Global Research

First published in August 2014, this essay brings to the forefront Washington’s relentless support for Saudi Arabia, a State sponsor of terror, which has been waging since 2015 a war on the people of Yemen, tantamount to genocide.   

America Has Sold Its Soul for Oil

Why Does the U.S. Support a Country which was FOUNDED With Terrorism

A U.S. congressman for 6 years,  who is now a talking head on MSNBC (Joe Scarborough) says that – even if the Saudi government backed the 9/11 attacks – Saudi oil is too important to do anything about it:

By way of background, former MI6 agent Alastair Crooke notes that Saudi Arabia was founded with terrorism:

One dominant strand to the Saudi identity pertains directly to Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism), and the use to which his radical, exclusionist puritanism was put by Ibn Saud. (The latter was then no more than a minor leader — amongst many — of continually sparring and raiding Bedouin tribes in the baking and desperately poor deserts of the Nejd.)

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Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity — a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. The list of apostates meriting death included the Shiite, Sufis and other Muslim denominations, whom Abd al-Wahhab did not consider to be Muslim at all.

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Abd al-Wahhab’s advocacy of these ultra radical views inevitably led to his expulsion from his own town — and in 1741, after some wanderings, he found refuge under the protection of Ibn Saud and his tribe. What Ibn Saud perceived in Abd al-Wahhab’s novel teaching was the means to overturn Arab tradition and convention. It was a path to seizing power.

Ibn Saud’s clan, seizing on Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrine, now could do what they always did, which was raiding neighboring villages and robbing them of their possessions. Only now they were doing it not within the ambit of Arab tradition, but rather under the banner of jihad. Ibn Saud and Abd al-Wahhab also reintroduced the idea of martyrdom in the name of jihad, as it granted those martyred immediate entry into paradise.

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Their strategy — like that of ISIS today — was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. In 1801, the Allies attacked the Holy City of Karbala in Iraq. They massacred thousands of Shiites, including women and children. Many Shiite shrines were destroyed, including the shrine of Imam Hussein, the murdered grandson of Prophet Muhammad.

A British official, Lieutenant Francis Warden, observing the situation at the time, wrote: “They pillaged the whole of it [Karbala], and plundered the Tomb of Hussein… slaying in the course of the day, with circumstances of peculiar cruelty, above five thousand of the inhabitants …”

Osman Ibn Bishr Najdi, the historian of the first Saudi state, wrote that Ibn Saud committed a massacre in Karbala in 1801. He proudly documented that massacre saying, “we took Karbala and slaughtered and took its people (as slaves), then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and we do not apologize for that and say: ‘And to the unbelievers: the same treatment.’”

In 1803, Abdul Aziz then entered the Holy City of Mecca, which surrendered under the impact of terror and panic (the same fate was to befall Medina, too). Abd al-Wahhab’s followers demolished historical monuments and all the tombs and shrines in their midst. By the end, they had destroyed centuries of Islamic architecture near the Grand Mosque.

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With the advent of the oil bonanza — as the French scholar, Giles Kepel writes, Saudi goals were to “reach out and spread Wahhabism across the Muslim world … to “Wahhabise” Islam, thereby reducing the “multitude of voices within the religion” to a “single creed” — a movement which would transcend national divisions. Billions of dollars were — and continue to be — invested in this manifestation of soft power.

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It was this heady mix of billion dollar soft power projection — and the Saudi willingness to manage Sunni Islam both to further America’s interests, as it concomitantly embedded Wahhabism educationally, socially and culturally throughout the lands of Islam — that brought into being a western policy dependency on Saudi Arabia, a dependency that has endured since Abd-al Aziz’s meeting with Roosevelt on a U.S. warship (returning the president from the Yalta Conference) until today.

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The more radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan — and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.Why should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar’s Saudi-Western mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard movement: ISIS?

Frontline notes:

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of “Wahhabism,” an austere form of Islam, arrives in the central Arabian state of Najd in 1744 preaching a return to “pure” Islam. He seeks protection from the local emir, Muhammad ibn Saud, head of the Al Saud tribal family, and they cut a deal. The Al Saud will endorse al-Wahhab’s austere form of Islam and in return, the Al Saud will get political legitimacy and regular tithes from al-Wahhab’s followers. The religious-political alliance that al-Wahhab and Saud forge endures to this day in Saudi Arabia.

By the 19th century, the Al Saud has spread its influence across the Arabian Peninsula, stretching from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and including the Two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina.

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By 1945, the U.S. urgently needs oil facilities to help supply forces fighting in the Second World War. Meanwhile, security is at the forefront of King Abd al-Aziz’s concerns. President Franklin Roosevelt invites the king to meet him aboard the U.S.S. Quincy, docked in the Suez Canal. The two leaders cement a secret oil-for-security pact: The king guarantees to give the U.S. secure access to Saudi oil and in exchange the U.S. will provide military assistance and training to Saudi Arabia and build the Dhahran military base.

U.S. presidents have been extremely close to the Saudi monarchs ever since.

The Progressive notes:

“The ideology of the Saudi regime is that of ISIS even if the foreign policies differ,” California State University-Stanislaus Professor Asad AbuKhalil tells The Progressive.

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“Wahhabi Islam [the official ideology of the Saudi monarchy] is fully in sync with ISIS.”

But instead of isolating the Saudi regime from the global mainstream, President Obama paid a visit there earlier this year, meeting with King Abdullah. He reportedly did not discuss the regime’s dubious conduct.

“I can’t think of a more pernicious actor in the region,” British-Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid told me in an interview last year. “The House of Saud has exported this very pernicious form of militant Islam under U.S. watch. Then the United States comes in repeatedly to attack symptoms of this problem without ever addressing the basic issue: Where does it all come from? Who’s at the heart of this thing? It would be like saying that if you have skin rash because of cancer, the best option is to cut off your skin. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Yet, the United States continues with this approach.

Even establishment opinion is recognizing the dimensions of the Saudi problem.

“It can’t be exporting extremism and at the same time ask the United States to protect it,” Retired General (and onetime presidential contender) Wesley Clark recently told CNN.

“Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings,” Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations recently wrote in the New York Times. “For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism [another term for Wahhabism] across the globe.”

Such entities “have been lavishly supported by the Saudi government, which has appointed emissaries to its embassies in Muslim countries who proselytize for Salafism,” he adds.

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Then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a December 2009 leaked diplomatic cable that entities in Saudi Arabia were the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

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Yet the United States keeps mum because the Saudi monarchy serves U.S. interests. Due to its pivotal role in OPEC, it makes sure that crude oil prices don’t rise above a certain level. It is a key purchaser of American weapons. It invests in U.S. government bonds. And it has acted in the past as proxy for covert U.S. actions, such as funneling arms and funding to the Nicaraguan contras.

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Until Saudi Arabia stops sponsoring the most reactionary brands of Sunni Islam, this U.S. ally will remain responsible for much of the mayhem in the Muslim world.

The Independent headlines “Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country”:

Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”

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There is no doubt about the accuracy of the quote by Prince Bandar, secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 and head of General Intelligence between 2012 and 2014, the crucial two years when al-Qa’ida-type jihadis took over the Sunni-armed opposition in Iraq and Syria. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute last week, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, emphasised the significance of Prince Bandar’s words, saying that they constituted “a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed”.

He does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the Isis surge into Sunni areas of Iraq. He said: “Such things simply do not happen spontaneously.” This sounds realistic since the tribal and communal leadership in Sunni majority provinces is much beholden to Saudi and Gulf paymasters, and would be unlikely to cooperate with Isis without their consent.

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Unfortunately, Christians in areas captured by Isis are finding this is not true, as their churches are desecrated and they are forced to flee. A difference between al-Qa’ida and Isis is that the latter is much better organised; if it does attack Western targets the results are likely to be devastating.

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Dearlove … sees Saudi strategic thinking as being shaped by two deep-seated beliefs or attitudes. First, they are convinced that there “can be no legitimate or admissible challenge to the Islamic purity of their Wahhabi credentials as guardians of Islam’s holiest shrines”. But, perhaps more significantly given the deepening Sunni-Shia confrontation, the Saudi belief that they possess a monopoly of Islamic truth leads them to be “deeply attracted towards any militancy which can effectively challenge Shia-dom”.

Western governments traditionally play down the connection between Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabist faith, on the one hand, and jihadism, whether of the variety espoused by Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida or by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Isis. There is nothing conspiratorial or secret about these links: 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as was Bin Laden and most of the private donors who funded the operation.

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But there has always been a second theme to Saudi policy towards al-Qa’ida type jihadis, contradicting Prince Bandar’s approach and seeing jihadis as a mortal threat to the Kingdom. Dearlove illustrates this attitude by relating how, soon after 9/11, he visited the Saudi capital Riyadh with Tony Blair.

He remembers the then head of Saudi General Intelligence “literally shouting at me across his office: ’9/11 is a mere pinprick on the West. In the medium term, it is nothing more than a series of personal tragedies. What these terrorists want is to destroy the House of Saud and remake the Middle East.’” In the event, Saudi Arabia adopted both policies, encouraging the jihadis as a useful tool of Saudi anti-Shia influence abroad but suppressing them at home as a threat to the status quo. It is this dual policy that has fallen apart over the last year.

Saudi sympathy for anti-Shia “militancy” is identified in leaked US official documents. The then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in December 2009 in a cable released by Wikileaks that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan] and other terrorist groups.”

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Saudi Arabia and its allies are in practice playing into the hands of Isis which is swiftly gaining full control of the Sunni opposition in Syria and Iraq.

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For all his gargantuan mistakes, Maliki’s failings are not the reason why the Iraqi state is disintegrating. What destabilised Iraq from 2011 on was the revolt of the Sunni in Syria and the takeover of that revolt by jihadis, who were often sponsored by donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates. Again and again Iraqi politicians warned that by not seeking to close down the civil war in Syria, Western leaders were making it inevitable that the conflict in Iraq would restart. “I guess they just didn’t believe us and were fixated on getting rid of [President Bashar al-] Assad,” said an Iraqi leader in Baghdad last week.

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Saudi Arabia has created a Frankenstein’s monster over which it is rapidly losing control. The same is true of its allies such as Turkey which has been a vital back-base for Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra by keeping the 510-mile-long Turkish-Syrian border open.

As we’ve extensively documented, the Saudis and the U.S. backed the radical “madrassas” in which Islamic radicalism was spread.

Indeed, the U.S. is backing the most radical Muslim terrorists in the world: the Salafis, who are heavily concentrated in Saudi Arabia, while overthrowing the more moderate Arabs.

This book is a globally unique documentation by Dr. Rosalie Bertell. I think it is one of the most important books of the 21^st century. In addition to the author’s original text from the year 2000 there are various updates by herself until 2011 and additional articles written by international experts. As the founder of the “Planetary Movement for Mother Earth” which was organized after having known Bertell’s work (2010) in order to distribute it always more, I have contributed to the book in various ways as well. We translated it and organized its publication. Rosalie has named me her representative in the German speaking part of the world.

When Rosalie Bertell passed, she was 83 years old. We learn from her that free expression of opinions and thoughts about the topic in question, as well as a whole collection of detailed scientific facts, as presented by her, have been suppressed to be discussed for decades. For me there needs to be a public discussion and a theoretical clarification asking the question: In which of the academic traditions, sciences, worldviews, in what logics, politics, and motivation does the literally inconceivable fit that Rosalie Bertell is describing? What are the consequences to be drawn?

Who was Rosalie Bertell?

Dr. Rosalie Bertell was born in 1929 in the United States. She earned a PhD in Biometry at the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, in 1966. She holds nine honorary doctor’s degrees, and she won numerous prizes, among them the “Right Livelihood Award”, RLA (1986); she co-founded multiple organizations including the “International Institute of Concern for Public Health” (IICPH) in Toronto, Canada (1984) and the “International Physicians for Humanitarian Medicine” in Geneva, Switzerland (1999). She has worked as an appraiser for the UN, worked in more than 60 countries for this institution, and was a life-long member of the Roman Catholic Congregation “Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart”, Pennsylvania, USA. Rosalie Bertell is concerned about human health, the environment and the planet as a whole respectively, and about a warning referring to the dangers we face. Her very first book dealt with nuclear dangers: “No Immediate Danger? Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth”. She was awarded the RLA for this very publication in the year of the MCA in Chernobyl 1986. Due to the several hundreds or even more times greater ultimate MCA in Fukushima in 2011 this book is now more relevant than ever.

“If the public were to discover the real health costs of nuclear contamination, a cry would arise from every part of the world and the people would refuse to continue to passively contribute with their own death!“ (Bertell, 1985, p. xiii)

For today she states:

 “What is planned now are climate and weather wars, wars in which earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and droughts, hurricanes and monsoon rains will play a role.“ (Bertell 2013, p. 57)

The dangers that we people and the planet are facing today are far more developed in the post-nuclear era without that the dangers of the nuclear one would have diminished.

Rosalie Bertell is an ethicist of the same magnitude as before her Rachel Carson with her book “Silent Spring” about the fifties and sixties of the 20^th century, who was the first to create awareness about the spreading chemical contamination in nature, and its ramifications with regards to steadily growing cancer rates (Carson 1962).

Bertell, too, wants to deliver a wakeup call for people to become active from below. Her hope is that a peaceful, cooperative and wiser world will emerge. The earth is still a wonderful planet, so she believes at the end of her book, as she calls upon us all “to respect it, to love it and to save it!” (Bertell 2013, p. 439)

Bertell is an ecofeminist and a pacifist in the best sense of the word. She stands for respect of the rights of Mother Earth as a “cosmic being”, and of all beings upon, beneath, and above her. She argues for the abolition of the military and of war, for the end of patriarchy as the attempt to dominate all life and meanwhile the earth itself, and for the end of capitalism as the raving and reckless looting of the whole planet.

She stands for the peaceful resolution of conflicts through international courts, and for the necessary foundation of an environmental court that will preserve the interests of the Earth and its safety and integrity, as well as rule over compensation for inflicted damage. Bertell is a most sensible thinker, crystal-clear and keen; she had a sixth sense for the uncovering of hidden information, she was committed and courageous, and she never gave up even though she has been threatened by several attacks on her life.

As a Catholic nun she was backed by her Congregation “Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart” in the US and had therefore not been dependent on funding by individuals or institutions.

Why is this book so important?

1. It is a history of the ongoing destruction of planet Earth through the development and employment of new military technologies
2. It shows the reaction of the public and of social movements
3. It should be the end of the “conspiracy theory” accusations
4. It shows the overall damages to the planet
5. It needs more of a theoretical explanation
6. It shows the legal situation

This book discusses the history of an ongoing destruction of our Planet, caused by applied natural science, corporate capital, and the military.

Since World War II the development and employment of new military technologies in the East and the West have been the basis of destructions in the very “life systems”, as Bertell calls them, of our planet. The book presents us with a unique historical documentation, which reads like a breathtaking thriller. Its scope ranges from chemical, biological, and nuclear technological development and warfare to the post nuclear, especially in the field of electromagnetic “plasma” weapons, not only threatening to wipe out all life on earth using technologies that are able to produce huge catastrophes, but also threatening to destroy the planet itself. The essence of the thriller Rosalie Bertell has written lies precisely in this escalation. For, it is literally this planetary dimension, which connected to warfare that has been taking action for a long time already, is completely new and unimagined. The beginning of this development started with the use of detrimental substances in industrial agriculture, and in the medical field – such as herbicides, pesticides, detergents, chlorine, and anesthetics – which were used during both world wars. It was Rachel Carson (Carson 1962), the first “eco-feminist” who protested against this development.

In this handout picture released by the U.S. Army, a mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. Japanese officials say a 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II.

The story continues with rocket technology and the atmospheric, surface, and underground nuclear and hydrogen bomb tests that have been ongoing since the end of World War II. There have been around 2.300 tests between 1945 and 1998 (s. Bertell 2013, p. 323) beginning with Hiroshima/Nagasaki up to the many tests in the western parts of the United States, in Central Asia and the South Pacific; more than half of them instigated by the US. These tests mark the beginning of a systemic radioactive contamination of the earth and the application of nuclear processes and radiation to food and for medical purposes. The nuclear tests caused the first damages to the ozone layer and all other layers of the atmosphere, and they were particularly detrimental to the layers of the Van Allen Belts, which determine the earth’s magnetic field.

Due to a lack of knowledge about the functions of the upper atmospheric layers in regard to the preservation of the earth’s life support systems, as Bertell calls them, there was complete ignorance about the effects (exo-)atmospheric nuclear testing could possibly cause. The military scientists acted by “trial and error”. Nature’s reaction to an attack on it’s very self would just have to be seen (Bertell 2013, pp 58f, 151, 156f, 158, 167, 476).

The damages to this sensitive mantle of the atmosphere, however, are unaccounted for until today and it remains unclear, if they will ever vanish again. We may never grasp the meaning of the earth’s “life systems” of which the electromagnetic field is a part, or understand the changes it has undergone.

In addition, experiments with the weather began to take place, reaching a first climax during the Vietnam War. They started with experiments on an artificially prolonged monsoon season, with artificially intensified severe weather episodes, using lethal chemicals such as Monsanto’s “Agent Orange”, which was dispersed through sprayings by airplanes, so that the trees would lose their leaves. These experiments moved on to the attempt of creating a hole in the ozone layer, with the objective of triggering a collapse of Vietnamese agriculture through the induction of unfiltered cosmic radiation, consisting of gamma rays, x rays, infrared rays, UV rays, or certain other microwaves, from which intact layers of the atmosphere protect the earth (Bertell 2013, p. 230).

Meanwhile the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica and the one that has formed recently and for the first time over the Arctic, probably due to radioactivity from Fukushima, allow numerous types of radiation, including the most harmful, to penetrate the atmosphere. Beyond that, this type of radiation is additionally manufactured for medical and electronic use down here (a.a.O.), following the principle of using war technologies in peace as well.

Further, the strategy around rockets and space travel, including supersonic flight, space stations, satellites, and the SDI „Star Wars“ program (Bertell 2013, pp. 184-188; 258ff), centers around projects designed to obtain military control of the Earth from space. “The space will be the next battlefield” (Bertell 2013, p. 177). For this reason thermonuclear bombs have circled above our heads to ensure swifter bombarding of targets on earth, and we have been endangered by plutonium that has been used to fuel rockets like the Cassini during its mission to Saturn, starting in 1997, a potential for widespread and lethal contamination in case of an accident.

Finally, experiments with EM (electromagnetic) waves and the heating up of the upper layers of the atmosphere (Bertell 2013, p. 139ff), called “ionosphere”, from an altitude of 80 km on, began in die 1960ies and 1970ies by influencing this electromagnetically charged layer through the use of “ionospheric heaters”. The most famous of these “heaters” being HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) in Alaska, built up later in the 1990ies, huge radar installations with antenna and a special energy supply (Bertell 2013, pp.273ff). According to Bertell, the Arctic region has been subjected to a deliberate thawing process through the utilization of EM-ELF (extreme low frequency) waves, action that seems to have been agreed upon by the former Soviet Union and the United States in Vladivostok 1974 already (Bertell 2013, p. 256, 445; Ponte 1976; MacDonald 1968).

This is a kind of borderline science, since much of this knowledge remains outside of the scientific discourse familiar to us. Practically nobody is aware of this new science, even though nearly 40 years have passed. In contrast, scientists, researchers and the population are made to believe that greenhouse CO2 gas emissions by the civilian industry are the cause for the swift thawing of the Arctic region, and are proof of climate warming through CO2 in general! (Storr in Bertell 2013, p. 533).

Meanwhile Exxon Mobile and its Russian colleagues have begun to stake out areas of the Arctic region in their quest for oil…

In the meantime there have been continuous “official“ wars in which, however, new unofficial weapons were put to use, such as laser guided weapons and especially DU (depleted uranium) ammunition, produced from de-riched Uranium 238 which originates in nuclear plants. This has been the case in the Balkans, during the Gulf War with Iraq/Kuwait, and everywhere else since – in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in Libya.

As a result, radioactive contamination in these areas and for those living in these regions temporarily or permanently has increased drastically (see the “Gulf War Syndrome”, Günther 2002, Lengfelder 2006). Research by the geophysicist Leuren Moret has provided evidence of a significant decline in birthrates; a rebound cannot be expected (Moret 2011c, d). In other words, radiation has actually already led to a real decline in population in the respective areas. Fukushima’s contribution to this development (Moret 2011 a, b; Kaku 2011, 6^th Info-Letter on www.pbme-online.org) is still completely unforeseeable.

After the many smaller facilities for manipulating the layers of the atmosphere with EM – electromagnetic – waves were installed, such as Poker Flats/Alaska, Plattville/Colorado, and HIPAS/Alaska, the larger ones emerged. This is to be seen in Arecibo/Puerto Rico, EISCAT in Tromsö in Northern Norway, as well as the so called “Woodpecker” in the Soviet Union (Bertell 2013, p. 288ff), and since the early 1990ies the HAARP antenna farms with 180 radar towers in 2002. They are meanwhile accompanied by facilities in the Netherlands and Sweden, Israel, Australia, China, and other countries (recently probably MARLOW near Rostock, northern Germany) as well as by mobile x-band radar as swimming supports, capable of ranging beyond the horizon. About two dozens of these facilities are estimated to be globally operational today. In the year 2013 a new one, MUOS, for satellite coordination, has been built in Sicily (MUOS 2015).

This way, a bombardment or heating up of the ionosphere can occur simultaneously, separately or in opposition to each other, be it for experimental purposes or as a planned attack (see “SuperDARNS” in Bertell 2013, p. 283ff).

For this to work, the electrically charged air of the ionosphere, the “plasma”, which is a unique aggregate state beyond a solid, fluid, or gaseous state (Bertell 2013, p. 143), is heated up using the power of the ionospheric heaters that can add up to GIGA watts, billions of watts. This operation is causing the plasma to densify and to bulge, creating a mirror like reflector from which rays of energy, sent by ionospheric heaters, can be bounced off at any desired angle, and be redirected back to a corresponding point on or under the earth’s surface (Bertell 2013, pp. 279ff). From there the great destruction emanates, that until now could not be explained as an artificially induced catastrophe, though the ENMOD Convention of the UN from 1977, after the Vietnam War, already talked about them, trying to forbid its military use (UN 1977). The use of ionospheric heating with pulsed EM waves as one of the main techniques for environmental modification is especially potent in unleashing or amplifying latent or beginning motion, being along earthquake lines or within active volcanoes. Such processes, utilizing extreme low frequency – ELF – waves, are capable of penetrating and cutting even through the interior of the earth and of causing disturbances at and within its very core, where the magnetic field of our planet is originating (“Deep Earth Penetrating Tomography“ or “Earth Probing tomography”, Bertell 2013, pp. 285ff).

EM waves of different types can also be used to change the “Jetstream” – fast winds moving around the globe on the northern and southern hemispheres being a barrier to  temperatures – up north or down south, so that more heat or cold can stream in. The waves can be used to change the course of the vapor-streams – clouds that move around the globe – to influence the development of droughts and floods. They can be used to get more energy than normal transported to certain places, producing fires, thunderstorms and extreme lightning down to the soil, or heavy explosions that resemble nuclear ones. They can be used to keep freak weather conditions on a certain place for a long time. They can be used to move and build up large storms and to influence ocean currents like El Nino and La Nina (Bertell 2013, pp. 445 ff; 465 ff).

The probably largest ionospheric heater, HAARP in Alaska, is able to set 1, 8 GIGA watts – billions of watts – in motion, and bundle them up to focus on one single point in the ionosphere. The types of technologies existing to destroy the environment have been explained by geophysicist and presidential consultant Gordon MacDonald in his article “How to Wreck the Environment“ published in “Unless Peace Comes” in 1968. That happened 48 years ago! (MacDonald 1968, cf. below)

The prominent journal “The Guardian“, London, has reported about the topic for example (4.4.2012) in an article titled: “At war over geo engineering“. The articles reads as follows:

“…Few in the civil sector fully understand that geo engineering is primarily a military science and has nothing to do with either cooling the planet or lowering carbon … While seemingly fantastical, weather has been weaponized. At least four countries – the US, Russia, China and Israel – possess the technology and organization to regularly alter weather, and geologic events for various military and black operations.… Indeed, warfare now includes the technological ability to induce, enhance or direct cyclonic events, earthquakes, drought and flooding, including the use of polymerized aerosol viral agents and radioactive particulates carried through global weather systems”.

The article mentions as well the role of a gradual warming of the Polar Regions for resource extraction.

This article entirely validates the statements of Prof. Gordon MacDonald, former deputy director of the Institute for Geophysics and Physics at the University of California, and member of the president’s science advisory committee under president Lyndon B. Johnson, made in 1968. The globally renowned scientist writes in Nigel Calder’s book “Unless Peace Comes: A Scientific Forecast of New Weapons“. On geophysical warfare in the chapter “How to Wreck the Environment”, he describes, how the energy fields of the earth can be used to manipulate the weather, resulting in a melting of the polar caps, the destruction of the ozone layer, and the triggering of earthquakes. Prof. Gordon MacDonald therefore established in the 1960s that these weapons were actually in production and that the whole process would practically go unnoticed by their victims if potentially utilized (www.Sauberer-Himmel.de).

• In fact, there was talk in the US as early as 1958 that „Climate control is coming!“ (Newsweek 1958): Edward Teller, “father” of the hydrogen bomb, was at the very front regarding the discussion of possible warfare through the manipulation of weather, for instance dumping aerosols into the atmosphere (cf. Hamilton in Bertell 2013, pp. 498ff).
• The UN ENMOD convention of 1976/77 – now 40 years ago – describes these abominations, and prohibits the military or any other hostile use of these technologies. In the meantime, they are heard of on a daily basis today: earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, and floods, change of weather patterns throughout entire regions, ocean currents and tornados, changes of the ozone layer and the ionosphere (cf. Bertell 2013, p. 46; Storr in Bertell 2013, p. 527).
• In the year 1997 the former US secretary of defense, William Cohen, voiced his concerns about the possibility of precisely these types of weapons being put to use by terrorists (cf. Bertell 2013, p.291).
• The EU Parliament conducted a hearing in 1999 in the matter of HAARP. The hearing remained without consequences, despite all the warnings. It, nevertheless, was admitted by the EU Commission that is has no influence whatsoever on military affairs! (Werlhof in Bertell 2013, p. 36). HAARP communications, however, state that “ionospheric heaters” are designed only for research purposes, and are by no means to be considered as a weapons system. Thus, they would most definitely be in the scope of EU influence, or would have to be prohibited by the UN!
• On the other hand, there is not much talk either about the European ionospheric heaters such as EISCAT in Tromsö, northern Norway. This facility is operated by the German Max-Planck-Institute.
• The UN pronounced another Moratorium on Geoengineering at the Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, prohibiting the private and publicly uncontrolled use of geoengineering (Bertell 2013, p. 318).
• In 2013 nearly 50 European activists and several members of the European Parliament, organized in “Skyguards”, made another intent to mobilize the EP via a conference “Beyond Theories of Weather Modification – Civil Society versus Geoengineering”, accompanied by a Petition to the EP that was even accepted by the EP-Commission on Petitions in 2014 (Werlhof in Bertell 2013, pp. 33-41). In 2016, nevertheless, the same happened to this petition as to the one of 1999: Ex-MEP Josefina Fraile from Skyguards, who had organized the Petition, got a letter from the EU-Commission telling her that military questions are not to be treated in the realm of the EP – though the petition spoke especially about civil geoengineering.
• In general, the Report on “Weather as a Force Multiplier – Owning the Weather in 2025”, prepared for the US Air Force in 1996, shows that the question of “weather wars” is in the hands of the military. A civilian and independent geo-engineering for “saving the world from climate change” is surely not existing (US Air Force 1996).

Results’ summary:

These political experiences seem to contradict the central thesis of Bertell´s book that the earth has already been transformed into a weapon of war, pointing against us as well as against itself in a perverse manner! The meaning behind all this: There is no official  recognition of the existence of means and possibilities of warfare that don’t only pose a threat to all life on earth by utilizing the earth’s own forces against us and itself, but beyond that the existence of a capacity capable of destroying the whole planet as such! (Bertell 2013, p. 251f). This danger had been spelled out already by physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943, Bertell 2013, pp. 223ff, 468ff), the original inventor of different ways how to use the electromagnetic powers of the planet (Bertell 2013, p. 32, 239f). Using her own forces, the earth can now be compelled to kill its own beings and then possibly coerced into suicide!

The means to destroy the planet are those of “geoengineering” – including electromagnetic plasma weapons and all additional forms of weather wars (Bertell 2013, p. 317). If these technologies used in an enhanced form, if the increase of rhythmically pulsed EM waves and the effect of their resonance becomes practically unlimited (Tesla’s “Magnifying Transmitter“, and “controlled earthquakes“, Bertell 2013, p. 288), the earth could possibly even be torn apart, plunge into the sun, or in last consequence, be hurled out into space! Special “Scalar” EM effects of resonance could be instantly reflected, when originating from the earth and penetrating space. A result could be the earth’s destruction through the sun, or the dynamic balance bet originating from the earth and penetrating space ween the earth and the moon, sharing the same magnetic field, could fall apart… Nikola Tesla, the most innovative mind in regard to the work with EM waves, predicted and warned of all these scenarios as a theoretical possibility at the beginning of the last century already (Bertell 2013, p. 465ff).

