are not going to proscribed organisations with past or present links to Al Qaeda or associated extremist groups in East Aleppo and Idlib, via Tamkeen:

1. With reference to Lord Ahmed’s answer of 20 September (HL 1252) will the government clarify the role of Tamkeen in delivering UK support for moderates in Syria; in particular will the government make clear which local councils are receiving UK assistance through Tamkeen, and will they state whether individuals associated with proscribed organisations, notably those with links past or present to Al Qaida, are members of those councils or have been members during the periods in which the councils have received assistance?

2. With reference to Lord Ahmad’s answer of 20 September (HL1252) will the government clarify whether the assistance they have channelled through Tamkeen has been spent in areas of Northern Syria presently under the control of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (the jihadi coalition led by the organisation which changed its name from Al Nusra), and the jihadi group Ahrar Al Sham, and whether that assistance continues to be made available to those areas?

To date, no answer has been forthcoming.

In 2013 former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, revealed that, as early as 2009, the UK had informed him of plans to destabilise Syria.

“International law is indifferent to the perceived legitimacy of the state and to the form of government; both democracies and authoritarian regimes have the right to fight insurgencies and to defend themselves from external powers which aid the insurgents. Either way, it falls under the domestic jurisdiction of the state. Foreign powers are prohibited from assisting insurgents. General Assembly resolution 2131 (XX) declares that “no State shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State.” This was reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v. USA. The injured state is even entitled to adopt countermeasures against the intervening state.” ~ Amal Saad

Promotional poster for the new UK-backed “Local Councils”, the Free Syrian Police and White Helmets found at a White Helmet base in East Aleppo (Photo: Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE)

The White Helmets, the Free Syrian Police, the Local Councils in terrorist held areas of Syria – are all being financed, promoted, equipped and supported by the UK FCO in its campaign to undermine the Syrian state, its people & its leadership. Money that is taken under false pretences through taxation is almost certainly funding terrorism that has undergone various branding, and rebranding schemes in order to conceal this nefarious activity.

Questions must not only be asked, they must be answered, and a full investigation into what has been “done in our name” should be demanded, so we may stem the flow of cash-for-terror into Syria, before we too, are implicated in the criminal, rogue-state foreign policy of our morally bankrupt government and its allies in the imperialist War Bloc.

Note:

“They Dont Care About Us – White Helmets True Agenda” – since my intervention at the Geneva Press Club on November 28th, where I presented the evidence in this article, the Tamkeen website is no longer available:

Watch the full Geneva Press Club event here.

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Trump’s Unmoored Behavior Must Not be Ignored. Unhinged, Angry and Frequently Incoherent…

December 2nd, 2017 by The Republican Editorials

Donald Trump has never seemed the most stable of characters. From his days as a fixture in the gossip columns of the New York City tabloids, to his turn as a reality TV star, through his quixotic run for president that ended in his most-unlikely election, the man formerly known as The Donald has always seemed not a little whacky.

But even by his singularly low standards, the president’s Twitter frenzy on Wednesday morning was worrisome. It seemed to be more clear and indisputable evidence that the frequently unstable Trump had become even more unbalanced.

Trump, without comment, retweeted three postings from a fringe right-wing group that calls itself Britain First. The tweets, each containing a video purporting to show Muslims engaged in violent acts, are of dubious origin. But in Trump’s through-the-looking-glass world, where he calls real news fake, facts are immaterial. It’s all just a show. So he retweeted the videos. Their titles:

“Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”

“Muslim destroys a statue of Virgin Mary!”

“Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”

There is no reason whatsoever to believe that the videos represent what their sensational titles claim.

And yet Trump retweeted them. Yes, the president of the United States did this. And though his move was outrageous, by anyone’s definition, it was, or should have been, the next easily anticipated step in Trump’s very public downward spiral. There are only two real choices here: Either Trump is losing his way, or he is pretending to. Each is exceedingly troubling in its own right.

If the president of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet, cannot be counted on to act rationally – no matter what – we are all in real trouble.

With this guy as president, each new day brings a new opportunity for a new self-made crisis.

During last year’s presidential campaign, this space repeatedly raised doubts about Trump’s abilities and qualifications. He not only demonstrated little understanding of national or global affairs, he also appeared to lack even the most basic sort of curiosity. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. And didn’t care to know. Add to this his frequent race-baiting, his demonization of immigrants and foreigners and Muslims in particular, his undeniably sketchy character, his lack of experience in politics or in the military, and the mix appeared toxic in the extreme.

Nonetheless, after Trump’s stunning win 13 months back, we strove to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he would grow into the job. Maybe the gravity of the office would change him.

But no. Time and again, the reality TV star shows that he’s got no clue, no grasp, no sense of how he ought to be acting. His Wednesday anti-Muslim retweet fest was only the latest. And as egregious as a display as it was, no one can rationally believe that it will be his last.

An increasingly unmoored, unhinged, angry and frequently incoherent character is president of the United States. And the members of his Cabinet and most Republicans in the Congress continue to act as though everything is just fine and dandy.

It most decidedly isn’t.

They are whistling past the graveyard. They are shirking their constitutional duty. They are hoping for the best, or at least for something better, when there’s absolutely no cause to have such hope.

The situation is dire. Less than a year after Trump took the oath of office, one can reasonably ask if we are witnessing our nation’s chief executive losing his mind before our very eyes. The question isn’t a pretty one. Neither is the most likely answer.

We are long past the time for those in power to continue to remain silent, to keep looking the other way.

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Neoliberalism: A Useful Concept?

December 2nd, 2017 by Damien Cahill

It is only over the past decade-and-a-half or so that scholars have begun to explore in greater depth the ideological roots of the neoliberal project. Such contributions tend to focus on the emergence of a distinctly neoliberal critique of ‘collectivism’ (especially as expressed in the post-war welfare state and the state-planned economies like the Soviet Union until the end of the 1980s) during the interwar period, the way this was elaborated through various strands of thinking during the next decades, and how it came to have a crucial influence on political transformations.

They tend to describe the transition from the post-war order to the neoliberal era by emphasising the intentions, ideas and interests of elite actors and their ability to purposefully coordinate their actions and implement their political strategies. Examples of such approaches include well-known books – written by authors who otherwise differ significantly in theoretical and political commitments – such as David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine (2008) and Philip Mirowski’s Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013).

To a significant extent, it is this wave of scholarship that propelled the concept of neoliberalism to its current status as a key concept for understanding the contours of modern life. Until the early years of the twenty-first century, neoliberalism was perhaps more a ‘word’ than a ‘concept’ – just a term used to refer to the general shift from the social-democratic era, to policies and institutions that were more concerned to promote market mechanisms and were more friendly to capital. As such, the word was used mostly as an adjective in major debates that were focused on related but different questions (such as globalisation, industrial restructuring, and deregulation). The word certainly had a somewhat critical connotation and was unlikely to be used by those (e.g. many orthodox economists) who would typically view economic processes as being primarily about neutral measures of economic efficiency and growth. Otherwise, however, the term was not the focal point of scholarly competition to define the character of contemporary capitalism.

From Small Beginnings

Recent arguments have claimed that neoliberalism is much more than a useful descriptor – namely, that it is a discrete project whose origins can be traced back to the interwar period and came into its own during the 1970s, when powerful organisations and political forces gravitated around the neoliberal intellectual tradition and gave it financial backing and institutional materiality. And this has forced perspectives that until then had used the word in a more casual way to make explicit how they view the neoliberal phenomenon. Although there is no shortage of rival definitions of neoliberalism, a trend is to insist that the concept should not or cannot be neatly defined. In the course of these debates, the growing interest in neoliberalism as a discrete political project, with distinctive ideational antecedents, has been matched by growing scepticism regarding the term’s use. One often hears that it is a somewhat lazy way for left-wing critics to group together any number of heterogeneous things to which they happen to be opposed. Imprecision would seem to characterise its use, sometimes even among those for whom the concept is central to their analysis, and its over-use is seen to have resulted in a loss of analytical value. This has led some to argue that scholars would be best served by jettisoning this unhelpful label. Others point to what they view as a disconnect between neoliberal theory and the major transformations to states and economies through processes of deregulation and privatisation.

But, of course, the notion of a strict correspondence of concept and reality rarely provides a good basis from which to evaluate the usefulness of concepts. By their nature, the labels we use represent abstractions, approximations and ideal-types. Social science scholarship tends to characterise political economic-regimes with reference to the normative doctrines to which their supporters profess allegiance: Keynesianism, socialism, liberalism, etc. A label such as neoliberalism is of course not by itself capable of capturing the complex dynamics and variegated details of social formations. The question is rather whether it provides a useful entry point, a way of looking that can subsequently be enriched with empirical detail. The phenomena and processes of human life are inherently more complex than social-scientific concepts we use to comprehend them; this truism should not be used to fudge the issue of the relevance of neoliberalism. The labels we use are in many respects less important than our description of the political economic processes to which the label refers. It is therefore worth reviewing some of the main approaches to neoliberalism in order to lay the groundwork for presenting our own perspective.

It is useful to start with what we might call the ‘classic’ perspective on neoliberalism, which saw it in terms of the growing power of markets vis-à-vis nation-states. We find here a very literal interpretation of the ‘neo’ in ‘neoliberal’: it sees neoliberalism as a revival of classic laissez-faire liberalism, marked domestically by a return to the minimal state and internationally by the resubordination of national policy priorities to the forces of economic and financial globalisation. For many purposes, this is a useful way of thinking about the changes neoliberalism has set in motion. But the tendency of thinkers in this vein to quickly qualify their basic assertions about the decline of the state suggests that the model has clear limitations. That is to say, it often has major difficulty accounting for those aspects of neoliberalism that do not fit with the idea of a return to a laissez-faire state.

This focus can be contrasted to the tendency to put neoliberal ideas and theories at the centre of analysis – a tendency that has been pronounced among recent contributions. Many ideational accounts emphasise how neoliberal ideas have developed historically and the organisational forms through which this has occurred. Typically this entails a close reading of the texts produced by key neoliberal intellectuals, the ways these were translated by neoliberal think tanks and their relationships with political and economic elites. For some scholars, such analysis is primarily an exercise in intellectual history that seeks to understand the diversity of currents that comprise the neoliberal intellectual movement and the sometimes nuanced differences between its leading figures. But it is increasingly common for such scholars to either treat neoliberal ideas as the key to deciphering the logic of the neoliberal revolution in policy or to see a fairly straight causal line from the formulation of neoliberal ideas to the implementation of neoliberal policy models, uncovering the hidden machinations of neoliberal think tanks and their attempts to shift the prevailing climate of opinion.

Emblematic of the latter tendency is Mirowski’s focus on the ‘neoliberal thought collective’ – the network of think tanks centred on the Mont Pelerin Society that mobilised from the 1940s onwards to shift elite opinion in a neoliberal direction. He recognises that neoliberalism did not entail a weakened or smaller state, nor free markets. Rather, he argues that the neoliberal thought collective and intellectuals such as Hayek and Friedman deliberately sought to cultivate an image of neoliberalism as concerned with the promotion of the freeing of markets by limiting the state, all the while recognising that any form of state action, including authoritarianism, was consistent with constructing a competitive economic order based on private property. Mirowski describes this as ‘the double truth doctrine’, a strategy whereby the neoliberal thought collective publicly advocated free markets and small states, whereas in their own private meetings and with policy elites they advocated the state-enforcement of market rule.

If we take Mirowski’s account as the limit point of the idealist take on neoliberalism, it readily bears out some of its limitations. Certainly conspiracies exist and we may readily grant that the Mont Pelerin Society is as close to one as we may ever hope to find evidence of; but the mere discovery of a conspiracy should not lead us to assume that it must have succeeded in realising its goals in the way it intended, or that it has been the organisational force behind its own realisation. In other words, we should not assume that neoliberalism can only rise to power through bypassing democratic institutions and the popular will. Although neoliberalism has involved its fair share of vanguardist initiatives, as a blanket statement this is untenable. Among the most telling examples here, what should we make of the many working-class Brits who voted for Thatcher, and the many working-class Americans who voted for Reagan? To say that these people simply have been misled by the ‘double truth’ machinations of neoliberal elites is to revert to a crude notion of ideology that has been widely discredited, and for good reason.

Still other scholars understand neoliberalism as the product of institutional variables. Such approaches tend to reject the idea that economic transformations simply mirror the prescriptions of neoliberal theory, and focus instead on identifying the actual development of pro-market and pro-business policy shifts, investigating how nationally specific institutional architectures mediate the adoption and implementation of neoliberal ideas. Such institutionalist approaches alert us to the unevenness, variegation and contextual specificity evident in the roll-out of neoliberalism globally. Moreover, by highlighting that privatisations and deregulations in practice often led to a proliferation of new regulations, the rich empirical studies produced by scholars within this tradition of analysis also provide a useful corrective to the over-simplistic view of neoliberalism as a system of rolling back the state.

The Forces of Neoliberalism

But where this literature is less robust is in explaining what forces are at work, amidst all the diversity of institutional dynamics, that requires using a generalising concept like ‘neoliberalism’. In other words, the institutionalist literature tends to be insufficiently concerned with the systemic dynamics of the capitalist economy and the common pressures that it imposes. Even though the global economic crisis of the 1970s is often seen as a catalyst for the changes being analysed, in many institutional accounts the global economy lurks in the background of analysis – forming the context for the story of institutional transformation, yet not amenable to explanation by the conceptual tools of institutional analysis itself. In reducing the question of neoliberalism to a purely empirical one, it seems that we may be missing out on some of its key aspects and its distinctive significance.

Neoliberalism should not be separated from a more general understanding of capitalism: neoliberalism, as Alfredo Saad-Filho argues is ‘the mode of existence of contemporary capitalism’. At the same time, however, we should not understand neoliberalism as simply a return to a basic form capitalism. Here we follow the spirit of other scholars, such as Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, who share a concern to avoid overly idealist explanations and to incorporate institutional factors into their analysis, but remain concerned to formulate a critique of neoliberalism as a distinctive political project. Neoliberalism represents an attempt to reconstruct capitalism in a way that registers some of the limitations of classic liberalism. Unlike classic liberalism, neoliberalism does not take the existence or reproduction of capitalism for granted. It is keenly aware that markets not are not natural phenomena that simply emerge when institutional obstacles are absent.

This constructivist impulse is at the heart of what Jamie Peck refers to as ‘neoliberal reason’ and it is why neoliberalism involves much more than simple deregulation. Neoliberalism is characterised by a certain degree of comfort with the constitutive character of institutional interventions: at its heart is an awareness that, whatever its official slogans might declare and however important promises of getting the state out of people’s business are to its political legitimacy, its success is not predicated on the realisation of some utopian state of non-intervention. It is such a focus on the institutional transformations effected by neoliberalism that can be usefully elaborated through an engagement with the history of neoliberal ideas. Peck draws on the history of neoliberal ideas, not in order to find the origins of the neoliberal project as it was later realised, but rather as new sources of insight into the distinctive logic of neoliberalism. This steers the analysis of neoliberalism away from exaggerated concern with the actions of small circles of political and ideological elites. It expresses the idea that the power of neoliberalism does not just involve the top-down imposition of a regime biased in favour of corporate and financial interests, but is also rooted in a broader field of beliefs, practices and institutions. And yet the notion that free markets are the most efficient and desirable basis of human organisation and the claim that states are inherently inefficient are at the heart of the logic and appeal of neoliberalism.