Further developments:

• The further development of EM weapons in dimensions of longitudinal “scalar” waves, as first developed in the Soviet Union, has found particular focus in the work of former member of the US Army, Tom Bearden, a scientist and disciple of Tesla’s who has been quoted by Bertell (Bertell 2013, pp. 223ff, 238ff, 465f; Bearden 1986/2002). This chapter of weapons technology with (longitudinal) scalar waves appears to be even more mysterious than that of other (transversal) EM waves. Considering that in the so-called vacuum or hyperspace – the “ether” (according to Tesla) or the space beyond the solar system – the movement of these scalar waves reaches beyond the three – dimensional terrestrial space and its conditions, acting independently of each of them under at least four – dimensional conditions – the three dimensions of space and the time dimension. This means for instance that scalar waves are simultaneous, they don´t need time to spread. Military application of these processes on earth – that is working with “unlimited” extra-terrestrial conditions under limited terrestrial ones (cf. first Wagner 1970 on nuclear fission on earth) – would be and actually is the greatest imminent threat (Bearden 2012; Wood 2010).
• Besides the effects triggered on a macro level, other effects that are no less eerie could be caused by EM waves on the micro level as well. We are talking about the interference with our brains using ELF waves that correspond to the pulse – the Schumann frequency – of the earth, which is the same as that of the brain (Begich/ Manning 1996; Bertell 2013, p. 289). These methods have apparently been developed predominantly by the Soviets, and can also be applied to larger populations, according to Bearden.

All this happens true to the motto: Electromagnetic pulses can reach anywhere, due to the fact, that matter itself “oscillates” (Begich/Manning 1996). This is finally the real “secret” of the magnitude and efficiency of the new Tesla-technologies as patented for their use in ionospheric heaters (official US patents by physicist Bernard Eastlund, Bertell 2013, p. 277ff) and elsewhere (Bearden 2012; Wood 2010).

The reaction of the public and of social movements

Through Bertell we are now finding out that we, the public, humans, and citizens have been vulnerable to this increasing threat since ca. 70 years without being made aware of it, let alone having been asked for our approval or “consent”, even though these developments are life endangering for us and the planet and have eroded conditions of life globally. Actually, if these threats are not brought to a halt, our living conditions and the earth itself could be destroyed within a brief period of time already.

Considering Bertell’s quotes: “The military is always 50 years ahead“. And:

“The military never uses the same weapons in a new war that have been used in an old one” (Werlhof in Bertell 2013, p. 48; Bertell Interview II, 2014).

We, as the allegedly responsible citizens:

1. Although embarrassing, we must now come to grips with the fact that we have not been aware of anything that has been going on in this field.

2. We need to realize that since the end of the “Cold War” we have allowed ourselves to believe in the end of wars, at least in the end of large-scale wars, and in the absence of the threat through another world war, nuclear war, let alone environmental wars, wars due to “natural” disasters, energy weapons, and eco terror! We held and still hold it unthinkable that the earth’s own forces can be used against us and the earth itself, and we even did not know about these forces at all…!

3. So, we have to ask, how and if at all there is still a differentiation between friend and foe, civilians and the military, conquerors and the conquered. Why has this distinction evidently become irrelevant? What kind of a war is this?

In respect to social movements, from Bertell’s analysis follows:

• A peace movement exists that has not recognized that there is a modern war, that is directed at and against the environment (Bertell 2013, p. 57f; 325f; 344ff).
• On the grounds of a continuously more obvious destruction of the environment, there nevertheless exists an ecological movement that has not yet realized the problems, which have particularly been caused by the military (Bertell 2013, p. 71).
• The anti- nuclear movement has not realized the post nuclear development of weapons of mass destruction within the military that supersede the necessity of nuclear wars (cf. Bertell 2013, p. 58).
• Right now a trend toward the creation of „environmental justice movements“can be observed. These “movements” intend to promote civil “geoengineering” within the fields of civil science, politics, and private industry, by claiming to fight “climate warming”. They are predominately comprised of geo-engineers. They claim to be in the position to fight climate warming without actually confronting the causes! (Hamilton in Bertell 2013, pp. 485 ff; Bertell 2013, p. 312ff). The blame for climate warming is laid down on the doorstep of civilian CO2 emissions, a position that is being taken only since 1997 (Kyoto protocol, Bertell 2013, p. 311).

According to Bertell, not a single climate conference ever mentioned CO2 before that! However, the movement of geo-engineers does not focus on the reduction CO2 emissions at all. On the contrary, this movement assumes that there is no chance of politically enforcing any considerable norms in this regard anyway. This “movement“ is targeting the alleged symptoms and not the problem of damages of the earth itself while attracting considerable funding and technical resources (Fraile 2015; Weiss 2014; 2016).

Rosalie Bertell

Under the premises of the CO2-thesis, these geo engineers tamper with nothing less than the planetary dimension of the earth’s elements. With the oceans (“ocean fertilization”), the layers of the air (aerosols, “Solar Radiation Management”, SRM, sprayings, s. Bertell 2013, p. 2543; 319), and the ground (deforestation (!), action in regard to more “albedo“, sun reflecting white spaces and clouds), to screen the earth against solar heat and/or for more effective CO2 absorption and to eliminate the necessity of CO2 reduction. Although the dangers resulting from CO2 are supposedly threatening, this approach denies the need to further deal with the issue – that is how to get rid of it itself! The process of fighting “climate warming”, once initiated in an engineering context, would need – as is said by geo-engineers – to be sustained “indefinitely” in order to maintain the climate and not risk an immediate overheating of the planet under the sweltering heat of a sun allowed to shine in blue skies. As a matter of fact, a partial warming of the earth is indeed taking place. However, this is not happening in the troposphere where CO2 actually accumulates, but rather in the higher layers of the stratosphere in which HAARP and similar facilities – the “ionospheric heaters” – are active! (Phillips 2011).

In total, global warming cannot be a result of CO2 emissions after all! (Bertell 2013, pp. 321-323). CO2 is dirty, but it is not heating up, as she says.Apart from Bertell hardly anyone has noticed that the environmental crisis in the guise of the so called climate crisis, as well as the alleged solutions for this crisis, namely geo-engineering, both originate from the same military laboratories!

Ironically, as said in Hamilton’s contribution to Bertell’s book: The military itself does not assume the existence of any kind of climate crisis at all! The measures of military geoengineering do not aim at reducing climate warming. These measures have been invented for completely different reasons, namely military ones: they are geo-weapons (Bertell 2013, p. 58).

Instead of figuring out how to stop military disruption and manipulation of the climate through, as Bertell states, “weather wars, plasma weapons, and geo engineering” by, for example, turning off “ionospheric heaters” globally, the discussion is focused on fighting the consequences of this global war – precisely by employing the same measures that have actually caused them!

The fact that it isn’t the alleged CO2 issue or even „evil nature“ opposing us, remains concealed due to the creation of deliberate confusion! One of most generous private sponsors of geo engineering, which poses as a civilian measure to counter the consequences of CO2 emissions, while actually being a military scheme towards the planet, is the wealthiest man on earth, Bill Gates (Bertell 2013, p. 253f; Hamilton in Bertell 2013, p. 504).

The end of “conspiracy-theory” accusations?

Bertell’ s book could be the beginning of an end to insults and suspicions that have been geared toward making all this sound like a “conspiracy theory” (a term invented by the CIA to revile those who doubted the official version of the murder of J.F. Kennedy). Where the corresponding current developments are dragged out of the dark room of anonymity, secrecy, denial, and concealment – as Bertell has done –, it will not be possible anymore to brush the facts off!

This, nevertheless, is not yet happening, as we know now, five years after having published Bertell in German – the first real public appearance of her book after the sudden bankruptcy of her English publisher in 2000. The background of this strategy to hide the facts can precisely be seen in the ongoing concealment of the connections between environmental crisis and military experiments and attacks. Hiding by all means a meanwhile “unofficial” and/or possibly already raging undeclared war, is necessary in order to not risk opposition from civil society, or even from law, as would inevitably happen if reality were to become publicly evident (Storr in Bertell 2913, p. 545). MacDonald, who has been mentioned earlier, explains that such a ‘secret war’ need never be declared or even known by the affected populations. It could go on for years with only the security forces involved being aware of it (MacDonald, 1968). This kind of “geo-terrorism” and as such “technetronic” (MacDonald) warfare would appear in the guise of militarization or “weaponization” of “industrial mishaps”, “environmental disasters”, and “geo-engineering” (Phillips 2011).

Rosalie Bertell states that the military needs us for legitimization since it is in need of civilian resources (Bertell 2013, p. 388) and legwork, as e.g. done through scientists, and our belief in its ability to create security in a military sense (Bertell 2013, p. 365) and in case of disaster. To have us assuming that it produces these disasters itself would of course be a bad fit! The civilian academic field is precisely one that asserts the impossibility of this type of disaster occurring due to a deliberate manipulation of natural events. All the catastrophes of the past decades, namely 10 times the number of natural disasters as compared to before 1970 (Bertell 2013, p. 306) and the unending cluster of most severe earthquakes globally, are nothing but simple natural events for them. We must not forget, that „normal science“ is unable to explain these phenomena, as they have never taken into account what Nikola Tesla had explored and invented. The earth seems to have remained unchanged tectonically and seismically, and there are no reasonable explanations for the increase in volcanic activity, for instance.

Yet, it is science itself enabling the dangers discussed by Bertell. For without science the development of the relevant technologies pertaining to our topic would never have been possible. It is important to bring the invisible doings of a science serving the military to awareness within the sciences themselves. Civilian science is going to lose its reputation and credibility in public, when trying to disguise possible and current mega crimes that would not be possible without its cooperation with military science in the first place. As Lowell Wood, “civil” geo-engineer and disciple of Edward Teller put it:

“We as humans always influenced our environment the way we wanted it. Why not the Planet?” (Hamilton in Bertell 2013, p. 501).

The overall damages to the planet.

Meanwhile, the earth, our planet, is in critical conditions. According to Bertell it has been weakened and could already have been irreversibly damaged (Bertell 2013, p. 59, 228, 320, 323, 326, 455, 473). The planet has become „a research victim of militarism“ (Bertell 2013, p. 483). It is as if air, water, soil, animals, plants and humans are presented like a “sacrifice” (Bertell 2013, pp 325ff) to the “Gods”!

Bertell illustrates how the military causes the greatest environmental damages, usurps most of the resources, and wastes away living conditions on earth by compromising it ruthlessly and without conscience (Bertell 2013, pp. 335ff). She draws parallels between the military and the behavior of an addict. The addict will not refrain from his addiction on his own. Obviously, all this goes without the knowledge or approval of the earth’s population, regardless of our democratic systems and beliefs.

Preliminary effects of the new weapons which have been described here in part, are:

• Apart from damages through mining, chemistry, nuclear and genetic engineering, life industries, Nano- technology, and sprayed substances like aluminum, barium, sulfur and lithium, that continue to destroy the atmosphere, the soil, the water, plants, and living conditions,
• there are holes in the ozone layer, produced by decades of nuclear testing, supersonic flights and rocket flights into space (and not by FCKW as we are constantly told!)
• there are disturbances of the earth’s electromagnetic field within its core as outside in space and in the Van Allen belts,
• there are holes and incisions throughout the protective layers of the atmosphere, produced by ionospheric heaters,
• there is a wobble/an imbalance of the planetary motion (Bertell 2013, p. 450) and a slowing down of the rotation,
• there is, therefore, the possible acceleration of a magnetic polar shift/polar reversal;
• there is the active thawing of the arctic region (Bertell 2013, p. 227) since the 70ies of the 20^th century
• causing an increase in ocean levels, a loss of fresh water,
• and there is a weakening of the gulf stream by 1/3 already, the end of which would mean a possible new ice age for Europe.
• There is the disappearance of the glaciers worldwide that leads to huge floods now and to extreme droughts later with the effect that the large rivers of the world would run dry and leave the population and nature without fresh water.
• Further, the outer layers of the atmosphere are decreasing by 1 km every 5 years (Bertell 2013, Chapter 3-5 in Part II, additional Texts A, D, C in Part IV).
• This means the loss of protection of the atmosphere against cosmic radiation like UV, Gamma, microwaves and x rays on the earth´s surface (Bertell 2013, p. 230), detrimental for all life on it and,
• if more, finishing with agriculture.
• It means weather and climate chaos everywhere and loss of any equilibrium to be expected.
• It means natural catastrophes of any magnitude, and that it will mostly be impossible to distinguish between natural and manufactured ones, especially when the tipping point is reached, and synergetic effects enter into play.
• It means that no catastrophe can be foreseen, or protected against. Catastrophes can and do happen everywhere and at any moment.
• If used for war these weapons can even lead to a total destruction of the planet as such, as Tesla warned (Bertell 2013, p. 241).

What are the plans? What is going on currently? How much of the earth’s living systems have already been destroyed irreversibly? How is the process of destruction going on already? What means that nature has a time lag of 40-60 years to respond to our manipulations? Does it mean that nothing is going to stop what is only starting to happen now? What actually do we not know about ongoing experiments? (Bertell 2013, p. 305)

We can anticipate: a boomerang effect, a nemesis – a counter reaction – of nature, synergies/tipping points as well as unpredictable “side effects” that will need to be taken into consideration (Bertell 2013, p. 256). “How do I repair a system without understanding it?” This is a question, which geo-engineers pose to themselves with regard to the climate. What they omit in the process is the fact that they are referring to a “system” that has essentially been under attack precisely by them, and that, too, before they had an understanding of it themselves!

The phenomenon of “kyndiagnosia”, the incapacity to recognize danger, is omnipresent in science, politics, economy, ecology, society, and particularly in the military. All the time over society has allowed these institutions to put life at risk – the life of people, nature and now even the planet – for their destructive actions and experiments. Never have the principles of war crimes, defined by the Nürnberg Tribunal after World War II, been applied to them (Bertell 2013, p. 474).

The need for more of a theoretical explanation

Since the whole undertaking causes harm to everyone, it becomes unbelievable and seemingly irrational. An explanation is necessary. Who of us regular human beings could possibly understand this deliberate promotion of insanity?

Rosalie Bertell is explaining the multiple facts she has gathered about the military as an institution that exists for ongoing and planned wars. As it seems clear, therefore, that the military is specialized in destruction and systems of destruction of always new kind, there appears to be no necessity for a more thorough explanation. This necessity, however, exists, because the military technologies stem from the natural sciences, the civil as well as the military ones.

Bertell as a scientist herself, though, has not developed a critique of the sciences as such, which means of modern science. The analysis of the origins and the development of modern science, nevertheless, shows that the military is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath its water surface, there is the mountain of a science that has been invented in modern times. It started with planning subjecting nature in all its forms, including women as “nature”, destroying and controlling them and nature alike by means of the “scientific experiment”. The respective technologies were first developed in the dungeons of the “Holy Inquisition” (Merchant 1982). These new sciences were not only motivated by a “patriarchal” society that was interested in new forms of subjecting women, but also in working with and for the military from their very beginning (Wagner 1970).  Today they are now ending up with trying to control Mother Nature, too, as Earth herself, like a sort of “mega witch”, destroying her, the planet, as we now know.

So, things have remained the same until today, the only, but important difference being that the dimensions and the dangers which have multiplied since, as well as the overall connection between the civil and the military sciences seems to be outside of the general knowledge and consciousness. When looking at the destruction of nature and life that takes place everywhere and can surely not be denied any more, occurring even without any direct war, we then can realize what it means that the sciences are related to the military even where they declare to be “civil” and “peaceful”. This way the whole of the scientific undertaking in reality is a war against life, the military being only its peak. This is exactly what we now are experiencing full size.

So, we now have to answer the question why and how this has happened and is even promoted by the Society, using all possible means, as we have seen.

From the point of view of my approach of the “critical theory of patriarchy”, the military has invented something like a “military alchemy”, an expression that Rosalie Bertell liked very much when she knew about it. (She even wanted a new edition of her book be entitled this way). It means that the patriarchal, women and nature hating – dimension of modern civilization (Werlhof 2016b) goes back to antiquity, where the science and technique of a patriarchal “alchemy” were developed. Their aim at that time already was to start to take control over women, mothers and Mother Nature in order to transform them into a supposedly higher and better life and matter, namely a motherless life and artificial gold (Schütt 2000; Werlhof 2011). They failed in doing so and did not succeed. With the invention of modern science and technology, nevertheless, the modern “alchemists” started with the same project again, being much more successful than at any time before in history. The results can be admired today: the machine, the commodity, money and “capital” in general being the alchemical wonders of modernity which are thought to replace life, nature and “matter” by something more civilized, more developed and more divine!

From nuclear, genetic and nanotechnology to geoengineering, from micro- to macro-life, this has been the path of modern alchemy, the military alchemy of geoengineering being its last invention, as I see it (Werlhof 2011, 2014, 2015).

The “Anthropocene“ (Crutzen 2002) is the result, the earth-era of mankind, to truly be God! This is “proved”:

• by transforming – “hacking” – the planet into a manageable instrument, as if this would be desirable and possible without damaging it;
• by reversing the vibrant planet into a “better” one, a predictable giant machine, a Mega-Machine, and a war-machine!
• by means of intended ultimate control over all of life’s processes, the ones of the planet as a whole included;
• and, finally, through a „taming“ of Mother Earth as a sort of dangerous and life threatening „mega witch“! (“Dr. Strangelove” in Hamilton 2013, p. 498ff)

There are people at work who are not kidding at all, but risk the last and greatest matricide, that of the earth herself. These people are “allowed” to do so! The necessity to demand an end to such a dangerous undertaking and hubris has not been acknowledged, and such undertaking has not been forbidden! It is obviously believed that all this is a desirable “progress” and “development” and really worth striving for. So, as an endeavor it takes on a truly religious dimension. We can see this way, how historically old this kind of “wishful thinking” and hubris is already. A failure seems inconceivable for the perpetrators, and such a thing does not even exist in their minds.

This development has endured for 500 years – rooted in a 5000 years old belligerent-religious-ideological beginning. It comes to a climax and to an end now: We are talking about “patriarchal” thinking and the development of a global “alchemical system” based on the utopian project of the destruction and technical substitution of a motherly nature, a process that appears to have become the “collective unconscious” of today’s civilization. (Werlhof 2010, 2014a, 2015, 2016b; Projektgruppe 2011).

Bertell says about the dangers and the secrecy around military activities:

 “Until now, nobody has clearly considered the potential consequences, described them, or admitted to them.“ (Bertell 2013, p.473).

What we will hear in the end might be no different from what the nuclear industry, which in fact remains uninsured against failure, has to say, namely that they assumed that the “worst case” scenario would never actually take place.

Bertell was still somehow optimistic in the year 2000. She was confident in grass roots movements throughout the world and their ability to join forces with international organizations like the UN in order to disempower the military, even abolish war (Bertell 2013, p. 376), and to find a path towards a peaceful and friendly future shaped by respect towards the earth and the maintenance of “ecological safety”.

Today, 16 years later, the ongoing crisis points towards a completely different development, if not to a new world war (Chossudovsky 2012 and 2015) which seem to have begun already. The public, most of civil science, social movements and most politicians, though, have not yet understood how the new weaponry of weather wars, plasma weapons and geoengineering is functioning. They lack any understanding why it should be possible to produce earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, droughts, floods, changing ocean currents, tsunamis, influencing the weather of whole regions, heat and cold, freak conditions beyond the seasons or the climate zones – all mentioned in the UN ENMOD Convention in 1977 already.

The reason is that these effects are mainly due to “Tesla technologies”, based on the manipulation of the electromagnetic potential of the earth. The physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) has never been publicly recognized by the civil sciences, even if without him there would be no alternating current, no electronic device, and no wireless communication. Tesla´s idea of treating the phenomena of life via its “waves” instead of via its “particles”, taking influence on its movements instead of on solid matter, as was usual in modern science, led to inventions of a character and magnitude that could neither have been produced, nor explained by “normal” physics. Tesla´s inventions (Tesla 1919) were secretly taken over by the military in the East, and the West at the end of World War II, and were never discussed in public. Less was it recognized how Tesla´s inventions were related to Quantum physics, another part of the new physics of the last century, leading to even more terrible weapons, as explained by Bearden, a disciple of Tesla, and Bertell (Bearden 1986; Bertell 2013, pp. 237, 239, 243, 251, 454, 468ff).

“Unfortunately”, says Bertell, “waiting for these weapons to be employed in order to then be able to better understand them will mean the end of our civilization and our life. Our research must be ahead of the threats instead of limping behind. Chemtrails are the attempt of biological and chemical warfare. What they are dumping on us now might only be a pre-taste of what is actually planned”. (Bertell, email 27.1.2011)

 What about the legal situation?

“No laws exist that prohibit the tampering with the earth’s climate” (Hamilton in Bertell 2913, p. 502).

Bertell’s stance on this issue: if the military is tampering with our air, our water, the ground and the forces of our earth, or doing anything that questions our living conditions, let alone has the potential to destroy them, then that simply must not happen! First and foremost this needs to be discussed publicly…Beyond all secrecy we must have a right to that!

Environmental advocate Dominik Storr:

“The fact that geophysical warfare against mother earth has no legal repercussions is, however, also a symptom of complete political failure. Politically it has not been possible to generate any binding legal norms concerning limitations, let alone a ban on climate and weather moderating measures.” (Storr in Bertell 2013, p. 528).

For, these remain concealed, and are regarded as inexistent, though the laws concerning human rights in general are sufficient to ban climate and geoengineering, once investigated and proved their necessarily detrimental effects on the health of people as well as of the environment as such. The UN-ENMOD Convention is prohibiting the hostile use of techniques that are altering the environment.  This Convention can, therefore, not been taken for legal activities as far as a “scientific and peaceful” use of these techniques is propagated, as civil geoengineering is proposing it. So, the military use of it has to be kept secret (Storr in Bertell 2013, p. 526, 530ff, 534ff).

None of the UN-Conferences has brought to the table a discussion about the military behavior, so Bertell, even though the UN has been well aware of the existence of weather modification for wars since 36 years, and has actually banned this, the topic was not even raised at the conference in Copenhagen 2009, at which climate was the central topic. Nor has this been the case in the COP21 UN-Conference in the same issue in Paris in 2015.

Instead, however, the UN enforced a global Moratorium against geo engineering in Nagoya 2010, prohibiting individual, therefore private action. Who cares? At the Stock Exchange, you can gain money with “weather derivates”.

What can we do?

It is our objective to rouse the public, the media, movements, science, politics, the EU, and above all, the people, especially the youth.

The official theories about global warming and the alleged reasons for it, namely the civil output of CO2 gases, as recently maintained again at the last UN Climate Conference COP21 in Paris (2015), have to be dismantled (Bertell 2013, pp. 300ff). The IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – as the main official institution propagating the theory about the importance of CO2, is based on mere computer simulation and has no real proves to offer (Storr in Bertell 2013, p. 533). Most scientists even have severe doubts about the CO2 thesis (Weiss 2016; Wigington 2016). The results of independent scientists like Marvin Herndon are not published (a.a.O.). Investigations like those of activist Dane Wigington are not valued (Wigington 2016), even if he is quoting official sources like a recent speech of CIA-Director Brennan on geo-engineering and some of its methods. Civil geo-engineers, on the other hand, are denying the actual use of these methods, pretending that they are only on the table of discussion for an eventual future use (Fraile 2015, Weiss 2014, 2016). This way they avoid any legal problem, any problem with civil society and any proximity to the military. For, if climate change is the result of the application of military geo-engineering, there is no way to propagate it against climate change!

COP 21: Heads of delegations (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Rosalie Bertell is an eye-opener! She leads us into 7 decades of manipulation and destruction of the earth´s systems, and shows how complicated the reality has become in the meantime, as synergetic effects may have been influential on the one hand, whereas the results of scientific research about them are lacking in public on the other hand.

She shows us that and why a new dimension never considered until now has to be recognized – the planetary one. At the same time, she demonstrates that this planet is a gigantic, but friendly and beautiful cosmic being that wants to maintain the abundance of life it has created over billions of years – us included! Rosalie Bertell is able to see the new dimensions of incredible dangers that are threatening us, to analyze them soberly, and to call for our love for Mother Earth as a mental and spiritual way to move on at the same time. It is an invitation to not give up, not to hide, and not to go into despair, but to start to open up, to join, to get organized and to stand up for this Earth as it is the only one we have. I call it her “planetary consciousness” (Werlhof 2014b), a consciousness for this wonderful planet that has to be loved and protected by us. What else?

Rosalie has called herself an ecofeminist. Isn´t her consciousness and love of Mother Earth exactly what ecofeminism needs today in order to be at the level of a reality that has entered a new dimension, one that has never existed on earth before? The key is, therefore, to wake up to this planetary consciousness before and not after an electromagnetic geophysical war. A new movement will be needed to get to it and a broader theory to understand it.

Bertell’s book is a global warning for all of us.

Claudia von Werlhof is Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

This article was originally published by PBME. 

You can read the French version here.

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Günther, Siegwart-Horst: Uran-Geschosse: Schwergeschädigte Soldaten, mißgebildete Neugeborene, sterbende Kinder. Ahriman, Freiburg (Breisgau) 2000, 2. ed.

Hamilton, Clive: die Rückkehr des Dr. Strangelove – Die Politik der Klimamanipulation als Antwort auf die globale Erwärmung, in: Bertelll 2013, pp. 485-507

Information-Letters of the Planetary Movement for Mother Earth“, www.pbme-online.org

Lengfelder, Edmund: Kaku, Michio in Bob Nichols: Fukushima: How Many Chernobyls Is It? 8.7.2011 (in: 4. Info-Letter PMME, Okt. 2011)

MacDonald, Gordon: How to Wreck the Environment, in: Nigel Calder: Unless Peace Comes: A Scientific Forecast of New Weapons, London, Pelican 1968, pp. 119-213 (see also https://calderup.wordpress.com/tag/unless-peace-comes/, 6.4.2012) http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2012/01/12/climate-control-is-coming/?utm_source= feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ModernMechanix+%28Modern+Mechanix%29

Merchant, Carolyn: The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, Sn Francisco, Harper & Row 1982

Moret, Leuren: Erdbeben in Japan und Atomunfälle sind Folgen eines tektonischen Nuklearkrieges, www.politaia.org/kriege/bekannte-Geowissenschaftlerin…, 23.3.2011a

Moret, Leuren: Der tektonische Nuklearkrieg wird von den weltweiten HAARP-Partnern beobachtet, www.politaia.org/kriege/leuren-moret…, 27.5.2011b

Moret, Leuren: Mega-Tsunami, totale Kernschmelze und Strahlenkrankheiten, www.politaia.org/israel/leuren-moret-am-14-06-2011, 19.6.2011c

Moret, Leuren: Japan, U.S., Kanada vertuschen Fukushima-Strahlungsdesaster, www.politaia.org/sonstige-nachrichten/leuren-moret…, 21.8.2011d

Morpheus: Transformation der Erde. <interkosmische Einflüsse auf das Bewusstsein, Berlin/München 2010, 2. Aufl., Trinity Verlag i. d. Scorpio Verlag GmbH & Co. KG

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Newsweek (condensed from Newsweek) Climate Control is Coming.

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Phillips, Jeff: Geo-Terrorism: The Weaponization of ´Industrial Accidents´, Natural Disasters´ and ´Environmental Engineering´, 4, 2011 (cf. www.pbme-online.org)

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Smith, Jerry E.: Weather Warfare – the Military´s Plan to Draft Mother Nature, 2006

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Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University Abdullah Al-Arian has written an epic tweetstorm showing that the “paper of record” has long pretended that the leaders of our close “friends” (cough … radical head-choppers) the Saudis are on the verge of becoming “moderate”:

.

This piece from 1953 describes King Saud as “more progressive and international-minded than his autocratic father” pic.twitter.com/U8ZFLNX0Ko

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

This piece from 1957 doesn’t refer to Saudi Arabia specifically but it’s an epic headline nevertheless. pic.twitter.com/Gj6NB1DRtq

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1960: “King Saud has increasingly assumed the role of liberal champion of constitutional reform.” (The Saudi constitution was adopted by royal decree in 1992). pic.twitter.com/3kwGcgnpDd

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1962: “The Oil Genie and the Sheikh” offers a tour of Gulf palaces that marvels at their “gilded furniture of impressive ugliness.” pic.twitter.com/EcFqhUpayE

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

The rest of the article (not included here) provides descriptions from several other Gulf states. Here is part of the photo spread from Oman and Bahrain with the caption “‘heaven on earth”—air conditioned palaces, Cadillacs, girls” pic.twitter.com/j6p7LiMmZt

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 25, 2017

During the so-called “Arab Cold War” Saudi royals were supported as a bulwark against Nasserism. This 1963 piece celebrates Crown Prince Faisal’s “burst of social reform and economic development.” pic.twitter.com/OR6g73Zveh

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

“With his older brother no longer looking over his shoulder…” pic.twitter.com/8KlT0vPYiP

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1964: “He is a man who has gained nearly absolute power without really wanting it.” pic.twitter.com/QYzWOKyzpE

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Here Faisal is described as “ascetic, with only one wife, who lives on grilled meat and boiled vegetables and makes a fetish of moderation.” pic.twitter.com/SSQV0s822i

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

This 1975 obituary: “Faisal, Rich and Powerful, Led Saudis Into 20th Century“ pic.twitter.com/2YZm2O3M3A

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Faisal’s successor, King Khalid, was a “moderating force” pic.twitter.com/MxmpR9vaAe

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

A couple of more headlines from 1975, including one on “planting the seeds of a parliamentary system in the kingdom.” pic.twitter.com/TlwWu1vLYv

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

An epic lede here from 1979: “His black Trans-Am sports car creeps along the Corniche Road on the edge of the Red Sea. To the left, skyscrapers jab into the humid air, a sight made more impressive by the desolation surrounding the ancient city of Jidda.” ? pic.twitter.com/0ljqekE2YN

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1982: “King Fahd has been depicted as the leading figure in a progressive, modernizing faction within the tradition-minded monarchy.” pic.twitter.com/lPPFWrW0QA

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1991-92: “major political changes,” “modernizers,” “governmental reform,” “and other political reforms” pic.twitter.com/0gRSPLSkjm

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1992: “In making the changes, King Fahd is following previous generations of Saudi rulers who had also moved toward modernization since King Abdelaziz united a vast territory populated by feuding tribal leaders into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 60 years ago.” pic.twitter.com/3NXCn6oo54

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

1996: Friedman makes his first appearance, describing King Fahd as a “bulldozer” in tackling political problems on behalf of his US ally. pic.twitter.com/DoYcoyVxrE

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

2000: “Saudi Heir Urges Reform, and Turn From US” pic.twitter.com/9iFEJ963MH

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

2002: Friedman opines about the “2 futures” for Saudi Arabia, concluding “Which school would I bet on? Ask me in five years.” pic.twitter.com/msVsLawvKl

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Luckily, we wouldn’t have to wait that long. On eve of Iraq invasion Friedman makes the case that war “could drive reform in the Arab/Muslim world” pic.twitter.com/ML6IfkE4uo

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

2005: “For Abdullah, who has fashioned himself as a reformer in a land where conforming to tradition is a virtue, the challenge now is to make good on longstanding promises for change.” pic.twitter.com/NlZWDWRphp

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

? pic.twitter.com/6f9Vtz6j5a

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

“Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert” ? pic.twitter.com/hEsHoH3jMp

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

2009: A cabinet reshuffle can sometimes be reform. pic.twitter.com/nOO7DCUARY

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

This editorial welcomes the reshuffle. pic.twitter.com/Z6Z0eUYlDx

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

“More generally, the reform agenda has drawn momentum from King Abdullah’s personal popularity…” pic.twitter.com/Q0LrjTUPtm

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

“Yet by the Saudi’s premodern standards, the 85 year-old King Abdullah, with a harem of wives, is a social revolutionary.” pic.twitter.com/zQ2tAj1p9L

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Saudi society is divided, but the monarch’s sympathies lie with the reformers. pic.twitter.com/x1siP4RnL6

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

From 2012: “King Faisal, in a rush to modernize his realm, created Saudi state television in the 1960s, and that bold step is widely believed to have led to his assassination” pic.twitter.com/ZZgrTLXi1y

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Twitter gets a shout! pic.twitter.com/lfoH8gkZaS

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Reporting from the front lines of the Arab uprisings in Dubai, Friedman calls Saudi King Abdullah “a real progressive” pic.twitter.com/Qf6bWuJUv6

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

King Abdullah’s 2015 obituary describes him as “…a cautious reformer amid great changes in the Middle East.” pic.twitter.com/urrdKRvkbk

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

Saudi Arabia’s economic revolution offers “tantalizing hints at even broader reforms.” ? pic.twitter.com/lJEKbhrHcD

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

From earlier this month, this Friedman piece includes such gems as “he is much more McKinsey than Wahhabi — much more a numbers cruncher than a Quran thumper.” pic.twitter.com/g6pkppqmQi

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

And finally, the one that inspired it all, a hagiographic ode to royal reform that represents seven decades of strategic policy objectives barely concealed beneath recycled cultural tropes. pic.twitter.com/DQHeftCxnz

— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017

L’aeroporto militare di Ghedi (Brescia) si prepara a divenire una delle principali basi operative dei caccia F-35.

Il ministero della Difesa ha pubblicato sulla Gazzetta ufficiale il bando di progettazione (importo 2,5 milioni di euro) e costruzione (importo 60,7 milioni di euro) delle nuove infrastrutture per gli F-35: l’edificio a tre piani del comando con le sale operative e i simulatori di volo; l’hangar per la manutenzione dei caccia, 3460 metri quadri con un carroponte da 5 tonnellate, più altre strutture da 2800 m²; un magazzino da 1100 m², con annessi una palazzina di due piani per uffici e la centrale energetica con cabina elettrica e vasche antincendio; 15 hangaretti da 440 m² in cui saranno dislocati i caccia pronti al decollo.

Poiché ciascun hangaretto ne potrà ospitare due, la capienza complessiva sarà di 30 F-35.

Tutti gli edifici saranno concentrati in un’unica area recintata e videosorvegliata, separata dal resto dell’aeroporto: una base all’interno della base, il cui accesso sarà vietato allo stesso personale militare dell’aeroporto salvo che agli addetti ai nuovi caccia.

Il perché è chiaro: insieme agli F-35A a decollo e atterraggio convenzionali – di cui l’Italia acquista 60 esemplari insieme a 30 F-35B a decollo corto e atterraggio verticale – saranno dislocate a Ghedi le nuove bombe nucleari statunitensi B61-12.

Come le attuali B-61, possomo essere anch’esse sganciate dai Tornado PA-200 del 6° Stormo ma, per guidarle con precisione sull’obiettivo e sfruttarne le capacità anti-bunker, occorrono i caccia F-35A dotati di speciali sistemi digitali.

Poiché ciascun caccia può trasportare nella stiva interna 2 bombe nucleari, possono essere dislocate a Ghedi 60 B61-12, il triplo delle attuali B-61.

Come le precedenti, le B61-12 saranno controllate dalla speciale unità statunitense (704^th Munitions Support Squadron della U.S. Air Force), «responsabile del ricevimento, stoccaggio e mantenimento delle armi della riserva bellica Usa destinate al 6° Stormo Nato dell’Aeronautica italiana».

La stessa unità dell’Aeronautica Usa ha il compito di «sostenere direttamente la missione di attacco» del 6° Stormo. Piloti italiani vengono già addestrati, nelle basi aeree di Eglin in Florida e Luke in Arizona, all’uso degli F-35 anche per missioni di attacco nucleare.

Caccia dello stesso tipo, armati o comunque armabili con le B61-12, saranno schierati nella base di Amendola (Foggia), dove un anno fa è arrivato il primo F-35, e in altre basi. Vi saranno, oltre a questi, gli F-35 della U.S. Air Force schierati ad Aviano con le B61-12.

Su questo sfondo richiedere, come ha fatto alla Camera il Movimento 5 Stelle, che l’Italia dichiari la sua «indisponibilità ad acquisire le componenti necessarie per rendere gli F-35 idonei al trasporto di armi nucleari», equivale a richiedere che l’esercito sia dotato di carrarmati senza cannone.

Il nuovo caccia F-35 e la nuova bomba nucleare B61-12 costituiscono un sistema d’arma integrato.

La partecipazione al programma dell’F-35 rafforza l’ancoraggio dell’Italia agli Stati uniti. L’industria bellica italiana, capeggiata dalla Leonardo che gestisce l’impianto di assemblaggio degli F-35 a Cameri (Novara), viene ancor più integrata nel gigantesco complesso militare-industriale Usa capeggiato dalla Lockheed Martin, la maggiore industria bellica del mondo (con 16000 fornitori negli USA e 1500 in 65 altri paesi), costruttrice dell’F-35.

Lo schieramento sul nostro territorio di F-35 armati di bombe nucleari B61-12 subordina ancor più l’Italia alla catena di comando del Pentagono, privando il Parlamento di qualsiasi reale potere decisionale.

Manlio Dinucci

Authoritarianism can be subverted if learning environments on college campuses are democratized to meet learner needs.

What happens to a nation when non-conformists are labeled as “enemies of the people” and their counter-views are described as “alternative facts?”

What happens when the ideas and beliefs of American citizens are rejected by the government due to their religion?

What happens when the polity continuously ignores its constituents and avidly deconstructs affordable internet availability?

What happens when critical thought is observed with contempt?

What happens when a society’s economic disparities continue to widen?

What happens when violence worsens across traditional socio-economic bounds and it is ignored?

What happens when questioning these concerns becomes inappropriate or even illegal?

The Frankfurt School and Authoritarianism

In 1922, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Max Horkheimer founded the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, or what would eventually be known as The Frankfurt School. Their research critically analyzed Western history by critiquing the ideological forces and structures that seemingly constrain people. Their goal in this critique? Individual liberation to reject or revise the conditions authorities have enforced as measures of constraint for the sake of conformance. The notion of defining the conditions of social subjugation became known as critical theory and, thus, evolved into a natural doctrine for redefining what it means to be truly emancipated.

In 1933, less than 10 years after its inception, the Frankfurt School was temporarily transferred, first to Geneva in 1933, and then to New York and Columbia University in 1935.

But why was such a move necessary? An emerging political party had taken control of Germany called the Nazis.

This makes the Institute’s move both ironic and a poignant. It is a reminder that its emphasis on questioning authority could never be realized without a societal and governmental structure capable of entertaining notions of non-conformance.

Such is the nature of a democracy and the antithesis of authoritarianism.

An authoritarian framework always seeks to overtake those structures that would otherwise subvert the total power it sways and deem them as dangerous or irrelevant to the public good. In fact, authoritarian regimes are notorious for punishing those engaging in what may be observed as “dangerous thinking.”But Hannah Arendt argued that all thinking is dangerous because it is individual thought that questions the relevance of the status quo. It is also the bedrock any civically engaged citizenry needs to critically think about how today’s reality will affect tomorrow’s democracy. This is especially true when dangerous thinking must traverse through the muck of radical extremist views, white nationalism, isolationism, and petty policies that push the needle of societal thought to the margins.

But where can these can ideas be discussed without reservation?

Education’s Subversion of Authoritarianism

Colleges and universities are the original bastions of dangerous thinking. These institutions reinforce scholars to question everything that is sacred.In doing so, the role of higher education is solidified as a pivotal mechanism for perpetuating a political democracy and an informed citizenry.

But the educative process for becoming an informed citizenry is not a one-way street.

Educators must recognize how to convey knowledge in a way that learners can engage on their terms. This is not pandering to the wants of the learner. Instead, this is an act of counterbalancing the learners’ needs with the educational methods that allow learners to understand the knowledge being conveyed.

This is not a revolutionary call to arms. Creating authentic and bespoke learning environments that liberate the minds of learners has been an impetus for educators since the era of John Dewey. However, in an age where the proliferation of students in blended learning environments is common, the ability for an educator to account for the needs of a learner is all but impossible without smaller class sizes and a legion of additional faculty. In that context, educators are better able to humanize their learners and emancipate them from being merely a passive object, thus empowering them to be interested and communicative. Learners then become an active part of the learning process because it has been democratized by, with, and through their needs. As a result, learners find an appreciation of power relations within the education system and society at large, so long as they see their input is relevant to the process at hand.

Yet, regardless of how small the classes are or how energetic the educator, in the end the learner must decide to be an active participant in the learning process, just as in the democratic process. It is truly their decision. In choosing to do so, learners must share their ideas while challenging the accepted assumptions of the time. They must also be free to do so by their peers, educators, and the administrators of the institutions they attend, thus allowing them to find the motivation to be an active participant and build upon that motivation over time.

This way of thinking is a precondition for cultivating a citizenry that prefers understanding and questioning the nature of governance in lieu of blindly accepting it as a natural form of authority. A predicating factor for fostering such a society is a host of civically-minded educators who are conscious of learner needs, unwavering in the quality of the learning process, and democratically-minded towards an end of liberating the minds of learners. In achieving this, dangerous thinking and individuality is encouraged, thus giving learners an example of positive power relations and the necessary context to tackle authoritarianism.

Anthony C. Clemons is a Curriculum Development Manager. His most recent book is Multicultural Andragogy for Transformative Learning (IGI Global, 2018). He is a contributing reviewer for a number of journals, including Journal of Interactive Media in Education, International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, and a language editor for Phenomenological Reviews. He holds an Ed.M. and an M.A. from Columbia University. He can be reached at [email protected].

The mainstream narrative is that squeaky-clean special prosecutor Robert Mueller is going to indict Trump’s one-time foreign policy advisor Michael Flynn because Flynn is in the pocket of the Russians and the Turks.

But the truth might be totally different …

After all, Flynn’s meeting with Russian diplomats was completely normal, according to a prominent U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

So why is Mueller really going after Flynn?

When Flynn was head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and afterwards, he blew the whistle on the U.S. and its allies willfully allowing Islamic terrorists to flourish in Syria.

That didn’t ingratiate him with the Deep State …

Then last November, Flynn ruffled more feathers by writing:

The primary bone of contention between the U.S. and Turkey is Fethullah Gülen, a shady Islamic mullah residing in Pennsylvania whom former President Clinton once called his “friend” in a well circulated video.

Gülen portrays himself as a moderate, but he is in fact a radical Islamist. He has publicly boasted about his “soldiers” waiting for his orders to do whatever he directs them to do.

***

To professionals in the intelligence community, the stamp of terror is all over Mullah Gülen’s statements in the tradition of Qutb and al Bana. Gülen’s vast global network has all the right markings to fit the description of a dangerous sleeper terror network.

***

To add insult to injury, American taxpayers are helping finance Gülen’s 160 charter schools in the United States. These schools have been granted more H1-B visas than Google. It is inconceivable that our visa officers have approved thousands of visas for English teachers whose English is incomprehensible. A CBS “60 Minutes” program documented a conversation with one such imported English teacher from Turkey. Several lawsuits, including some in Ohio and Texas, point to irregularities in the operation of these schools.

However, funding seems to be no problem for Gülen’s network. Hired attorneys work to keep the lucrative government source of income for Gülen and his network going. Influential charities such as Cosmos Foundation continue their support for Gülen’s charter schools.

Incidentally, Cosmos Foundation is a major donor to Clinton Foundation. No wonder Bill Clinton calls Mullah Gülen “his friend.” It is now no secret that Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s close aide and confidante, worked for 12 years as the associate editor for a journal published by the London-based Institute of Minority Muslim Affairs. This institute has promoted the thoughts of radical Muslim thinkers such as Qutb, al Bana and others.

***

The forces of radical Islam derive their ideology from radical clerics like Gülen, who is running a scam. We should not provide him safe haven.

Now, Mueller is reportedly investigating Flynn specifically for his criticism of Gülen.

Who Is Gülen

So who is Gülen, really?

The Atlantic notes:

[Gülen’s organization] is rumored to have between 1 and 8 million adherents.

The Hill reported last year:

What lies underneath [Gülen’s] charter-school network, however, is a possible undercurrent of white-collar crime and corruption. Known in Turkey as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization or FETÖ this growing network is being investigated by the FBI for everything from fraud and malpractice, to misuse of public funds. One spokeswoman for the bureau said that an investigation is ongoing and FBI agents carried out raids at 19 Gülen-affiliated charter schools in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in 2014.

***

Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks demonstrate a concern by U.S. officials that these Turkish teachers and businesses “might be using the reputation of the school as a cover to get to the U.S.” These cables state that the H1B visa applications were “not convincing” and that Gülen’s more moderate message “cloaks a more sinister and radical agenda.”

***

Receiving approximately $150 million a year in tax breaks and subsidies, government officials are increasingly concerned that taxpayer dollars are being used to fund a close-knit network of Turkish teachers and businesses using charter schools as a Trojan horse for embedding into the U.S. education system.

Private intelligence company Stratfor notes:

Gulen [said] that in order to reach the ideal Muslim society “every method and  path is acceptable [including] lying to people”.

Documents leaked by Wikileaks has shown that American officials have been worried Gülen could be targeting children across the U.S. for radicalization:

In 2005, one U.S. embassy worker expressed concern about the schools: “We have multiple reliable reports that the Gülenists use their school network (including dozens of schools in the U.S.) to cherry pick students they think are susceptible to being molded as proselytizers,” U.S. Embassy officials in Ankara said in a 2005 report. And we have steadily heard reports about how the schools indoctrinate boarding students,” they said.”

Vox notes:

Among other charges, critics allege that the schools were a scheme to replace US teachers with Turkish immigrants, who were then expected to transfer money back to Gülen organizations. This resulted in investigations from the FBI, Labor Department, and Education Department. An audit of Georgia Gülen charters found that they improperly awarded contracts to affiliated businesses, and in 2014 the FBI raided 19 Gülen-affiliated schools in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. A Gülen school in New Orleans lost its charter in 2011 after allegations of cheating and sexual misconduct involving kindergartners.

***

Secular critics in Turkey have long attacked the Gülen movement as a stalking horse for more thoroughgoing Islamism.

In the 1980s, Turkish generals — who at the time were in control of the government following a military coup — accused Gülen of plotting a takeover to install an Islamic dictatorship. As Al-Monitor’s Murat Bilgincan explains, Gülen went on the run for about six years before being arrested.

***

In 2000, the Turkish government, then led by secularist Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, indicted Gülen on charges of attempting to undermine Turkish secularism — a core feature of the state since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic in 1922 — and trying to install a Islamic dictatorship.

***

In other words, the Gülen movement was for many years a crucial ally of Erdoğan and the AKP — acting as a grassroots arm with significant funding that could support Erdoğan’s attempts to fight back secularists and, in the eyes of critics, suppress dissent.

A diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks notes that Turkey’s chief Rabbi said about Gülen:

[There’s a] belief in parts of the U.S. government that he is a “radical Islamist” whose moderate message cloaks a more sinister and radical agenda

The Washington post reported in 2011:

A memoir by a top former Turkish intelligence official claims that a worldwide moderate Islamic movement based in Pennsylvania has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s.

The memoir, roughly rendered in English as “ess to Revolution and Near Anarchy,” by retired Turkish intelligence official Osman Nuri Gundes, says the religious-tolerance movement, led by an influential former Turkish imam by the name of Fethullah Gulen, has 600 schools and 4 million followers around the world.

In the 1990s, Gundes alleges, the movement “sheltered 130 CIA agents” at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone, according to a report on his memoir Wednesday by the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter.

(Gundes was chief of Turkish intelligence long before Turkey’s current dictator, Erdogan, came onto the scene, and doesn’t seem to have any connection with him.)

Interviews of Gülen’s former top assistants say that Gülen is running a cult, that he wants to rule Turkey and the Middle East, and that he won’t hesitate to use violence to make it happen:

Gülen is certainly supported by at least some former American intelligence and state department officials, at least in some capacity. After all, Gülen’s application for a Green Card to live in the U.S. was  supportedby ex-CIA agent George Fidas, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, and former CIA Deputy Director Graham Fuller.   Another former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Marc Grossman, receives $100,000 per month (that’s $1.2 million per year) from a Gülen company called the Ilhas Group.

The Turkish government has labeled Gülen and his followers as a terrorist network.    This is ironic, given that Gülen was instrumental in converting Turkey from a secular to Islamic government, and electing Turkey’s leader Erdogan. Until recently, Gülen was a very close ally of Turkish strongman Erdogan.

FBI Whistleblower Says Gülen Is a Terror Kingpin

Sibel Edmonds – a former FBI translator who has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups, who the ACLU described as “The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America”, and who famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers” – has for years tried to tell the truth about corruption related to Gülen:

In a series of interviews over the last couple of years, Edmonds has said that – when she worked for the FBI as a translator – she saw documents showing that:

• Gülen is the leader of one of the world’s largest terror networks, with terrorist training centers throughout the Middle East and central Asia

• He is a key player in false flag terrorism in Turkey and other areas

• He was key in changing Turkey from a secular country to an Islamic country, and electing dictator Erdogan

• He is involved in heroin and other drug networks, selling nuclear material on the black market, and money-laundering

• Gülen has contributed large sums of money to the Clintons through the Clinton Foundation

• Gülen’s handler in the U.S. is former long-time CIA officer – and current CIA contractor – Graham Fuller

• When Mueller was the Director of the FBI, he was instrumental in covering up Gülen’s terrorist activities and spiking prosecution against Gülen

• Mueller is now trying to throw Flynn in jail, to silence his efforts to expose Gülen

This video goes into some of these allegations.

Washington’s Blog asked Edmonds what documents she saw while at the FBI which implicated Gülen as a terrorist mastermind.  She responded:

Gülen’s FBI cases:

1- White Collar Crime Division: had to do with front/shell companies and NGOs used for money laundering and bribery (political contributions to various political action committees).

2- Terrorism & Criminal Divisions: US derived funds being transferred to international hubs for various terror cells (including Chechen groups), Gulen’s Pakistani-Arab-Turkish operatives in US involved in heroin smuggling into US, Gulen-affiliated Turkish businessmen with cash-only companies (Ex: Re-selling used clothes previously contributed to charity groups like GoodWill) in Chile and other S. American countries (as money-laundering ops), …

3- Counterintelligence Division (Washington DC Field Office): Espionage (State Department, DOJ, RAND Corporation),  Bribery and extortion of dozens of elected officials,  including Hastert, Jan Schakowsky, Bob Creamer, Jane Schmidt …

Gülen has pocketed strategically positioned police chiefs such as the one for Fairfax County (Where CIA HQ is located among with several dozens of top Intel & MIC contractors) …

In other words, Edmonds says that Gülen is a terror kingpin and drug smuggler who launders vast sums of money, and bribes U.S. officials and officials throughout the world … and Mueller is going after Flynn in order to protect Gülen and the corrupt politicians he’s in bed with.

A lot of people are writing and talking about spirit, higher self, personal enlightenment, shining health, transformation and the attainment of the Godly. A lot of people are following the words of those who proclaim knowledge of the above.

It is clear that many are searching for the security of a sound spiritual path to lead them through the material and mental chaos. Something that will bring with it a new awareness and sense of reality.

But this immediately raises the question: once having set off down this road – what will one do with the new found power which comes with traveling it? This opening-up of a new dimension of personal awareness and inner freedom.

Will one be content to simply carry on with ‘life as usual’ basking in the sense of uplift generated by this elevated sense of being? Perhaps one will change one’s diet. Buy a purer toothpaste. Take a brisk run each morning. Get a better juicer. Practice regular yoga and positive thinking. Even maybe seek to move to the fresher air of the countryside?

These are the ‘life changing’ messages that emanate from ‘Enlightenment plc’: the glossy mind, body, spirit periodicals; the earnest conferences; the retreats and the copious on-line sites devoted to self improvement. Nothing exactly wrong with any of these, of course, except that they mostly simply offer bolt-on ‘improvements’ to the existing status quo. More a kind of self enhancing escape route than a going forward to build something entirely different. Which, of course, is what is actually needed.

What is so evidently missing here, is instruction to the initiate to direct this new found energy outwards – into actions that help transform the dire state of life and of people on this planet. We cannot escape this material dimension in which we find ourselves, but we can help to transform it, by bringing our newly acquired four dimensional insights to bear on the largely static status quo.

To become aware, and therefore in a certain sense ‘to be free’, carries with it responsibility. A responsibility to help bring about a radical change (in society). A change informed by the bigger awareness achieved by our new found consciousness. This is the pay-back we are bound to make. For having ‘seen the truth’ one cannot then hide from it. One cannot simply sit crossed-legged and dream of a better life.

Once blessed with a little enlightenment, we are in a position to recognize that inner personal development and outer actions for positive change – are two parts of one whole. Just as inhaling and exhaling are also two parts of one whole. Only when the two are united – and made one – can we truly express our God given potential.

There is no spiritual ‘enlightenment’ without complementary grounded actions in which to pour our greater vision for the betterment of humanity. Such outward actions can also be termed ‘service to humanity’.

‘Enlightenment plc’ has tried to deceive us in this. Enlightenment plc says “No problem, you can escape from the material third dimension by seeking higher consciousness in the fourth dimension and leaving the problems of the world behind you. Pay your dues and tune in to us – and you will be healthy, happy, untainted by the greed, violence and destruction going on around you!” Yes, there is no doubt about it, the self-salvation road show is booming. Millions, who can afford to pay its fees, swear to its efficacy and personal rewards.

How tempting then, to jump in and turn one’s back on this deeply wounded world; leaving the 0.2% control freaks to carry on their take-over, unopposed and unnoticed.

How easy it is to leave the management of this jewel into which we were born and of which we are trustees – to those who are totally indifferent to its fate. Those whose only interest is money, power and control. Complete control over everything. Yes, it’s oh so tempting to evade our responsibilities as guardians of planet earth, and escape into this chimeric deception called ‘freedom’.

Real freedom is wholeness. And wholeness is the putting back together of that which has been made separate. The spiritual is all too often seen as disconnected from the physical and practical. And the practical and physical seen as separate from the spiritual. Separate entities. The powers of the spirit plane remain divorced, and even in opposition, to the powers of the material plane. Indeed, one is often considered superior to the other. As two halves, neither one is whole. Without integration, both remain only half of what they should be. Only half of what they are.

The maintaining of this division is the key trick played on us by our oppressors. It is the Ace card in their control pack. We need to recognize this and act on it.

There is a deeply disquieting mismatch between what aspirants get high on and the actual state of life on earth. The tens of thousands who diligently work on their asanas; who meditate daily; who keep only to the obligatory diets; who purify their drinking water and try to do the same to their souls. Supposedly ‘awakened ones’ who turn a blind eye on reality, choosing to remain ‘politically correct’ and aloof from the fray.

Such individuals strive to remain untouched by the contaminated world around them. Not daring to face the fact that the contamination is there because they make no effort to prevent it. That the wars carry on because they make no effort to stop them. That people are abused because they make no effort to defend them. That the main abusers continue to push open the doors, because it is not considered ‘spiritually correct’ to block them.

Is this really the great road to human emancipation?

When, I dare to ask, will such individuals be willing to channel the fruits of their awakening into bringing down the despots of destruction? Those who continue to hold them and this planet to ransom. When will they dare to face the truth and act on it?

For at present too many are living a lie and calling it truth. They are simply perpetuating the failings of those who are always on the look-out for ‘a great escape’.

To make life whole, the spiritual/mental plane must be fully integrated into the physical/practical plane – and vice versa of course. Our true power lies in the marriage of social activism and spiritual aspiration. For in essence they are One, but have been divided against each other. Divided in two by powers that seek to derail humanity and capture the planet for their own despotic ends.

By integrating a steadily awakening spiritual awareness with a determination to bring deep social change – we can and will – overcome the divisive hold exerted by our oppressors. This is the only, yes only, way to achieve true liberation. Now is the time to unite.

Time is short. We are very far down the road of divide and conquer. This blood and war stained road to ruin. A state, we can now admit, which has been brought about through our own passivity and abstention, and through the control system capitalizing on this abstention. Let us not pretend that we are so delusional to imagine we can live-out our lives as enlightened slaves. One day, those who persist in turning their backs, may be rudely reminded of their selfish indifference by a uniformed thug with a gun in his hand. By then it’s too late.

Now is the time to take control of our destinies  – to get on the front foot and seize the initiative. Words alone will not cut the ice, neither will prayers alone. In the end actions always speak louder than words. All those who claim the sanctity of the spirit, cannot forever turn away from confronting those who continue to systematically destroy the very air we breath, the very food we eat, the very water we drink, the very earth we live on.

We are fully equipped with – but have as yet failed to manifest – the courage necessary to turn the tide of history and to block the despots from tearing apart the uniquely precious soul of man and the beating heart of our living planet. True acts of love and of freedom manifest as bold and defiant determination. A far cry from the call for ‘love and light’ to sweeten one’s self satisfied journey to a chimeric salvation.

There is no time to lose. A totalitarian jack-boot is about to crush our deepest and most precious aspirations. We must rise up and stand firm against it.

By bringing together, into unity, spiritual aspiration and social activism, we will be taking a quantum leap towards true empowerment. We will be instrumental in catalyzing a great turning point in humanity’s struggle to throw off its adversaries and lay the foundations of genuine freedom.

By breaking the chains of divide and conquer, we can – and will – bring to our doorstep the great victory we long for. A victory which, at this very moment, lies right in the palm of our hands.

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer and international activist. He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. Julian is the author of two acclaimed titles; Changing Course for Life and In Defense of Life. Why not visit his website www.julianrose.info to find out more.

As this Thanksgiving holiday comes to an end and the Xmas season approaches, let’s not forget to give thanks to our richest 1% fellow Americans and their corporations. Thanks to all 1.25 million of you from the 130 million of us 99 percenters households. 

Your stewardship of the US economy has allowed us to keep 5% of all the national income created since the last recession in 2009; while you wealthiest 1% got to keep the other 95% (see UC Berkeley economist, Emmanuel Saez’s annual income inequality analyses).

But the more you get to keep, the more you can ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us, right? So say your politicians, talking media heads, economists, and other assorted hirelings. So thanks very much for at least sharing something with us.

If not sharing wages, we certainly got more jobs to be thankful for from you—who lose no opportunity to proclaim you are the source of all job creation.

Since 2009, you ‘gave’ us millions of part time, temp, contract, on call, and gig jobs. True, mostly low paid, without pensions or benefits jobs. Better than nothing jobs. And while it took you 8 years to re-create the level of jobs we had back in 2007, better late than never, right? Even if our pre-2008, higher paid jobs were replaced mostly by lower paid after 2008, it sure beats unemployment benefits. So thank all of you 1% self-proclaimed job creators for all the low paid, no benefit, service jobs you eventually did create for us.

As owners of the system you certainly had a difficult task managing your complex, mega-corporation called the USA economy, keeping all those foreign competitors and troublemakers in line with the US economic empire. You know, those ‘russkies’ that just won’t lay down and play dead anymore, those too clever Chinese, and all those assorted ‘rocket men’. But that’s what our 1000 offshore military bases are for, aren’t they? Our trillion dollar a year defense budget is well worth it.

And getting us out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression of the 1930s in 2008-09 was no easy task for you, we know. So all of you 1.25 million wealthiest 1% households deserve every dollar you’ve diverted in the process of economic recovery these past 8 years, including:

• The $6 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend payouts paid out to you from your corporations since 2008 (see Yardeni Research, November 2017);
• The nearly 400% increase in the value of your stock holdings (see the DOW, S&P 500 and Nasdaq combined market gains since 2008);
• The additional $ trillions in capital gains income you earned on bond interest and capital gains since the last recession;
• Your share of half of the $1.9 trillions in ‘pass through’ non-corporate business income net gains since 2007 (see US national income accounts);
• The unknown $ trillions more you earned from investing in derivatives in offshore markets that you don’t report, which even the US government cannot discover;
• The still additional $ trillions more you stuffed in your offshore accounts to avoid paying US taxes (see recent revelations from the so-called ‘Paradise Papers’);
• The $2 trillion cash your bank and non-bank US corporations are still sitting on in the US, and another $2 trillion your multinational corporations are hoarding offshore—together earmarked at least in part for your personal future distribution (see Moody’s Analytics).