These two poles of market construction and market freedom coordinate neoliberal reason, a rather malleable set of political heuristics that, from the 1970s, came to shape processes of political and economic transformation that had been set in motion by the crisis of the early post-war order. It provided political and economic elites with modes of seeing, formatting and interpreting in ways that were certainly ideological, but also broadly compatible with the imperative to restructure faltering capital accumulation. Central to this was a much greater engagement of corporations in the delivery of social services through policies of privatisation and marketisation; the extensive deregulation of industries, including financial deregulation which enabled financial capital to play a more dominant role within the global economy and indeed, people’s everyday lives; new approaches to macroeconomic policy, beginning with the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system of exchange rate controls and culminating in a focus on low inflation and tolerance of much higher levels of unemployment than previously; and a confrontation of the power of labour unions. This resulted in a new institutional architecture for managing capitalist social relations, at both domestic and global levels, even if there was a deep temporal and geographic unevenness to this process.

This post is an abridged excerpt from the Introduction to Damien Cahill and Martijn Konings’ new book, Neoliberalism, published as part of Polity’s ‘Key Concepts’ series.

Damien Cahill is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. His research examines the dynamics of neoliberalism as well as theories of capitalism as a socially embedded system of value production. His publications include: Market Society: History, Theory, Practice (with Ben Spies Butcher and Joy Paton; Cambridge University Press 2012); The End of Laissez-Faire? On the Durability of Embedded Neoliberalism(Edward Elgar 2014) and Neoliberalism (with Martijn Konings; Polity Press 2017).

Martijn Konings works in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Development of American Finance(Cambridge University Press, 2011), The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed (Stanford University Press, 2015), Neoliberalism (with Damien Cahill, Polity, 2017) and Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason (Stanford University Press, 2018). With Melinda Cooper, he edits the new Stanford University Press series “Currencies: New Thinking for Financial Times.”

Featured image is from Socialist Project.

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Volunteers Create Worlds

December 2nd, 2017 by Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir

Featured image: Yossef Ben-Meir (author) and project partners visiting the Aboghlou women’s cooperative in the Ourika Valley, Morocco.

A world created is one that begins with a path taken by an individual who gives time, energy, thought, and care without personal material return, to people seeking a genuine change. The volunteer-of-oneself may begin this journey with heavy concern over the unknown, with boundless belief in the infinitely possible, and with even outright alienation from the people to benefit. The giver-without-recompense may start a dialogue within oneself, asking why am I here, what can I do that really matters, and must I do this and feel cold, tired, hungry, and alone?

The passage of time, persistence, and remaining true to the ideal of service-to-others leads to people’s familiarity with the volunteer. Stories of joy and hardship are sometimes shared, dreams and fears may be expressed, and trust emerges from the people’s observations of the volunteer during setting after setting. Finally, the people’s acceptance opens a pathway for creation.

There can be no set timetable for this new path to development becoming open. Social and environmental factors that are understood, that could take a lifetime to precisely identify, or that are oftentimes uncontrollable, bear upon the pace at which a volunteer’s service may become supported by the people. At a certain point, however, a moment is reached after the volunteer passes an unacknowledged and informal trial set by the community when they become willing to gather for a meeting, facilitated by the volunteer. At this time, there are methods – call them participatory, action research, community management, or by more than 100 other names – that assist the local participants in assessing their priority needs and viable project options.

The volunteer plays a key role in launching this analytical process taken by the community. The giver to local sustainable change helps to coordinate a suitable time and location for people to meet. The volunteer works to ensure that all people – women and men, homeowners and homeless, youth and retirees, all and one – are part of the conversation about the first and following initiatives they create. The volunteer shares information about prospective public and civil, local and distant, partners to a given development project. The volunteer organizes the community’s data, searches for synergies, writes proposals, identifies funding – and builds the capacities of the people so that they can carry forward this change process for themselves.

What exactly is the new world created from this evolving experience? An empowered path taken by the people; a discovery of a future far more fulfilling than the future prior imagined; new and changed relationships derived from a new and changed sense-of-self; and a new world gained from livelihoods derived from one’s own production that is achieved in conjunction with others. In Morocco – where I have given as a Peace Corps and civil society volunteer and then supported others in their giving – this means women’s healing and legal recourses from abuse, drinking water in schools and deserts, organic fruit trees stopping eroding places, university students once volunteers facilitating change and now employed to accomplish change, and Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people restoring together their scared sites as a strategy for poverty-alleviation. It involves program and policy advocacy at all levels to advance the sustainable development the nation has envisioned for itself. It means consequences that we can measure, and generational ones that have yet to enter our imagination.

For many volunteers, they may not have to blaze that initial beginning difficult pathway to new worlds, the winding road with its enough measures of doubt, misunderstanding, and even risk. They may instead find a placement to help already-accepting-others to further along an existing development pathway to transformation, or maybe even evaluate the tangible empowerment changes that have been generated by new projects.

In any case, there are also new worlds formed for and by the selfless traversing of the volunteers. They may be introduced to a profession that provides the wonderful flexibility to promote the people’s self-growth. Their studies may take an action-orientation, which recognizes that to explain a social problem without improving the situation leaves the research design incomplete. They move along a new way they would not have otherwise, meeting people, forming relationships, and effecting communities never before projected. They discover more of themselves, love more themselves and others, and find higher meaning that a harsh reality cannot take away. They become filled with the people’s stories, and can with time and the accumulation of the narratives, communicate on behalf of the marginalized.

Advocates of including service in schools and the workplace remind us that we are three times more likely to volunteer if we are asked to do so. With December fifth’s International Volunteer Day mobilizing thousands of volunteers, let’s join this chorus and energy that will forge better worlds that reflect our giving-selves and the sustainable projects that are just steps away.

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is president of the High Atlas Foundation and a sociologist.

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Regime Change: Will Macedonia be Removed from the Map in 2018?

December 2nd, 2017 by Andrew Korybko

The future looks very grim for Macedonia as the newly installed pro-Western coup “government” wastes no time in dismantling the country’s identity and selling out sovereignty to some of its hostile neighbors, both of which could have the cumulative effect of erasing what is constitutionally known as the Republic of Macedonia from the world map by sometime next year and replacing it with a domestically reconstituted “federalized” (internally partitioned) entity internationally recognized by a “politically correct” “compromise” moniker.

Backdrop To The Balkans

The tiny South-Central Balkan country of the Republic of Macedonia is in dire straits right now, but most of Europe – let alone the rest of the world – has no idea that this is the case because the Mainstream Media narrative is that the state’s two-year-long political crisis was “resolved” when the patriotic VMRO-DPMNE government of Nikola Gruevski was replaced in a “constitutional/electoral coup” that followed Color Revolution and even Hybrid War provocations. The author wrote about this in a Sputnik piece at the time from May 2017 titled “The Macedonian Crisis Isn’t Over, and a Bigger Balkan One is Just Beginning”, and the reader should review that article and also skim through his Oriental Review & Sputnik archives on the topic if they’re not already familiar with the contextual backdrop of what happened and why.

In a nutshell, the Republic of Macedonia was targeted for Hybrid War destabilization in order to offset Russia and China’s Balkan megaprojects of the Balkan Stream gas pipeline and Balkan Silk Road, respectively, that are expected to transit through the country, though with the former possibly being redirected to Bulgaria instead. In any case, a trumped-up “surveillance” scandal was used as the Color Revolution “trigger event” for attempting to coerce a Regime Tweak (political concessions), the failure of which forced the external conspirators and their internal foreign-backed SDSM “opposition” collaborators to move towards the next step of Regime Change, though eventually the decision was made for a Regime Reboot (constitutional change) to fundamentally cripple the country and forever prevent its key integration in the emerging Multipolar World Order.

The point of this piece isn’t to chronicle all of the author’s previous analyses on the topic, nor to reiterate his explanation about what’s previously been happening and why, but to engage in forward-focused reporting and scenario forecasting in raising awareness about the fraught future that awaits the Republic of Macedonia.

Macedonia political map

The Great Partition

The newly installed pro-Western coup “government” of Zoran Zaev and his foreign-backed SDSM cohorts has swiftly moved to cut a serious of external and internal deals that are bound to endanger the country’s existence by next year. For starters, despite denying it all throughout the 2016 campaign, his party is now aggressively trying to push through “bilingualism” in setting the institutional precedent for what logically seems to be the country’s inevitable forthcoming “federalization” (internal partition). Concurrently with this, he also signed a “treaty” with neighboring Bulgaria that essentially makes Macedonia a junior-rank partner susceptible to being swallowed up by its civilizationally similar brethren to the east in the event of a serious domestic crisis, such as the one that could be sparked on command by the country’s “federalization” and de-facto partial absorption into the revived Nazi-era geopolitical project of “Greater Albania”.

The formal international partition of the Republic of Macedonia between Albania and Bulgaria is what the author predicted back in May 2015 and which was even indirectly responded to by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the time during the height of the country’s Color Revolution crisis, but this process has since taken on an unofficial form as well if Macedonia is “federalized” into an Albanian western half simultaneously with its eastern one being socio-economically subsumed by Bulgaria, with this latter scenario being facilitated by the Albanian “bilingualism” push and recent “treaty” with Bulgaria. Some Macedonians have keenly picked up on this plot, but that’s why the ruling authorities have sought to imprison patriotic citizens and political figures in order to intimidate the rest of the population into passively allowing this anti-constitutional and even treasonous process of state dismantlement to continue.

Zaev’s “Dictatorship Of The Proletariat”

At the same time as SDSM is locking up its political opponents, it’s also trying to pass through a controversial “amnesty” proposal for freeing convicted criminals, which might even apply to Daesh terrorists who are returning to the country. Despite the “government’s” heavy American-ordered pressure on civil society, the Republika online information outlet was brave enough to write about this appalling dichotomy in pointing out how imprisoned terrorists and free patriots are poised to switch places if Zaev gets what he wants. This alone speaks to the silent “lustration” process that’s being carried out in the country right now to “cleanse” its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”), as well as academic, media, and other institutions, of all opposition to the coup-imposed authorities.

Interestingly, SDSM is establishing a sort of “dictatorship of the proletariat” in Macedonia, seeing as how the party presents itself as a “leftist-socialist” one, and true to the tradition of this ideological camp, it’s using the cover and slogans of the working class (“proletariat”) to set up an actual dictatorship in the country. Just like it’s usually happened in the past, “leftist-socialist” demagogues are distracting the masses with high-sounding platitudes and crafting a media-acceptable narrative for their external backers to hide behind in “justifying” the seizure of power by an elite group of individuals who are far removed from the actual concerns of the working class. History has a curious way of repeating itself, as the EU is the warped ideological successor of the Soviet Union taken to its most dystopian socio-cultural and dictatorial extremes, so there’s a certain “logic” behind why this faux “leftist-socialist” “government” is so fawning towards Brussels.

But unlike during the Soviet period of the Old Cold War when any ideologically aligned country could join the Eastern Bloc, in the “EuroLiberal” era of the New Cold War there are certain bureaucratic obstacles that prevent the free accession of aspirant states to both the EU and NATO, namely – pun intended – the Republic of Macedonia’s constitutional name. The aforementioned post-modern unipolar structures occupying Western Eurasia are set up in such a way that new admissions must be consensually agreed upon by all existing members, and in this case Greece is adamantly opposed to Macedonia joining either of these two. What might have at one time been viewed as a “curse” in the chaotic international uncertainty immediately following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, this “veto right” has actually turned into a “blessing” because it formally kept Macedonia out of both organizations until the present day.

Greek Macedonia map

Name Games

Nevertheless, the US-installed coup “government” of Zaev’s SDSM wants to change that, but the only way that he can do so is if he gets rid of Macedonia’s constitutional name and therefore erases the country from the map. It doesn’t matter if it’s called “New Macedonia”, “Northern Macedonia”, or “The Central Balkan Republic” like has been speculatively reported, or even the author’s own admittedly absurd prediction of the “Federation of Vardar Albania”, but the fact of the matter is that it won’t be the Republic of Macedonia, a name which has taken on a semi-sacred aura as the torchbearer of Macedonian identity across its rich history. The EU Commissioner signaled that he expects Zaev to change Macedonia’s name by next year, which would then allow the country to be fast-tracked into both the EU and NATO and thus formalize its occupation by the Western elite.

All of this should rightly enrage any Macedonian, but Zaev and his fellow underlings are unfazed because they don’t have any patriotic affiliation to their homeland. Just like their Soviet predecessors, their loyalty lies with an ideology, not a nation, which is why they’re literally selling Macedonia out to Albania, Bulgaria, and the EU in order to please Greece and therefore fulfill the US’ grand strategic vision of annexing their country to its hegemonic unipolar institutions in order to more effectively disrupt, control, or influence China’s (and possibly Russia’s) Balkan megaproject(s). The final step is to remove Macedonia’s constitutional name and replace it with a “compromise” one, but the run-up to dealing a deathblow to this ancient country is the destruction of the monuments to Macedonia’s civilizational heritage that were built as the flagships of the former VMRO government’s Skopje 2014 project.

Monument Mockery

To add insult to injury, the “Cultural Marxist” erasure of all visible signs of Macedonia’s historical uniqueness will probably be directly supervised by Hoyt Brian Yee, Victoria Nuland’s successor and expected replacement of current US Ambassador to Macedonia Jess Baily. Yee was just as responsible for Macedonia’s coup as Nuland was for Ukraine’s, yet at least the Eastern European country wasn’t totally humiliated to the point of having her officially oversee the destruction of its monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine’s first-ever statehood no matter how “politically incorrect” it is for its ultra-nationalists to ever acknowledge. In Macedonia’s case, however, the Balkan country is being forced to endure the shame of having the man most directly responsible for their coup placed in charge of seeing out the destruction of monuments representing a much older civilizational heritage than just the past 100 years.

If the Skopje 2014 monuments, especially the horseman in the city center that’s clearly supposed to be Alexander the Macedonian, are destroyed, then it will probably be impossible to prevent Macedonia’s name change and its subsequently swift annexation into the EU and NATO alongside the state-supported suppression of its people’s culture, history, and civilization. The “government’s” plan to make a mockery of Macedonia’s monuments and disown its very identity could function as an emergency “trigger event” for sparking a “reverse-Color Revolution”, which the author previously analyzed as the creative utilization of Color Revolution techniques by patriotic individuals for multipolar and pro-sovereignty purposes, just like what was attempted in May when concerned citizens unsuccessfully tried to prevent their parliament’s takeover by a former Albanian separatist-terrorist who was designed by Zaev as that body’s “speaker”.

A Third Force Is Calling

If Macedonians don’t band together to stop what is being falsely marketed as an “apolitical and anti-corruption municipal decision”, then it might be inevitable that their country will cease to exist in its present name and possibly even state (per an internal and/or external partition) by next year. If the monuments fall, Macedonia falls, once and for all, which is why the last chance to save Macedonia is to save its monuments. VMRO has the greatest potential to organize legal and peaceful demonstrations in support of this pressingly important issue, but some of the party elite are unfortunately partly compromised due to what can only be postulated is American blackmail pressure against them, be it the threat of physical violence or illegal arrest on fake pretexts (“anti-corruption”, “abuse of power”, etc.) by the coup “government”. As such, a Third Force needs to eventually emerge, possibly growing out of VMRO and the various civil society movements aligned with it, in order to counteract the limitations being imposed on the former ruling party and serve as a bridge for attracting “moderate” SDSM supporters who were misled during the last election.

The protection of Macedonia’s monuments – and accordingly its statehood, civilization, and identity – mustn’t be framed as a partisan political issue, which isn’t at all what VMRO is doing but its potentially pivotal role in being the organizational center of such a civil society movement might make it easier for SDSM and its American backers to manipulate the perception that it is, which is why it’s essential that a Third Force develop in leading the way during this historically crucial moment. Whatever it’s called and however it’s formed, this Third Force will be the vanguard actor protecting Macedonia from dismantlement, with its members understanding that it’s now or never to safeguard their state because its very existence is incompatible with the EU and NATO’s plans expansionist plans. The Republic of Macedonia is slated to be removed from the map so that its people and territory can be formally annexed to these two unipolar structures under Zaev’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and all indications point to 2018 being the make-or-break year where Macedonia’s patriots will either prevail or the country itself will perish.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea: More Proof of the Colossal Russiagate Scam

December 2nd, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE:

Contact at [email protected].