That’s easily more than $15 trillion in cash, near-cash, and easily convertible to cash sources of income accumulated over the past 8 years (and excludes the earnings from real estate and real property)—to be shared amongst the 1.25 million of you.

In total wealth and assets, not just income, American households held $58 trillion in net worth in 2009; that has since risen to $105 trillion, according to the US Federal Reserve bank’s latest 2017 report. Since median US Households’ net worth is still 30% below 2007 levels—and 90% of all US households are still below 2007 levels (per the New York Times, September 28, 2017)—the lion’s share of that $47 trillion total gain in net worth must therefore have gone to you one percenters. Congratulations. (Can’t wait to get my trickle down share. Please send by way of this blog address).

Let’s not forget to thank in particular the bankers among you. While it’s true they gave us the 2007-09 financial crash that led to 14 million home foreclosures and $4 trillion in our lost savings, your bankers did allow us to offset our stagnant wages these past 8 years with more loans and debt.

So thank you bankers, for the $1.4 trillion in student debt, the $1.2 trillion in credit card debt, and the more than $1 trillion in auto loan debt. That’s $3.6 trillion! Who needs wage increases when we can borrow our way to prosperity!

And while we’re talking about banks, let’s not forget to thank our central bankers, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, for buying up all bad investments you one percenters made before the 2008 crash. I mean the subprime mortgage bonds and other securities you got stuck with and couldn’t sell, that Ben and Janet generously bought from you at above market prices. That was another $5 to $6 trillion cash subsidy to your professional investor class.

By the way, I hear Ben is now making the speech circuit rounds, speaking to your bankers and companies for a fee of $200k per pop, and is serving on your corporate boards? And Janet has just announced she’ll soon also be leaving the Fed and joining him. Reward them well, Mr. and Mrs. 1%. They’ve done yeoman work for your banks, providing loans at 0.15% for 7 years, while the US government charged students 6.8% student loan rates and grandma and grandpa retirees lost more than $1 trillion in fixed income savings as result of near zero interest rates.

And let’s not forget your great multinational corporations who’ve been offshoring our high paying jobs made possible by free trade treaties like NAFTA. You know, the tech companies, big pharmaceutical companies, auto parts and textiles, and all the rest. Now we can buy cheaper priced products at Walmart and Target from you that they make in Mexico, China, and Indonesia.

Like loading up on Loan debt, free trade is so much better than getting wage increases!

And this season let’s not forget to thank your politicians that you help finance their elections. Thanks to George W. Bush for cutting taxes by $3.4 trillion. And Obama and the Democrats for cutting your taxes by another $1.1 trillion during the recession, and then extending the Bush tax cuts in 2013 for another decade by a further $5 trillion. Now their heir to the presidency, Uncle Donald, is proposing another $4.5 trillion tax cut for you one percenters, for yet another decade. I can’t wait for all the ‘trickle down’ that’s finally coming.

Your Republican party politicians (aka one wing of your Corporate Party of America) can’t take all the credit. Your Democrat wing deserves some. So thanks to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer, for their current efforts to broker a deal with Uncle Donald to let the 800,000 ‘Dreamers’ kids stay in America—in exchange for agreeing to deport their parents and for funding the border Wall with Mexico.

I do hope that next year Nancy and Uncle Donald can revisit the repeal of the ACA-Obamacare Act. It will mean another $592 billion tax cut for you one percenters and your corporations, and maybe then even more trickle down to us 99%. All those single moms with kids, disabled persons, and mentally ill don’t really need the improvements in Medicaid they got from the ACA. They were doing just fine before.  You one percenters need the tax cuts more.

In conclusion, I’d like to give special thanks to your most famous one percenter, Don Trumpeone, a member of the wealthiest .01% (or 12,600) super richest households within your ranks, whose income gains in 2016 averaged $65 million.

Thank you, Don Trumpeone, for keeping us 99% safe in 2017. We ‘kiss your hand’. This year not one American was killed by the North Koreans, or by the Russians in the Ukraine, or by those violent Yemenis and world domination seeking Iranians—even though 60,000 Americans have died from the Opioid epidemic (started by the big Pharma companies) this past year; another 38,000 of us died from guns made in the US (291,000 since 2007); and the USA has continued to fall below its 20^th ranking in infant mortality among the advanced nations while our teen suicide rate has doubled since 2007.

We 99% have so much to be thankful for this holiday season. And you 1%–and your corporations, politicians, and media pundits—are largely responsible. So God keep blessing America. Let’s all stand for the flag. And thank you, our wealthiest 1% fellow Americans, the richest and greatest generation the world has ever seen.

Jack Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com, twitters @drjackrasmus, and his website is http://kyklosproductions.com.

She was just standing there, in the middle of burning land, surrounded by stumps of trees, fire everywhere, smoke rising towards hopelessly gray sky. The expression on her face was mischievous, almost girlish. I had no idea how old she was: she could have been 28, just as she could easily have been 55.

This island, this village, this charred land: it all looked like hell to me, but obviously not to her: it actually made her laugh, burst with pride.

After all, it was her island, not mine; it was her land, her trees, and it was all getting royally fucked. She was personally participating in this carnage of nature – she, as well as her husband, her entire family, her neighbors.

Her name was Bu Elvi. ‘Bu’ means mom, or mam or Misses, in Bahasa Indonesia. Her scorched land spans near the village of DusunTerusan, and DusanTerusan is near Sintang, in the heart of Borneo, on the largest island in Asia, which is also the second largest island in the world, on what we habitually call ‘our Planet Earth’; although frankly, this moonscape of Indonesian Borneo/Kalimantan has very little to do with what used to bethe ‘blue planet’.

Bu Elvi

“I follow stock exchange regularly”, Bu Elvi brags, boastfully:

“I know that prices of rubber went down at least three times, lately. Now we will burn all this down, since the government refuses to give us any substantial compensation… and then, we will plant some vegetables, at least for a while.”

“And then?” we ask. “What if the prices of rubber go up again?”

“Then, well…” she hesitates, but for just a few moments. Regaining her bearings, she declares, defiantly:

“If that happens, we will burn the vegetables and reintroduce the rubber plantation.”

Now it is all black around her. It is desperate and depressing. But she doesn’t look suicidal,miserable, or even guilty. She does precisely what she was told to do under General Suharto’s military dictatorship, which was sponsored by the United States and the rest of the West. She does what she was taught to do right after the dictatorship collapsed (at least on paper) -in the present era of savage capitalism and unbridled thieving, which has also been clearly supported from abroad. She is making money. She is simply producing dough. She does not rely on anybody, she is well aware of the bottom line: nobody will give her anything. Even if she were starving to death, she would get nothing. And so she opts to be‘independent’, as well as strong, aggressive, arrogant and observed from some distance, mildly insane.

She is of course religious, as everyone in this country is forced to be from his or her childhood. Most likely, she doesn’t give a damn about this life, as there is, she believes, something much better, ‘somewhere else and big’, right after this suffering on Earth.

She is a tough woman, a ‘survival of the fittest’ kind of person, in short a ‘new Indonesian’.

Can one blame her? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. She has to live, to survive in this inhuman, savage system, designed and injected from somewhere, from far away.

Still, the land is burning. Here and all around Sintang, all around Borneo, and in all corners of this entire Indonesian archipelago.

Would she opt for the independence of her island, if such an option were to be available?

She doesn’t need to think; she is suddenly absolutely certain. She clenches her right fist, grinning at us: “Merdeka! Independence!”

I am wondering whether it matters, whether it matters at all, who is ruling over this island. Fascism, savage capitalism, as well as the collaboration with foreign powers and institutions, has created a monoculture in this once great archipelago whose motto stated proudly:‘Unity in Diversity’.

If there is merdeka, and if Bu Elvi rules, would the land stop burning?

*

I spoke to a woman near the city of Samarinda, in Eastern Kalimantan. She was selling some fruits and crackers in a small store, predominantly serving workers from the immense plantations located literally behind her back. No primary forest was left anywhere in the vicinity. Everything in the area was black, or green, but if green it covered by sawit, the Indonesian word for palm oil.

Her business was so-so, she said, nothing spectacular. Frankly, she was hardly making ends meet,and she had no health insurance, no housing subsidies, and no financial support from the government. Despite all this, she appeared to be content. Or at least she said that she was:

“We don’t have any fires around here, anymore. Before, when there was still some tropical forest left, there were constant fires. Now it is all quiet.”

“Isn’t it because the palm oil companies and mining multi-nationals finally got what they always wanted?” I wondered. “Now they do what they desire. They cut down everything. Why would anyone burn things now? Forest is gone… Island is totally ruined. Palm oil, open mines and rubber plantations are covering almost entire surface of it…”

She stares at me, blankly. She does not understand what am I talking about, at what am I hinting at. She is confused. No one speaks like this, here. No one thinks this way. No one thinks, anymore, full stop…

*

“I used to come here every weekend,” whispers Ms Mira Lubis, a professor at Tanjungpura University in Pontianak city:

“It used to be so serene, so beautiful. This beach… My beach… My father was a doctor. He worked very hard. When he got tired, he took us all here, an entire family. I used to play in the pristine sand, with my brothers… I used to swim here. Now just look around…”

She shows me her childhood photos. I can see ‘her beach’, as it used to be, decades ago. I can see it now. She has tears in her eyes.

I look around. And it is all ruined: someone poured concrete over the sand: terrible job, thoroughly amateurish. Ugly stalls are everywhere, like sores. The sand area was reduced to just a couple of meters. Some huts and ugly, crumbling structures double as a ‘seaside hotel’.

Poisoned land after gold mining in Borneo

The beach appears to be totally abandoned and forgotten. The only thing that is never forgotten in Indonesia is an entrance fee; charging random visitors for entering anything, even this devastated place. In this country, nothing is public, nothing is free, and nothing is for the people. Even destruction is promoted as an attraction, as a ‘tourist destination’. You stop your car near the emergency room of a hospital: you have to pay… You enter a disaster area, a place ruined by a mining company somewhere in East Java: you are forced to pay. Scarred nature, ruined land quickly becomes a sightseeing attraction! You essentially pay for everything in Indonesia, especially if you are dirt poor.

Mira is walking slowly along ‘her beach’. She is deep in thoughts; she looks devastated. Her calm childhood memories are now confronted by reality, which appears to be simply monstrous. Her green island inhabited by ancient cultures and thousands of species of animals, birds and plants, now resembles a computer-generated image from a second-rate horror film.

She specializes in water communities, but the water is poisoned, mighty waterways polluted.

Far away, there is a brilliant, purple-red sunset covering the entire horizon. The sun is setting down behind a cluster of offshore islands. It is a brilliant, stunning sight. Borneo used to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But now, only contours are left; contours, memories and bitterness.

*

Again, I work; we work – filming, photographing and talking to local people. I don’t need any data. There is no need for theories. This is all clear, raw, absolutely indisputable.

Everything can be ‘explained’ and ‘neutralized’ by complex and ‘scientific’ theories, by going round in circles, by blurring the reality. Indonesian ‘science’ and academia, after 1965, has produced nothing useful for the country and for humanity, but they do one thing well: ‘muddying the water’, confusing and complicating things, making sure that what is obvious from the first sight, is squarely disputed, denied.Hundreds, perhaps thousands of PhD’s are made this way and for this very purpose, annually.

And the island is burning. Filthy chemical streams are everywhere. There is “illegal” gold mining on the land and in the middle of the mighty but horrendously polluted rivers of Borneo; mining is visible from the air and surface, but controlled by ‘influential individuals’, even by armed forces, and therefore untouchable.

Borneo is now synonymous with mining and logging, as well as with terrible plantations that have already cannibalized most of the land. Nothing is being produced, but everything has been extracted.

People are losing their land. They are losing health, even lives. The world is losing its ‘lungs’ – the tropical forests – or more precisely, it has already lost them all around this unfortunate archipelago.

Savage capitalism, moral and financial corruption, multi-national companies on the loose; this is a sad, even horrifying reality of the country, which totally lost its bearing.

Borneo, it appears, is nearing the end. The entire Indonesia is nearing the endgame, but it is considered ‘politically incorrect’ to mention it in the West, particularly in the mainstream media. Indonesia is, after all, ruining itself, so the West can prosper. It was like that during colonialism, and it has been like that, again, ever since the US-sponsored military coup of 1965.

I work feverishly in Borneo: I film, I write and photograph. Others are standing by me, trying to help. Are we going to achieve anything? I hope we will; we have to, otherwise, soon, here and elsewhere, everything will be finished, privatized, commercialized and eventually destroyed.

Palm oil processing factory near Singkawang

I also work in Afghanistan, in the Middle East and in several fully ruined countries of Africa. Everything here, in Borneo, appears to be extremely familiar. Is it really peace that is reigning here? I’m highly doubtful. To me it looks like a war, like an extremely brutal war. It looks like the war of people against their own people, the war of people against nature, against all living beings and species; a war against the forests and river, and even against life itself.

It looks like a neo-colonialist nightmare. It once used to be the most beautiful place in Asia, now it is scarred, charred and in terrible pain. But it is still breathing; it is alive. And what is alive is always worth fighting for.

*

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

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

All images in this article are from Andre Vltchek.

According to Inside Syria Media Center military sources [yet to be confirmed, GR Ed.] in Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), SDF-Kurds will join the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) as “Northern Syria Protection units” after the establishment of the federal system in Syria.

A Rojava official and the joint chief of defense in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), Rezan Gilo stated that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have no problem joining the Syrian army if a federal state is awarded in northern Syria (Kurdish autonomous territories as part of the federal Syria). They are now in process of considering the possibility of joining the SAA.

“There is no problem for our forces to join the Syrian army if a new Syrian constitution is drafted on a federal basis and the rights of all the Syrian components are reserved,” Gilo stated.

Analysts believe if the SDF ever join the national army, it would be under American supervision and guidance. [An impossibility] Anyway, unification of SDF and SAA may also become another link in the chain of the U.S.’ blunders and failures of strategic planning.

Riad Darar of the Syrian Democratic Council confirmed this. He noticed also that If Syria was united, he believes there would be no need to have a separate force because they would join the Syrian Army.

To prevent joining the rumors have been circulating online for about a month of a new army created with the U.S. supervision. The U.S. is now allegedly in the process of forming a regular army instead of the SDF and will actually begin distributing military ranks soon to their chosen officers under American supervision.

Recent events indicate that the Syrian Kurds are beginning to realize the hopelessness of cooperation with the American side. Apparently, ‘the Kurdish card’ of Washington is bursting at the seams. Despite the fact that the U.S. plans to extend its presence in the region, the White House’s intention will not clearly be directed to help the Kurds and the latter are clearly aware of this.

As a matter of fact, the unification of the Kurdish forces with the government troops of B. Assad will probably be the best way to solve the Kurdish problem. The federalization will not only legitimize the rights of the Kurds, but it can also push the people of Syria to unite under the banners of government forces, whose reputation and rating are only gaining momentum day by day. The top secret of the deal between the SDF and the SAA is that it will help expel the U.S. and its allies from the Syrian political arena and complete this so protracted confrontation.

For your information:

The Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), most commonly known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region originating in and consisting of three self-governing cantons in northern Syria, namely Afrin Canton, Jazira Canton and Kobanî Canton, as well as adjacent areas of northern Syria like Shahba region. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 as part of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Civil War in Syria establishing and gradually expanding an officially secular policy based on the contemporary Western democratic confederalist principles of democratic socialism, gender equality, and ecological sustainability.

Northern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab, Syriac-Assyrian and Turkmen populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Armenians, Circassians, and Chechens. This diversity is mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics. Despite such diversity, Rojava is regarded by Kurdish nationalists as Western Kurdistan, one of the four parts of Great Kurdistan. It is also considered by Assyrians as Gozarto (meaning Upper Mesopotamia), part of the historical Syriac-Assyrian homeland.

While entertaining some foreign relations, the cantons within Rojava are not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any international state or organization. For their part, supporters of its constitution consider their system a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than independence.

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

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Canada’s Unraveling Web of Deceit. Terrorism and War Propaganda

By Mark Taliano, November 28, 2017

Now that Syria and its allies in the Axis of Resistance have done the world a favour by destroying most of the West’s terror proxies in Syria, the Canadian narrative is falling apart.

Socialism, Capitalism and Health Care

By Prof. James Petras, November 28, 2017

The US political and economic elites have always bragged that capitalism is far superior to socialism in terms of providing people’s personal welfare.  They claim that citizens live longer, healthier and happier lives under capitalism.

The American Dream Has Been Irreparably Broken

By William Hanna, November 27, 2017

We have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be ‘the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all’ but ‘the champion and vindicator only of her own.’”

Combating Terrorism and the Barbaric Egypt Rawda Mosque Attack

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, November 27, 2017

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has chosen to respond to the Rawda carnage, the worst in modern Egyptian history, by ordering air strikes on militant strongholds. While they serve a purpose, they are not the solution. More attention to, and emphasis upon, constant and comprehensive intelligence gathering may help to prevent acts of terror from occurring. In a number of terrorist episodes in different parts of the world, the absence or lack of prior intelligence appears to have been the real problem.

Is the Islamic State a “Geopolitical Tool”? US Looks to Southeast Asia to Unleash Its ISIS-Daesh Hordes

By Tony Cartalucci, November 27, 2017

This narrative – these think tanks would have audiences believe – entails militants fleeing Syria and Iraq, and entrenching themselves amid supposedly sectarian conflicts in Southeast Asia. The think tanks conveniently never mention how tens of thousands of militants are funding the logistical feat required to move them to Southeast Asia or sustain their militant operations in the region once they arrive.

Video: Treatment of Native Americans by Colonialists. Marlon Brando Denounces Fake US History

By Marlon Brando, November 27, 2017

Marlon Brando talks about the treatment of native Americans or Indians at the hands of colonialists and the values of freedom and equality in USA. Please note that this video is not meant to offend anyone and is not against any race.

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Created in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis, the CFPB has been more bark than bite.

In September 2010, Obama appointed Elizabeth Warren (current US senator) as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to set up the new agency.

In July 2011, when it began operating, she was passed over for Richard Cordray as its first director, formerly Ohio’s attorney general – an establishment figure like Warren, neither a reformer or people’s advocate, Leandra English his deputy.

On November 24, Cordray stepped down, naming English his successor. Trump named hardline budget director Mick Mulvaney as acting CFPB director until a permanent appointment is made and confirmed – a legal clash underway over who’s rightfully in charge of the agency.

Dodd-Frank legislation (2010) created the CFPB, clearly saying its deputy director (currently English) shall “serve as acting director in the absence or unavailability of the director.”

Yet the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) lets the president install a temporary acting head of an executive agency, already confirmed by the Senate for another administration position – adding the following:

FVRA lets the president appoint an acting head of an agency “unless (1) a statutory provision expressly…(B) designates an officer or employee to perform the functions and duties of a specified office temporarily in an acting capacity…” Dodd-Frank clearly says so for the CFPB.

English filed a lawsuit, saying she’s the “rightful acting director,” calling Mulvaney’s temporary appointment “unlawful.” She has a strong case, challenging the administration and a politicized court, maybe ruling against her.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia will decide, its ruling likely to be appealed whichever way it goes, perhaps to the Supreme Court.

Mulvaney has no qualifications for the CFPB position. He once called the agency a “sad, sick joke,” wanting it abolished.

English has the experience and skill to lead the agency – despite its inability to provide much consumer protection in a hostile Washington anti-consumer environment – in the White House and Congress under either party, undemocratic Dems marginally different from Republicans.

From inception under Obama, the CFBP was largely toothless. Nominally charged with overseeing banking practices with regard to credit cards, mortgages, payday loans, student loans, and other consumer financial products, it provides consumer-friendly cover for ineffective Dodd-Frank legislation.

Neither the legislation or CFPB did anything meaningful to curtail Wall Street practices responsible for 2008-09 financial crisis conditions. Things today are worse than earlier.

Warren is no consumer rights champion. She did nothing to urge prosecution of Wall Street crooks. Nor did Cordray. As deputy director, English is untested.

On November 25, National Consumer Law Center’s Lauren Sanders issued a statement on Mulvaney’s interim appointment, calling it “an illegal affront to the American public,” adding:

“In an attempt to install a wrecking ball at the helm of the consumer watchdog, President Trump has ignored the law that dictates that the consumer bureau’s deputy director takes over until Congress can confirm a new director.”

“The law is designed to protect the consumer bureau’s independence and to make sure that the qualifications and biases of a new director are examined through the regular confirmation and hearing process.”

Since inception, the CFPB’s mandate and practices have been world’s apart. Wall Street does what it pleases with bipartisan support.

If Trump FCC chairman Ajit Pai had confined his attack on Net Neutrality to merely rolling back the 2015 Title II rules, he might have gotten away with it; but like the Republican plan to kill Obamacare, the Republican plan to rob the middle class to enrich billionaires, and, well, every other Republican plan in this administration, Pai’s plan is so grotesque, so overreaching, so nakedly corrupt that it is likely to collapse under its own weight.

That’s because the Supreme Court has held that a federal agency contemplating a significant change in policy must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” But there are no new facts in evidence since the first Net Neutrality rules were enacted in 2004 to justify a change. We don’t know what evidence Pai will bring to court when it comes time to fight his plans, but the cards he’s played so far are hilariously weak: for example, he claims that the 2015 Title II rule led to a decrease in infrastructure investment by telcos. In fact, the telcos’ own filings and investor calls reveal that the reverse is true (Pai is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own fact).

US democracy has many structural deficits, but it also has strengths, and Pai has blundered into them. The first is that the administrative branch is composed of “expert agencies” like the FCC and they are legally required to provide strong evidentiary backing for their actions. As Tim Wu — the competition and internet legal scholar who coined the term “Network Neutrality” — writes in the New York Times, “A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough.”

The other structural strength of the US system is the independent courts who act on a well-litigated Constitution whose jurisprudence is voluminous, and who have the power to overturn both the administrative branch and Congress. Again, these are far from perfect, but they are an important check on the abuse of political power, and they are much more readily available to the public than the other two branches. To saw Congress, you have to buy a majority of Congressjerks with campaign contributions; to capture a regulator, you must represent an industry that can offer them lucrative employment after they leave government life; to use the court to neutralize these other branches, you need only convince three appeals court judges or five Supremes that the Constitution supports your position.

While the courts are packed with Republican appointees (thanks to GOP Senate dirty tricks in refusing to approve judicial appointments under Obama, all the way up to a vacant Supreme Court seat that Trump stole), there is a well-established moderating effect of judicial service on long-serving judges, because working your way up through the federal courts requires a showing of adherence to the Constitution, which, overall, favors policies at odds with the right-wing agenda.

This means that when Pai’s plan gets to the courts, it stands a good chance of being struck down — and in any event, the court battle may last until 2020 and serve as a good argument to spur voters to vote against Trump and thus change the FCC leadership, mooting the whole point.

But Mr. Pai faces a more serious legal problem. Because he is killing net neutrality outright, not merely weakening it, he will have to explain to a court not just the shift from 2015 but also his reasoning for destroying the basic bans on blocking and throttling, which have been in effect since 2005 and have been relied on extensively by the entire internet ecosystem.

This will be a difficult task. What has changed since 2004 that now makes the blocking or throttling of competitors not a problem? The evidence points strongly in the opposite direction: There is a long history of anticompetitive throttling and blocking — often concealed — that the F.C.C. has had to stop to preserve the health of the internet economy. Examples include AT&T’s efforts to keep Skype off iPhones and the blocking of Google Wallet by Verizon. Services like Skype and Netflix would have met an early death without basic net neutrality protections. Mr. Pai needs to explain why we no longer have to worry about this sort of threat — and “You can trust your cable company” will not suffice.

Moreover, the F.C.C. is acting contrary to public sentiment, which may embolden the judiciary to oppose Mr. Pai. Telecommunications policy does not always attract public attention, but net neutrality does, and polls indicate that 76 percent of Americans support it. The F.C.C., in short, is on the wrong side of the democratic majority.

Featured image is from Chris Potter, CC-BY

Featured image: Rezan Gilo

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According to YPG-led Syrian Kurdistan defense chief Rezan Gilo, “(t)here is no problem for our forces to join the Syrian army if a new Syrian constitution is drafted on a federal basis and the rights of all the Syrian components are reserved.”

Joint Syrian Democratic Council president Riad Derar agreed, saying when conflict resolution is achieved, YPG fighters are willing to join the Syrian army – if Damascus agrees to a northern Syria Kurdish federal state, changing its constitution to permit it.

Apparent conditional Kurdish willingness to be part of Syria’s army comes as the latest round of Geneva peace talks begins.

Syria’s delegation delayed its departure. According to its Foreign Ministry, delegates arrived Wednesday afternoon instead of Tuesday, headed by UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari, a FM statement saying:

“Following intensive contacts, held during the past two days between the Syrian and Russian sides, the Syrian Arab Republic decided to participate in the 8th round of the intra-Syrian dialogue in Geneva” – knowing the futility of past efforts, likely turning out no differently this time.

The so-called unified anti-Syria opposition is led by Saudi-controlled Naser al-Hariri. On Monday, he called for “political transition which achieves the ousting of Assad at the beginning of the transition.”

If opposition delegates stick to this demand as expected, Geneva talks are dead-on-arrival. Previous talks collapsed over this issue, this round likely to go nowhere as well.

Commenting on Hariri’s demand, Russia’s UN envoy in Geneva Alexei Borodavkin said

“(a)ll this is very alarming and will hardly contribute to a constructive dialogue…”

The position of the opposition “is not in line with the real situation” and Security Council resolutions on Syria.

The document agreed on by opposition delegates in Riyadh includes an unacceptable precondition for Assad to go.

“It is unclear how the opposition members plan to hold talks with representatives of the Syrian government if the delegation coming from Riyadh views them almost as criminals with whom it is impossible to talk,” Borodavkin added.

Separately, according to the Jerusalem Post (JP),

“Assad agreed to a demilitarized zone of up to 40 kilometers from the border in the Golan Heights…but only if Israel does not work to remove (him) from power.”

JP claimed Putin relayed the message to Netanyahu. Though reportedly amenable to the deal, his goal remains eliminating Iran and Hezbollah from Syria, said the broadsheet, citing an unnamed source – a topic I addressed in a previous article, a worrisome sign.

Assad is grateful for Iranian and Hezbollah help in combating US-supported terrorists in Syria, significant progress made in defeating the scourge.

If achieved, conflict resolution doesn’t rule out possible revival of the threat, Syria again needing Iranian and Hezbollah help, along with Russian airpower.

It’s unlikely Assad would agree to forego the presence of his valued allies in the country, given the continued threat of aggression ahead – even if conflict resolution is achieved in the months ahead.

UPDATE:

A Syrian government delegation is scheduled to arrive in Geneva on the 29th of November for the Peace Talks hosted by the UN.

“Damascus had threatened to boycott the talks over the demands of the Syrian opposition that Assad step aside as a precondition for its involvement.”

Russia announced it had postponed the Peace Dialogue in Sochi until at least February “over Turkish objections to Russia inviting groups linked to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it sees as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey’s south-east.” (See The Guardian, November 28, 2017)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

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Contact at [email protected].

The idea involves playing both sides against the middle, keeping options open, promising support for both sides, a strategy to benefit the manipulator – dirty politics, the way America operates, why it can never be trusted.

According to Turkish Foreign Minister Melvut Cavasoglu, Trump “instructed (the Pentagon) in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said that this absurdity should have ended much earlier.”

On Monday, Kurds in northern Syria said Washington will “adjust” weapons deliveries to their YPG fighters. Mutual cooperation will “continue.”

Pentagon and White House press secretary statements on this issue equivocated, failing to say precisely what Washington will or won’t do.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Washington will continue aiding Kurdish YPG fighters “as long as they remain committed to the goal of fighting and defeating ISIS.”

“(M)aterial support (meaning weapons and equipment), training, advice and assistance” will continue.

According to the Pentagon-controlled Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve,

“(o)ur tactical partnership with the SDF is focused on defeating ISIS in Syria. Our attention is strongly focused on that fight…”

“The coalition continues to provide material support, training, advice and assistance to the SDF in their ongoing effort to defeat ISIS in Syria.”

“While ISIS is on its way to military defeat in Syria and Iraq, there is still much work left to be done to ensure their lasting defeat in the region.”

There you have it. Trump told Erdogan supplying Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria with weapons will end, saying it should have ceased “much earlier.”

The Pentagon (taking orders from Defense Secretary Mattis) indicated otherwise, saying weapons to YPG fighters will continue because “there is still much work left to be done” in Syria.

The Pentagon abstains from using the term YPG in comments about the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – comprised of Kurdish fighters and Arab terrorists – nothing democratic about how Washington uses them.

In all its war theaters, America’s aims are endless conflict and regime change, or propping up puppet regimes it installed – in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Since US-led aggression on Libya, strategy involved using ISIS and other terrorist fighters instead of Pentagon troops on the ground, supported by so-called “coalition” terror-bombing.

It’s how current US wars are waged, along with US forces occupying targeted countries on the phony pretext of serving as trainers and advisors.

Russia’s intervention in Syria foiled its imperial objective to topple Assad. Still seeking regime change, Washington has no leverage to achieve it.

It has considerable ability to continue conflict in Syria, still seeking to impose its will on the country under leadership it controls – why winning the peace remains a formidable challenge.

In the Middle East and beyond, we are witnessing a series of high-level political meetings between dozens of nations involved directly or indirectly in the Syrian situation. It is crucial to understand all this in order to understand the direction in which the region is going and what the new regional order is.

With the liberation of Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border, the last Syrian town controlled by ISIS, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have completed the task of eliminating the Caliphate and its control over Syrian cities. ISIS returns to its original dimensions of being a terrorist organization without control of any territory or a city-state proclaimed as its capital.

These are important days, with political conferences about the future of the region and Syria itself occurring from Sochi to Cairo and passing through Riyadh. In Sochi, Assad met with Putin to confirm the alliance as well as Moscow’s loyalty to the Syrian State, and to also focus on a political solution. The Russian and Syrian presidents agreed on the need to involve the largest possible number of opposition groups in the reform process. In this regard, the meeting between Rouhani, Erdogan and Putin was also aimed at creating the conditions for an inclusive solution for all those who have agreed to put down arms and engage in talks with the legitimate government in Damascus. Turkey is the country that holds together the ranks of the so-called legitimate opposition, and Erdogan’s moves have confirmed that his strategy in the region is based around pivoting towards Russia through a full-fledged cooperation with Moscow. It is an almost unprecedented diplomatic victory for Russia that in two years it has managed to turn a potential opponent into one of the main guarantors of the peace process in Syria.

Riyadh is in the meantime bringing together the not-so-moderate opposition groups that are very close to Islamic extremism, a sort of spin-off of Al Nusra (Al Qaeda) and Daesh, and attempting to apply on them a makeover in an effort to rebrand them. It is important to note that recent meetings between King Salman and Putin seem to have opened some sort of dialogue with a representative of Moscow present at the Riyadh conference.

Firstly Erdogan, and then King Salman and his son Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), seem to have understood that a military defeat in Syria is now inevitable, and the latest developments have been related to the consequences resulting from the defeat of the terrorists. Turkey has much to gain from a convenient alliance with Moscow, both in terms of energy and transit along the East-West route of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and along the North-South corridor contained within the agreement between Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey. In light of this, Russian planes have been flying over Turkey to reach Syria. A NATO country is letting Russian military aircraft fly over its airspace to reach Syria, something that would have been impossible to imagine not too long ago.

For Saudi Arabia the situation is different. While the meeting between King Salman and Putin represents an absolute novelty, the recent confirmation by MBS of his intentions to oppose the rise of Iran run counter to the possibility of pacifying the region.

The result of the war in Syria has carved out a new Middle East, where the likes of Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Washington, previously regional masters of all they surveyed, appear to have more or less been deliberately cut off from the decision-making process. While it can be argued that Washington has played out its role in the region with the defeat of Daesh, thanks to Trump’s “America first” policies that resists direct involvement in conflicts, Riyadh and Tel Aviv do not seem to have any intention of accepting Tehran’s new role in the region, even as it is supported by Turkish and Russian diplomacy and even military might.

The aggression against the Syrian state initially saw a compact front comprising the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, Israel, France and the United Kingdom. All were at the forefront of arming, training, financing, assisting and treating the injured of the tens of thousands of terrorists sent to Syria. It was a destabilization operation with few precedents in history. Already in 2014, at the pinnacle Daesh’s power, Assad’s position seemed firm and immovable. According to the intentions of Western terror planners, Assad was to be expelled within the first twelve months of the conflict. The drawback was the impossibility, for a number of reasons, of NATO and its allies directly intervening a la Libya, foremost among which was Syria’s possession of a good level of air defense, as well as America’s inability to deal with the human and financial costs of yet another conflict in the region, with the inevitable escalation that would follow given Iran’s involvement.

After the failure to remove Assad, the next step for Western policymakers was to deploy Daesh to create chaos and destroy the country, this diabolical force having been born as a result of America’s illegal occupation of Iraq.

Russia’s 2015 intervention in Syria, at the invitation of the legitimate government in Damascus, disrupted Western plans, bringing about the inevitable defeat of Daesh and consolidating Assad’s power. There are two events between the Russian intervention and the efforts to Balkanize Syria through use of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that served to confirm that the Iran-Syria-Russia axis was destined to prevail in the conflict. The first is Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. Leaving aside all the negatives related to his presidency, his victory has ensured that there is no direct intervention in Syria against Assad and against Russia. This is in contrast to what would have happened had Clinton won the election, the former Secretary of State prepared to trigger a regional conflict between the great powers by giving the order to shoot down Russian planes in Syria, thereby potentially kicking off World War Three.

The other event that has upset the balance of power in the region concerns the events that have occurred in Turkey over the last two years. Both the failed coup and the downing of the Russian fighter plane played an important role. The turning point was reached with the reconquering of Aleppo, which indicated a clear military failure by the opposition to overthrow Assad. Erdogan faced an unavoidable choice: support the terrorists and have to deal with a Kurdish enclave on the Syrian border; or reach a peaceful solution with the Russian Federation in order to contain the Kurdish threat and guarantee the integrity of Syria.

Erdogan has been rewarded by his choice to side with Russia and Iran, leaving Turkey in a better position than that of a couple of years ago, with him now able to influence the fate of many events in the Middle East, as well as allowing him to focus on his own national interests, in particular on the Kurds. The failure of the plan to balkanize Syria, involving the extreme attempt to declare Kurdish independence in Iraq, has only led to the end of Barzani’s reign. Hardliners committed to regime change in Damascus, such as the international coalition led by the US military and the military-industrial complex, have tried in every way possible to sabotage the SAA’s fight against Daesh along the Euphrates. Saudi Arabia had even ventured to support Kurdish movements directly within Iraq; and Israel was the only country to openly support the referendum on Kurdish independence.

This strategy foundered on the opposition of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, which with Russian military support consolidated the front against the Saudi-Israeli-Neocons-Neoliberals. During this series of changes and upheavals, the anti-Assad front managed to alienate even a country like Qatar, which has explicit ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the neoliberal part of the American establishment. Although anti-Assad propaganda continues on state media such as Al Jazeera, the concrete effects are zero. Moreover, Qatar, following the Saudi crisis, sought to broaden its geopolitical stance, engaging directly with Moscow (there have been many contacts between the Al Thani family and the Kremlin) and Iran, a historic enemy of Riyadh.

The European component of the anti-Assad alliance is in complete disarray, with Macron in France conducting difficult mediation between MBS and Hariri in an attempt to avert further Saudi-Israeli political disasters that risk pushing Lebanon completely into the Iranian sphere of influence. In Germany, Merkel is experiencing a long wave of pervasive challenges between globalist versus national-sovereignty movements, with new elections looming. In England, the consequences and effects of Brexit are still tangible, with an unstable government and a series of difficult negotiations with the European Union. There no longer seems to be any time or resources available to invest in Syria. The falsification of reality continues through the mainstream media that belongs to the neoliberal world-wide elite, such as CNN, Al Jazeera, and the Washington Post. In addition to the usual lies fed through television and newspapers, Europeans and Americans today have no other tool at their disposal.

Trump seems to be contented to have been able to return home from his tour of Asia having secured hundreds of billions of dollars worth of extortion from allies, while not getting embroiled in the type of endless wars that even Saudi Arabia is unable to sustain, as seen with the genocide in Yemen and actions against Qatar. The Trump administration has many flaws as well as a deep aversion towards Iran, but it has no ability or intention to support Israel and Saudi Arabia in their attempt to limit Iranian influence by force. Not even the combined military forces of Israel and Saudi Arabia could pose a threat to Hezbollah let alone the Islamic Republic of Iran.

What we see is a Middle East that is trying to restore a regional order that is practical and functional. Meetings in Sochi between Turkey, Russia and Iran aim precisely to achieve this. In this scenario, Washington’s absence is notable, despite attempts from Staffan de Mistura to revive the now-dead Geneva conference. Russia and its allies, after taking the military initiative, are ready to guide the diplomatic negotiations between the Assad government and opposition forces, to be held under the auspices of the trio gathered in Sochi, with the involvement of the United Nations in a role as guarantor rather than decider. The shots are called by Assad, Putin, Erdogan and Rouhani, even though this new reality will never be accepted by MBS, Netanyahu, the European governments and the US deep state (neocon/ neoliberal).

MBS’s domestic actions, together with Netanyahu’s threats to Iran and Hezbollah, reveal a refusal to acknowledge defeat as well as, in the case of MBS, an extreme attempt to avoid losing control of the country. For Israel, the problem is more complicated. Already in 2006 it was unable to defeat Hezbollah, and now Hezbollah is more developed, better trained, and better able to inflict damage on the Jewish State. Saudi and Israeli military leaders are more than aware that they do not have the ability to defeat Iran or Hezbollah and that only Washington’s direct involvement would be able to change the course of events. This hypothesis, however, must also take into account the reality on the ground, with Moscow now allied to Tehran and Trump more than opposed to any new wars involving the US. In this situation that is chaotic for anti-Assad forces, MBS continues his work of arresting anyone opposed to him and recovering money sunk into wars in the context of the collapse of the oil price.

The new Middle Eastern order coincides with the near-end of the conflict in Syria and the intention to find a political solution to the conflict by pacifying all parties. It is a solution that is increasingly successful, especially in light of Turkey’s abandonment of the anti-Assad front. Moscow is slowly replacing the US as the fulcrum in the region and beyond, solving conflicts and accompanying the progressive withdrawal of US military and economic influence in the region.

Once again, the strategic triangle between Iran, Russia and China finds itself victorious, inheriting and solving one of the most complicated conflicts since the end of World War II. Kudos to Putin, Rouhani and Xi Jinping, the new giants of the 21st century.

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

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Featured image is from the author.

This article was published in April 2013. Fidel Castro Ruz was a contributor as well as a reader of Global Research.

A few days ago I mentioned the great challenges humanity is currently facing. Intelligent life emerged on our planet approximately 200,000 years ago, although new discoveries demonstrate something else.

This is not to confuse intelligent life with the existence of life which, from its elemental forms in our solar system, emerged millions of years ago.

A virtually infinite number of life forms exist. In the sophisticated work of the world’s most eminent scientists the idea has already been conceived of reproducing the sounds which followed the Big Bang, the great explosion which took place more than 13.7 billion years ago.

This introduction would be too extensive if it was not to explain the gravity of an event as unbelievable and absurd as the situation created in the Korean Peninsula, within a geographic area containing close to five billion of the seven billion persons currently inhabiting the planet.

This is about one of the most serious dangers of nuclear war since the October Crisis around Cuba in 1962, 50 years ago.

In 1950, a war was unleashed there [the Korean Peninsula] which cost millions of lives. It came barely five years after two atomic bombs were exploded over the defenseless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, in a matter of seconds, killed and irradiated hundreds of thousands of people.

General Douglas MacArthur wanted to utilize atomic weapons against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Not even Harry Truman allowed that.

It has been affirmed that the People’s Republic of China lost one million valiant soldiers in order to prevent the installation of an enemy army on that country’s border with its homeland. For its part, the Soviet army provided weapons, air support, technological and economic aid.

I had the honor of meeting Kim Il Sung, a historic figure, notably courageous and revolutionary.

If war breaks out there, the peoples of both parts of the Peninsula will be terribly sacrificed, without benefit to all or either of them. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was always friendly with Cuba, as Cuba has always been and will continue to be with her.

Now that the country has demonstrated its technical and scientific achievements, we remind her of her duties to the countries which have been her great friends, and it would be unjust to forget that such a war would particularly affect more than 70% of the population of the planet.

If a conflict of that nature should break out there, the government of Barack Obama in his second mandate would be buried in a deluge of images which would present him as the most sinister character in the history of the United States. The duty of avoiding war is also his and that of the people of the United States.

President Trump announced last week that he was returning North Korea to the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism” after having been off the list for the past nine years. Americans may wonder what dramatic event led the US president to re-designate North Korea as a terrorism-sponsoring nation. Has Pyongyang been found guilty of some spectacular terrorist attack overseas or perhaps of plotting to overthrow another country by force? No, that is not the case. North Korea is back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism because President Trump thinks the move will convince the government to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. He believes that continuing down the path toward confrontation with North Korea will lead the country to capitulate to Washington’s demands. That will not happen.

President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued that North Korea deserved to be back on the list because the North Korean government is reported to have assassinated a North Korean citizen – Kim Jong-Un’s own half-brother — in February at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. But what does that say about Washington’s own program to assassinate US citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son under Obama, and later Awlaki’s six year old daughter under Trump? Like Kim’s half brother, Awlaki and his two children were never tried or convicted of a crime before being killed by their own government.

The neocons, who are pushing for a war with North Korea, are extremely pleased by Trump’s move. John Bolton called it “exactly the right thing to do.”

Designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism will allow President Trump to impose the “highest level of sanctions” on North Korea. Does anyone believe more sanctions – which hurt the suffering citizens of North Korea the most – will actually lead North Korea’s leadership to surrender to Washington’s demands? Sanctions never work. They hurt the weakest and most vulnerable members of society the hardest and affect the elites the least.

So North Korea is officially a terrorism-sponsoring nation according to the Trump Administration because Kim Jong-Un killed a family member. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is in the process of killing the entire country of Yemen and no one says a word. In fact, the US government has just announced it will sell Saudi Arabia $7 billion more weapons to help it finish the job.

Also, is it not “state-sponsorship” of terrorism to back al-Qaeda and ISIS, as Saudi Arabia has done in Syria?

The truth is a “state sponsor of terrorism” designation has little to do with actual support for global terrorism. As bad as the North Korean government is, it is does not go abroad looking for countries to invade. The designation is a political one, allowing Washington to ramp up more aggression against North Korea.

Next month the US and South Korean militaries will conduct a massive military exercise practicing an attack on North Korea. American and South Korean air force fighters and bombers will practice “enemy infiltration” and “precision strike drills.” Are these not also to be seen as threatening?

What is terrorism? Maybe we should ask a Yemeni child constantly wondering when the next Saudi bomb overhead might kill his family. Or perhaps we might even ask a Pakistani, Somali, Iraqi, Syrian, or other child who is terrified that the next US bomb will do the same to his family. Perhaps we need to look at whether US foreign policy actually reflects the American values we claim to be exporting before we point out the flaws in others.

Nicolas Maduro is a dictator although he was fairly elected. He has improved the situation of the poor and for this alone should be considered democratic.  Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad Bin-Salman, on the other hand, sacked scores of his opponents, almost overnight. He is not a dictator.

The Crown Prince has brought the economy, the security and military forces, the media and the religious establishment totally under his control. He’ll make sure millions starve in Yemen or die of cholera. But he opposed the “old guard”. He’s considered bold and enterprising, modern.

On the anniversary of Fidel Castro’s death, the connection matters. It has to do with lies and how we accept them. If there’s one thing to remember about Fidel Castro, it is his insistence on ideas. He insisted on philosophy. He talked about what it means to be human. It has to do with how we get truth.

We notice the lies, of course, but we don’t see the connection to how we think about who we are and how we live. José Martí did. He said a major barrier to Latin American independence was a false idea of how to know. A philosophical idea.

“We want truth, not dreams”, he wrote.

When I mentioned Martí at a solidarity meeting for Venezuela, the chair suggested he was irrelevant, or at least his philosophy was. What matters is economics and politics. Venezuelans must eat. Many admire Cuba’s revolution and don’t bother with the ideas. They talk about Castro’s charisma as if it had nothing to do with his philosophical vision, centuries old.^[i]

The separation of philosophy and politics is part of the ideology Martí opposed. Fidel followed. He dedicated his life to opposing that ideology. He said people suffer because of a “nicely sweetened but rotten idea” about how to live: an idea about what it means to be human.[ii]

In philosophy classes, students engage in a thought experiment. Suppose you could enter a happiness machine that makes it appear that your desires for your life are satisfied. Once you enter the machine, you won’t know it is a machine. You will have a happy, fulfilled life, within the machine.

Few choose to enter. They are not sure why. They say,

“I know there is something wrong but I am not sure what.”

Some point to the importance of struggle. They want to work for their happiness. But the machine can make it seem as if they did, and they won’t know the difference.

The thought experiment is supposed to refute hedonism, the idea that pleasure is the only value worth pursuing. If you don’t opt for feeling happy, there must be more to life than pleasure.

One might think, though, that the pursuit of happiness itself is the delusionary machine. Concern for happiness – my happiness – obscures the distinction between truth and reality: real lives are irrelevant.

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu, said: when the shoe fits, you don’t feel it. He meant that when you live well, by which he meant realizing your unique human potential, you don’t wonder about it. The question doesn’t arise. We ask questions when there is doubt.

Happiness involves a paradox, at least as understood in North America: When you pursue it, you don’t find it. Those looking for happiness are not happy. The Buddha, of course, said “May all beings be happy” but his idea of happiness was quite different. He meant absence of ego, not fulfillment of it.

The self-help industry is instructive. Many realize that material gain does not satisfy. They seek elsewhere – in yoga, meditation, travel, art, creativity, “sharing circles”, nature.  Self-help books and life coaches give guidance. And then there are self-help books to help you deal with the self-help industry.

A simple truth is missed. It was known to Marx, Lenin and José Martí. It is known within indigenous traditions that motivated José Carlos Mariátegui. It was known to the Buddha and Chuang Tzu. It was expressed by Fidel in its myriad dimensions and applications.

Human beings are interdependent. Like every other part of the universe, we are dependent upon other people and upon the natural environment. This includes for thinking. Marx said human beings are herd animals not because of how we live but because of how we think. We do not think alone.

And we cannot be happy alone. The self-help industry in the North tells us to “get the most out of yourself …  in a job that is spiritually fulfilling, socially constructive, experientially diverse, emotionally enriching, self- esteem boosting, perpetually challenging and eternally edifying”.^[iii]

For what? It is for me, all about me. And it doesn’t work.

I am surprised when activists in the North tell me philosophy is irrelevant. There’s no time for that, they say. Cubans cannot afford tomatoes, and Trump is preventing US tourists from going to Cuba.

But Juan Marinello, one of Latin America’s great thinkers, said Martí left an important legacy: the idea that if you want to flourish intellectually, you should commit yourself to the major causes of your time.[iv] In other words, if you want to think well, to distinguish truth from lies, you need to act well, for others. You need to sacrifice.

We won’t know the lies if we’re living them. And if we don’t know we’re living them, we don’t ask about those lies. Fidel Castro opposed such lies: some philosophical. He did that as part of the struggle for a better world, politically and economically. Those who don’t see that in his legacy aren’t looking.

Ana Belén Montes opposed lies.^[v] She’s in jail, in the US, having hurt no one. Please sign petition here.

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

This article was originally published by CounterPunch.

Notes

[i] Nelson P. Nelson, “El contenido revolucionario y político de la autoridad carismática de Fidel Castro”, Temas 55 (2008) 4-17

[ii] “A revolution can only be born from culture and ideas” (Master lecture at the Central University of Venezuela, February 3 1999). Havana, Cuba: Editora Política, 9.

[iii] David Brook, Bobos in paradise (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[iv] Cuba: Cultura (Havana: Editoral Letras Cubanas, 1989) 287

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

Recently, Israel and Saudi Arabia began to demonstrate their mutual readiness for proximity or even collaboration based on the joint opposition to Iran. So far, these two ferocious geopolitical enemies of Tehran are trying to stick to the policy of confidentiality in the conducted negotiations and have not entered the level of official inter-state contacts yet. However, even now, many things testify to the readiness of Tel-Aviv and Riyadh to go towards ‘bold decisions’, to the extent of making visits of official persons and establishing diplomatic relations.

The evidence of such a trend became obviously unprecedented with regards to the two countries, judging by the interview with the Chief of General Staff (Israel) Gadi Eizenkot given to the Saudi online newspaper Elaph and published on 16^th November, where the Israeli military commander appealed to Saudi and other ‘involved stakes’ for the mutual inhibition of ‘aggressive Iranian influence’ in the Middle East region. Whereby the Chief of General Staff (Israel) noted the readiness of Tel-Aviv to exchange intelligence data with Riyadh to neutralize the threats on part of Tehran.

Not so long ago, the Jewish state was visited by the Saudi delegation headed by the Saudi general Dr. Anwar Eshki, the former advisor of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who met Dore Gold, Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The negotiations of Eshki were, first, concerned the sphere of military collaboration. In this respect, we would like to remind that in May in London, the electronic intifada Аl-Rai al-Youm already informed us that Israel offered its famous air-defence system ‘Iron Dome’ to Riyadh.

Earlier, the Arab mass media already widely quoted Yisrael Katz, Minister of Transportation and the Minister of Intelligence, who suggested in June that King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulazis Al Saud “could have invited” the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pay a visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and establish ‘diplomatic relations on a full scale”.

Whereby it is quite remarkable that until recently, in Saudi Arabia it was officially prohibited for the Israelites to be on their territory. Saudi Arabian Airlines do not only refuse to sell tickets to the citizens of Israel on their flights, but refuse entry on board to those Israelites who hold citizenship of other countries, if in their luggage a kippah, a Jewish cap, would be found, the Torah or any other paraphernalia testifying to affiliation to the Jewish religion.

The daily Arabic newspaper ‘Al-Akhbar’ (Lebanon) recently informed us that it has a secret document in possession regarding the covert negotiation between Saudi Arabia and Israel, during which both sides talk terms of establishing mutual diplomatic relations. This document presents a letter of Adel al-Jubeir, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohhamad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, where the negotiations with the participation of the USA are mentioned regarding the issue of international recognition of Israel by Riyadh and creation of a coalition together with it, against Iran in the Middle East, with the approval of Washington. As a ‘contribution’ to the covert alliance of Israel-Saudi Arabia, Riyadh expresses willingness to support Jerusalem division and placing it under international regime, per the plan adopted by the General Assembly. It being understood that the Palestinian refugees living on the territory of the Arab League, at the suggestion of Riyadh, should be granted citizenship of these countries, whereby the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself would be ‘turned into a cinder and a memory’, and, according to arrangements between Riyadh and Washington, the USA would openly support Saudi Arabia in creating a military alliance against Iran with the participation of Israel.

As per another statement by the Wall Street Journal, Riyadh is prepared to withdraw the demands to Jerusalem to freeze the construction in the parts of Judea and Samaria, located beyond the settlement ‘blocs’; however, it also demands from Israel to increase the humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

The rapprochement of the Arab world and Israel is in many aspects related to the creation of the ‘front’ to stay united against Iran. The Saudis are intending to become masters of the whole Middle East, just as the Israelis.

The government of Israel admitted having confidential consultations with Saudi Arabia, the major part of which is devoted to the co-operative deterrence of Iran threats. The fact of secret contacts between Tel-Aviv and Riyadh was also confirmed recently by Yuval Steinitz, Energy and Water Resources Minister of Israel.

In relation to the anti-Iran sentiments actively demonstrated recently, we would like to remind of the history and the development of the region and Israel itself. When the Biblical Israelites emerged, Persia was a civilised country already.

Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, assisted the Jews in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, in essence, having founded what they now call ‘the Jewish people’. That is why he is so praised in the Jewish sources, as he marked a great epoch in the history of the Jewish people, being a ‘great benefactor’. Partly due to this reason, when the establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, David Ben-Gurion, former Prime-Minister of Israel, saw in Iran a natural ally. That is why, back at that time, most Iranian Jews said they viewed Iran as their home, whereas Tehran became heaven (kind of ‘Mecca’) for many Jewish businessmen. The experts from the Israel Security Agency Shin-Bet even trained the secret police SAVAK, domestic security and intelligence service of Pahlavi dynasty, whereas the high-ranking commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the time could travel unchecked through Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan to train Peshmerga – the military forces of the federal region of Iraqi Kurdistan, who have played a key role in the mission to capture Saddam Hussein. Israel also supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq war of eight years with ‘Ba’athist Iraq’. Thus, at that time Israel eliminated the obstacle for Iran’s domination in the Middle East.

Indeed, the times change, so do politicians and political ambitions. By intending nowadays to take the place of the regional hegemon, with the support of Washington, the current Israeli politicians, due to U.S. pressure, decided to correct their previous mistakes in ‘Iran’s Regional Position Strengthening’, being poised to concluding an alliance with their opponents from Saudi Arabia. However, even this temporary political-military alliance between the Jews and the Saudi looks highly suspect. In long run, Arab regimes still cannot tolerate the State of Israel, although they are trying in their convoluted comments, so peculiar to them, to convince the Israeli that they “are now united with them in their goals: to reflect the threat from the common enemy and withstand in the atmosphere of chaos”. In actual practice, although Riyadh does not declare open its intention to destroy the ‘Jewish state’, it supports the terror groups that are acting exactly in this direction, and tomorrow, with the prompt from Riyadh, might divert their anger against Israel.

The East is a delicate matter, indeed!

Valery Kulikov is expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine ‘New Eastern Outlook’.

Bitter negotiations over post-Brexit arrangements with the European Union threaten to destabilise governments in the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Britain is due to exit the European Union in March 2019, raising the possibility that the border between the north and south and the Irish Sea will become an external customs and tariff barrier to “Fortress Europe.” The issue has therefore pitched a divided British government against the EU’s 27 member states, including the Republic.

The EU has made a resolution of the border issue one of the three preconditions for moving forward onto talks with the British government on Brexit trade terms. Brussels is placing maximum pressure on the Conservative government of Prime Minister Theresa May to agree to pay a £40-50 billion “divorce settlement” that is meant to be agreed in one week’s time. The Irish government has made clear it will veto any border solution—and therefore any Brexit deal—of which it does not approve.

This has potentially catastrophic consequences for cross-border trade and for the economies of both parts of the island. Politically, it threatens the survival of May’s government but, more fundamentally, calls into question both future Anglo-Irish relations along with the power-sharing arrangements between the nationalist Sinn Fein and the pro-British Unionist parties. Inaugurated by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the arrangements ended the 30-year armed conflict known as The Troubles.

Britain’s Tory government depends on the vote of ten Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MPs in a “confidence and supply” arrangement made necessary by the disastrous election result in June. This means that the DUP can veto any Westminster policy it doesn’t agree with.

Northern Ireland has not had a functioning government since early this year—when the Northern Ireland Executive was collapsed by Sinn Fein seizing on a long running scandal over the misallocation of British government funds. Two subsequent elections, one in Northern Ireland and one in Westminster and months of desultory talks failed to revive the power-sharing government between Sinn Fein and the DUP.

Despite the collapse of the Stormont Assembly, the DUP’s stranglehold on May’s weak and divided government has been strengthened—along with her reliance on the hard-Brexit wing of her own party. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, Northern Ireland voted by a clear majority, 56 to 44 percent, to remain in the EU. However, the DUP are fervent Brexiteers with intimate connections to the Tory right.

Earlier this month the British government, egged on by the DUP, took the first steps towards re-imposing direct rule over Northern Ireland from Westminster. A budget to allow public services to continue to function in the absence of regional government was pushed through by Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire.

Last week, the situation became yet more fraught when the Republic of Ireland was also pitched into an electoral crisis.

A long running scandal around the state framing of whistle blower, Maurice McCabe, who exposed fraudulent and corrupt police practices and was falsely accused of being a paedophile, has led to successive police and government resignations.

The main opposition party, Fianna Fail, and Sinn Fein, which operates on both sides of the Irish border, are calling for the resignation of Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) Frances Fitzgerald of Fine Gael over her role in the affair. Recently appointed Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar has refused.

Fianna Fail, which props up the minority Fine Gael government, responded by threatening to pull out of a “confidence and supply” deal. That would precipitate a snap general election just days after the crucial December 14 summit between the EU and the British government.

Both sides are in talks seeking to avoid such an outcome. Fianna Fail are also under pressure from Sinn Fein who recently dropped opposition to entering a coalition agreement as a minority party.

Gerry Adams’ retirement announcement last weekend would facilitate such a governmental role by removing the leader most associated politically with the Irish Republican Army’s campaign against British rule in the North. Adams’ departure brings nearer the prospect of Sinn Fein simultaneously being in government in Northern Ireland and acting as king makers in the Republic.

Brexit has proved to be an unmitigated economic and political disaster for Irish capitalism, north and south. Until Brexit, the Irish Republic, for all the nationalist posturing of its leading parties, broadly shadowed the trajectory of its former imperial master and leading market. Ireland even joined the EU’s forerunner, the European Economic Community, on the same day as Britain, in 1973, at a time when Northern Ireland was occupied by tens of thousands of British troops.

As a member of the European trade bloc, the once impoverished republic attracted vast amounts of US and EU investment aimed at exploiting cheap English-speaking labour with access to European markets. Indeed the “peace process” in the North was underpinned by the fact that both Britain and Ireland were in the EU. The US, Britain and the EU worked to create the conditions for the island to be economically integrated, and investment to be directed towards the increasingly isolated north.

As a result, over the past 19 years, the economically irrational 300-mile border that was once scarred by hundreds of checkpoints, fortresses and patrolled by the British Army effectively ceased to exist. Tens of thousands of goods vehicles, commuters and bargain seekers cross it every day. A recent EU paper reported 142 areas, including the environment, health, agriculture, transport, education, tourism, energy, telecommunications, broadcasting, inland fisheries, justice and security, and sport in which current cross border activity was underpinned by the Good Friday Agreement and EU law.

Brexit poses other problems for the republic. Statistics vary, but 2014 figures suggest that Irish trade with the EU, at €109 billion, is more than double its €52 billion trade with Britain. However, external trade, even if ultimately destined for Europe, still passes through Britain. A recent Financial Times article quoted the Irish Exporters Association stating that two thirds of Irish goods directed towards European and even global markets currently cross the Irish Sea to use the British motorway infrastructure and access to the Channel Tunnel.

All parties and governments, including the DUP, therefore agree that there should be no return to a “hard” border. But there is no unity on how this can be done, or where the line marking the EU’s boundary should fall.

The DUP and the British government have ruled out any “special status”, or “bespoke” solution for Northern Ireland that would allow the rules of the EU single market and customs union to continue to be mirrored in the North. They have also ruled out checks at British and Northern Irish ports, claiming this would undermine Northern Ireland’s status as part of the UK.