The media hullabaloo over Flynn’s plea is more proof of the colossal Russiagate scam.

He pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, relating to conversations he had during the transition period with former Russia ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak.

Many congressional members had personal contact with him, part of their job and Flynn’s as a key member of Trump’s transition team at the time.

Through its ambassador, he reportedly tried urging Russia to hold off expelling US diplomats in retaliation for Obama administration expulsions, along with opposing last December’s SC Res. 2334, declaring Israeli settlements illegal, flagrantly violating international law.

The vote was 14 – 0 with Washington abstaining. It broke longstanding US tradition, vetoing over 40 SC resolutions hostile to Israeli interests.

Flynn technically violated the 1799 Logan Act, amended in 1994. It prohibits unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments – considered an attempt to influence bilateral relations.

The act remained unused since passage, no one prosecuted under the law in over 200 years. Legal experts suggest it’s unconstitutional. It’s been used more as a threat than justification for prosecution.

Why did the FBI question Flynn about anything relating to his transition team job, specifically contacts with foreign officials, namely Kislyak?

His only offense was telling what amounts to a white lie, nothing warranting the witch-hunt investigation he was put through, resulting in his guilty plea over nothing.

The aim, of course, was trying to build a case for nonexistent Russian inference in America’s political process, along with anything suggesting illegal or improper Trump dealings with Moscow.

After months of House, Senate and special council Mueller investigations, not a shred of proof was found making either case – just baseless allegations and accusations, no evidence supporting them.

The neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post jumped on Flynn’s plea, ludicrously saying “the Russia affair just got bigger,” falsely claiming “Flynn…sought help from the Russian ambassador in undermining the Obama administration’s policies.”

His contacts with Kislyak had nothing to do with “undermining” anyone. Reportedly, Jared Kushner asked Flynn to urge
Russian opposition to SC 2334, not a crime by either individual.

WaPo: “In negotiating with the Kremlin before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Trump transition team undermined the foreign policy of the sitting president.”

“What’s more, the Obama administration designed its sanctions against Russia as retaliation for election interference.”

“Mr. Flynn apparently promised that the next administration would review those sanctions – meaning Mr. Trump’s advisers sought to weaken the US attempt to hold Russia accountable for its meddling.”

Fact: Nothing was done by Flynn or any other Trump transition member to undermine Obama.

Fact: No Russian US election interference occurred.

Fact: Unilaterally imposed US sanctions on Russia or any other countries are illegal, flagrantly violating international law.

Fact: If Flynn supported lifting them, he warrants praise, not condemnation.

Endless witch-hunt investigations continue, wasting time and money, proving nothing except more evidence of America’s deeply corrupted political system – far too debauched to fix.

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].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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White House May Share Nuclear Power Technology with Saudi Arabia

December 2nd, 2017 by Isaac Arnsdorf

The Trump administration is holding talks on providing nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia — a move that critics say could upend decades of U.S. policy and lead to an arms race in the Middle East.

The Saudi government wants nuclear power to free up more oil for export, but current and former American officials suspect the country’s leaders also want to keep up with the enrichment capabilities of their rival, Iran.

Saudi Arabia needs approval from the U.S. in order to receive sensitive American technology. Past negotiations broke down because the Saudi government wouldn’t commit to certain safeguards against eventually using the technology for weapons.

Now the Trump administration has reopened those talks and might not insist on the same precautions. At a Senate hearing on Nov. 28, Christopher Ford, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation, disclosed that the U.S. is discussing the issue with the Saudi government. He called the safeguards a “desired outcome” but didn’t commit to them.

Abandoning the safeguards would set up a showdown with powerful skeptics in Congress. “It could be a hell of a fight,” one senior Democratic congressional aide said.

The idea of sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia took an unlikely path to the highest levels of government. An eccentric inventor and a murky group of retired military brass — most of them with plenty of medals but no experience in commercial nuclear energy — have peddled various incarnations of the plan for years.

Tom Barrack (Source: Heavy.com)

Many U.S. officials didn’t think the idea was serious, reputable or in the national interest. “It smelled so bad I said I never wanted to be anywhere close to that,” one former White House official said. But the proponents persisted, and finally found an opening in the chaotic early days of the Trump administration, when advisers Michael Flynn and Tom Barrack championed the idea.

The Saudis have a legitimate reason to want nuclear power: Their domestic energy demand is growing rapidly, and burning crude oil is an expensive and inefficient way to generate electricity.

There’s also an obvious political motive. Many experts believe the Saudis aren’t currently trying to develop a nuclear bomb but want to lay the groundwork to do so in case Iran develops one. “There’s no question: Why do you have a nuclear reactor in the Persian Gulf? Because you want to have some kind of nuclear contingency capability,” said Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A Saudi spokesperson provided a written statement noting that the country’s electricity needs have grown “due to our population and industrial growth.” The statement noted that

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, hence is diversifying its energy mix to serve its domestic needs in accordance with international laws and standards. The Kingdom has been actively exploring diverse energy sources for nearly the last decade to meet growing domestic demand.”

The technology for nuclear weapons is different from that for nuclear energy, but there is some overlap. The fuel for a power plant can be used for a bomb if it’s enriched to a much higher level. Also, the waste from a power plant can be reprocessed into weapons grade material. That’s why nonproliferation experts generally prefer that countries that use nuclear power buy fuel on the international market instead of doing their own enrichment and reprocessing.

In 2008, the Saudi government made a nonbinding commitment not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing. They then entered negotiations with the U.S. for a pact on peaceful nuclear cooperation, known as a 123 agreement, after a section of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. A 123 agreement is a prerequisite for receiving American technology.

The talks stalled a few years later because the Saudi government backed away from its pledge not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing, according to current and former officials.

“They wouldn’t commit, and it was a sticking point,” said Max Bergmann, a former special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security at the time those negotiations occurred.

U.S. officials feared a domino effect. Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt restrict those countries from receiving the most sensitive technologies unless the U.S. allows them in another Middle Eastern country.

“If we accepted that from the Saudis, nobody else will give us legally binding commitment,” a former State Department official said.

During that same period, the Obama administration was pursuing an agreement to stop Iran’s progress toward building a nuclear bomb while letting the country keep some domestic enrichment capabilities it had already achieved. The Saudi government publicly supported the Iran deal but privately made clear they wanted to match Iran’s technology. A former official summarized the Saudi position as,

“We’re going to develop this kind of technology if they have this kind of technology.”

The Obama administration held firm with the Saudis because it’s one thing to cap nuclear technology where it already exists, but it’s longstanding U.S. policy not to spread the technology to new countries. As Saudi Arabia and Iran — ideological and religious opponents — increasingly squared off in a battle for political sway in the Middle East, Republicans argued that the Obama administration had it backwards: It was enshrining hostile Iran’s ability to enrich uranium while denying the same to America’s ally Saudi Arabia.

One such critic of Obama’s Iran policy was Michael Flynn, a lieutenant general who was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. Flynn quickly took up a variety of consulting assignments and joined some corporate boards. One of the former was an advisory position for a company called ACU Strategic Partners, which, according to a later financial disclosure, paid Flynn more than $5,000.

Flynn was one of many retired military officers whom ACU recruited. ACU’s chief was a man named Alex Copson, who is most often described in press accounts as a “colorful British-American dealmaker.” Copson reportedly made a fortune inventing a piece of diving equipment, may or may not have been a bass player in the band Iron Butterfly, and has been touting wildly ambitious nuclear-power plans since the 1980s. (He didn’t answer repeated requests for comment.)

By 2015, Copson was telling people he had a group of U.S., European, Arab and Russian companies that would build as many as 40 nuclear reactors in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Copson’s company pitched the Obama administration, but officials figured he didn’t really have the backers he claimed.

“They would say ‘We have Rolls-Royce on board,’ and then someone would ask Rolls-Royce and they would say, ‘No, we took a meeting and nothing happened,’” recalled a then-White House official.

In his role with ACU, Flynn flew to Egypt to convince officials there to hold off on a Russian offer (this one unrelated to ACU) to build nuclear power plants. Flynn tried to persuade the Egyptian government to consider Copson’s proposal instead, according to documents released by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Flynn also tried to persuade the Israeli government to support the plan and spoke at a conference in Saudi Arabia. (The trip would later present legal problems for Flynn because he didn’t report contacts with foreign officials on his application to renew his security clearance, according to Cummings. Cummings referred the information to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump’s associates and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment.)

Copson’s outfit eventually splintered. A retired admiral named Michael Hewitt, who was to head up the security services part of the project, struck out on his own in mid-2016. Flynn went with him.

Hewitt’s new company is called IP3 International, which is short for “International Peace Power & Prosperity.” IP3 signed up other prominent national security alumni including Gens. Keith Alexander, Jack Keane and James Cartwright, former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, Bush Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend, and Reagan National Security adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane.

IP3’s idea was a variation on ACU’s. Hewitt swapped out one notional foreign partner for another (Russia was out, China was in), then later shifted to an all-American approach. That idea resonated with the U.S. nuclear-construction industry, which never recovered from the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s and was looking to new markets overseas.

But nuclear exports are tightly controlled because the technology is potentially so dangerous. A 123 agreement is only the first step for a foreign country that wants to employ U.S. nuclear-power technology. In addition, the Energy Department has to approve the transfer of technology related to nuclear reactors and fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses reactor equipment, and the Commerce Department reviews exports for equipment throughout the rest of the power plant.

IP3 — whose sole project to date is the Saudi nuclear plan — never went through those normal channels. Instead, the company went straight to the top.

At the start of the Trump administration, IP3 found an ally in Tom Barrack, the new president’s close friend and informal adviser and an ultra-wealthy investor in his own right. During the campaign, Barrack wrote a series of white papers proposing a new approach to the Middle East in which economic cooperation would theoretically reduce the conditions for breeding terrorism and lead to improved relations.

Barrack wasn’t familiar with nuclear power as an option for the Middle East until he heard from Bud McFarlane. McFarlane, 80, is most remembered for his role in the defining scandal of the Reagan years: secretly selling arms to Iran and using the money to support Nicaraguan rebels. He pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress but was pardoned by George H.W. Bush.

Nevertheless, Barrack was dazzled by McFarlane and his IP3 colleagues. “I was like a kid in a candy shop — these guys were all generals and admirals,” Barrack said in an interview. “They found an advocate in me in saying I was keen on trying to establish a realignment of U.S. business interests with the Gulf’s business interests.”

McFarlane followed up the meeting by emailing Flynn in late January, according to six people who read the message or were told about it. McFarlane attached two documents. One outlined IP3’s plan, describing it as consistent with Trump’s philosophy. The second was a draft memo for the president to sign that would officially endorse the plan and instruct his cabinet secretaries to implement it. Barrack would take charge of the project as the interagency coordinator. Barrack had discussions about becoming ambassador to Egypt or a special envoy to the Middle East but never committed to such a role. (McFarlane disputed that account but repeatedly declined to specify any inaccuracies. IP3 declined to comment on the memos.)

Flynn, now on the receiving end of IP3’s lobbying, told his staff to put together a formal proposal to present to Trump for his signature, according to current and former officials.

The seeming end run sparked alarm. National Security Council staff brought the proposal to the attention of the agency’s lawyers, five people said, because they were concerned about the plan and how it was being advanced. Ordinarily, before presenting such a sensitive proposal to the president, NSC staff would consult with experts throughout government about practical and legal concerns. Bypassing those procedures raised the risks that private interests might use the White House to their own advantage, former officials said. “Circumventing that process has the ability not only to invite decisions that aren’t fully vetted but that are potentially unwise and have the potential to put our interests and our people at risk,” said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and NSC spokesman.

Even after those concerns were raised, Derek Harvey, then the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East, continued discussing the IP3 proposal with Barrack and his representative, Rick Gates, according to two people. Gates, a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, worked for Barrack on Trump’s inaugural committee and then for Barrack’s investment company, Colony NorthStar.

y then, Barrack was no longer considering a government position. Instead, he and Gates were seeking investment ideas based on the administration’s Middle East policy. Barrack pondered the notion, for example, of buying a piece of Westinghouse, the bankrupt U.S. manufacturer of nuclear reactors. (Harvey, now on the staff of the House intelligence committee, declined to comment through a spokesman. In October, Mueller charged Manafort and Gates with 12 counts including conspiracy against the U.S., unregistered foreign lobbying, and money laundering. They both pleaded not guilty. Gates’ spokesman didn’t answer requests for comment.)

Ultimately, it wasn’t the NSC staff’s concerns that stalled IP3’s momentum. Rather, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior aide tasked with reviving a Middle East peace process, wanted to table the nuclear question in favor of simpler alliance-building measures with the Saudis, centered on Trump’s visit in May, according to a person familiar with the discussions. (A spokesperson for Kushner, asked for comment, had not provided one at the time this article was published; we’ll update the article if he provides one later.)

In recent months, the proposal has stirred back to life as the Saudi government kicked off a formal process to solicit bids for their first reactors. In October, the Saudis sent a request for information to the U.S., France, South Korea, Russia and China — the strongest signal yet that they’re serious about nuclear power.

The Saudi solicitation also gave IP3 the problem its solution was searching for. The company pivoted again, narrowing its pitch to organizing a consortium of U.S. companies to compete for the Saudi tender. IP3 won’t say which companies it has signed up. IP3 also won’t discuss the fees it hopes to receive if it were part of a Saudi nuclear plan, but it’s vying to supply cyber and physical site security for the plants. “IP3 has communicated its strategy to multiple government entities and policy makers in both the Obama and Trump administrations,” the company said in a statement. “We view these meetings and any documents relating to them as private, and we won’t discuss them.”

The Saudi steps lit a fire under administration officials. Leading the charge is Rick Perry, the energy secretary who famously proposed eliminating the department and then admitted he didn’t understand its function. (It includes dealing with nuclear power and weapons.) Perry had also heard IP3’s pitch, a person familiar with the situation said. In September, Perry met with Saudi delegates to an international atomic energy conference and discussed energy cooperation, according to a photo posted on his Facebook page. Perry’s spokeswoman didn’t answer requests for comment.

Other steps followed. Soon after, a senior State Department official flew to Riyadh to restart formal 123 negotiations, according to an industry source. (A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.) In November, Energy and State Department officials joined a commercial delegation to Abu Dhabi led by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main lobby in Washington. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Edward McGinnis said the administration wants to revitalize the U.S. nuclear energy industry, including by pursuing exports to Saudi Arabia. The Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration and the Energy Department are organizing another industry visit in December to meet with Saudi officials, according to a notice obtained by ProPublica. And in the days before Thanksgiving, senior U.S. officials from several agencies met at the White House to discuss the policy, according to current and former officials.

The Trump administration hasn’t stated a position on whether it will let the Saudis have enrichment and reprocessing technology. An NSC spokesman declined to comment. But administration officials have begun sounding out advisers on how Congress might react to a deal that gives the Saudis enrichment and reprocessing, a person familiar with the discussions said.

Senators have started demanding answers. At the Nov. 28 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ford, the NSC nonproliferation official who has been nominated to lead the State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, testified that preliminary talks with the Saudis are underway but declined to discuss the details in public. As noted, Ford wouldn’t commit to barring the Saudi government from obtaining enrichment and reprocessing technology. “It remains U.S. policy, as it has been for some time, to seek the strongest possible nonproliferation protections in every instance,” he told the senators. “It is not a legal requirement. It is a desired outcome.” Ford added that the Iran deal makes it harder to insist on limiting other countries’ capabilities.