The Irish government’s European Commissioner, Philip Hogan, warned that Ireland would “continue to play tough to the end.” He did so knowing that he has EU backing, with chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier recently Tweeting,

“Strong solidarity with Ireland…Irish issues are EU issues.”

There is a strong element of political brinksmanship, but all sides are behaving with extraordinary recklessness over the future of an island whose most recent civil war only ended two decades ago.

For the working class, the situation is fraught with the danger of heightened sectarian conflict amid a continued descent into austerity. Only through a united struggle for the abolition of all national borders and the founding of a United Socialist States of Europe can workers advance their interests.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has approved the release of genetically engineered mosquitoes in 20 US states and Washington D.C – what are the implications of this mass experiment?

In early November the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the use of mosquitoes which have been genetically engineered to carry a common bacterium designed to kill mosquitoes that carry dangerous viruses. The news was reported in Nature, and later confirmed to Gizmodo by MosquitoMate, the company behind the GE mosquitoes, and the EPA. The EPA said they officially registered MosquitoMate’s Asian Tiger mosquito with a five-year license to sell their lab mosquitoes in 20 states across the nation.

Nature reported:

On 3 November, the agency told biotechnology start-up MosquitoMate that it could release the bacterium Wolbachia pipientis into the environment as a tool against the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus). Lab-reared mosquitoes will deliver the bacterium to wild mosquito populations.

The decision — which the EPA has not formally announced — allows the company, which is based in Lexington, Kentucky, to release the bacteria-infected mosquitoes in 20 US states and Washington DC.

The goal is to have MosquitoMate release the Wolbachia-infected A. albopictus male mosquitoes into the wild to mate with wild females in the hopes that the fertilized eggs do not hatch due to faulty paternal chromosomes. As with all mosquitoes, the laboratory grown male mosquitoes do not bite.  MosquitoMate believes that over time the infected males will help shrink the population of  A. albopictus mosquitoes.

Stephen Dobson, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and founder of MosquitoMate, told Nature that other species of mosquito and other insects are not harmed by the release of the lab mosquitoes. Dobson also stated that MosquitoMate plans to begin selling the mosquitoes locally in Lexington, Kentucky and then from there expand to nearby cities.

The EPA’s decision came after the US Food and Drug Administration approved the release of genetically engineered mosquitoes designed to prevent the spread of the Zika virus. The FDA’s approval was in relation to a field test of genetically modified mosquitoes engineered by the British biotechnology company Oxitec.

Oxitec is the same company involved in a controversial vote in the Florida Keys during the 2016 Election. In that vote, residents of the Key Haven voted against the release of the mosquitoes in their community. However, shortly after, the trials were approved for a different location in the Keys. Despite the approval, opposition to the controversial project has not ceased. In late November 2016, Health News Floridareported that a coalition of groups, including the Center for Food Safety and the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition, have filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Earlier this year the Houston Chronicle reported that Oxitec is working on a deal with Harris County officials to release GE mosquitoes in the Houston area. Oxitec is attempting to sway Houston officials by stating that their product has a nearly 100% success rate. Gizmodo reported:

The company claims that trials in Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands have reduced mosquito populations by 90%, calling the success “an unprecedented level” of human control over nature. (The World Health Organization, for it’s [sic]part, has stated that while the technology “has demonstrated the ability to reduce the [mosquito] populations in small-scale field trials” there is still “an absence of data on epidemiological impact.”)

Interestingly, in October 2017, the FDA made another announcement which clarifies that “mosquito-related products intended to function as pesticides” are not “drugs” under the Federal Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act, and “will be regulated by the EPA under the Federal Insecticide Act.” This decision led to the November announce from the EPA and now sets the stage for future experiments with genetically engineered mosquitoes.

Will the first site of genetically engineered mosquitoes be in Houston, the Florida Keys, or one of the newly approved 20 states? Time will tell. For now, it is important to express your thoughts and concerns to local officials. If this is happening in your area and you have concerns, do not sit around doing nothing, or only complain online. Take some type of action. Educate your neighbors and hold your public officials accountable.

Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter forActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter. Derrick is the author of three books: The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 1 and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 2

Featured image is from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Monsanto has been selling glyphosate to farmers since 1974 – under the trade name Roundup, used to kill weeds without killing crops.

It’s currently the most commonly used herbicide in America – sales today 100-fold greater than when first introduced.

In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic in humans” – based on epidemiological, animal, and in vitro studies.

In February 2016, a group of international scientists published a consensus statement – explaining the risks associated with increasing human exposure to glyphosate herbicides.

They noted its endocrine disruption in test tube and animal experiments studies.

Glyphosate residues are found in popular Western foods and drinks. Tests show most Americans have it in their urine. Any amount is unsafe.

In 2009, the International Endocrine Society warned of the dangers of chemicals that interact with, take the place of, or inhibit or stimulate the action of natural human hormones (endocrine disruptors – EDs).

Peer-reviewed research by international scientists show little doubt that glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) are endocrine disruptors, associated with a wide range of maladies, including cancer.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, glyphosate exposure is linked to cancer in humans. Yet no regulatory action in America or Europe has been taken to ban its use.

On Monday, EU member states approved its renewal for another five years – 18 nations in favor, nine opposed, one abstaining – 16 yes votes needed for approval.

Germany’s 11th hour U-turn in favor of renewal outweighed French and Italian opposition. The European Commission ignored the European Parliament’s demand to phase out glyphosate on farms by 2020, urging restriction on its use in the interim – including a ban on non-professional use in public parks and gardens.

Permitting unrestricted glyphosate use ignores the health hazard it poses. For years, Monsanto has been ghostwriting studies, bankrolling EU scientists to call the product safe.

Evidence proves otherwise. According to Adrian Bebb from Friends of the Earth Europe, commenting on the EU vote:

“Glyphosate damages nature, probably causes cancer, and props up an industrial farming system that is degrading the land we need to feed ourselves.”

“Today’s approval, even if only for five years, is a missed opportunity to get rid of this risky weedkiller and start to get farmers off the chemical treadmill.”

“Five more years of glyphosate will put our health and environment at risk, and is a major setback to more sustainable farming methods.”

When used as directed, glyphosate is harmful to human health, a risk too great to ignore.

Now that Syria and its allies in the Axis of Resistance have done the world a favour by destroying most of the West’s terror proxies in Syria, the Canadian narrative is falling apart.

In 2016, Prime Minister Trudeau described the terrorists in this manner:

“The so-called Islamic State are terrorists, criminals, thugs, murderers of innocents and children and there’s a lot of labels for them.”[1]

He was right that there are a lot of labels for them. But some labels have been conspicuously absent from the Canadian narrative, and these are the most accurate of all: “proxies”, “assets”, “strategic assets”, “allies”.

These “criminals, thugs, and murderers” are also Canada’s proxies in the Middle East and beyond, and the Canadian government needs to take ownership for its criminality.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister, Ralph Goodale, for his part, recently claimed that chances for rehabilitating these people are “pretty remote”, and that pursuing charges against these people is “difficult”.[2]

Conspicuously absent from Goodale’s explanation of why it is difficult to prosecute these individuals is the previously mentioned stumbling block. If the terrorists are Canada’s assets, as they are, then prosecuting them would necessarily reveal the government’s guilt.

Consider the case of Swedish national Bherlin Gildo.[3]  In 2015, Gildo’s terror trial in the U.K. collapsed because the British intelligence agency M16 was supporting the same terrorists that Gildo was reportedly fighting for.

The Canadian government’s web of criminal war propaganda is unraveling at the seams. If the press was free, and not an appendage of the government’s criminal apparatus of deception, more Canadians might be aware of this.

Notes

[1] Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press, “Trudeau: ISIS Just ‘Terrorists’ And ‘Thugs,’ Not A State.” HuffPost, 29 March, 2016.(http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/03/29/trudeau-isis-terrorists-calgary-interview_n_9568642.html) Accessed 27 November, 2017.

[2] Rachel Aiello, Ottawa News Bureau Online Producer,“Chance of reintegrating Canadian ISIS fighters ‘pretty remote’: Goodale.” CTV News, November 26, 2017. (https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/chance-of-reintegrating-canadian-isis-fighters-pretty-remote-goodale-1.3693559) Accessed 27 November, 2017.

[3] Stuart J. Hooper, “Terror Trial Collapses: Suspect Fighting For MI6 SUPPORTED Fighting Group.”21st Century Wire, 4 June, 2015. (http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/06/04/terror-trial-collapses-suspect-fighting-for-mi6-supported-group/) Accessed 27 November, 2017.

Poland announced that it will purchase $10.5 billion worth of anti-air Patriot missiles from the US.

Technically, the official news event is that the State Department approved the possible sale and that Congress has 30 days to block it, but for all intents and purposes it’s widely considered that the deal will go through as planned. This means that the Central European country will strengthen its frontline position as NATO’s anti-Russian vanguard, crucially functioning as an indispensable component of the missile defense shield that the US is constructing around Russia’s borders. In and of itself, the Patriot system is presently incapable of neutralizing Russia’s nuclear strike capabilities, especially given the hypersonic missile advancements that Moscow has undertaken over the past couple of years in invalidating this strategy, but it worryingly sets the precedent that further missile-related infrastructure could one day be deployed on Russia’s borders.

The latent threat that this represents could also see Poland acquiring cruise missiles in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, whether to augment its ground-based systems or its planned submarine ones in the future. Per the former, cruise missiles could be deployed to Poland under the guise of being Patriot anti-missile munitions, with Moscow being unable to adequately ascertain whether Warsaw is building up its defensive or offensive strike capabilities. This will likely contribute to the spiraling security dilemma between Russia and NATO, and Russia and Poland in particular, though with the inadvertent consequence being that Poland is essentially paying billions of dollars to improve its anti-Russian “soft power” credentials among its own population and the West at large.

This is very important for the ruling Law and Justice Party, popularly known by its Polish abbreviation PiS, because party leader and de-facto “grey cardinal” Jaroslaw Kaczynski has staked his reputation on being the West’s most vociferous Russophobe, partly in a bid to provoke more nationalist sentiment among his base and therefore distract from some domestic shortcomings. In addition, Warsaw shrewdly believes that its anti-Russian crusade is necessary in order to retain Washington’s support amidst Brussels and Berlin’s “EuroLiberal” opposition to the ruling authorities’ revolutionary “EuroRealism”, believing whether rightly or wrongly that a strong stand against Moscow can help PiS remain in favor with the EU’s American overlord and thereby preserve its hold on power in the face of Color Revolutionary threats.

As such, the costly $10.5 billion Patriot anti-missile system deal acquires self-interested strategic value for Poland because it allows the conservative government to “buy off” American support for its “EuroRealist” agenda, which also aligns with Trump’s ideological vision, but it dangerously risks provoking an uncontrollable orgy of nationalism at home that could easily spiral into its own set of problems. Furthermore, Poland is reducing any realistic chance at normalizing ties with Russia after purchasing this weapons system, suggesting that the American-provoked “Cold War” between these two civilizationally similar Slavic neighbors will continue into the foreseeable future and remain a mainstay of continental geopolitics to the detriment of both states’ genuine national interests and the overall dynamics of the emerging Multipolar World Order.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Nov 24, 2017:

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

According to news reports in the British press, Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed Russia’s industries to prepare themselves to be able to make a quick switch to war production.   

Clearly, the Russian government would not make such an announcement unless it was convinced that the prospect of war with the West was real. For some time I have emphasized in my columns that  the consequence of years of hostile actions taken by Washington and its European vassals against Russia was leading to war.  

It is easy to understand that the massive US military/security complex needs a convincing enemy in order to justify its enormous budget, that the crazed neoconservatives put their fantasy ideology of US world hegemony above the life of the planet, and that Hillary and the Democratic National Committee will do anything to overturn Trump’s presidential victory. However, it is difficult to understand why the European political leaders are willing to put their countries at risk for Washington’s benefit.

Yet, they do. For example, on November 13 UK PM Theresa May said that Russia was a threat to international security and was interfering in European elections and hacking European governments. There is no more evidence for these claims than there is for “Russiagate.” Yet the allegations continue and multiply. Now the European Union is organizing former provinces of the Soviet Union—Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—into an “Eastern Partnership” with the European Union.   

In other words, the West is openly organizing former provinces of Moscow against Russia, declared by Prime Minister May to be a “hostile state.” Russia knows that there is no basis for the allegations against Russia and regards them as identical to the false allegations against Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad in order to justify military attacks on Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Having convinced Russia that she is being set up for attack, Russia is preparing for war.

Think about this for a moment. The world is being driven to Armageddon simply because a greedy and corrupt US military/security complex needs an enemy to justify its huge budget, because Hillary and the DNC cannot accept a political defeat, and because the neoconservatives have an ideology of American Supremacy. What’s the difference between the detested White Supremacy and the American Supremacy that President Obama himself endorsed? Why is white supremacy terrible and American supremacy God’s gift to the “exceptional” and “indispensable” country?

The Russian government has openly shared its concern that Russia is being set up for military attack. As I, if not CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, have reported, the deputy commander of the Russian military’s Operation Command stated publicly the concern that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack against Russia. President Putin recently called attention to Washington’s collection of Russian DNA for a US Air Force weapons lab, which implies development of a Russian-specific bio-weapon. On many occasions Russia has called attention to US and NATO bases on its borders despite previous assurances from US administrations that no such thing would ever happen.  

We have to ask ourselves why it is not the top item of public and political discussion that Washington has convinced Russia, a premier nuclear and military power, that Russia is going to be attacked. Instead, we hear of football players who kneel for the national anthem, fake news about Russiagate, a Las Vegas shooting, and so on.

We also must ask ourselves how much longer Washington is going to permit any of us via the Internet to report the real news instead of the fake news that Washington uses to control explanations. The effort by the Federal Communications Commission chairman to destroy net neutrality and other efforts underway to discredit factual news as Russian propaganda indicate that Washington has concluded that in order to war on Russia Washington must also war on truth.   

Washington will not survive its war, and neither will the American and European people.

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

Preface to Proposal

We know where Zionism has taken Israel. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 led the way. In that imperial and colonial document, the British promised the World Zionist Organization a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. They did so, as Edward Said put it, in “flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority residents in that territory.”

Right from the start the Zionists understood “national home” to mean an eventual Jewish state. Actualizing that assumption has had enormous implications not only for the Palestinians but also for the Jews. And, as it turns out, for the rest of us as well.

You cannot introduce one people, in this case a large number of Europeans who happen to be Jewish, into a territory populated by hundreds of thousands of non-Europeans, without negative consequences. And, if the incoming Europeans have the goal of creating a state exclusively for their group alone, those consequences are going to be dire indeed. Surrounded by “the other,” the only way you can achieve your exclusive state is through discriminatory practices and laws ultimately producing an apartheid nation. And that is what happened.

While this has meant, and continues to mean, segregation, ethnic cleansing and Bantustans for the Palestinians, for the Jews it means that their religion is tied to a racist political ideology. There is no instance of Israeli prejudice exercised against the Palestinians, no act of violence committed against them, that does not simultaneously dishonor and debase the Jewish religion and people.

A section of the barrier — erected by Israeli officials to prevent the passage of Palestinians — with graffiti using President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote when facing the Berlin Wall, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” (Photo credit: Marc Venezia)

Worldwide Consequences

How about the rest of world? The consequences of Zionism are threatening both security and equality everywhere. Here is how this is happening:

—As the Balfour Declaration indicates, Israel and its society are products of a colonial era. That is an era when the people of both Europe and the U.S. openly practiced racist policies and behavior toward non-Europeans. They regularly trampled of the rights of alleged inferiors. Israel continues to operate in this fashion into the present.

—Following World War II, it became understood that these behaviors and attitudes are morally indefensible and their consequences should be remedied. And so, the United Nations was established, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued, and a number of treaties embodying international laws designating crimes against humanity were signed. With this process the world entered a potentially more civilized, post-colonial age.

—When this happened the Zionist project instantly became an anachronism. In fact, Israel became a state that defied the modern norm the moment it was proclaimed.

—However, Israel does not want to be outside the norm. It wants to be accepted as a “normal” nation, particularly within the Western state system. There are only two ways this can happen: either (1) Israel must either give up the racist ideology of Zionism and embrace a form of democracy accessible to all its people regardless of religion or ethnicity, or (2) the world must revert back to an acceptance of at least some of the colonial practices of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries.

You would think that choosing the anti-racist option, and therefore seriously pressuring Israel – as the world had done with white-ruled South Africa – to fundamentally change, would be the obvious choice for today’s statesmen. But it seems not. Why is that?

There is now an ongoing effort, we might call it the updated Zionist project, to move the world backward so as to accept racist past practices as “normal.” It consists of

(a) an attack on international law protecting human rights (despite the fact that much of this law was created as a reaction to the anti-Semitic crimes of World War II),

(b) an attempt to undermine the International Criminal Court, and

(c) an attack on the United Nations and its efforts to protect the human and political rights of Palestinians.

Enter BDS

It is clear that very few of the world’s governments are willing to confront Israel, even though it is an apartheid state existing in an era that claims to detest such racist regimes. This has a lot to do with the financial and special interest strength of Zionist supporters both Jewish and Christian, and the strategic use of such power to corrupt policymaking. This can be seen most plainly in the United States.

Palestinian boys prepare to welcome Women’s Boat to Gaza, which was intercepted by the Israeli naval blockade on Oct. 5, 2016.

There are also Israel’s extensive high-tech and weapons-trading networks in Europe, Africa and South America that lead important political and economic institutions and individuals to support, or at least turn a blind eye to, the Zionist state. And then, of course, there are a growing number of states that themselves have plans to marginalize their own minorities.

Does this mean that there is no defense against the insidious effects of this reactionary regime – one which, according to its own past Prime Minister Ehud Barak, is “infected with fascism”? No, there are options to oppose Israel. However, at present they are to be found outside of the realm of government action and, at least for the moment, outside occupied Palestine as well.

The latter is so because inside Palestine, 70 years of Israeli colonial savagery has worn down much of the indigenous population. This does not mean that resistance from within the Occupied Territories does not continue. It does, but at relatively low levels and at a high cost.

Since the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, too many of the Palestinian leaders have been co-opted into playing the role of modern-day Quislings. The Palestinians within Israeli-controlled territory are now fragmented into Bantustan-style enclaves, and their own “security forces” often work hand-in-hand with the Israeli oppressors.

As a consequence of these circumstances, right now the greatest pressure can be put on apartheid Israel through the activities of organized civil society. This pressure by itself may or may not be able to force fundamental change on Israel, but it can certainly raise the cost of its racist behavior and impact public opinion.

Here we are talking about the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement that urges both individuals and organizations (be they economic, cultural or intellectual) to avoid interacting with Israel and its state-sponsored institutions and projects. To date this has proved to be an effective weapon against Israeli racism and colonialism. For instance, if you go to the website of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, you can find a list of 200 recent victories falling within the Boycott and Divestment categories. State-based sanctions are still in the future.

Israeli Pressure

Success in this regard has, of course, generated a fierce reaction from the Zionists. According to a Huffington Post article, “The Israeli government has reportedly committed tens of millions of dollars, one government ministry and its military and security intelligence assets to the fight.

Israeli Minister of Transport, Intelligence and Atomic Energy, Yisrael Katz, recently called for “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS leaders. Actually, such a reaction reflects not only the fact that the cost of Israeli racism is on the rise, but also that the Zionists have lost the public (if not the governmental) debate when it comes to their behavior toward the Palestinians.

Put broadly, BDS is an effort to help save the positive potential inherent in modern post-colonial society: the civilizing potential to be found in international law, in human and civil rights, in a benevolent and egalitarian rule of law for all of us.

So successful has BDS been to date, and so much potential does it have to help force Israel down the same road as white-ruled South Africa, that Israel and its surrogates in the U.S. and Europe are willing to undermine the very laws and rights that help uphold what freedoms there are within the public realm. For instance, in the U.S., the very right to engage in such a boycott is under Zionist attack, and by extension, so is the constitutional protection to free speech. American Zionists seem willing to subvert their own constitutional protections in order to support a racist foreign state.

Zionism can be seen as a strange twist on the Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s warning that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The Zionists certainly remember the persecutions suffered by European Jews. But they forget that this mistreatment was most often organized by racist states that sought to ethnically cleanse the Jews.

Having forgotten about this state-based aspect of their own past, the Zionist state now commits this same offense against the Palestinians. It also needs the rest of us to forget the sins of past racism if it is to carry on its effort to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. Our response should be to embrace the motto, “Never Again!” It is time to direct this demand to the shameful behavior of Israel and the Zionists.

Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism. He blogs at www.tothepointanalyses.com.

In early November, the organization Moms Across America launched a nationwide campaign to finally ban glyphosate herbicides in every state in America.

With the formidable support of millions of people collectively, the Organic Consumers Association, the Institute for Responsible Technology, and the Thinking Moms Revolution, a unification is taking place to put actual pressure on state governors to act now.

While people who understand the dangers of glyphosate herbicides surely also understand the revolving door between government and corporations such as Monsanto or DuPont, BASF or Dow Chemical, and these people typically understand that a “ban” on something is technically using government force to stop something, the situation we are in, under the rule of government, leaves people with no option but to demand that this government use the force it has given itself to do something right.

According to a statement from Moms Across America:

“European Member states, after considering volumes of scientific studies and numerous testimonies by lawyers and researchers, have refused to renew the license for glyphosate. If it is not safe for Europeans, and Malta, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, and Argentina who have banned glyphosate, then we do not want glyphosate in our United States. We urge our governors to take bold steps like the Governor of Arkansas and Missouri did in banning Dicamba, and ban glyphosate herbicides and toxic chemicals immediately.” – Zen Honeycutt, Executive Director of Moms Across America

Glyphosate herbicides or Monsanto’s RoundUp weed killer, the most widely used herbicide in history, has been proven to cause serious harm to life. Glyphosate has contaminated our planet and is now found in our children’s urine, mother’s milk, our bloodstreams, and our food, beverages, and water.

In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization found that glyphosate “is a probable human carcinogen.”

In July of 2017 the California State Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) added glyphosate to its Prop 65 list of known carcinogens.

In October of 2017, after 1 million Europeans requested a ban, 72% of the Members of the European Parliament voted to BAN glyphosate and EU Member states have refused to renew the license.”

The MAA statement includes further evidence that will probably be succinctly presented to these people who claim to represent us in government.

The best citizens can do, is hold our “representatives” accountable, hold their feet to the fire and present them with the evidence for why glyphosate shouldn’t be legal in such a succinct, undeniable and public way, that when they refuse to meet the people’s demands, it is so clear that they are not representing us it becomes a public spectacle.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Saudi Arabia is the Arab world’s leading state sponsor of terror. It backs ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot and other terrorist groups – supplying them with weapons (including CWs), munitions, funding and other material support.

Wahhabism in the kingdom is the most extreme form of Islam, calling Shias and other non-Wahhabis “infidels,” encouraging intolerance, supporting terrorism.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused Riyadh and Qatar of supporting regional terrorist groups.

Tehran accused Saudi Arabia of sponsoring two terrorist attacks in the Islamic Republic last June, killing 17, wounding dozens, saying individuals responsible belonged to a Wahhabi terrorist network.

Days after the incidents, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari said

“(w)e have precise intelligence showing that unfortunately, Saudi Arabia, in addition to supporting the terrorists, has demanded them to conduct operations in Iran.”

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is no political reformer – just the opposite. He’s cut out of the same cloth as his father and earlier Saudi leaders – ruthless despots, supporting regional terrorist groups, along with committing appalling human rights abuses internally.

MBS saying he’ll “wipe (terrorists from the) face of the earth” belies his full support for what he claimed to oppose. His war on terror is as phony as America’s.

Both countries back the scourge, waging war OF terror against humanity. The Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Military (counterterrorism) Alliance (IMA) is a convenient fiction – fooling no one.

Announced by MBS as Saudi defense minister in December 2015, it’s headquartered in Riyadh – the heart of Islamic terrorism.

Dozens of alliance members support the ruse. In January, Pakistan’s former army chief of staff/retired general Raheel Sharif was named its commander-in-chief.

The alliance isn’t about protecting Muslim countries from its threat. MBS lied, earlier saying the IMA intends coordinating efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan, adding:

“There will be international coordination with major powers and international organizations…in terms of operations in Syria and Iraq.”

All IMA member states are Sunni Muslim dominated, majority Shia countries Iran, Iraq and Syria excluded. So is Qatar because of a Gulf states dispute ongoing since last summer.

During an alliance meeting in Riyadh, MBS turned truth on its head, claiming

“(t)oday we start the pursuit of terrorism, and we see its defeat in many facets around, the world especially in Muslim countries.”

“We will continue to fight it until we see its defeat” – not so as long as Saudi Arabia and its rogue allies support the scourge they claim to oppose.

Last week, MBS disgracefully called Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khameni “the new Hitler of the Middle East.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi responded, calling his remark “immature and weak-minded,” adding:

“Now that he has decided to follow the path of famous regional dictators…he should think about their fate as well..” Khamenei called the House of Saud an “accursed tree,” responsible for regional terrorism.

Riyadh continues sponsoring the scourge, the IMA perhaps to provide cover for its destructive agenda.

Prefatory Note:

This post addresses the need for dialogue with the political, economic, and cultural ‘other,’ that is, those multitudes acutely alienated from and angry with secular globalism and the Enlightenment legacy often equated with ‘modernity’ and ‘modernization.’ At the core is a search for closure on the nature of reality as well as feelings about equity (given many dimensions of inequality) and ethical innovation (revisionist approaches to gender, sexuality, marriage). Does reason or faith or tradition provide greater closure? Can the Thomistic grand synthesis of the 13^th Century be repeated under 21^st Century condition in the rough waters of controversy generated by Trump and Trumpism? Is this too Western a way of putting the problem? I write as an American, but there are many parallels in other countries. The first step is to admit being out of touch with the ferment below the surface. A second step is a matter of identifying what is to be included, what excluded.

What is going on? Commentary on the Rise of Populism

Confessions of Political Myopia

To avoid any impression of condescension, I will begin with a humbling root question, “Why have I been so out of touch?” After all, I have become deeply aware in recent years that intellectual elites generally have little understanding of wider public sentiments that animate upheavals and distress in America and several foreign societies. I had big trouble back in the 1970s grasping the grassroots strength of Nixon’s ‘moral majority,’ which I haughtily dismissed as the ‘immoral minority’ (perhaps, my dismissive precursor of Hilary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’). The inspiration for this essay comes not only from personal experience but from a recent reading of Thomas Frank’s non-prophetic, yet deeply illuminating, much discussed, and influential 2005 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.

Frank is non-prophetic because he presupposes that cultural values (family, tradition, flag) rather than material concerns would remain at ‘the heart of America.’ Trump rode to power on a demagogic appeal (foolishly discounted by the media and Beltway wizards as a campaign ploy never meant seriously) mobilizing his base with inflammatory language about jobs, jobs, jobs buttressed by fear-mongering about terrorism, blaming Goldman Sachs capitalism for unfavorable international trade deals (above all with China), illegal and unwanted immigrants (that is, Mexicans and Muslims) who tarnish the American dream, and above all Islam as a menacing threat. By and large, he put the right-wing cultural agenda to one side, while embracing its patriotic tropes, which is hardly surprising given his own freewheeling Manhattan celebrity life style that included powwows with the notorious and lewd sexist Howard Stern, not to mention the tape of his Hollywood conversation. The deeper observation here is a scary confirmation of America’s susceptibility to demagogic appeals, ethnic and religious scapegoating, and strong intimations of racism.

There are two distinct concerns regarding this tendency toward misperceptions of political reality in America, and elsewhere in the world, that overlap: one is being out of touch with the swift currents of right wing opinion that have abruptly risen to the political surface in recent years to sway the multitudes in populist directions; the other is the failure to understand what is at the root of this unexpected particular political swing, which sometimes may turn out in some cases to be nothing more revealing than skillful, imaginative, unscrupulous, persevering marketing and access to major funding sources, but in more serious situation there are disclosed rips in the societal fabric that seem beyond repair, providing a deliriously ready audience for a demagogue intuitively attuned to the harsh rhythms of discontent unnoticed or dismissed by the established political elites. Trump confounded, and continues to confound, conventional wisdom over and over again, by reading the tea leaves of discontent with alarming accuracy.

Professor Richard Falk (image right)

It is undoubtedly the case, at least in the U.S., that part of the failure of perception is a combination of self-segregation and the widespread tendency of intellectuals to underestimate the political skills of those whose focus is on emotions, religion, and traditional values rather than reason, science, and evidence. To illustrate, not a single person in my social milieu will own up to being a supporter of Donald Trump. In effect, the insularity of my social networks puts me out of touch with what the Trump constituency feels, thinks, fears, and hopes for. The Trump/Bannon formula for electoral victory a year ago, surely abetted by a dismal Clinton campaign, abandoned several familiar Republican positions—especially mounting a critique of neoliberal globalization, and its core reliance on international trade and unhampered capital flows, as well as taking nasty jabs at the Washington establishment, including the standard Republican Party handlers.

An Egyptian Detour 

Amr Moussa (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I was in Cairo meeting friends shortly after the dramatic events in Tahrir Square in February 2011 awaiting UN permission (that never came) to visit Gaza on behalf of the Human Rights Council. Amid the tumult and excitement I was struck by the unanimity of opinion believing that Amr Moussa was sure to be elected Egypt’s next president in the country’s first ever free election scheduled for the following year. Moussa was a non-charismatic high profile civil servant in the Mubarak government and former Secretary General of the Arab League who opportunely welcomed the democratizing movement in Egypt, and quickly became the preferred candidate of the Cairo urban cognoscenti. As it turned out Moussa never made it to the second and deciding round of the presidential elections, receiving less than 12% of the vote in the opening round. The point here is not whether Moussa was good or bad, or whether he might have been the best candidate to serve as leader of Egypt in this fragile period of uncertain transition from dictatorship to constitutional democracy. The point is to underscore how out of touch were these most knowledgeable of urban secular Egyptians about the convictions and outlook of the rest of Egyptian. It also became clear that they greatly underrated the organizational strength of the MB and other Islamic oriented political groups that dominated the countryside and much of Egypt other than the middle class and elites of Cairo and Alexandria.