Sen. Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who led the questioning of Ford on this topic, seemed highly resistant to the idea of the U.S. helping Saudi Arabia get nuclear technology. “If we continue down this pathway,” he said, “then there’s a recipe for disaster which we are absolutely creating ourselves.” Markey also accused the administration of neglecting its statutory obligation to brief the committee on the negotiations. (The White House declined to comment.)

Any agreement, in this case with Saudi Arabia, would not require Senate approval. However, should an agreement be reached, Congress could kill the deal. The two houses would have 90 days to pass a joint resolution disapproving it. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Ben Cardin, suggested they wouldn’t accept a deal that lacked the same protections as the ones in the UAE’s agreement. “If we don’t draw a line in the Middle East, it’s going to be all-out proliferation,” he said. “We need to maintain the UAE’s standards in our 123 agreements. There’s just too many other countries that could start proliferating issues that could be against our national interest.”

Bob Corker, the committee’s chairman, has been a stickler on nonproliferation in the past; he criticized the Obama administration for not being tough enough. Corker isn’t running for reelection and has criticized Trump for being immature and reckless in foreign affairs, so he’s unlikely to shy away from a fight. (A spokesman declined to comment.) “The absence of a consistent policy weakens our nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and sends a mixed message to those nations we seek to prevent from gaining or enhancing such capability,” Corker said at a hearing in 2014. “Which standards can we expect the administration to reach for negotiating new agreements with Jordan or Saudi Arabia?”

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Normalizing the Unthinkable in “Western” Exceptionalism

December 2nd, 2017 by Dr. Anthony F. Shaker

On November 11, Polish Independence Day, Warsaw saw large throngs pouring into the streets chanting “Clean Blood,” “Death to enemies of the homeland,” “Europe will be white or uninhabited,” and “No to Islam.” Neo-fascists were seen giving the “Sieg Heil” salute with balaclavas to hide their faces. When the grouping All Poland Youth began organizing this march back in 2010, parallel to the official celebration marking the end of foreign imperial rule in 1918, it used to attract a few hundred hard-core supporters. This year three ultranationalist groups managed to bring out 60,000 people.

The popularity of fringe movements has risen sharply with the large influxes of refugees from the Syrian conflict. By hanging on to the coattails of the United States in its most recent attempt to destroy the government of Syria, the European Union (EU) led by England, France and Germany unwittingly threw open the refugee floodgates, provoking virulent anti-immigrant reactions especially among the EU’s poorer member states. Far from settling, this chain reaction portends ill for the stuttering EU. It has certainly destabilized further troubled countries like Poland and poisoned relations with its current regime. The EU leadership, long been criticized for haughtily overriding local concerns, is now at loggerheads with Poland on a number of issues, just as it has been with Bulgaria’s nationalist and publicly abrasive leader. In Germany, the refugee crisis precipitated by the war against Syria has cost Chancellor Angela Merkel valuable voter support that would have averted the predicament she faces trying to form a new governing coalition.

A New Language of Intolerance

“White”—a pseudo-racial designation originally coined by the English—has strangely become standard among extreme nationalists living in culturally and historically distinct eastern Europe. The old Pan-Slavism and other ultranationalisms had a pronounced tendency toward intolerance and mutual hatreds, but dividing the world into “white” Europe and the “nonwhites” of everywhere else is quaintly new. It mocks humanity, of course, not to mention the reality of population distribution since the dawn of history. Above all, though, it indicates the extent to which radicals there have learned to parrot the language of western Europe: “We the West” (enlarged to include central and eastern Europe) vs. “They the rest.”

By “nonwhite,” of course, they mean to refer to all “outsiders,” as Muslims have been specifically designated. It makes no difference whether the “nonwhite” outsider’s hair is blonde or blue, whether his or her country of origin lies just across the EU border or halfway around the globe. The absorption of the former Warsaw Pact countries into the EU has warped people’s self-perceptions, and thus their politics, by aligning public mentalities with a vestige of the colonial era: the racial worldview according to which England and France originally interacted with the rest of the world after gaining world hegemony a century and a half ago.

Unfortunately, the ultranationalists conveniently overlook the histories of their own countries. Islamic civilization has been indigenous to the European subcontinent since the eighth century AD. Covering almost the entire civilized world and profoundly pluralistic, religiously as well as ethnically, it predominated for around twelve centuries. From the two opposite ends of the subcontinent seeped the philosophy, science and technology of this brilliant civilization into a tiny, geographically isolated northwestern region. Hopelessly backward and straddling present-day France, England and Spain, the northwest was the core region that the 19th and 20th centuries later christened “the West.”

Today, 35-50 million Muslims are indigenous—not immigrants—to the European subcontinent. They live in the Balkans and up to Poland itself. There they have remained despite the mass expulsions and systematic massacres, including the murder of hundreds of thousands in Bulgaria in the 1890s. Though still numerous, Bosnians were once a strong and proud nation that contributed great leaders, thinkers and scientists to the Ottoman world. Miraculously, Muslim-majority countries like Albania, Azerbaijan, Russia’s Caucasus republics and others elsewhere also have survived. No one really knows how many millions in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and Palestine trace their ancestry to the expulsions from Europe.

The long Islamic experience of eastern Europe survives in the languages, culinary habits and collective memories of people, just as it does in modern Spain. Yet, this did not prevent a shocking banner during a Polish independence demonstration in 2015 that read: “Prayer for an Islamic Holocaust.” Poles are thought to have lost about a quarter of their population when they were conquered by Nazi-ruled Germany. Nazi racial doctrine relegated them—like most eastern Europeans—to “mongrel” or “subhuman” status.

Despite mainstream media reports, the offensive banner fortunately was not sighted in this year’s march. However, the present government is led by the right-wing Law and Justice Party, and authorities decide what is legal and acceptable for public display. Ministers went out of their way to describe what was merely an annual march by fringe groups as a “regular event,” thereby granting it an official stamp of approval. When the demonstration was over, they insisted that all legal requirements had been met. Granted, the violence triggered in the past by counterdemonstrations did not happen, but Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak also denied there were any racist slogans.

“It’s only your opinion, because you behave like a political activist,” he answered the prying reporter interviewing him.

Liberal or Conservative?

The interior minister’s party rode to power on the same xenophobic wave that placed many rightist parties and their candidates in positions of power all over eastern Europe and in Austria, Germany, France, England, the United States. This is not to say that many, if not most, voters are not appalled at the direction that the public discourse has taken. So, politicians are well-advised to avoid the expediency of using back-alley prejudices to endear themselves to a fictional electorate. Fear of instability usually overrides other considerations come voting time.

There are already signs of a backlash against the populist tide. Like Donald Trump in the White House, British PM Theresa May’s stubborn tone and incoherent policies have isolated her—she and several of her ministers face repeated accusations of incompetence. Whereas the Labor Party’s new Palestine-friendly leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is on the ascendancy, France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen received a beating in the last election, despite her image as an inveterate iconoclast.

The new political actors of the right have, in one way or another, contested the way politics has been run, internationally and on immigration-related issues, though May appears little more than a weak mouthpiece for the single-issue proponents of Brexit. Traditional liberals and not a few progressive voices have shown their true stripes by joining the chorus over regime-change schemes abroad. In their hatred for President Trump, their lightning rod, they have made a contrarian’s miscalculation that my enemy’s friend must be my enemy. They lump Trump with Russian President Putin in an underhanded conspiracy to hobble the former, while longing for an “even-headed” leader like Barack Obama. Never mind that there have been calls for Obama, whom many others consider a worse warmonger than Bush, Jr., to be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize. On Obama’s watch, moreover, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence services intruded—among other things—into the private lives of literally everyone on the planet, not just Americans. Only a short while ago that was the stuff of thrillers and SciFi flicks.

Still, there is no turning back the clock. The wave of populism sweeping the Western world has already upturned the glib politics-as-usual of the overbearing Liberal Establishment. Nevertheless, the liberal wing of the Establishment, taking no for an answer, is melding indistinguishably into the Neoconservative cabal, whose primary objective is to lock US foreign policy into the pro-Israel lobby’s plan for the Middle East. Ironically, “liberals” have been able to forge ahead without missing a beat thanks to, not in spite of, Trump. Trump has opened new doors for entrenched interests in government bureaucracies and big business frustrated by a changing world. Wasting no time to turn everything on its head, he has resorted to direct threats instead of multilateralism or the liberals’ usual doubletalk, with which the rest of world has learned to roll.

Some Background

“Liberal Establishment” is a popular catchall label, but it’s not bad for a description of the motley political and economic interests that have made common cause as the self-crowned defenders of “world order.” It should be noted, though, that the word liberal here has little bearing on how open- or close-minded a person happens to be. “Neoliberal” economic policy, for example, is a form of “revolutionary” conservatism that seeks to deregulate everything, including the banking sector whose creative practices precipitated the most calamitous financial crises in living memory. It does so solely to allow big business to milk an economic system that is in unremitting historical decline. Neoliberal economics has been used since the 1970s to overturn social orders, not preserve them, but in a manner that safeguards a few vested interests. Much like in a corporatist state, those interests are assigned the broad task of driving economic activity along a prescribed path under new and increasingly turbulent conditions.

Yet, the Liberal Establishment flirted with rival policies long before neoliberalism decisively replaced the Keynesian model, and has been steering the same capitalist ship under successive liberal- and conservative-led governments. Whatever its policy of the day happens to be, it has learned to adapt to the disorders it creates while augmenting its worth in the eyes of the public as the indispensable guarantor of security. Its legitimacy depends entirely on its ability to perpetuate unsustainable economies through overabundance, the expansion of security regimes and one foreign war after another.

In the past few decades, there has been no shortage of criticism of the overbearing character of the Postwar order. Without a broader context, though, critics are easily co-opted, and the mistakes of the past are liable to be repeated. If, as Marx once wrote, history repeats itself only as a farce, then I think too many progressive-minded people have chosen either to live farcically in past glories, without truly understanding the past, or to surrender effetely to what they figure they can’t do much to change. If you can’t beat ’em, I guess, why not join ’em?

This is exactly the kind of collusion between supposedly rival ideological camps that political historians tell us happened in the horrible chapter of history that presaged World War II. We’ve almost forgotten that most of the political and civil freedoms we take for granted were enacted in the Postwar period to enhance the toolbox of control. And they are once again being regarded with cold detachment as part of what has euphemistically been named the Liberal order. In the 1990s, conservative intellectual Francis Fukuyama arrogantly claimed that the Western liberal order signaled the “end of history,” meaning that no other system of government can supersede it anywhere in the world. But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the 1970s, there have been persistent and rather disturbing efforts at institutional redesign. These efforts were based on the equally arrogant notion that the “West” must keep expanding worldwide, given that it was somehow above history and above the needs of the rest of the world.

The meeting of minds across political and intellectual boundaries clearly demonstrates, as the rise of fascism did in the 1920s and 1930s, how fast liberal political circles become enamored of radical elements in their midst whenever structural shocks threaten the supremacy of financial elites. A fine recent example of this is the support that Hillary Clinton managed to garner from the most rabid Neocon elements in the American political scene, all of them fearful of candidate Trump’s supposed desire for rapprochement with Russia.

The ambiguity of liberalism, even after the Democratic Party’s historic dissociation from segregationists in the South, has been evident in American politics ever since the series of assassinations of President John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the ever-shifting Robert Kennedy blunted its force in the 1960s. Such ambiguity allowed the rise of Mussolini and Hitler to fill the gaps, just as it did liberalism’s alliance with radical conservative—sometimes pro-fascist—elements in England and France during the same period. President Eisenhower did not throw caution to the wind on a whim when he sternly warned about the “military-industrial complex,” which had outgrown the American role in WWII.

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In 1975, an influential book was published titled The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, in which the authors—Samuel P. Huntington (who later wrote The Clash of Civilization), Michael Crozier and Joji Watanuki—expressed deep pessimism about liberal democracy. They determined that the institutions of political socialization were falling apart and that the changing of values constituted a major contributing factor—in other words, fewer and fewer people believed what their governments and media were telling them.

In the context of the mass protests against the Vietnam War, pessimism was commonplace among Cold War intellectuals. Many outspoken academics and intellectuals belonged to think tanks tied to elite circles like the Trilateral Commission, which gathered together influential figures of every hue from the US, western Europe and Japan. Since 2011, this is the selfsame mindset that has impelled the politicians we keep electing, the spy agencies they run and those who bankroll their election campaigns to use Wahhabi terrorists to demolish sovereign states in the Middle East ostensibly for security reasons and in defense of “Western values.”

We have essentially been lulled by lip service paid to some abstract fight to the finish against international terrorism, while mountains of arms purchased with our tax dollars and mind-boggling sums of Peninsular Arab oil money are funneled to terrorists the likes of which no one has ever seen before. The selective violence of the leftist Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhoff Gang is almost like a tender dream now.

Oil, Terrorists and the Syrian Debacle

The new terrorist mutations needed only to operate at a safe distance against Syria, a country we didn’t care much about but whose will had to be crushed to make way for the new. Besides, Israel had to be guaranteed a sustainable future even if the entire region had to be leveled and responsibility for the dispossession and genocide of the Palestinian people erased from the world’s memory. This reasoning falls into lockstep with threats—albeit increasingly hollow—made by Israel against Iran and Lebanon for one troubling fact: Israel illegally owns hundreds of nuclear weapons aimed not merely at every capital in the neighborhood, but at the heart of Europe itself, just in case. Since 9-11, the key to the impossible puzzle of legitimizing a race colony built on real estate that belongs to another people has thus revolved around the forcible removal of any force that might challenge the decision of the three Western ringleaders to dispatch the Jews to Palestine.

Unfortunately, the confluence of interests that has bound Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Liberal Establishment for decades has proved a miserable failure. But it is being tried again, this time in the open, with Saudi Arabia even keeping Lebanon’s prime minister either a willing or an unwilling hostage. Everything else has failed, and the third party—the Wahhabi terrorists—have taken to committing horrific acts of violence inside the EU and elsewhere.

But what did the liberals and the Neocons on both continents do in response to these terrorist acts? They became even more fervent in their call that Syria’s legal government be removed, not through negotiation but, at the point of the gun. Why? Because the mere presence Bashar al-Assad—went the wisdom—promoted radicalism. What more convenient way for someone giving himself civilized airs than to use a third party like the head-chopping Wahhabi mercenary armies?

The hilarious fact is that the attempted demolition of Syria introduced Iran and Russia for the first time right on the border with Israel, a worse scenario for the West than before the war. And notwithstanding the ragtag elements of “Marxist” militias run by treasonous Kurds, the United States stands powerless to reverse this introduction on pain of taking down Europe with it. The risk of direct conflict with either Iran or Russia is not something any sane person contemplates. Consequently, the panicked, coercive way in which the alliance between Israel and the Persian Gulf Arabs is being refurbished, on the back of the Palestinians, only confirms the steep decline of the US, the main power behind the Postwar order.

There is no other way to describe it: America, England and France have sunk themselves to the level of spoilers in their Middle Eastern playground, a secondary role the Soviet Union was forced to play even in its heyday. Every new diplomatic initiative on Syria serves as just another platform for them to repeat the demand that Russia give up Bashar al-Assad before it’s too late and stop obstructing their efforts to maintain their “world order.”

Russian diplomacy’s first breakthrough, for example, allowed Syria to relinquish its chemical arsenal, thereby removing the pretext for an imminent military attack by the US. This unilateral initiative set the stage for the Geneva declaration that later emerged about some vague notion of a “transition” as a way out of armed conflict. Both could have served as precedents toward eventual peace negotiations. But Western governments have been ineptly trying to parlay every diplomatic initiative into the forcible removal of Syria’s government, with no thought to the unimaginable consequences of such an outcome. They pepper their game with regular accusations about chemical weapons, before following up the “moral outrage” with new measures, including air strikes against the Syrian army. No matter what Syria does, like Iraq in the past and Iran today, it remains under permanent suspicion concerning WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). When the subject does not involve nuclear weapons, it turns to missiles designed for self-defense, like those of Iran, alleged shipments to Lebanese Resistance forces in Syria, and everything but the kitchen knife.

This is all a transparent—and very dangerous—way to pursue narrow interests at the expense of a world that no longer feels beholden to the Western powers. It is neither respectful nor productive to speak to other nations this way. Unless, of course, Western governments are acting out of sheer panic.

President Putin’s ability to check, if not neutralize, the Western alliance’s aggressive attempts at expansion in the post-Soviet era, and his active encouragement of other countries to take a more independent stance, has put the new Russia, too, on a permanent blacklist. But his presence on the international scene also underscores Syria’s own historical and geopolitical significance, which our bellicose and ignorant politicians barely suspected back in 2011 when they went for the jugular. Syrian war has acted like a powerful vortex in the international order. It made short shrift of the old love affair that the Liberal Establishment has with third parties willing to do its bidding.

The Establishment now has Donald Trump, an outsider and a willing warrior who suffers no compunction at all when it comes to beating back the Muslim horde. It clearly follows the wake of his grating stridency, which it uses for better penetration much as the German and Italian “liberal” elites did before WWII. Congress may gripe about Trump’s questionable language, but they feel unstoppable now with respect to Iran and Russia. Likewise the EU leadership. It complains about him in public, yet denounces Iran’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East, as if the Middle East belonged to the West and Iran was not located there at all.

But the cost has been steep. Domestic politics has turned the US into a farce of history. Besides Israel, the US’s best friends in the world are the descendents of Saudi desert brigands who used to raid trade routes, ambush the Ottoman army, and murder masses of noncompliant Muslims. Trump has earned the full support of the same Peninsular Arabs, who sold Palestine to England a century ago for a few silver pieces on a promise to make them rulers of a newly invented “Arab” world. With English counsel, the Saudi clan conjured up a new “religion” for their Wahhabi heresy and a quaint “Arab” identity for Arabic speakers outside the Arabian Peninsula. Both concepts are utterly foreign to the vast majority of Arabic-speakers, who have their own ancient ethnic identities and linguistic roots.

And the masquerade continues with the tragicomic League of Arab States’ serial condemnations of Iran and any other country daring to defend itself against the alien Zionist race-colony to the south. Israel murdered 24,000 Lebanese citizens when it invaded in 1982, a horrific spectacle I distinctly remember and that a silent world simply watched. The bill for that crime has yet to be paid. Since then, the reflexes of the world have been conditioned all the more by Wahhabi and Zionist heresies joined at the hip from birth.

Some History Repeats Itself in Ever-smaller Farces

Some observers have noticed that the present rush to the right is bringing to a head developments that predate WWII. One of them is Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and one of the most astute observers of current events with an impressive historical perspective.

He has written extensively on various aspects of the illusion of Postwar normalcy that has been hanging precariously until only recently. This illusion came crashing with the demise of the USSR and the Western rush to swallow up the fragments. Measured against a possible big with a formidable foe like the USSR, and with “small” hot wars like those in Korea and Vietnam subsiding, Syria seemed like a delectable fruit. The trouble is that Syria is not like other countries. It is a central piece in a larger mosaic stretching from the Middle East to the Ukraine. All that used to be one world. Still, one has also to wonder if the wider chaos unleashed inside Syria is not precisely the balkanization that the old colonial powers had in mind all along for the entire Middle East. Western ruling circles are intensifying familiar policies, not changing them. Only, this time they seem to be waging rear-guard actions in a vain hope to recover, if only for a fleeting moment, their fading hegemony over the lives of billions of human beings. To put everything in perspective, let us do a little comparison.

Hitler during the WWII

Imagine yourself in the middle of WWII. The Nazi clique ruling Germany basically won the war, having overrun subcontinental Europe in roughly two years and secured a period of calm. What would have happened if the Hitler had been able to cement this short-term victory, instead of precipitating the renewed warfare that finally ended the Nazi state? We shall never know, because he decided to advance into Eurasia against the politically and geographically isolated USSR. The Western allies seized upon the failure of the epic battle that unfolded in the east to launch their Normandy invasion. As in the past, their victory was assured only by a third party, this time the unlikely Soviet Marxists. They used the Soviet Union as a battering ram without having to lift a finger, at the cost of more than twenty-four million Soviet lives.

Take a moment to think about what the Western powers were at that moment: the same colonial predators they always were. And once the German army started to beat a retreat on the Eastern Front, the Allies embarked on a policy of mass murder in the heart of Europe and the Far East at levels unequaled either in World War I or during their own colonial conquests.

The alliance of Atlantic states barely managed to pry the “Western” torch from the hands of Hitler, who had hoped to strike an entente with England and even the US, given their cultural proximity. Hitler’s weakness was to have had a beggar’s envy, which afflicted the crushed, rootless humanity that survived the aftermath of WWI and the Great Depression. the grandiose dream he harbored of incarnating the myth of “Europe” was the great tragedy of Germany, which was kept an outsider no matter how culturally important it was to the rest, or how disproportionately it contributed to intellectual and scientific endeavors. The colonial powers that saw fit to crush it a second time—the first being the financial burden imposed on it after WWI—were an England that assisted in the Palestinian genocide, and a France that attempted an Algerian genocide.

The Trump presidency is cut from the same cloth as the liberal and conservative elites that fused together inside those colonial powers, not just in Germany after World War I. All the same, the order over which he presides culminates what the Nazi clique had already refined into an art. The Nazis idealized the corporatist state, which they designed to manage various elites, the manpower working the factories and the armed thugs who kept everyone in line. They pioneered tools of statecraft that we take for granted today, including the welfare state and novel technical features of mass propaganda. Their scientists advanced the development of nuclear weaponization and rocket technology, which the US recovered for its Cold War race with two Communist superpowers. And experts still admire the technical mastery—if not the moral content—evident in Nazi-era architectural design, cinematography, and other technological breakthroughs.

To put it mildly, Nazism designed a good portion of the future we live today. Imperial Japan also made its contributions—e.g., medical research into the cooling process of captives’ bodies leading to death. After a few guilt pangs, the American government quietly took possession of the results of those experiments too for its own use.

In short, one can only gasp at what the Western powers victors of the war pilfered in ideas and technology from the losing side. It gave them a new lease on life. Germans are an inventive, industrious people. I know their language and for years have studied their philosophers. But their fate was sealed when their liberal and conservative elites, fusing together during the Weimar Republic, sold their soul to the same devil of self-worship that ruled to the west and which continues today in the name of exceptionalism.

The reason for my comparison of alternative possibilities during WWII is to underline a lingering question on my mind: Has the Allied victory really altered the course of history? Or, is the rise of the Trump and the extreme right in the West a resumption of what Hitler began? Perhaps we still have time to decide.

The Roots of Western Exceptionalism

The Western powers are once again howling about foreign “enemies,” whom they vilify and sanction because they stand in their way. Their elites continue to frame their “right” to dominate the world in a secular, “universalist” language of freedom and the rule of law that has served to hide the root of their failure: the same exclusivist tribalism that has given us the English delusion of divine destiny, the Puritan self-image of Chosen People, American Manifest Destiny, Afrikaaner supremacism, Zionism, Wahhabism and other modern aberrations.

Without exception, these ideologies originate at time of history when the Old Testament was being interpreted in peculiar ways. The vast majority of the Old Testament lacks modicum support from archaeological and historical evidence. Yet, as historians tell us, the Bible began to be paraded for the first time as actual history in the 18th century. Something similar happened in the Islamic world when Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, an ignorant wanderer preaching in the wild Najd desert of the Arabian Peninsula in the late 18th century, gave the Saudi clan its signature ideology. But his heretical doctrine, amounting to a new religion, influenced many educated people, most notably Muhammad ‘Abdu and the strange crop of “reformist” Islamists and nationalists he inspired. They suddenly claimed to be “Arab,” even if the word “Arab” meant little more than “uncouth” and “desert-dweller” in Arabic. Touched by the same pervasive envy as their counterparts in western Europe, they looked to the “superior” French and English occupiers of their lands for inspiration in matters of social and theological interest, including Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer.

More importantly, they also set out to redesign Islam in the image of Western Christianity to make it more modern, little realizing that uprooting their millennial tradition with such violence opened the door to the mass murderers of the Nusra Front and Daesh. That was about the time, too, when elements in the English government began toying with the idea of creating a Vatican-like entity on the Arabian Peninsula to wrest authority over the holy sites from the Ottomans, and from there to control the rest of the Islamic world. It was an ignorant and dumb idea, but Trump has revived it by calling Saudi Arabia the leader of the “Arab” world and of Islam.

Lest we forget, the damage of “Christian” Zionism—the original template—manifested itself also in the form of “Jewish” Zionism which, in turn, led Hitler to declare in Mein Kampf his utter admiration for the “indomitable race consciousness” he imagined sharing with the Jews. A bigger tribute to the procreative power of the parent ideal of Zionism is hard to imagine. Hitler cared for neither the living Jews nor the Old Testament Jews invented by the Christian historians and exegetes of the Bible. He was articulating the tribal essence of the “Western” myth, nothing more. Everyone, it seems, has dreamed up a divine destiny of his own fit for a chosen race.

Exceptionalism – That Other Gift from the Recent Past

One would think that exceptionalism was something the Nazis might have concocted to justify their draconian laws. While contentious as a legal concept, however, its role has expanded in the Western world, especially America’s judicial system and foreign policy. Interestingly, the person who bequeathed the legal reasoning behind it to the West, alongside the other things we inherited from that era, was Carl Schmitt. He was the foremost legal, constitutional and political theorist in prewar and wartime Germany, and certainly not a minor thinker in international law. Rather than a convinced Nazi, however, he was an opportunist, as legal historians generally believe and his own Nazi colleagues realized to their chagrin. Nevertheless, he was part of the political and intellectual edifice built by the Nazi clique. What may be unfamiliar to many readers is that his reputation as the most effective debunker of liberalism is fully acclaimed in the postwar Western world, outside Germany.

I had completely forgotten about him before Alastair Crooke brought him up in a published piece in Consortium. Crooke contrasted his ideas with a much older conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, as a way to divide American foreign policy not into liberal and conservative camps, but more accurately into two strands of conservatism. Obama thus represents the soft-spoken, pragmatic Burkean approach to politics, while Trump and the Necons echo Schmitt’s more decisive but intrusive approach.

Unfortunately, Schmitt cannot be so lightly dismissed. He correctly identified a fundamental failing of liberalism: its recurrent paralysis in the face of exceptional circumstances. The butt of his criticism was British-style parliamentarism as it existed in Weimar Germany. He argued that legal norms, which depended on a “homogeneous medium,” were useless in a chaos. On the other hand, when the spirit of exceptionalism is enshrined in law to deal with concrete circumstances, it renders the authority it recognizes as the executing authority equally exceptional and permanent, with the risk of turning this authority into an arbitrary instrument of the law.

The fact that the liberal constitutions of modern states do not traditionally recognize a bearer of sovereign authority has provoked long debate about the need for a sovereign authority in the application of the law. Therefore, liberal constitutionalists insisted that particular acts of state had simply to apply the general norms of the law to maintain the predictability of the law and diminish the arbitrary authority of persons. Schmitt contended, on the other hand, that legal norms could not govern a state of exception or an extreme emergency. Applying the law normally under totally abnormal circumstances led to unpredictable results and undermined any action to end the emergency. Because who interprets and applies cannot be determined by the material content of the law, an authority was needed to apply general legal rules to concrete cases. General legal norms alone cannot automatically give determinate guidance without over-interpretation and interstitial legislation. Only sovereign authority ensured the continuity of legal order.

What is certain from the arguments he presented to that effect is his limpid understanding of his time. Basically, embracing the permanence of the crisis of capitalism became central to him as a condition for the application of law. He stood for a conservatism adapted to the revolutionary upheavals of the epoch, rather than beholden to the fiction of a status quo.

It worked disastrously then, and the fundamental flaws of liberalism have yet to be rectified. Crooke’s historical association of this major current of legal thinking with Trump’s political function is interesting, but from a different angle. Trump relishes his own unpredictability as a tactic, actively seeking through impetuosity to create his own conditions. I doubt if he or the Neocons fully realize what legal consequences flow from the new normal they insist on creating with their idea of “creative chaos.” They are not adapting to anything, but need constantly to overthrow. The Neocons under the Bush administration flirted with exceptionalist legal arguments justifying the official use of torture. Court rulings are being handed down ordering the seizure of other states’ properties. Under Trump, Congress—the legislative branch—is fast-tracking the enactment of laws that freeze the assets of any foreign person or entity violating sanctions it decrees on its own territory. Meanwhile, the President himself is issuing one special executive order after another on immigration and other areas, as far as executive prerogative will take him, until he gets his way. Elsewhere, he has taken to the habit of threatening Beijing one day then calling on it to help “me out” with North Korea.

All this smells like the offspring of the old marriage of liberalism and conservatism. Their distinction now seems academic. A society of the rootless, without the continuity of tradition, community, religious practice, has still to steer itself with every new situation deemed exceptional. When this state of affairs persists, exceptionalism becomes the law, the authority and the guide. There is no other country where this is clearer than the United States.

Although a conservative thinker, Schmitt is sometimes described as a defender, not just a critic, of the Weimar “liberal order.” But liberal order, then as now, has always rested on a collection of elite interests, regardless of their political or moral affiliations. His writings during the Weimar period are said to highlight, in particular, the compatibility between economic liberalism and political authoritarianism. However, this compatibility has been a historical reality in the latter part of the twentieth century, as well, most starkly in post-Allende Chile and the series of bloody dictatorships installed in Argentina, Brazil, Egypt and elsewhere, though with different emphases on how various interests are managed.

There is no question that Trump’s meteoric rise has helped unleash venomous, retrograde forces around the world harking back to the worst segments of the last century. The acid effect of his discourse has emboldened everyone from France’s anti-immigrant Front National to Zionist outfits in the US specialized in the pilfering of Iranian money through lawsuits over 9-11, of all things, and to the Saudi would-be king, Prince Muhammad Ibn Salman in his vicious rampage in the region.

But it would be far too easy to heap the blame on trash-talk alone. These forces have existed for quite some time. On the European subcontinent, they’ve been around especially since the 1920s and have made a strong comeback since the Thatcherism of the 1970s. We just haven’t been attentive enough to the dangers they pose to our future or how they are driven by elite interests.

Nevertheless, the populist airs that Trump gives himself have done what I thought in my youth would take decades to complete. The man has ironically shattered the Western and, in particular, the American claim to exceptionalism. The elite interests he defends have hit a wall before his rise. and beyond this wall lies the abyss of world conflagration. The more Western governments push, the more violent everything will turn. The new reality is that they can no longer have their way without consequences.

The severity of this unprecedented limitation confirms that Western exceptionalism has all along been an interlude, not to say a bare-faced myth. Since the Second World War, this myth has been nourished by the historically untenable claim that something called the West (America, England and France) somehow began in ancient Greece and has brought enlightenment to the world: modern technology, science, civil liberties and the rule of law. Such narcissism is on full display in documentaries and books. We are inculcated in it starting in elementary school. Never mind that the former Roman provinces in western Europe lived their entire history in darkness and barbarism until only very recently. Western Europe was one of the last places on earth to have stumbled upon humanity’s long tradition of science, philosophy and human rights, thanks to the ambient Islamic civilization.