In the Egyptian case this detachment was in large part a reflection of the secular/Islamic split that plagued the region ever since the success of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. My other recollection from 2011-12 visits to Cairo related to the feelings of the seculars about the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the post-Tahrir electoral process. Most Egyptians I had contact with expected and accepted MB full participation in the public life of post-Mubarak Egypt, including the political process, regarding the organization as a religiously oriented and secretive but respectful of law and nonviolent, and this entitled to be dream of an inclusive Egyptian democracy that was the widely shared dream of most Egyptians in the weeks following the successful uprising. These knowledgeable urbanites anticipated at the time that the MB would at most win 25-30% representation in the legislative assembly, and did acknowledge that if they ended up doing much better there would be trouble, all the while strongly doubting that this would not happen. Well, it did, causing an immediate reassessment by Egypt’s urban elites, which expressed itself by way of an instantaneous retreat from the democratizing hopes and expectations that had dominated the Tahrir Square moo, and a switch of allegiance to the Mubarak era presidential alternative. In this spirit, the realigned secularists voted for Ahmad Shafik in the runoff election in June 2012 between the two top vote getters in round one. Round two produced a narrow 52%-48% victory for Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood candidate, a result eventually, although reluctantly certified by the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces that was supposed to be the neutral supervisor of the post-Mubarak transition, but more and more leaned toward questioning the legitimacy of a governing process under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The earlier Cairo outlook was not wrong about the other part of its assessment of the political scene, which had insisted that MB leadership of the country, as distinct from its minority participation as part of a democratic opposition, was neither acceptable nor viable. It is notable that even the Brotherhood originally accepted a limited political role for itself in the first months after Mubarak was overthrown, seeming acknowledging that it should not seek control as distinct from participation. On this basis, the MD even made a rather unusual pledge for any political party, committing itself not to compete in certain electoral districts in the country and not to put forward its own candidate for the presidency. It later quietly renounced the pledge, likely sensing its strength and historic opportunity, and did go on to win the presidency, but at a high cost to itself. Before realizing that its victory would set off a chain of events that would turn out to be a crushing defeat, the MB experienced an intense backlash in Egyptian society confirming that it too was dangerously out of touch with the red lines of the urban elites and the balance of forces in the country. The Brotherhood obviously greatly underestimated the leverage and convergence of interests that joined the Egyptian Armed Forces, the Gulf monarchies (excepting Qatar), the governments of the United States and Israel, as well as the segments of the working classes and of course the Coptic minority. This formidable array of opposed forces produced in 2013 a counter-revolution in the form of a seemingly popular military coup, a new leader—Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—bloodier and more autocratic and repressive than Mubarak. The new leadership immediately criminalized the elected MB leadership of the country, and labeled the Brotherhood a terrorist organization with the tacit approval of its allies in the region and beyond, and autocratically denied political space even to secular activists who were unwilling to accept this renunciation of democratic hopes for Egypt.

This extended look at Egypt is descriptive of broader global trends, confirming that being dangerously out of touch is not only an affliction of Western elites stunned by the unexpected and shocking successes of Brexit and Trump. In the Middle East where politics are highly polarized, both sides are out of touch, miscalculating at great cost to society and to themselves, and totally unprepared for the intensity of backlash politics that have so far reflected an anti-democratic balance of forces in the region and beyond.

Trending Toward Illiberal Democracies 

In the United States and Europe where polarization is deepening, there remains some respect for the rules of the game set by procedural democracy, that is, political choices determined by generally fair elections and a constitutional framework that institutionalizes checks and balances. In the United States, Trump shook even these structures late in the presidential campaign of 2016 when he apparently thought he was going to lose by contending that the electoral process was ‘rigged’ against him, even equivocating in public about whether he would accept an adverse outcome, a tactical move evidently supported by the Russians. And then later, after he was officially installed in the White House, Trump irresponsibly contested the Clinton margin of victory in the popular vote by contending wildly that several million unlawful immigrants had been fraudulently registered to stack the vote against him in such states as California and New York.

The fact that Trump offered not a scintilla of evidence for either challenge seemed not to bother even slightly his political base. His close advisors were darkly creative, inventing a large arsenal of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘Breitbart news.’ These counter-narratives were invoked brashly to contest such visually clear conclusions as the size of the crowd attending Trump’s presidential inaugural ceremony as compared to the size of the crowd that showed up eight years earlier for Obama. For anti-Trump critics these developments raised foundational issues about whether the constitutional order would be resilient enough to prevail if Trump had lost the election and then were to unleash his followers assigning them the almost unimaginably subversive mission of reversing the outcome. The success of this kind of fact-free discourse also raised the ultimate epistemological question about whether or not an overall respect for truth in the public realm was still expected of politicians, suggesting the possibility that reality was becoming a function of ideology or faith, not fact or evidence.

The Trump victory in 2016 mooted these particular challenges to some extent, shifting the tactical locus of opponents to the wrongdoing of Trump and his entourage, especially such potential impeachment and discrediting issues as ‘collusion with the Russians,’ ‘obstruction of justice,’ and ‘improper financial dealings.’ Implicit in these charges was the concession that blatant and consistent lying if not quite okay, was still not so disqualifying as to challenge Trump’s right to remain president even it placed his victory under a dark cloud due to the evidence that Russian meddling swayed enough votes in a close election. This apparent acceptance of this retreat from an ethos of truthfulness seems misguided in a number of respects. Manifest lying breaks the trust between state and society without which a democracy cannot function properly. As such is far more corrosive for a democratic republic than the several wrongful acts being regarded as grounds for impeachment. In part, the media and the people, and the advertising mentality of a consumer society, are all complicit in this de facto acceptance of a leader who lies consistently and willfully. In other words, it is not just the Breitbart alt-right, the bevy of outrageous late night talk show hosts, and Trump’s use of a Twitter account that cleared the populist pathways leading to Trumpism, but we the people and our materialist indulgences and indifference to or ignorance of the torments of stagnant wages and growing challenges directed at even middle class living standards due to sharply rising costs of health, education, and housing.

The constitutional order remains under unprecedented pressure not only because of the way Clinton lost or Trump won, but also because the dominant faction in the American deep national security state lost, and lost badly and for the first time since 1945, although it has in 2017 staged a strong comeback spearheaded by the appointment of generals McMaster, Kelley, and Mattes to key posts.

It is crucial to distinguish between business/financial establishment interests that were mostly content with a Trump/Republican victory from the national security oriented think tanks and government elites that were earlier deeply worried by Trump’s campaign language questioning the global alliance network and attacks on foreign regime-changing interventions, especially as played out in the Middle East. But on the security agenda Trump has seemed to give way—he upped the military budget, backed off from his earlier promised confrontation with China and expected soft policy toward Russia, escalated tensions with North Korea and Iran, and maintained continuity in the Middle East, throwing even greater support in the direction of Israel and Saudi Arabia than his predecessor.

What remains to be determined is whether the Rule of Law can hold minimally accountable the dual domains of militarism and neoliberal capitalism.

Perhaps, the Rule of Law lost out years ago, and we are just now awakening to this somber reality thanks to Trump’s disruptive worldview and modes of governance. Scenarios in this vein are likely to dominate most upcoming episodes of the unfolding Trump tragicomedy. Maybe the center stage contest is not this at all but will be determined by whether the internationalist faction of the deep state remains successful in avoiding the apparent grand strategy revisionism of Trump without necessitating his removal from power.

Trump’s real views, especially on global issues, are opaque, and his surface mercurial qualities of contradicting himself make the adaptation scenario more probable than the removal alternative. Either taming or removal both appear to be suitably responsive to the imperatives of the current phase of global capitalism and its dependency ties to the American led global security system. This system consists of a vast costly network of foreign bases, navies in every ocean, the military domination of space, including cyberspace, and assignment of combat units of special forces to carry out armed missions in over 130 countries. Trump was not feared or opposed by the national security establishment because of his pledges to repeal Obamacare or overhaul the tax structure for the benefit of the very wealthy. He was feared and opposed by many Republican hawks because his campaign rhetoric were perceived to raise unacceptable challenges to the stability of the world economy and were interpreted by most deep state aficionados as gesturing toward a possible dismantling of the American global state that had ‘governed’ the world since 1945.

Out of Touch, Out of Contact 

Liberals and intellectuals in the United States are generally middle class in life style and outlook, rarely in meaningful existential touch with either the very poor or the very rich, and as a result are not privy to their fears, pain, anger, and agenda, or their affirmations and affiliations. This circumstance of being out of contact contributes to toxic polarization, mirrored in the inability of political parties to cooperate any longer for the sake of the national public good. Among other negative effects, such polarization leads to legislative gridlock and perceptions by the majority of citizens that the institutions of government have become weighted down by lobbyists, special interests, and intense partisanship, and have lost much of their legitimacy. In such a race to the bottom, the winners are business and the military, which is why a pre-fascist depiction of current political life in America, and by indirection, the world, is sadly, not out of touch.

Is the Enlightenment to Blame?

At the root of these developments are deep tensions between the rational and scientific legacies of the European Enlightenment and religious orientations that rely on faith and revealed truth. On the Enlightenment side are secular values and ideals associated with the human equality and respect for scientific evidence. On the religious side are attachments to traditional values of family, flag, and church. Both orientations are rooted in their own dogmas that exclude the belief systems of their opponents, undoubtedly providing the ideational infrastructure of what has now surfacing in many national variations as polarization, and with it disillusionment with the worth and promise of political democracy.

In one respect this is a crude rendition of Hegelianism versus Marxism, with the Hegelians giving priority to the dialectics of the idea whose time has come, while Marxists, in their various schools, in general lend priority to material conditions, class relations, and self-interest. Oddly the right-wing populists are mainly taking a ideational or faith-based posture that emphasizes the purity of the nation, puritan family traditions, an ethos of hard work, good jobs, and religious values, and thus supposedly hostile toward casino capitalists and foreign intruders, advocates of gay rights and legalized drugs, free traders, and secularists. Their liberal antagonists are generally comfortable with global capitalism according to the precepts of Goldman Sachs, free trade, outsourcing, and minimally regulated capital as advocated by the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and IMF) and World Trade Organization, and, of course, sparing no expense to maintain full spectrum military dominance. The two sides converge with respect to militarism, with the Trump right invoking patriotism, arms sales, and national security while the liberal establishment emphasizes the indispensable role of American military superiority in keeping the country and its friends safe and the world more peaceful and global markets more stable than they would otherwise be.

Does making these acknowledgements amount to a nihilistic and solipsistic admission that there is no way to justify prevailing patterns of political alignment beyond their caprice? Not at all. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon persuasively argues in Being in Time, a politics of reason has been thrown disastrously off course by the impact of a liberal discourse infected by the taints of ‘political correctness’ and ‘identity politics,’ which substitutes conformity and allegiance for truth-seeking and acknowledgements of the impurities of social reality.

Without a suitable discourse respectful of the contingencies and unevenness of reality we cannot find the pathways to humane political behavior. To be sure, the Mammonite discourse of the Trump brand of right-wing politics is certainly no better, offering a greed-saturated form of materialism that feeds the limitless appetite of the very richest among us while manipulating and repressing the rest of us. As Atzmon provocatively insists, this absence of a trustworthy discourse by which to express grievances and aspirations is why it clears the air to admit that our epoch has become ‘post-political,’ at least for now.

Yet there is even more than ‘discourse,’ a synonym for clear thought, at stake. There is self-esteem, ethical values, and the meaning of life that is jeopardized by the tradition-breaching dogmas of secular elites. Thus controversies surrounding abortion, gay marriage, legalized marijuana, and even gun control are too often being given precedence over considerations bearing on material well-being by this American version of populism preaching economic nationalism at Trump rallies.

What makes the Trump phenomenon truly populist is its anti-establishment outrage and the high level of susceptibility to demagogic appeals on the part of his followers. This demagoguery blinds adherents to their true material self-interests and misidentified their real social enemies. By rejecting reasoned discourse, including commitments to truth and evidence, the capacity to manipulate mass opinion and play on such repressed emotion as racism and class envy is without limits. Trump is a master of such demagogic politics who has yet to commit definitively to whether in the end he will strike a deal with the anti-populist elites that have been running the system or proceed to wage open revolutionary warfare against the entire edifice of constitutional governance at home and abroad. Of course, a third way is also possible, a condition of no-peace, no-war, in which there ensue a multitude of skirmishes but no open warfare, which may be the most accurate way of portraying Trump’s first year as president.

Concluding Remarks 

A wide variety of populisms, other than the American version, have gained control of the governing process of several important countries, and in each case despite widely different national circumstances, bringing to power an autocratic leader adored by the masses more for his style than his substance, and feared and hated by displaced elites who seem unable to generate a mobilizing program of their own or a charismatic alternative leader. Whether it be Putin in Russia, Modi in India, Erdoğan in Turkey, Sisi in Egypt, or Duterte in The Philippines, the leader claims to have a special capacity to interpret the will of the people, entitling the circumvention of the Rule of Law and conventional truth telling, professing an ardent and exclusivist nationalist ideology that pretends, at least, to abhor the cosmopolitanism of elite tastes and the globalization of economic life. Except for Duterte and Trump these popular autocrats have been rather prudently inclined with respect to political risk taking. Putin and Erdoğan have tried to enlarge their regional spheres of influence with mixed results, and have encountered some costly adverse reactions domestically and internationally.

These autocratic leaders in what have become ‘illiberal democracies’ seem more at home when dealing with authoritarian figures in other societies than with counterparts in countries that still qualify as functioning constitutional democracies. Trump seems quite at ease with Xi Jinping or even Duterte than he does with Angela Merkel or Emmanuel Macron. What this portends for the future is unknowable at present. Will there emerge a tacit alliance of autocrats that represents the global ideological sequel to the shattered edifice of democratic expectations that had given rise to the Warsaw based, U.S. funded brainchild christened as the ‘Community of Democracies’ with 110 governments signing on at its founding fifteen years ago? As of 2017 neither Poland nor the United States would any longer be welcomed in venues catering to real life democracies!

Instead of the anticipated ‘twilight of the nation state’ we are experiencing its worldwide resurgence, energized by a counter-globalization movement that emphasizes borders and walls rather than fluid boundaries facilitating flows of capital and workers. ISIS (or DAESH) has been a partial outlier, as are the more radical versions of political Islam more generally. Instead of territorial enclaves these movements affirm exclusivist Islamic communities whose extension is not geographically identifiable by boundaries on a map, but rather by allegiances and networks however far flung. By proclaiming its caliphate in 2014 in Iraqi and Syrian territory that it then controlled, ISIS seemed to territorialize its sense of political community, which fortunately turned out to be a huge strategic mistake. By insisting that its rise was ‘the end of Sykes-Picot’ ISIS was also announcing to the world that it was not altogether anti-territorial, but was not beholden to the European state concept crudely imposed on the Middle East by a colonial driven statecraft after World War I.

It is this deterritorializing of community combined with the embrace of militarist and terrorist versions of jihadism, as well as of the equally deterritorialized technologies of the digital age that makes such movements so disruptive of traditional territorially based forms of security. Territorial states win renewed support from their national populations by celebrating patriotic virtues associated with flag and country, identifications that correspond with their primordial sense of community (providing ideas and causes worth dying for) spatially defined by internationally legitimated geographic boundaries.

Finally, it is this collision between antagonistic conceptions of communities in space that define the modern geopolitical landscape. This sense of political engagement is being increasingly itself challenged by communities in time that spring to life in the ecological landscape where the principal preoccupations are with the multiple challenges of global warming toward species sustainability. The ultimate evasion of reality by Trumpism is its willful blindness when it comes to showing respect for the ecological integrity of contemporary human existence. The decision of the Trump White House to refuse participation in the Paris Climate Change Agreement is probably the most destructive blow against sustainable global governance than was the imposition of a punitive peace on Germany after World War I.

Trump also intrudes his bluster in ways that subvert nuclear restraint. His words threatening annihilation of North Korea and confrontation with Iran cast the darkest shadows over the present and future.

At issue is more than Trump. I want to live and die in a world of inclusive political communities. I also regard as imperative forms of ecological inclusiveness that extend to all of nature, animals, plants, soil, air, water, glaciers, mountains, ravines, and valleys.

“There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one’s own business in our relations with everybody.

Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be ‘the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all’ but ‘the champion and vindicator only of her own.’”

U.S. Senator James W. Fulbright (1905-1995) The Arrogance of Power, 1966.

Despite having met and befriended some fine Americans over the years, my long-held opinion of the U.S. in particular and the American people in general — an opinion confirmed after I read Senator Fulbright’s book in the late 60s — has not only remained doggedly unchanged, but has in fact become more entrenched and pessimistic. Such entrenched pessimism stems from the inescapable truth that regardless of an illusory concept of the “American exceptionalism” that arrogantly presumes to present itself as the “superpower” champion of democracy and human rights, the U.S. is in reality the world’s biggest violator of the very ideals it so hypocritically claims to champion.

This superpower which straddles the world with some 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad — Britain, France, and Russia combined have only about 30 foreign bases — has been responsible for the killing of more than 20 million people in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War Two.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.

Needless to say, Eisenhower’s warning fell on deaf ears and the latest Congressional homage to the military-industrial complex was recently payed in September to the tune of a $700 billion defence policy bill designed to maintain America’s position — with an endless War on Terror and military interventions including regime changes — as a global military power.

As a consequence of such largesse to the military-industrial complex and billions more in aid to a brutal Apartheid Israeli state bent on an expansion policy of Palestinian land grabbing to build more settlements for Jews only, the U.S. has become a nation where more than 50 million Americans live below the poverty line; where 48 million of them receive food stamps; where more than one in five children is on food stamps and living in poverty; where an astounding 15% of senior citizens live in poverty; where ethnic poverty rates are 28% for Blacks, 24% for Hispanics, 10.5% for Asians, and 10% for Whites; were being Black lowers one’s credit score by 71 Points; where a new AFL-CIO study on corporate salaries found that CEOs made 335 times more than the average employee who earned $36,875 while the the big company CEOs got approximately $12,400,000; where according to a Forbes survey 56% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their combined cheque and savings bank accounts; and where an observation once made in 1967 by Martin Luther King Jr. has become a stark reality:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

Featured image: Zahid Amid (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In Pakistan Street protests have affected cities like Imamabad, and is spreading in other cities as well. About six persons have died and more than two hundred have been injured. PTI has reported that the police aided by paramilitary Rangers and Frontier Constabulary yesterday launched a massive operation against activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan religious groups who had blocked a key highway to Islamabad for nearly three weeks. The protesters have been laying siege to the capital for about three weeks demanding removal of Law Minister Zahid Hamid for changes in a law related to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (finality of prophethood) oath in the Elections Act 2017.They alleged the action undermined Islamic beliefs and linked it to blasphemy. The government has already amended the law and restored the original oath but the hard line clerics refused to call of the protests until the minister is sacked.

The real power holder former PM Nawaz Sharif is believed to have given a thought to remove the Minister in order to pacify the protests; present government is under much pressure due to political problems which emerged since the revelations of Panama Papers, and strict actions taken by Judiciary have made the government weak and in all likelihood in next elections it may find itself in troubles in electoral battles. The present protest is a continuation of the politically unstable Pakistan since the revelations of Panama Papers.

The root cause of the political problems started when on right grounds Judiciary removed PM Sharif on misdeeds in Panama Papers. The new PM is not capable to manage the affairs of the state. He is transitory PM knowing well that he has been on the position just due to grace of Nawaz family.

Elections in Pakistan are due to take place in 2018 and the prospects of Nawaz’s party are not very strong at the moment. Moreover the external pressures from world on the containment of terrorism has placed stress on the political leaders of country.

In these backgrounds the protest assumes importance. As the elected political leadership has proved unsuccessful to control the developments in the country. Now they have asked for the help from army which is already eyeing for increased role in the political space in the country particularly after the departure of Nawaz Sharif.

Army has taken a recommendatory view so far by advising government to take steps with cautions. The Army chief Gen. Bajwa are in touch with Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi and has asked to deal the protest peacefully, and violence should be avoided from both sides.

Source: Countercurrents

There is also alternative analysis that army may come in direct conflict with the conservative elements and Pakistan may find itself more into trouble. The release of Hafiz Saeed is also not good for the political system of the country as these are major destabilizing elements of the country. Their activities if supported more by army and establishment of more hardliners in the socio-politico milieu of the country do not suggest good things to come.

The recent developments in Pakistan are result of the non nation building in the country. Several countries are passing through this phase but Pakistan has emerged as a classical case where army, terrorists and conservative elements have come to stay in the political world of the country and have prevented genuine development of democratic elements in the country.

In next few days the developments will take a new path and it is hoped that Pakistan is able to control the situation but major question remains unanswered which forces are in real terms responsible for such developments? And why Pakistan is getting into fragmentation? Role of army will be observed in the days to come. Terrorists and fundamentalist have engulfed the society. Can governance manage these or army is about to enter more aggressively in the governance?

Dr. Vivek Kumar Srivastava is Vice Chairman, CSSP, Kanpur; e-mail: [email protected].

The barbaric attack that killed 305 worshippers including 27 children during Friday prayers (24 November 2017) at the Rawda mosque in North Sinai, Egypt is a tragic reminder to the entire human family that the threat of terrorism is as deadly as ever.

Though no one has formally claimed responsibility, it is reported that some of the terrorists carried Daesh flags. It is estimated that some 25 to 30 persons were involved in the heinous act.

Terrorist attacks have a long history in Egypt. They have become worse since the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Dr. Mohammed Morsi, in 2013. Daesh or groups affiliated to it have been targeting local tribes and Christian churches.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has chosen to respond to the Rawda carnage, the worst in modern Egyptian history, by ordering air strikes on militant strongholds. While they serve a purpose, they are not the solution. More attention to, and emphasis upon, constant and comprehensive intelligence gathering may help to prevent acts of terror from occurring. In a number of terrorist episodes in different parts of the world, the absence or lack of prior intelligence appears to have been the real problem. In this regard, Malaysia has evolved an effective intelligence gathering system that has played a significant role in thwarting potential terrorist attacks.

Equally important in this battle against terrorism is education, especially in relation to certain key motivating concepts that seem to spur potential terrorists to act in an utterly irrational manner. Their notion of the justification for violence for instance is totally misconceived. They operate under the erroneous belief that it is perfectly legitimate to use violence to advance the Islamic cause as they and their religious teachers interpret it. It is forgotten that it is only if one is a victim of direct, overt aggression that one is permitted to defend oneself by whatever means possible including the use of force.  The pursuit of justice which is paramount in Islam has to be through peaceful means. This is why the avenues for articulating issues pertaining to justice — even if they are anathema to the powers-that-be — should be available in any society. The ruling elite in Egypt should address this obvious flaw in its political system as a matter of urgency.

Education or awareness building should also aim to nurture a willingness to accept diversity within the Muslim family. Differences within the ummah should be seen as legitimate and integral to the faith as long as it does not subvert the fundamental principle of the Oneness of God (Tawhid). Since the Rawda mosque is viewed as a Sufi mosque and Sufis in Egypt and other countries are regarded as heretics by Daesh and other Wahabi oriented extremist groups, it is crucial to re-assert that the Sufis have made a monumental contribution to Islamic civilisation. Their emphasis upon the quintessence of Islam and their gentle character and conduct played a major role in the spread of the religion in Southeast Asia, South India, Central Asia and East and West Africa. Sufi movements were also critical in the resistance to Western colonial rule in North Africa. Some questionable practices among some Sufi orders should not diminish their overall worth and value.

Their acceptance by mainstream Muslims just as the acceptance of the Shia minority — another significant sect that Daesh types and Wahabis reject — underscores the inclusive spirit of Islam which today is threatened by the bigotry and fanaticism of fringe elements.  It is that inclusive spirit that the Amman Message of 2005 seeks to capture, a Message endorsed by Muslim leaders and religious scholars from all over the world that should be brought to the fore at a crucial time like this. And indeed, the Amman Message embodies that precious Quranic truth, “Unto every one of you have We appointed a (different) law and way of life. And if God had so willed, He could surely have made you all one single community: but (He willed it otherwise) in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works!  Unto God you all must return; and then He will make you truly understand all that on which you were wont to differ.” (Chapter 5, Verse 48)

However, education and awareness, on the one hand, and effective intelligence, on the other, will not be able to root out terrorism if we do not take into account the vital role of global geopolitical forces. Since I have discussed these forces in other articles in the last 10 years, I will merely pose a number of questions on this occasion. Is it a coincidence that the US elite and its allies began to focus upon ‘Islamic terrorism’ after the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991? Was it motivated by the need for a new enemy that would justify the pursuit of global hegemony and the sale of weapons in tandem with the tightening of the state security apparatus? Was conflating Islam with terrorism which incidentally has historical antecedents in the interface between Islam and the West an attempt to denigrate the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination?  Is this an indication of how Israeli interests have shaped the US agenda on ‘Islamic terrorism’? Was the 9-11 tragedy part of that hegemonic agenda? Has the manipulation of terrorism as part of that agenda become even more obvious now with the recent revelations of who actually finances certain terrorist outfits, trains the militants and provides them with intelligence?

These are questions that need to be asked because even in the case of Rawda, analysts are wondering why the attack took place when it did. Is it because the Egyptian government has played a pivotal role in trying to bring the two adversarial factions in Palestine — Fatah and Hamas — together in order to solidify the Palestinian struggle?  Perhaps some people are not comfortable with this development?

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Western think tanks have been increasingly busy cultivating a narrative to explain the sudden and spreading presence of militants linked or fighting under the banner of the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) across Southeast Asia.

This narrative – these think tanks would have audiences believe – entails militants fleeing Syria and Iraq, and entrenching themselves amid supposedly sectarian conflicts in Southeast Asia. The think tanks conveniently never mention how tens of thousands of militants are funding the logistical feat required to move them to Southeast Asia or sustain their militant operations in the region once they arrive.

Among these think tanks is the so-called International Crisis Group (ICG). In its report, “Jihadism in southern Thailand – A phantom menace,” it claims:

The decline of the Islamic State (ISIS) and the advent of ISIS-linked violence in South East Asia evince the possibility of a new era of transnational jihadist terrorism in the region. 

Recurring, albeit unsubstantiated, reports about ISIS activity in Thailand have prompted questions about the vulnerability of the country’s Muslim-majority deep south and, in particular, its longstanding Malay-Muslim insurgency to jihadist influence.

While ICG claims that “to date” there is no evidence that ISIS has made inroads in southern Thailand, it warns:

But the conflict and a series of ISIS scares in Thailand are fanning fears of a new terrorist threat. Such fears are not irrational, though they are largely misplaced and should not obscure the calamity of the insurgency and the need to end it. 

Direct talks between insurgent leaders and the government are a priority; a decentralised political system could help address the principal grievances in the south while preserving the unitary Thai state.

In essence, ICG is warning of a crisis it itself admits is unlikely, then recommends that Bangkok pursue a course of action it already is taking – talking with militant leaders in its southern most provinces.

The lengthy ICG report – in reality – is just one of many reoccurring and premeditated attempts to place the notion of ISIS militancy taking root in Thailand into the realm of possibility. Just as the US and its allies have used ISIS as a geopolitical tool elsewhere in the world, and more recently, in Southeast Asia itself – particularly in the Philippines – a longstanding US goal in Thailand is to find and exploit sociopolitical and sectarian fault lines across which to divide, destroy, and control the Thai state.

It was in a 2012 leaded memo drafted by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that admitted the US and its allies sought the creation of what it called at the time a “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State), specifically in eastern Syria where eventually ISIS would base itself before joint Russian-Iranian-Syrian operations uprooted and expelled them.

The 2012 report (.pdf) states specifically (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

Thus, if ISIS is a geopolitical tool first designed and deployed by the US and its allies to subvert, isolate, and overthrow the government of Syria, it follows that ISIS’ expansion into other regions of the world US foreign policy is facing increasingly insurmountable challenges is also very much planned and fueled by US policymakers and the special interests that sponsor them.

Who is the ICG and Why are They Promoting ISIS Fear? 

ICG is a corporate-funded and directed policy think tank and network that creates and leverages conflicts under the guise of “preventing” them.

It claims on its website that:

Crisis Group aspires to be the preeminent organisation providing independent analysis and advice on how to prevent, resolve or better manage deadly conflict. We combine expert field research, analysis and engagement with policymakers across the world in order to effect change in the crisis situations on which we work. We endeavour to talk to all sides and in doing so to build on our role as a trusted source of field-centred information, fresh perspectives and advice for conflict parties and external actors.

Yet a look at its sponsors and membership reveals a Westerners-only club of corporate-financier special interests, lobbying groups, lawyers, and politicians linked directly to the US State Department, the UK Foreign Office, or governments beholden to either or both.

These sponsors include oil giants Chevron, Eni, Noble Energy, Shell, Statoil, and British Petroleum (BP). It also includes financiers such as HSBC Holdings, MetLife, and RBC Capital Markets.

There is also the matter of law firms and lobbyists which fund and are directly involved in ICG’s agenda including Sherman & Sterling, White & Chase, APCO Worldwide, and Edelman.

APCO Worldwide is notorious for fabricating news articles to manipulate inner corporate governance, while Edelman is notorious specifically regarding Thailand for providing lobbying services (PDF) to ousted dictator Thaksin Shinawatra, removed from power in 2006 via a military coup ICG itself vehemently opposed, condemned, and to this day protests.