Nearly 100 million deaths in two world wars, and the endless other minor wars that have swallowed up at least another 55 million lives—we’re supposed to forget all that. Maybe the chickens are finally coming to roost, as Malcolm X once said.

Dr. Anthony Shaker is a specialist in philosophy and history. His most recent book is Modernity, Civilization and the Return to History (Vernon Press, 2017). He has authored numerous articles on contemporary politics, and served as an Executive Councilor for the party of the Official Opposition, Canadian Parliament.

Featured image is from PopularResistance.Org.

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Clearing the Smoke and Mirrors Around Zimbabwe. US-UK role in “Regime Change”

December 2nd, 2017 by Netfa Freeman

“The West, led by Britain and the U.S., have been engaged in a regime policy against the Southern African nation for the last 18 years.”

Reasons for examining what is happening in Zimbabwe are many but few to none can be found in accounts by major news media or from liberal progressive pundits. Such accounts are busy reinforcing the over simplified and misinforming narrative that forcing out former 93 year-old president Robert Mugabe marks the end of 37 years of brutal dictatorship that has driven the country into economic disaster.

The over simplified version being fed to the general public is that everything kicked off after Mugabe fired a disagreeable vice-President. Zimbabwe is to be seen as just another African country with a long reigning dictator who presides over the repression and impoverishment of his own people who really are unable to govern themselves without the aid of the benevolent West.

Since the November 14th reports that Zimbabwean army tanks were seen heading towards the capital Harare in the middle of rising tensions between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and the military, led by one of Zimbabwe’s Vice-Presidents, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the ultimate political outcome is still unfolding. In short, the story has seen Mugabe first put under house arrest by the military, many of his high level supporters arrested, and eventually, after initially appearing to refuse, Mugabe was pressured into resigning to be replaced by Mnangagwa who was sworn into office last Friday.

“Greg Elich also challenges the portrayal that ‘All Zimbabweans… are happy at the turn of events.”

Unsurprisingly, these new political developments reawakened the Western news media’s fixation with Zimbabwe because the West, led by Britain and the U.S., have been engaged in a regime policy against the Southern African nation for the last 18 years. The accompanying media campaign makes it necessary to look for an honest examination of “What’s Behind the Military Coup in Zimbabwe ” — as in the recent article by Greg Elich. Using an assortment of sources that include a September Reuters report claiming to have obtained hundreds of internal documents from Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization, Elich dispels distracting narratives like the claim that the coup was to prevent maneuvers by Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace from becoming his successor. Elich also challenges the portrayal that “All Zimbabweans… are happy at the turn of events,” explaining why photos and footage mainly showing demonstrations in the capital Harare “aren’t necessarily reliable. Opposition backers predominate in the cities, whereas Mugabe’s support is heavily concentrated in rural areas, where it can have little political effect.”

The rural areas are also where Zimbabweans have most benefited from the fast track land redistribution policy initiated in 2000.

Liberal progressives like activist Bill Fletcher , who also hosts and produces the Washington DC based radio show ARISE, gives progressive cover to old and misinformation and falsehoods about Zimbabwe. In these portrayals it is acknowledged that Mugabe and many of the ZANU-PF leadership are not your typical “African dictator” variety and instead arose from the liberation struggle. But on the November 24th show of ARISE Fletcher buttressed old and refuted lines straight from imperialism’s talking points.

Among these points are the claims that ZANU-PF’s 2000 fast track land reclamation was a failure and only benefited cronies of the party and President Mugabe; that the political and economic mission of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is unclear; and that the dire economic conditions of the country are due solely to the corruption, irresponsibility, and mismanagement of Mugabe.

“Bill Fletcher buttressed old and refuted lines straight from imperialism’s talking points.”

It would have been difficult for the show to feature any other angle, given that one of the guests was Scott Taylor, professor at Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service, whose credentials include serving as a consultant for USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the African Development Bank, and the World Bank.

Flecther’s other guest was Nii Akuetteh, founding Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), an arm of George Soros’ “network of foundations.”

Much of the misinforming propaganda being resurrected by Western media and reinforced by liberal progressives has been refuted in the 2010 major study, Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities , by Institute of Development Studies Fellow Ian Scoones, with Zimbabwean colleagues Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba, Jacob Mahenehene and Chrispen Sukume. The book challenges five myths through a detailed examination of field data:

Myth 1 – Land reform has been a total failure

Myth 2 – The beneficiaries have been largely political ‘cronies’

Myth 3 – There is no investment in the new resettlements

Myth 4 – Agriculture is in complete ruins creating chronic food insecurity

Myth 5 – The rural economy has collapsed

The book uses evidence to argue that the land reform program may well be the foundation needed for broad based economic efficiency and new livelihoods in the fight against poverty.

The study finds that while production crops for export declined, other crops “such as small grains, edible beans and cotton” for domestic use increased or remained steady. “A core group of ‘middle farmers’ — around half of the population in the Masvingo study areas — are generating surpluses from farming.”

There is substantial agricultural production on small farm holders, with the majority producing enough to feed their families and sell to local markets in good rainfall years.

“Significant investment in the new land has included plot clearings, well digging and home building. In addition, schools have been built, roads cut and dams dug. New market connections are being forged, unleashing a dynamic entrepreneurship in the rural areas.”

“A core group of ‘middle farmers’ — around half of the population in the Masvingo study areas — are generating surpluses from farming.”

We can be sure that the major factor impacting the Zimbabwean economy was not the shopping habits of First Lady Grace Mugabe. This is not to say there was no mismanagement of the economy on the part what is a parliamentary government. The major factor responsible for the spiraling inflation is, however never mentioned by the major media. That would be the pervasive EU and US sanctions against Zimbabwe — a type of warfare without guns and bombs. The hypocritically entitled “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001,” a.k.a. ZIDERA, is the U.S. sanctions legislation that explicitly designed to damage the economy by denying any extension of credit and loans to the government or any balance of payment assistance by international financial institutions. They also actively dissuade investments in, or trade with the country. This has had devastating effects on the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe in multitude of ways, a fact that Western media and liberal progressive pundits never fail to ignore.

The symptoms of these sanctions are pinned on “Mugabe’s economic mismanagement.” Rarely does anyone ask scrutinizing questions like those of Ugandan journalist, Timothy Kalyegira:

“Before the Mugabe Government started uprooting the white farmers in 2000, his Government kept inflation at 5 percent, 8 percent (or 11 percent in difficult years.) How, then, does a country with all the same factors and leaders from 1980 to 2000 suddenly (because the white commercial farmers have been uprooted) see inflation soar to world record levels in a space of just six years starting in 2000? And how is it that a stable Zimbabwe has an inflation rate 1500 times higher than Somalia, a country without a government since 1991?”

“The major factor responsible for the spiraling inflation is the pervasive EU and US sanctions against Zimbabwe — a type of warfare without guns and bombs.”

The Western press is notorious for largely ignoring Africa. So we should ask why Zimbabwe so easily makes breaking news and headlines when the repression and rape of countries ruled by U.S.-allied leaders like Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo goes virtually unnoticed.

The renewed attention is because imperialism’s protracted strategy is apparently bearing fruit. Unable for a host of internal reasons to raise its hegemony through the opposition party MDC, which they literally created and poised to usher in a neo-liberal agenda, current developments seem to bare out the assertion of former U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell who in 2007 wrote in a leaked Wikileaks cable ,

“Our policy is working and it’s helping drive changes here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation…”

We now seem to be witnessing a “say it ain’t so” moment. Since the resigning of Mugabe and the instatement of Mnangagwa as Zimbabwe’s President, a number of foreign officials have paid “courtesy calls” to the new president, including Britain’s Africa Minister Rory Stewart, who pledged that Britain is ready to strengthen its relations with Zimbabwe and,

“On sanctions, I have to be clear, there are now very few sanctions on Zimbabwe. Sanctions are left on a few individuals. The only outstanding question here is of international financial assistance from organizations like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but we have already begun discussions to have the embargo lifted.”

Imperialism would hardly make such a commitment unless they were certain their economic interests were secured.

“We should ask why Zimbabwe so easily makes breaking news when the repression and rape of countries ruled by U.S.-allied leaders like Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo goes virtually unnoticed.”

Amid rumors that that land would be returned to large-scale white farmers, Emmerson Mnangagwa declared to the contrary that “the land reform program was unavoidable and shall not be reversed.” But he promised that those white farmers who lost property would receive compensation.

At the moment it looks as if one of only two of Africa’s remaining hold outs from imperialism’s world domination has succumbed to pressure. But there is much more to unpack and the people’s struggle is a story that never ends.

The lessons for the international struggle for self-determination, justice and against capitalist imperialism are always more complicated than we can get from the most readily available sources.

The people of Zimbabwe and the whole of Africa must find a way to forge an expressly anti-capitalist mass movement toward processes of participatory democracy where the people can devise and implement their own social programs that benefit the most disenfranchised classes. Much like the movements that emerged in Latin America and were attempted in Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara. It would seem this is best safeguard against the aggressions of imperialism. We must concede that the land reform and “indigenization acts” were inadequate measures toward economic empowerment that kept capitalism and imperialism intact. We hope we’re wrong, but the neo-liberalism that now appears to be on the horizon has always in the long run ended in deeper and more sustained misery for the working class and rural poor populations of Africa and the world.

Netfa Freeman is an Analyst and Events Coordinator for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a longtime organizer in the Pan-African and international human rights movement, and former Liaison for the Ujamma Youth Farming Project in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He also hosts and produces the radio show Voices With Vision on WPFW 89.3 FM.

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How Come Military Contractors Are Doing The Pentagon’s Dirty Work?

December 2nd, 2017 by Valeriy Kulikov

It is no secret that the last couple decades saw an abrupt increase in the number of private military companies or private security contractors (PMCs), the overall budgets of some easily surpass the military budgets of certain sovereign states. The turning point in the creation of such companies occurred in 1995 during military operations conducted by the Armed Forces of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbian troops, when hostilities were outsourced to a number of security contractor firms.

There can be no second opinion about Washington being the most faithful adept of the PMC concept, since the number of wars the US has been waging against other states requires the Pentagon to find extra hands to do its dirty work for it. American intelligence agencies were quick to comprehend in mid 90s that they would need a lot of private contractors if they were to carry on their dubious operations across the globe over the next several decades. Therefore, the Pentagon began encouraging various companies to handle a wide range of outsourced military tasks. As a result, over the last decade alone the US military has signed more than 3,0 00 contracts with PMCs.

Today PMCs are operating more than 90% of all drones than US Air Force and Navy have together, they are also engaged in reconnaissance missions, data analysis, along with developing promising technologies and materials, on top of providing routine military training, convoy escorts, and air cargo support. In May 2007, the US government disclosed for the first time the total amount of funds allocated on the PMCs by American intelligence agencies, with the total amount reaching 33.6 billion dollars. In January 2015, the US Central Command published statistics on contract employees of PMCs, specifying that CENTCOM alone employs more than 43,0 00 individuals that fulfill all sorts of contracts, of which no more than 17,0 00 are American citizens, with the rest being natives of the UK and Australia.

According to rough estimates, the PMC market exceeds 150 billion dollars. As for the continuous increase in the actual of number and their value it can be attributed to an ever expanding share of “secret operations” deals signed off on by Washington.

Although existing US legislation has set in stone the principle that “the most complex and sensitive tasks shouldn’t be fulfilled by private organizations”, when it comes to the situation on the ground we witness quite the opposite.

This notion has recently been confirmed by the Daily Mail as it reported on the activities of one particularly notorious PMC, Academi, formerly known as Blackwater. According to these revelations Academi contractors were engaged in torturing and physically abusing members of the Saudi royal family and those businessmen that were detained along with them in Saudi Arabia in early November. According to the publication, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally participated in the said interrogations thanks to the dubious services provided to him by Academi. As a result of these interrogations, the Crown Prince received a total of 194 billion dollars in “voluntary donations” from those that he was questioning.

One can recall that Saudi law enforcement agencies arrested a total of 11 princes, four ministers and several dozen former ministers and prominent businessmen on charges of corruption. Among those arrested one could find one of the richest men on the planet – Al-Waleed bin Talal. Earlier, Middle Eastern and Western media leaked details about the harsh treatment that the detainees were exposed to, regardless of their social status or previous achievements. The New York Times has already reported that at least 17 prisoners among those arrested on suspicion of participating in corrupt schemes were brutally beaten.

Another example of Washington’s privatization of global war and brutality is the delivery of lethal weapons to areas of armed conflict prohibited by international law, including to regions where extremist and terrorist groups have yet to start violence.

Thus, in spite of Washington’s continuous claims that there has been no instance of American weapons being delivered to Ukraine, Western PMCs have been delivering those to Ukraine for over two years now. For instance, AirTronic has been delivering American-made grenade launchers to Kiev, confirmed by its CEO, Richard Wendiver in his interview with Voice of America. In particular, he specified that the company initiated such deliveries last year and has continued them since. He added that such deliveries have been coordinated by the US Embassy in Kiev, in close cooperation with the State Department, the Pentagon and the Ukrainian government.

Since other American PMCs have been fulfilling similar contracts in other regions of the world, one shouldn’t be surprised when one sees a picture of a radical terrorist armed with top-notch US weapons systems, especially when those operate in Syria and Iraq. Almost one and a half thousand fully loaded trucks worth of weapons were delivered to the terrorists of ISIS, as it’s been announced by the Syrian Defense Ministry earlier this year. Automatic weapons and grenade launchers produced in America are fairly common among militants that the Pentagon has been unofficially supporting. All this has already been proven true, as tons of units of such weapons have already been confiscated from these militants amid ongoing security operations.

Despite the presence of a wide range of international actors, modern geopolitics is far from being public. A significant role in it is played by behind-the-scenes actors and secret deals, which are then fulfilled by all sorts of PMCs. Thus, we have found ourselves in an age when private companies are capable of influencing individual countries and even whole regions. This, in particular, confirms the involvement of American PMCs in the torture of representatives of the Saudi elite and the ongoing US-made arms deliveries to the Middle East, Ukraine, Afghanistan.

In 2008, the status of PMCs was clarified in the so-called Montreux Document, signed by a total of 17 nations. This document contains rules of engagement for those companies and regulates their operations in conflict zones. According to this document, the state that hosts a private military company bears full responsibility for its actions in various regions of the world.

What this basically means is that Washington will not be able to escape responsibility for the crimes committed by its contractors somewhere behind-the-scenes.

Valery Kulikov is an expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine ‘New Eastern Outlook’.

Featured image is from the author.

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Iran Playing Major Role in Defeating Terrorism in Middle East: Mark Taliano

December 2nd, 2017 by Mark Taliano

A renowned author and political commentator from Canada praised Iran’s campaign against terrorism in the Middle East and said the Islamic Republic has been fighting the phenomenon while the West’s support for terror groups in the region is well documented.

“Iran has played a very important role in defeating terrorism in the Middle East; it has acted in accordance with international law, and it is to be commended for its efforts,” Mark Taliano said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“The US Empire projects its own criminality on “prey” nations, and Iran is in the crosshairs, but Iran has been fighting and destroying terrorism, whereas the West has been supporting and growing terrorism,” he added.

Tasnim: As you know, the resistance forces and the armies in Syria and Iraq have recently liberated last strongholds of the Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group in the Arab countries. What do you think about the recent military achievements? Do you have a positive perspective on the security situation?

Taliano: The Axis of Resistance is defeating all of the terrorist groups, all in accordance with international law, and with a view to bringing peace and stability to the Middle East and beyond. I have a very positive view on the security situation. New alliances and trade partnerships are being formed to strengthen the resistance against the criminal, terrorist-supporting regimes that oppose trajectories of peace and stability. US-led NATO and its allies, including Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies, need to be held to account for their high crimes against sovereign states such as Syria, Iraq, and beyond.

US imperialism is creating globalized war and poverty. Thanks to the West’s illegal invasion of Libya — imperialism under the cover of the so-called “Responsibility To Protect”, Libya, now a failed state, is host to a growing slave trade, it is a hub for terrorists, including Daesh, and it is the source of multitudes of refugees. Libya was a “successful” regime change. Gaddafi was murdered, and a nation that previously boasted of the highest Human Development Index in Africa was destroyed.

The genocidal sanctions and ultimate illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq was also a successful Regime Change, in the sense that the country, its institutions, and its infrastructure were destroyed and plundered. Fortunately, Iraq is now rebounding.

The Regime Change in Ukraine was also successful in the sense that the elected government was overthrown, and the country is now divided, impoverished, and in a state of war. Yet another imperial success story.

The totality of the impacts of illegal warfare, post 9/11, and their enduring consequences, has created an overseas holocaust as described by Dr. Gideon Polya.

Tasnim: Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), recently declared the collapse of the Takfiri terror group in Iraq and Syria. What is your assessment of Iran’s role in the anti-terrorism campaign in the Middle East?

Taliano: Iran has played a very important role in defeating terrorism in the Middle East. It has acted in accordance with international law, and it is to be commended for its efforts. The US Empire projects its own criminality on “prey” nations, and Iran is in the crosshairs, but Iran has been fighting and destroying terrorism, whereas the West has been supporting and growing terrorism.

The US-led Empire seeks to label Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) a “terrorist” entity in its on-going campaign to destabilize and ultimately destroy Iran. If we recall General Wesley Clark’s earlier, public statements, the Pentagon’s plan was 7 countries in 5 years, and Iran is on the list.

Tasnim: Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance Movement Hassan Nasrallah said recently that despite the US claims about fighting terrorism, it spared no effort to help Daesh forces in the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal. “The US helped Daesh as much as it could in Al-Bukamal short of directly engaging forces that fought to liberate the town from Daesh,” the Hezbollah leader said. What do you think about the remarks?

Taliano: The West and its allies have been directly supporting terrorist groups since well before the war on Syria started. The terrorists are there because of the West, not despite the West. All of this is well documented. Daesh has been a “covert proxy” for the West in Syria. In an earlier article, I described it as a “place setter”. The West infests an area with Daesh, then destroys the area under the fake pretext of going after Daesh, and then re-occupies the area with a new batch of terrorists. In the case of Raqqa, for example, the area was destroyed, Daesh was re-located to other fronts – with US coalition air support — and now “overt proxies”, the anti-democratic SDF Kurdish forces are the new occupiers.

In Deir ez-Zor and elsewhere the US has been brokering deals between Daesh and Kurdish forces with a view to advancing its imperial projects of occupation and plunder. Recently, original documents were discovered which detail the terms of a deal between Daesh and the SDF.

Now that the terrorists are being defeated, the West’s direct support is more transparent. The Hezbollah leader is being diplomatic when he states that “The US helped Daesh as much as it could in Al-Bukamal short of directly engaging forces that fought to liberate the town from Daesh,” Daesh and all of the terrorists are there because of the West, not despite the West.

Mark Taliano is an author and independent investigative reporter who recently returned from a trip to Syria with the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria. In his new book titled “Voices from Syria”, he combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives about the dirty war on Syria.

All of the post-9/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that disseminate propaganda to both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda levelled at Syria and contaminating humanity at this moment is likely unprecedented. I had studied and written about Syria for years, so I was not entirely surprised by what I saw.

(Excerpt from Preface, Mark Taliano’s book “Voices from Syria“, Global Research Montreal, 2017)

Order directly from Global Research (also available in PDF)

Voices from Syria

Mark Taliano

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Should the U.N. Consider the White Helmets as a Politically Neutral Organization, and Its Allegations as Credible Sources by U.N. Investigative Panels on Syria?

December 2nd, 2017 by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli

What is, and what is not, our main focus in analysing the White Helmets

Although we have published clinical findings on White Helmets materials –which I will later summarise in this presentation– the main interest of SWEDHR on this thematic goes beyond the pure commenting on isolated life-rescuing or lifesaving procedures done by the White Helmets.

According to SWEDHR ultimate task –the endeavour for stopping wars and averting risks for new world conflagrations– we think that the most relevant issue about the White Helmets is to analyse the political behaviour of the organization as such, the international positions adopted by its leadership in the issue of peace or war in Syria, and not to focus on single disgraceful episodes of its members –unless a widespread repetitions of those would constitute a behaviour characterizing the organization.

We have acknowledged since time ago, that individuals in that organization, as in any other of the kind, might have different motivations for their participation. For instance, in an article from 2016 in The Indicter, I wrote, “Undoubtedly, there are in that organization, like in any other of that kind, true volunteer-individuals trying to make a humanitarian contribution.” [2] I repeated the same thing the year after, in an interview with Sputnik Radio. [3]

So, the point for us has not been to demonise the individual participation of some well-minded volunteers deploying natural solidarity with civilians, which in a given moment are –tragically as in all wars– victims of a collateral damage. Neither is the case to criticise the humanitarian rescue-activity per se, in those cases in which that activity has been real.

Instead, our analyses on the White Helmets materials aim to focus on two mayor issues pertaining the White Helmets as institution: a) The geopolitical significance of the White Helmets as an international construction in the propaganda war, and b) The using of this organization as a main source of information by UN investigative commissions.

The propaganda strategy in a geopolitical perspective

From a geopolitical perspective, the White Helmets model can also be viewed as a constructed instrument to be used in the war propaganda against regimes which Western powers consider hostile to their interests.

We find a clear example in the relatively recent establishment of the White Helmets in Venezuela, where these formations, distributed in different main cities, would also perform as first responders ‘assisting victims’. And again, those victims are solely those within the ranks of the oppositional forces –in this case opposition to the Maduro government. Then we have as well White Helmets in Malaysia and Philippines, etc. We can anticipate that other similar organisations of first responders will pop up in the future, associated with regime change strategies.

Generally, the White Helmets propaganda has been mainly analysed in reference to 1) The imagery and uploading of videos representing victims of war –in several cases having consisted in faked materials distributed by mainstream media, and which have been exposed afterwards. 2) A vast production of self-promoting materials, videos, etc. in which White Helmets operators are portrayed as heroes. A classical item has been the carrying of a crying girl in the arms of a White Helmets operator, a pictorial theme that together with the same girl used as model, recurrently appears in different stage settings.

To the above should be added the propaganda about the White Helmets, such as the debated documentary film that won a Hollywood Oscar award.

A main “propaganda trick” of the White Helmets

A recurrent White Helmets propaganda method have consisted in randomly repeat in mainstream media or social media ‘life-saving’ related episodes (see items 1 and 2 above), which give the public the notion of ‘permanent bombardment on civil areas’, independent of whether those raids are actually happening at the moment of the published propaganda material. Overwhelmingly, that ‘propaganda trick’ has been used on occasions when air strikes have not taken place.

On the other hand, reports of air operations on military targets are frequently omitted in the White Helmets propaganda.

The propaganda routine described above, mixed with the allegations of gas attacks –also a routine in itself (see my report “From Timisoara to Khan Shaykhun”)– [4] serve as backbone of the ultimate aim in the White Helmets strategic propaganda: the petition routine for an intensification of the military operations in Syria. This has been concretely implemented mainly through the repeated pledge for a No-Fly Zone. [5] [6] [7]

The White Helmets as source in UN investigative panels

The other important issue considered in SWEDHR analyses, is the use done by UN Commissions investigating allegations on chemical attacks in Syria of the White Helmets allegations and testimonies. The information provided by the White Helmets and associated actors are used as a main source for the investigated allegations, and subsequently to ‘legitimate’ conclusions.

In a recent analysis of the report by UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) on the Khan Shaykhun incident of April 2017 [8] I pointed out that absence, or non-professional verifying, of the reliability of such partisan information and ad-hoc testimonies provided by the White Helmets, conveys the risk that the UN-Investigative panel’s report condemning the Assad government result “inaccurate, politically biased”. [9] Those methodologically biased conclusions do not only represent unfairness against the governments signalled as “guilty” without a juridical requirement of evidence beyond reasonable doubt, but also end fuelling the risk for catastrophic geopolitical consequences. Therefore, it is utmost important to analyse the credibility of the information-providers, and this is sine qua non factor in securing the reliability of those UN investigative reports.

“Other humanitarian actors” directly associated with the White Helmets

A further methodological problem is presented by the using of “separate” information provided by “other humanitarian actors” in the field, but which are directly associated with the White Helmets. These “different” sources that are in use by the current UN investigative commissions may be referred as to different names, for instance medical-related (such as the “Syrian American Medical Association” (SAM), “field hospitals in Idlib”, etc.), or individuals’ Twitter accounts listed by the COI as its trusted open sources, [10] in sum, all of which the investigative panels nominally separate from the “White Helmets”.

However, these entities are intrinsically not politically separated from each other. They share the same ideology, some times the same financing sources, and the same strategy for the continuation and even the intensification of the military escalation of Western powers in Syria.

Vice News reportage, “Horrifying Videos Shown at UN Display Carnage of Suspected Chlorine Attacks in Syria”, [11] gives a clear illustration on the above. It referred a footage uploaded by the White Helmets in You Tube on 16 March 2015.

“At the meeting, the doctors showed council members footage taken by a field hospital in Sarmin, in Idlib Province, on the night of March 16. The video, which was provided to VICE News, depicted frenetic efforts to resuscitate three young children exhibiting symptoms of chemical exposure.”

“If there was a dry eye in the room, I didn’t see it,” US Ambassador Samantha Power, whose mission organized the closed-door session, told reporters afterward. “Those people responsible for these attacks have to be held accountable.”

“Dr. Mohamed Tennari, the director of the field hospital where the victims of the March 16 attack were treated, told reporters on Thursday that residents in Sarmin heard helicopters that night and then noticed “bleach-like odors.”

That meeting at the UNSC was followed by a broadcast in CNN [Editor’s Note: published by CNN in YouTube on April 20, 2015], where the president of the SAM was also interviewed and appeared together with the said doctor from the rebel-occupied area of Idlib. The main point publicized in the CNN broadcasting was their renewed pledge for a No-Fly Zone in Syria. Which corresponds exactly to the core of the White Helmets strategic propaganda.

But for the White Helmets, the above-mentioned doctors, Ms Samantha Powers, Vice News, CNN, etc. –for all those participating in the reproduction of the White Helmets footage showed at the UN Security Council in April 2015– the problem is, however, that footage series correspond to staged or definitely non-medical lifesaving procedures. The audio (which translation was not shown in the video) indicates that some scenes are directly instructed by the cameraman. Furthermore, no verifiable evidence has ever been produced regarding the “gas attack” that allegedly would have led to the “lifesaving” manoeuvres on seemingly dead children. In sum, dead children have been used in a macabre propaganda coup aimed to back a petition for a No-Fly Zone in Syria at the UN.

See further below in this text details on the professional analysis done by several Swedish doctors, and the subsequent exposure that SWEDHR did on those deceptive video materials.

Issues to consider in analysing the credibility of the White Helmets as reliable source of information

I will here list some issues directly associated with the credibility of the White Helmets in their capacity of sources of information. This observation is about the role of the White Helmets as source being used in UN-investigations, or any other inquire that is supposed to meet research requirements of impartiality and objectiveness; it is not to be confounded or interpreted as a criticism of actual rescue activities that the White Helmets said to perform.

1. Credibility issue, “Civil defence”

The organisation White Helmets makes a fundamental point of its “civil defence” character. We have of course the issue of who is legally the Civil Defence of Syria. On this point I shall only refer to a published report by independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who obtained a testimony from the Geneva-based (UN affiliated) International Civil Defence Organisation, that keeps register of the Civil Defence institutions in the world. The author reports that the real Syria Civil Defence, established in Syria in 1953, is the one and only officially recognised as such. [12]

Yet, my query is on whether a real “civil defence” character there exists in all the rescue-operations reported by the White Helmets.

For instance, Professor Jan Oberg, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley and other investigative journalists or independent investigators have reported, on the base of their on-site visits, a number of episodes, or witnesses testimonies, indicating that the White Helmets rescue operations have rather been not directed to civilians, but to combatants in the rebel fractions they would be in cooperation with.

One issue that we have discussed internally at SWEDHR, is whether those episodes may or not represent the standard in the priorities of the White helmets operations. Such an investigation would require access to the records of all rescue operations, data which is not available. Meanwhile, the thesis of Vanessa Beeley appears to derive support from the correlation between a) the amount of testimonies referred to different episodes, and b) the similarity of the testimonies content.

2. Credibility issue, “White Helmets political neutrality”. Does it really exist?

Author’s Note: The logo in the image below (screenshot from a YouTube video) correspond to the same jihadist formation which, simultaneously with the White Helmets, uploaded in YouTube on 16 March 2015 the staged “lifesaving” scenes commented above, and also in further section “3. Credibility issue on “Rescuing and lifesaving” – Real or staged?”

This issue is twofold:

One item refers to the double militancy of White Helmets individuals which appear one moment posing in White Helmets operations…and in the next moment they are seeing sporting their White Helmets uniforms while celebrating military operations together with armed “moderate extremists”…waving a back jihadist flag with the belligerent shahada inscription.

In one footage or image which was not shown in the film here at today’s conference, two White Helmets are captured by the lens doing the “V” sign while standing on top of rests of demised soldiers being transported in a pick-up truck. This scene would indicate that either a) the WH are participating as ad-hoc services in the actual combat zone, or b) the bodies of the Syrian soldiers correspond to executed prisoners whose corpses are disposed with the services of the White Helmets. Corroborating this hypothesis, the film earlier seen in this conference showed the sequence of the execution of a young individual, immediately followed by White Helmets operatives lifting the body for further transport. It emerges that the White Helmets would have been already prepared, and that they were at the execution scene.

Images above: Screenshot from video uploaded in YouTube

Mainstream media would dismiss that this would represent an official, regular White Helmets collaboration with the combatant forces. But on the other hand it is difficult to see those footage as only a result of White Helmets “individual’s” collaboration. That because in those scenes captured in the videos, the participation of White Helmets vehicles, gear, and several of White Helmets operators, is also visible.

Another fact which contradicts the political neutrality principle adduced by the White Helmets, is the participation of its top representatives in political meetings advocating for political strategies in favour of the opposition forces in the Syrian conflict. Even when the White Helmets director explains why he would not participate in a political meeting –like the one in Saudi Arabia last week– he does that by uttering statements referred to political stances taken by the White Helmets as organization.

3. Credibility issue on “Rescuing and lifesaving” – Real or staged?

As to the episodes of flawed rescuing or staged life saving, there are a number of these allegations spread in social media and particularly in YouTube. For our part, we did an analysis of a video series uploaded by the White Helmets on March 2015, depicting life-saving scenes of children purported filmed in the aftermath of an alleged gas attack in Sarmine, Idlib.

As we mentioned above, a most serious problem about the Sarmine videos, is that a Dr associated with the White Helmets field work, and the White Helmets associates at the SAM, were invited to show those videos in a session ad hoc to the Security Council in New work, in April 2015. However the veracity-content of those video materials were not controlled. Or if it was, the materials were shown anyway. All that to support the argument of an intensification of the military campaign against the Syrian government, specifically pledges for the establishment of a no-fly zone.

Our conclusions were published in two articles, 1) “White Helmets Video: Swedish Doctors for Human Rights Denounce Medical Malpractice and ‘Misuse’ of Children for Propaganda Aims”, [13] and 2) “Updated Evidence From Swedish Doctors Confirm Fake ‘Lifesaving’ and Malpractices on Children“. [14]

I have to point out that the videos uploaded by the White Helmets correspond exactly to the materials uploaded the very same day, at nearly the same opportunity, by “Coordinating Sarmin” (تنسيقية سرمين), an organization bearing a logo with the jihadist Shahada flag used by Al-Qaeda.

These were the SWEDHR conclusions:

Quoted from article 1, above:

Dr Leif Elinder, a known Swedish medical doctor profile, author and specialist in paediatrics, summarised the following in his reply:

“After examination of the video material, I found that the measures inflicted upon those children, some of them lifeless, are bizarre, non-medical, non-lifesaving, and even counterproductive in terms of life-saving purposes of children”.

Further, I received a detailed clinical statement from Dr Lena Oske, a Swedish medical doctor and general practitioner. In her statement, Dr Oske referred to the presumed, adrenaline injection, performed in the White Helmet video (excerpt in the photo above). Her specialist opinion dismisses the procedure conducted in the White Helmet video, as unqualified and incorrect. Furthermore, she describes the earlier assessment of the procedure by a colleague who had exclaimed:

“If not already dead, this injection would have killed the child!”

Excerpts from Dr Lena Oske’s statement to SWEDHR:

“Intracutaneous injection with adrenalin may be used if any other resuscitation measure does not succeed. Especially under precarious circumstances – such as in field emergency settings– where safer ways for the administration of medication (i.e. endotracheal, intravenous, or intraosseus) might be difficult or unavailable. But not in the way shown in the video”.

“In order to perform the injection, CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) has to be interrupted, and then the CPR resumed immediately after. Which is not done in the procedures shown in the video.”

And referring to a correct medical procedure, the Swedish specialist MD adds:

“The technique is simple. Long needle, syringe with 1 mg adrenaline, find the 4th or 5th intercostal space and insert the needle just adjacent to the sternum, left side, deposit the medication after checking you are in the right position (aspiration of blood and no resistance), take out the needle and immediately resume CPR! So, the doctor who wrote the comment, ‘If not already dead, this injection would have killed the child’ was right! What a macabre scene; and how sad.”

Dr Martin Gelin, specialist in dental surgery, designer of various medical and surgical items, wrote:

“The laryngoscope displayed in the video, positioned on the child’s left wrist/hand, is in my view an instrument for grown up patients. Of course this is only an estimation supported by the instrument size in comparison with the size/length of the child’s arm/hand. BUT, the blade is curved! Laryngoscopes for small children have a flat (or less curved) and smaller blade.“

In a later communication, Dr Martin Gelin added:

“There are no traces of blood visible around the “cardiac” syringe when initially penetrating the skin of the child’s chest. No blood either around the needle during, the wild and uncoordinated in and out movements when trying to “reach” the child’s heart! (As far as ascertainable in the video clip). We have long maintained, this would again indicate that the child “operated” on most likely is dead, no blood circulating anymore or that the blood already is coagulating or has coagulated.”

For my part, I had made the following observation [see frame sequence bellow], which motivated the further consultation to colleagues at SWEDHR:

“No substance (e.g. adrenaline) was injected into the child while the ‘medic’ or doctor introduced the syringe-needle in a simulated intracardiac-injection manoeuvre.”

Here below, successive still frames indicating that the piston in the syringe appears remaining in the same position, at the beginning as well as in the middle and at the end of the “intracardiac-injection procedure”.

My finding, which has also been confirmed in second-opinions issued by European MD specialists outside membership of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR) in a meeting in Holland in August 2017 –including an specialist head of the intensive care department of a high reputed hospital in Germany– would indicate that a) the main highlighted ‘life-saving‘ procedure on the infant (intracardiac-injection manoeuvre) shown in the White Helmets video was faked, and b) the hypothesis mentioned by SWEDHR doctors in the first report, [13] referring that the child in question, “if not already dead, might have died because the injection procedure” (Dr Lena Oske) has a factual ground.

Have our findings on the anti-medical, non-lifesaving procedures showed in the White Helmets been questioned. The answer is no.

In the last article in the series mentioned above, [14] I wrote a special Note asking doctors and readers for replication, rebuttal, or comments on our conclusions. No refutations from any doctor did ever come. This despite the two explanatory videos we posted in The Indicter Channel at YouTube have been viewed altogether over a quarter million times (N= 283,308 views). [15] [16]

The only critical article against SWEDHR on this issue was produced by the anti-Russia propaganda publication “CODA Story” (May 2017). However, the CODA Story article had to acknowledge that our conclusions about medical malpractice were accurate. In the CODA article that is referred as to “poorly executed procedure”, “not a usual resuscitation method”, or “did not appear to be carrying out a resuscitation attempt according to accepted guidelines”. [17] The article only contended whether the White Helmets footage would have correspond to an intentional staged scene.

I have served in two consecutive periods as alternate scientific member of the Swedish Ethical Review Committee in Uppsala, appointed by two different governments. I can affirm that any medical ethic review panel would call that, as we did in SWEDHR, medical malpractice.

Regarding whether scenes in the footage are staged or not, those we have referred are staged, beyond doubt. For instance, the CODA article omits to refer the instructions giving by the cameraman shooting the footage to the doctor or paramedics, which it hears clearly in the soundtrack of the video. While filming, the cameraman instructs that children’s bodies should be piled on top of the corps of a deceased woman, depicted in the video as the mother. This is what he says, according to the translation I received, provided by Vanesa Beeley:

“The mother should be underneath and the children on top of her, hey! Make sure the mother is underneath.”

Not to mention the episode of the simulated intracardial injection on one of the children, presumably already dead.

All the above can be observed by anyone at the videos indicated in references [15] and [16].

Conclusion

The aspects reviewed above, referred to a) the partially questioned “civil defence” character of the rescue endeavours, b) the empirical negation of the “political neutrality” principle, both via individual behaviours on the field and by public political activities of the organisation representatives, and c) the production of life-saving scenes reportedly staged, and with war propaganda ends –all together considered, should naturally pose questions about the credibility of the White Helmets and its associates in terms of first-reporters of alleged events, and further as corroborating witnesses of the events they are the original sources.

Judging from published reports [8] [10], the UN appointed commissions investigating the allegations of chemical attacks in Syria have not properly addressed this issue.

Finally, on behalf of SWEDHR, I wish to make clear that our organization neither negate nor support any thesis which would emphatically conclude, in absence of verifiable evidence, who is responsible for the alleged chemical attacks referred here. As scientists, we have solely demand, and we still do, for “beyond reasonable doubt” evidence.

“Swedish Doctors for Human Rights therefore suggest the establishment of an international, independent and multidisciplinary expert-panel of scientists aimed to review the methodology and procedures comprised in the JIM investigation; to assess whether methodological or other bias are behind evidence-deprived conclusions of the report. The suggested professional team shall be a true objective panel not only concerned with the flawed report on the Khan Shaykhun incident, but also reviewing similar faulty allegations done in recent years, which together form a pattern of an aggressive geopolitical behaviour, and a contributing menace to world peace.” [9]

Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli is Chair, Swedish Professors & Doctors for Human Rights SWEDHR.

This article was originally published by The Indicter.

Notes

[1] “SWEDHR Foundation Manifest”, http://swedhr.org/swedhr-manifest/; “SWEDHR, about us”, http://swedhr.org/about-us/

[2] M Ferrada de Noli, “Why Is Sweden Giving the “Alternative Nobel Prize” to Syria’s ‘White Helmets’?“. The Indicter Magazine, 25 November 2016.

[3] “’The evidence of chemical attack in Syria is questionable’ – Marcello Ferrada de Noli”. Radio Sputnik, 10 April 2017. https://soundcloud.com/radiosputnik/media-should-ask-white-helmets-to-provide-evidence-of-the-chemical-attack-in-syria

[4] M. Ferrada de Noli, “From Timisoara to Khan Shaykhun. Part I: The Staged-Massacre Routine for Regime Change”. The Indicter Magazin, 24 October 2017. http://theindicter.com/from-timisoara-to-khan-shaykhun-part-i-the-staged-massacre-routine-for-regime-change/

[5] Interview with the author, “NATO White Helmets Denounced by Swedish Doctors”. UK Column News. Published on Mar 8, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijcA3LCKCl0

[6] Interview with the author, “De Hvide Hjelmes propaganda er farlig”. Arbeideren, Denmark, 26 April 2017. http://arbejderen.dk/udland/de-hvide-hjelmes-propaganda-er-farlig

[7] Associazione di medici svedesi: “Attacco chimico in Siria è una fake news”. Oltre La Linea, Italy. http://www.oltrelalinea.news/2017/04/10/associazione-di-medici-svedesi-attacco-chimico-in-siria-e-una-fake-news/

[8] “Seventh report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism”. http://static.alarabiya.net/files/PDF/2017/10/27/17021a74-d826-4752-aba6-f4083d8e7220.pdf

[9] M Ferrada de Noli, “UN ‘Joint Investigative Mechanism’ report on Khan Shaykhun proven inaccurate, politically biased”. The Indicter magazine, 8 November 2017. http://theindicter.com/un-joint-investigative-mechanism-report-on-khan-shaykhun-proven-inaccurate-politically-biased/

[10] “Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (Advance Edited Version)” http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/G1723418.pdf

[11] Samuel Oakford, “Horrifying Videos Shown at UN Display Carnage of Suspected Chlorine Attacks in Syria”. Vice News, 17 April 2015. https://news.vice.com/article/horrifying-videos-shown-at-un-display-carnage-of-suspected-chlorine-attacks-in-syria

[12] Vanessa Beeley, “Who are Syria’s White Helmets (terrorist linked)?” 21th Century Wire, 25 June 2016. http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/06/21/who-are-the-syria-white-helmets/

[13] M. Ferrada de Noli, “White Helmets Video: Swedish Doctors for Human Rights Denounce Medical Malpractice and ‘Misuse’ of Children for Propaganda Aims”. The Indicter Magazine, 6 March 2017. http://theindicter.com/white-helmets-video-swedish-doctors-for-human-rights-denounce-medical-malpractice-and-misuse-of-children-for-propaganda-aims/

[14] M. Ferrada de Noli, “White Helmets Movie: Updated Evidence From Swedish Doctors Confirm Fake ‘Lifesaving’ and Malpractices on Children”. The Indicter Magazine, 17 March 2017. http://theindicter.com/white-helmets-movie-updated-evidence-from-swedish-doctors-confirm-fake-lifesaving-and-malpractices-on-children/

[15] “The White Helmets video and How to NOT correctly perform intracardiac injection“. Uploaded in YouTube by The Indicter Channel, 6 March 2017 (214,833 views). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GXz9ww7JY4

[16] “White Helmets video with fake life-saving procedures deceived UN sec council”. Uploaded in YouTube by The Indicter Channel, 12 March 2017 [71,475 views). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nj6fc69qjM

[17] “Russia Used a Two-Year-Old Video and an ‘Alternative’ Swedish Group to Discredit Reports of Syria Gas Attack”- CODA Story, 2 May 2017. https://codastory.com/disinformation-crisis/armed-conflict/a-swedish-alternative-ngo-disputes-a-video-of-syrian-carnage-and-a-russian-fake-news-meme-is-born

All images in this article are from the author.

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Opinion: The US-Israeli Gang of Trump, Netanyahu and Kushner

December 2nd, 2017 by Hans Stehling

Not satisfied with rigging the election of the presidency of the world’s super- state, the Trump and Netanyahu families now intend to manipulate global politics to suit their own agendas.

Those agendas include control of Middle East oil/gas reserves, the building up of nuclear weapon arsenals in both the US and Israel and the isolation of the European Union in terms of international trade and influence.

They intend to accomplish this by the deployment of hundreds of nuclear-armed, F-35 strike aircraft: the use of the US veto in the Security Council and the weakening of the authority of the United Nations. This will be achieved by the cutting-off of funds to all UN departments and the increase in the numbers and deployment of US forces in Israel and other key strategic sites around the world in order to reinforce American domination of world affairs. That is the agenda – the reality will be somewhat different.

The American president will be impeached, various family members will be prosecuted for offences against the state and for endangering national security and the Israeli prime minister will be indicted and imprisoned for bribery and corruption.

As for Saudi Arabia, there will be a revolution that will reverberate throughout the Middle East as a popular uprising will consign the House of Saud to history. That will uncover a multitude of secret deals between the previous regime and various Western governments, including the United Kingdom and America that were designed to bolster the status quo ante to their own political advantage.

Then Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Egypt and probably Turkey will make their play. And Trump, Netanyahu and their respective families will be just history.

Featured image is from Jerusalem Post.

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Provocation and the Danger of Military Escalation: Israel Bombs Syrian Military Target

December 2nd, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE:

Contact at [email protected].

Washington and Israel want endless war and regime change in Syria – overnight Israeli terror-bombing of a Syrian military target a clear step toward escalating conflict, aiming to prevent diplomatic resolution.

According to reports, Israeli warplanes fired air-to-ground missiles from Lebanese airspace. Israel uses it regularly like its own, illegally without Lebanese permission.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA),

“(t)he army’s air defense at midnight confronted an Israeli attack with ground-to-ground missiles (GGM) on one of the military sites in Damascus countryside.”

“Informed sources told SANA Saturday that the Israeli enemy launched at 12:30 am (local time) a number of GGM against one of the military sites in Damascus countryside, adding that the Syrian air defense intercepted them and destroyed two of them.”

“The Israeli aggression caused material damage to the site, according to the sources.”

Israel “is closely linked to the terrorist organizations in Syria. The army has repeatedly found Israeli weapons inside the terrorists’ hideouts, particularly in Jub al-Jarrah, al-Mayadeen and Khan al-Sheeh areas.”

Reportedly, a Syrian army ammunition depot was struck in the Damascus countryside, southwest of the city.

Claims of an Iranian military base in Syria were fabricated, reported by the BBC weeks earlier, saying Iran’s military “established a compound at a site used by the Syrian army outside El-Kiswah, 14 km (8 miles) south of Damascus,” citing an unnamed “Western intelligence source.”

Days earlier, Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman said

“(t)here are no (Iranians) in Syria, contrary to what is being said.”

“Yes, there is a pool of experts, advisers…Iran has not been present in Syria so far and our main goal is to prevent (it) from being present as a real military force.”

Separately, Netanyahu lied claiming Iran’s goal is “using Syria as a base from which to destroy Israel.”

The overnight attack came after Syrian and allied forces liberated more areas near Golan from US/Israeli supported terrorists. Territory west of Damascus was cleared.

A US/Israeli-supported terrorist assault on Golan’s Bardaiya Hills was foiled. Maqtoul mountain and Mudawwar hill were captured, al-Nusra terrorists eliminated from the areas.

Other advances were made. Israel likely struck Syria overnight to try slowing its liberating efforts, along with escalating conflict, aiming to prevent resolution.

Separately, Syria’s chief negotiator in Geneva Bashar al-Jaafari condemned a so-called Riyadh-2 communique, demanding Assad’s resignation and exclusion from governing during a transition period.

“As long as the other side sticks to (this demand), there will be no progress” in talks, Jaafari stressed, adding:

“(P)rovocative and irresponsible” Riyadh-2 language “contravenes UN Security Council Resolution 2254,” aiming to undermine conflict resolution.

On Saturday, Syrian delegates left Geneva, undecided on if they’ll return, given the futility of eight rounds of talks over the past five years, several days of current ones accomplishing nothing.

Focus is largely on continuing Astana talks and a Russian sponsored Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi at dates to be announced.

A Final Comment

Perhaps in retaliation for Israel’s overnight terror-bombing attack, Syrian and allied forces launched an offensive against Mount Hermon’s Beij Jinn pocket, controlled by al-Nusra terrorists – around four km from Israeli positions in the area.

The offensive began shortly after Israel’s latest assault on Syrian territory.

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].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”