Edelman’s lobbying for Thaksin Shinawatra was headed by Kenneth Adelman, who joined Edelman as a senior adviser in 2001. Not only is Edelman a corporate sponsor of ICG, but Kenneth Adelman himself is listed in the appendixes of ICG’s Thailand report as a senior ICG adviser. Adelman also chairs the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) subsidiary, Freedom House – another front alongside Washington and London-based lobbyists that have pressured Thailand since the ousting of Shinawatra in 2006.

Listed along with Adelman is George Soros who sits on ICG’s board of trustees. Soros’ Open Society Foundation is listed by ICG as one of its sponsors.

Soros and his Open Society Foundation’s involvement is essential to note. Virtually all of Thailand’s “opposition” groups – from supposed student and academic fronts to media platforms and activists – are funded by both NED and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. These include Prachatai, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), Thai Netizens, the New Democracy Movement (NDM), Human Rights Watch Thailand, Amnesty International Thailand, iLaw, the Isaan Record, and many more.

The concerted efforts by ICG, its corporate sponsors through lobbying, and among its memberships various other associations like Freedom House and Open Society to attack and undermine Thailand in favor of the West’s proxy of choice – Thaksin Shinawatra and the large and growing opposition front the West is building inside Thailand – already raises suspicions about ICG’s motivation in publishing its most recent report regarding ISIS in Thailand.

Observing Western efforts against Thailand’s Southeast Asian neighbors, particularly Myanmar and the Philippines, raises suspicions even further.

The United States has expertly cultivated a deadly sectarian divide in Myanmar – turning nationalist extremists against the nation’s Rohingya minority and using the resulting violence to undermine the nation’s military while propelling Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) into power. The violence also compromises constructive economic and diplomatic ties between Myanmar and China.

In the Philippines, ISIS-linked militants managed to seize an entire city in the nation’s southern region. The money, weapons, and militants required for this feat clearly required state sponsorship. Just as in Syria, ISIS in the Philippines is linked to Saudi Arabia which serves as an intermediary for US money, weapons, supplies, and directives.

The conflicts in both Myanmar and the Philippines has given the US the initiative in serving as “mediator” in Myanmar, and providing “military assistance” in the Philippines. Both moves serve to give Washington a tighter grip over both nations at a time when the whole of Southeast Asia moves further out from under the shadow of US hegemony and into a more constructive and mutually beneficial embrace with Beijing.

Thailand – because of its large economy, population, and geostrategic location at the center of continental Southeast Asia – would serve US interests well in reasserting hegemony over Asia Pacific and creating a untied front against Beijing. However, Thailand – because of its independent institutions, particularly its military and monarchy – enjoys a level of unity its neighbors do not.

Under Thaksin Shinawatra, the US sought to exploit sociopolitical and class fault lines. As this fails, it appears the US is trying to use the very same networks of “reds” to stoke the same sort of nationalist fervor that has consumed neighboring Myanmar. “Reds,” referring to Shinawatra’s ultra-violent United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) street front, have already begun shifting activity toward temples to cultivate a previously nonexistent  Buddhist-Muslim divide.

Soros-funded fronts like Prachatai posing as “rights advocates” have decried swift and decisive moves by the Thai military to detain and defrock “monks” attempting to promote sectarian violence.

To bookend US efforts to engineer a sectarian divide in Thailand, it appears that organizations like ICG are creating a narrative to explain soon-to-be ISIS activity in Thailand. The abhorrent nature of ISIS operations will play well into the anti-Islam propaganda promoted by US-backed networks in Thailand’s northeast. Somewhere in the middle – US policymakers hope – a self-sustaining “clash of civilizations” can be sparked, and consume Thailand’s historically impressive national unity.

Once divided, Thailand will be more easily coerced toward US objectives in Thailand and across the wider region.

What Thailand Should Really Do

The militancy in southern Thailand is contained. The Thai government must continue existing efforts to bring socioeconomic progress to the region to drain the swamps of poverty and perceived injustice that drives recruitment into militant organizations. But beyond that, Bangkok must identify and deal with the logistical nature of the conflict, particularly those involved in arming, training, and funding the militancy.

To preemptively stop efforts by the US to expand the conflict, the government would benefit from Singapore-style hate speech legislation which makes attempts by groups to promote sectarian violence impossible without receiving immediate and severe jail sentences.

Simultaneously, efforts to further promote interfaith understanding, mutual respect, and activism would enhance Thailand’s already renowned values of tolerance and diversity. Many Thais are already aware of the constructive role members of the Thai Muslim community have played in Thailand’s history. There is already positive cross-cultural exchanges that happen accidentally everyday in Thailand’s markets and among its many street vendors. Highlighting and enhancing this will help further inoculate the public from attempts to divide and destroy the nation along sectarian lines.

Also, the government must expose and hinder efforts by US NED and Open Society-funded fronts. Citing the US’ own precedent in forcing Russia’s RT to register as “foreign agents,” the Thai government could legislate mandatory disclosures in all social media profiles and at the beginning and end of every publication in print or online – including social media posts – by fronts like Prachatai indicating who funds them and why.

Finally, understanding that ISIS’ source of strength came from networks propped up by the US and its allies means that fighting an ISIS militancy in Thailand begins with understanding that the US Embassy represents the very source of the militancy’s strength. Rather than fostering a direct confrontation with the United States, alternative Thai media could link ISIS activity directly and repeatedly with the US embassy – ensuring any terrorist act is immediately linked to suspicion of the US Embassy.

The more covert US-sponsored terrorism that unfolds, the more US credibility in Thailand and in the region will suffer.

Finally, when seeking allies in a true “War on Terror,” Bangkok should cultivate ties with nations that are truly waging war on terror. This includes China, Russia, and Iran.

When the US begins losing and being excluded permanently everywhere it brings its “War on Terror,” policymakers in Washington will either be held accountable and the tactic abandoned, or the US itself will find itself as isolated and irrelevant as it has tried to make nations like Syria and Iraq upon which it first unleashed its ISIS menace.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

All images in this article are from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Washington and Israel demand regime change in Syria, along with removal of Iranian and Hezbollah forces involved in combating ISIS and other terrorists.

Despite most of Syrian territory liberated from US-supported terrorists, winning the peace remains a formidable challenge.

Washington, NATO, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their rogue allies won’t tolerate conflict resolution unless their unacceptable demands are met.

Because of their battlefield successes, Syria, Russia and Iran should have a significant advantage in upcoming Geneva and Sochi peace talks.

US occupation of northern and southern areas, its determination to stay indefinitely, and its threats along with Israeli ones change the dynamic adversely.

In mid-November, Netanyahu addressed the Jewish Federation of North America’s General Assembly. He repeated a long ago discredited canard, saying:

“Iran is scheming to entrench itself militarily in Syria with the declared intent of using Syria as a base from which to destroy Israel.”

He called on the international community to counter a nonexistent Iranian threat – vowing to act alone if necessary, threatening war on Syrian and Iranian forces in the country.

On Sunday, Netanyahu again threatened war on Syria if Iran maintains a permanent military presence in the country – its legitimate right, invited by Damascus to be there.

America is an illegal occupier, a hostile invader, its presence in Syria authorized by no one. Yet Defense Secretary Mattis said US forces aren’t leaving after ISIS is defeated – a prescription for continued conflict.

Netanyahu gave Damascus an ultimatum. If Iranian forces establish bases or use Syrian ones in the country, Israel will attack Syrian army positions and other military targets – a near-declaration of war.

His threat was relayed to Assad through Russian intermediaries, possibly Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and/or National Security Advisor Nikolai Patrushev – perhaps Vladimir Putin when he and Assad met earlier this month in Sochi, Russia.

Netanyahu failed to get Putin to agree on keeping Iranian forces in Syria far removed from Israel’s border, along with their removal once ISIS is defeated.

Russia’s objectives in the country and region are world’s apart from US/Israeli ones. Putin told Netanyahu that Iran’s presence in Syria is legitimate – coming at the invitation of its government.

They pose no threat to Israel or anyone else. As long as Damascus authorizes their presence, they’re legally entitled to stay.

Will Israel follow through on its threatened response? Will it risk confrontation with Tehran and Moscow?

Will Washington intervene on its behalf, risking greater war than already? These and related questions remain unanswered.

What’s clear is that resolving years of conflict in Syria has miles to go with no certainty of its outcome.

With all-party support, Canada’s Parliament adopted in late October a new sanctions law patterned after the US Magnitsky Act. Under the pretext of targeting so-called human rights violators, the legislation provides a ready mechanism for Ottawa to sanction leaders of, and ratchet up tensions with, Russia and other countries in the cross-hairs of Canadian and US imperialism.

The Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Bill S-226) enables the government to freeze Canadian assets of “corrupt” foreign officials” and prevent them from entering Canada. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, a self-avowed Ukrainian nationalist and notorious anti-Russian hawk, announced the first round of sanctions under the new law at the beginning of this month. They target 52 individuals in Russia, South Sudan and Venezuela, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

These sanctions were imposed only weeks after Canada targeted 40 other Venezuelan government officials and individuals under a different sanctions regime. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza has labelled the sanctions as “illegal” and accused Canada of “absolute and shameful subordination” to Washington in its campaign for regime-change in Caracas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the passage of Bill S-226 by accusing Canada of playing “unconstructive political games.” While not revealing any names, Kirill Kalinin, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Ottawa told the Globe and Mail that a “large number of Canadians pursuing a toxic Russophobic agenda” were now prohibited from entering Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed that the list of Canadians “contains dozens of names.”

Canada’s “Magnitsky Act” is only the latest step in its longstanding and growing strategic rivalry with Russia. Ottawa staunchly supported NATO’s expansion to Russia borders, which was undertaken in violation of pledges given to Moscow at the end of the Cold War. It has played a major role in Washington’s quarter-century long drive to bring Ukraine under western domination; and today is an integral part of the US-led military-strategic offensive to isolate, encircle and prepare for war with Russia.

Since coming to power in 2015, Trudeau’s Liberal government has continued and even intensified Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s anti-Russia agenda.

In Ukraine, Canada was deeply involved in the February 2014 fascist-spearheaded, US-orchestrated putsch that toppled the country’s pro-Russian elected president, Victor Yanukovych.

Trudeau has continued Canada’s close relationship with the far-right regime in Kiev. Last year Ottawa signed a free trade pact with Ukraine that facilitates arm deals between the two countries. When he traveled to Ukraine in the summer of 2016 visit, Trudeau boasted that Canadian troops are training Ukrainian forces to “liberate” eastern Ukraine from pro-Russian separatists. This was a reference to the 200 Canadian Armed Forces’ personnel who are training Ukrainian Army and National Guard troops under a mission set to last until 2019.

The Canadian Armed Forces is commanding and anchoring a NATO “forward deployed” battlegroup in Latvia, one of four such battalions that have been established since 2016 in the three Baltic States and Poland. Canada also now routinely deploys battleships to the Black Sea and warplanes to patrol Russia’s western border.

Another element in Canada’s conflict with Russia is Ottawa’s determination to expand its military presence in the Arctic, where the two countries have competing claims for the resource-rich Arctic seabed.

The original Magnitsky Act was adopted in 2012, with bi-partisan support, as part of the Obama administration’s increasingly hardline anti-Russia stance. The Obama administration seized on a persistent campaign waged by multi-millionaire financier and Hermitage Capital-founder William F. Browder for anti-Russia measures, following the 2009 death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Russian prison. Browder, who made a fortune out of the restoration of capitalism in Russia, alleges Magnitsky was jailed on trumped up charges and refused proper medical care, because he had uncovered a US$230 million tax fraud involving Russian government officials.

In addition to the US and Canada, Britain and Estonia have implemented Magnitsky-style sanctions legislation. The US law enables the government to deny visas and block access to American banks to Russians and others accused of human rights “abuses.”

Browder has praised Canada’s adoption of like legislation, saying that

“the fact that the government came out so quickly with this shows how serious they are. This is a demonstration of moral leadership in a world that’s sorely needing world leadership right now.”

In reality, the Canadian parliament’s unanimous adoption of a Magnitsky-style law is a further sign that the Canadian ruling class is determined to deepen the country’s already extremely close military-security partnership with Washington, while pressuring the Trump administration not to seek any accommodation with Moscow.

Since the election of Donald Trump, Trudeau’s Liberals and Canada’s corporate media have aligned themselves with the furious anti-Russia campaign mounted by the Democrats and a section of the Republicans, in league with the military-intelligence apparatus. Without providing any evidence, this campaign has baldly asserted that Russia, under the direct orders of Putin, covertly intervened in the 2016 US elections to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and favour Trump’s victory.

This neo-McCarthyite campaign is increasingly being exploited to label all voices critical of the US ruling class as Russian stooges and demand that they be censored. It takes place in a context of fierce and ongoing conflicts within the US political establishment over matters of foreign policy. Specifically, the issue at stake is whether to prioritize Russia or, as Trump advocates, China for economic and military confrontation.

Although Russia is the prime target of Bill S-226, the Liberal government is seeking to invoke human rights to advance Canadian imperialist interests around the globe.

Trudeau’s “humanitarian” rhetoric is shot through with hypocrisy. Canada, as a long-standing ally of US imperialism, has for decades resorted to the most ruthless methods to enforce its predatory imperialist ambitions around the globe. This includes assisting in installing, arming and otherwise supporting right-wing dictatorships, backing US wars of aggression, and spying on the world’s population through Canada’s membership of the American National Security Agency-led “Five Eyes” surveillance network.

In tandem with Washington, Ottawa maintains a studious silence when western-aligned governments such as Saudi Arabia, Israel or Egypt commit gross human rights violations. Indeed, Canada recently concluded a $15 billion arms deal with Riyadh, facilitating the absolutist sheikdom’s suppression of its own population and its brutal war against the Yemeni people, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the Arab world’s most impoverished country. During his recent Asian tour, Trudeau declared his willingness to work with the fascistic president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte as well as the Burmese government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which is carrying out an ethnic pogrom against Rohingya Muslims.

While claiming to uphold international law and human rights, Canada has engaged in virtually uninterrupted war over the last two decades, including NATO’s 1999 bombardment of Yugoslavia, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for a decade beginning in 2001, the 2011 war on Libya, and the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq. In its foreign interventions, Canada has shown no qualms in cooperating with far-right, fascistic forces, such as in its 2004 toppling of the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Trudeau is also indifferent to glaring human rights abuses at home, when not overseeing further encroachments on Canadians’ democratic rights. Trudeau preaches “native reconciliation.” But his government has refused to provide native people living on reserves with per capita health and education funding commensurate with that given other Canadians and has privately reassured Big Oil that it is ready to deploy the army to suppress protests against the building of environmentally and socially-destructive pipelines.

And while the Liberals do everything to prevent desperate asylum seekers from fleeing to Canada to escape the Trump administration’s brutal anti-immigrant crackdown, hundreds of refugees, including children, are left to rot in Canadian jails without trial, merely because they lack adequate identification papers. Since 2000, at least 15 people have died while detained by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including at least three since the Liberals came to power two years ago.

Even before Emmerson Mnangagwa was inaugurated as president Friday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a list of demands post-Mugabe Zimbabwe must meet before being reconsidered for financial aid packages.

The demands make a nonsense of Mnangagwa’s platitudes and bromides about renewed democracy, his promise “to serve our country as the president of all citizens” and to provide “jobs, jobs, jobs,” delivered in a packed stadium in the capital Harare.

On Thursday, Reuters was told by IMF mission chief for Zimbabwe Gene Leon,

“While growth in 2017 will be boosted by the bumper harvest due to the exceptional rainfall, the challenge is to sustain growth going forward in a context where macroeconomic stability is threatened by high government spending, the foreign exchange regime is untenable, and the pace of reform inadequate.”

The first task was to address “Excessive government spending” and “the central bank creating money” that was “potentially jeopardising the financial sector.”

This meant deficit reduction (through cuts), accelerated “structural reforms” to “restore fiscal and debt sustainability” (more cuts) and to “rebalance the economy towards one where growth is driven by the private sector” (more cuts to the public sector as well as privatisations).

Before re-engaging “with the international community to access much needed financial support,” Zimbabwe, which has already paid its arrears to the IMF, must also pay off arrears to the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the European Investment Bank accrued since international aid was cut off in 1999.

This amounts to US$1.4 billion to the World Bank and US$600 million to the AfDB. But Zimbabwe’s total debts as of October to the IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank stand at $9 billion—so it faces being bled dry in celebration of the brave new world heralded by last week’s deposing of Mugabe.

The replacement of Mugabe with the equally corrupt billionaire Mnangagwa, installed by the billionaire leadership of the armed forces, was prepared for months during which Mnangagwa and his backers reassured the US, Britain and other imperialist powers, as well as key trading partners China and Russia, that he would meet all demands placed on him.

Prior to the palace coup against Mugabe, the November 7 Zimbabwe Mail wrote mourning Mnangagwa’s deposing as deputy prime minister in the factional struggle between the ZANU-PF old guard and the Generation 40 faction led by Grace Mugabe.

The article, “With Mnangagwa gone, back to square one for the economy!”, explained that while in charge of economic ministries, he “began a gamut of reforms. Channels were opened with international financiers that had shunned Zimbabwe, among them the IMF, World Bank and the AfDB,” as well as the European Union.

Emmerson Mnangagwa

In China, Mnangagwa met entrepreneurs and the China Development Bank Corporation, setting up Special Economic Zones and the Industrial Park Project in Zimbabwe. In a 2015 interview with Chinese TV channel, CCTV, he was asked which areas of the economy needed urgent attention. Mnangagwa replied:

“You cannot say there are areas of our economy which we are happy with… We have to see how we can create an investment environment which will attract the flow of capital. We must know that investment can only go where it makes a return so we must make sure we create an environment where investors are happy to put their money because there is a return.”

Mugabe responded to the interview by warning,

“This is where we are beginning to differ with some of our people; they’re going to the extent of approaching the Chinese, saying we want a new leader).”

With Mnangagwa’s key ally and former finance minister Patrick Chinamasa declaring during international negotiations that he had “fallen in love with the IMF and World Bank,” Mnangagwa was praised by Eddie Cross, economic secretary of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai, as “a business man who understands business.”

Cross now anticipates that the MDC and other oppositional groups will end up in some form of power-sharing with ZANU-PF—possibly even prior to the general election scheduled for next year. In a November 22 interview with The Zimbabwean, Cross, a political puppet of the imperialist powers and financial institutions, put flesh on the bones of what is expected of ZANU-PF under Mnangagwa. The “very tough issues… on the table for the new regime” include:

• Shaping the upcoming national budget to reduce the “huge fiscal deficit” this year after the US$1.4 billion deficit in 2016.
• “Free and fair” elections as a precondition for “an IMF guided stabilization and recovery plan.”
• The reduction of the fiscal deficit from 15 percent of GDP to just 3 percent “by both reducing recurrent costs and increasing State revenues. Both are going to be difficult to achieve as Zimbabweans are already heavily taxed and any cuts in employment costs are going to be very unpopular.”
• Amending or removing the “Indigenisation Act” providing for 51 percent local ownership of corporations, complete autonomy for the Reserve Bank and revisiting land reform by “paying compensation to the [wealthy white] farm owners who had their land taken from them without compensation. Then what to do with the millions of hectares of farm land that is affected by this exercise.”
• “Finally, the government is going to have to deal with the national debt which now stands at over US$30 billion [a trebling] if farm compensation is included as a contingent liability.”

Another opposition politician with a story to tell is Tendai Biti, the former Minister of Finance from 2009 to 2013 during the period of cooperation between ZANU-PF and the MDC, who fell out with Tsvangirai and now heads the MDC-Renewal party. Biti told Deutsche Welle during an economic forum in Johannesburg, South Africa Thursday that Zimbabwe must mend relations with foreign donors. “We have to make peace with London, Brussels and Washington. We have to find the boys and girls with money,” he said.

Biti stated,

“We have removed the baobab [tree] that is Robert Mugabe. We are not going to allow a little mopane tree, a little acacia tree, to be another Mugabe. People will go back on the streets again.”

But to make absolutely clear that he was not advocating any popular action against Mnangagwa or the army, he added,

“The minister himself will also go back to the streets again with the tanks.”

These are the participants in the political and social conspiracy being prepared against the workers and rural poor behind the official celebration of Mugabe’s fall.

NKC African Economics, an Oxford company dealing in sovereign risk in 30 African states, insisted in Business Week,

“The task facing Mnangagwa, Zanu PF, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions, Joice Mujuru [formerly of ZANU-PF and now Zimbabwe People First] and several others is to put aside party-political issues and begin to implement economic and social policies that will encourage the wider international community to take Zimbabwe seriously and send the resources it needs to rebuild.”

Everyone concerned knows full well that the policies that will be taken “seriously” are those which facilitate an international looting operation, hiked up debt repayments and fat compensation packages for Zimbabwe’s former masters and the continued impoverishment of working people.

This explains why Zimbabwe’s former colonial master is now busy seeking restored relations with Zimbabwe. UK Minister for Africa Rory Stewart made the first ministerial visit to Harare since 1998 on Thursday, where he met and was photographed with Mnangagwa prior to his inauguration. Stewart also met with Tsvangirai and Majuro. The Conservative government announced that Britain is putting together a package of support for Zimbabwe that is made conditional on “political and economic reform.”

Featured image: Karunananthan at net neutrality rally, May 2008 (Source: The Council of Canadians)

The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) poses a threat to net neutrality in Canada.

The Toronto Star reports, “U.S. telecom regulators have confirmed plans to roll back Obama-era rules designed to protect net neutrality.”

In response, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains has commented,

“Canada will continue to stand for diversity and freedom of expression. Our government remains committed to the principles of net neutrality.”

Let’s hope so.

The loss of net neutrality would mean “a two-tiered system where certain content is favoured for paid subscribers, while other streams are blocked or slowed.”

The Toronto Star news report cautions,

“John Lawford, executive director and general counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre [says] major wireless carriers in Canada could seek a review of Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission net neutrality policies, arguing that harmonization with the U.S. to protect investment here is now warranted…”

OpenMedia has warned,

“Canada has some of the strongest pro-consumer net neutrality safeguards in the world, recently reinforced by the CRTC’s landmark decision to ban telecom providers from engaging in discriminatory pricing practices. By contrast, the U.S. under Trump is moving to rapidly dismantle its own net neutrality safeguards, and the concern is that they’ll use NAFTA to force Canada into line with an agenda that prioritizes the narrow interests of U.S. telecom giants over the broader interests of Canadian consumers.”

They have additionally highlighted,

“Canada has strong Net Neutrality regulations that protect free expression and create the conditions innovators need to succeed. Under NAFTA, we should not accept any policies that would weaken these safeguards or prevent us from enforcing these rules.”

But it’s very likely that the regulatory ‘cooperation’ and ‘harmonization’ agenda built into NAFTA would do just that.

The Council of Canadians has long argued for net neutrality.

In May 2008, Council of Canadians campaigner Meera Karunananthan spoke at a net neutrality rally on Parliament Hill.

We believe the Internet should be a commons that prioritizes equitable access to information over commercialization. Given the growing number of media outlets in crisis, net neutrality is an increasingly essential principle for ensuring public participation in what can and must be a much more democratic media system.

John Hudson reports on the push to get Trump to approve sending arms to Ukraine:

President Donald Trump’s top advisers are closer now to achieving what seemed unthinkable at the start of his presidency: Shipping millions of dollars of US weapons to Ukraine’s embattled military.

According to the report, Trump’s advisers think that the president will agree to arming Ukraine if they can persuade him that it will lead to “peace” and the Ukrainian government will pay for the weapons. It’s possible that they might sucker Trump into believing this, but he would be a fool to listen to them. Sending arms to Ukraine makes a dramatic increase in violence more likely. It will almost certainly lead to escalation and will make a peace settlement even harder to reach. There is no military necessity for providing these weapons to Ukraine now, unless the goal is to encourage their government to go on the offensive. That obviously won’t lead to “peace,” but rather to a renewed conflict that Ukraine can’t win.

Ukraine isn’t in a great position to pay for the weapons, either. Hudson continues:

Requiring Ukraine to pay for the arms package is not an ideal situation for cash-strapped Kiev, which has allies on Capitol Hill who are more than willing to foot the bill.

In short, Trump’s advisers have to deceive him into thinking that arming Ukraine won’t have the destabilizing and provocative effect that it is very likely to have, and they have to make him think that Ukraine will pay for something that it can’t really afford and that hawks in Congress want to give away. Trump is gullible and doesn’t know enough about these issues to understand the implications, so his advisers will probably succeed. If I had to guess, Trump will end up going along with the bad advice he is receiving. He doesn’t know enough to realize when he’s being misled, and he tends to favor more aggressive policies because he mistakenly thinks they project “strength.” That makes him unusually susceptible to hawkish demands to do irresponsible and destructive things. Arming Ukraine would be an extraordinarily foolish thing for Trump to do, and so it is probably what he will decide to do.

Featured image is from Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com

Are such designations ever useful? At the stroke of a pen, an entire state is designated “terrorist” or a seemingly milder sponsor of terrorism, its name finding a way onto a list of supposed unmentionables and moral inverts. Obscure groups and more notable countries huddle together, supposedly sharing some disreputable common ground and we are none the wiser on the content behind the categorisation. 

Terrorist designations are also highly problematic when they issue from powers with the capacity to strike, globally, within minutes, under orders from a creakily wacky leadership that threatens other states with fire and brimstone immolation should the circumstances arise.

Such circumstances of apocalyptic annihilation have even prompted members of the US Congress to hold hearings on the scope of presidential authority to launch nuclear weapons, fearing that man in the White House.

That the state being threatened is a blemished North Korea does not matter to a certain US President, Donald J. Trump, who made room in his schedule last week to deem the DPRK a sponsor of terrorism. Having been taken off in 2008 from the US watch list, Pyongyang now finds itself mixing it with other unmentionables.

The guns have been brought out in the US press adding succour to the decision.

“North Korea,” claims Kim Hyon-hui without equivocation, “has always been a terrorist nation.”

Her credentials to fame might well suit her in making the observation. She, after all, was a former North Korean agent behind the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987, resulting in the deaths of all 115 on board.

Testimony, and moral judgments from spies, are tenuous things. Can one ever accept the record of a person trained to lie? But such views are being given the credence born from propagandistic timing. Much of this might be atonement on her part, the stirrings of guilt at having been a regime’s witting instrument.

“It was, from my view, a major mistake (on the part of the US) to [take the country off the list] without receiving a formal apology from the North Korean regime for the bombing.”

The portrait painted of the regime is one that involves hiring well trained killers who roam the globe to do the leadership’s grand bidding.

“In the case of the KAL bombing and other previous operations, well-trained North Korean agents carried out terrorist attacks themselves, and if caught, they committed suicide so as not to reveal North Korea had orchestrated them.”

Obviously, she proved to be an exception.

The labeling strategy here is part of the staple of diplomatic isolation. It enables the Trump administration to further drive its program of sanctions, though Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged that,

“The practical effects may be limited but hopefully we’re closing off a few loopholes with this.”

Tillerson may well be ignoring a few fundamental and very impractical effects. Using such tactics of labeling creates a double bind. It condemns the subject in question – in this case, North Korea – to an inflexible moral caste, while also boxing in the labeling power – here, the United States. Avenues of dialogue are cut off, while other powers, such as China, are discouraged to press for a solution.

This form of self-inflicted rhetorical ambush has historical precedent. The Union insisted on unconditional surrender from the Confederate states during the US Civil War. This rhetoric of unconditional surrender would again make its morally high minded appearance during the Second World War towards both Germany and Japan, a purposely taken stance that subsequently restricted any flexible diplomatic approach towards the Axis Powers.

“First articulated by President Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference in 1943,” writes James W. Hikins, “the slogan metamorphosized [sic] by 1945 into a political shibboleth which operated to constrain policy makers.”

The stance towards Japan, in particular, arguably lengthened the duration of the conflict, given fears on the part of Japanese officials that they would have to do away with the Mikado in any settlement with the US and its allies. The momentum towards using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was further assured despite the contention that the country was on its knees.

“By August, 1945,” Hikins explains, “the doctrine’s calcifying effect on American decision-making precluded an earlier end to hostilities in the Pacific and resulted in atomic devastation for the two Japanese cities.”

There is little to doubt the cruel and desperate credentials of the DPRK regime. Abductions have taken place, assassinations and provocations carried out. But such labels as “state sponsor of terrorism” are intended to isolate and distance such states when the impetus in resolving a crisis should involve bringing them in from the cold.

This dubious title will hardly stop any scheduled missile tests, nor will it dissuade the regime from pursuing a task of proofing itself against efforts to carry out regime change. It also makes public relations, once negotiations are required to take place, a near impossible sell.

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

Featured image: Riad Darar, co-chairman of Syrian Democratic Council

On November 25, Co-chairman of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) Riad Darar told the pro-Kurdish media network Rudaw that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will join the “Syrian Army” if a political solution is reached in Syria.

The SDC is the political wing of the US-backed SDF and it is dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

“If we are going to a united Syria with a federal system, we believe that there will be no need for the weapons or the forces, because these forces will join the Syrian Army and because the important ministries like the defense and forgiven affairs will be in the center [capital], the SDF is a Syrian force not a local force,” Darar said, according to Rudaw TV.

Some news outlets took Darar statement out of context and reported that the SDF will join the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) once a political solution is reached in Syria without providing further details.

Darar told the Syrian opposition news outlet Enab Baladi that his words were manipulated and that the SDF would only join the “new” Syrian Army that could be formed if Syria becomes a federal country, not the SAA. Darar went further and called the SAA the “regime army”.

“I didn’t mean that the regime army [SAA] is the Syrian Army, I meant the Army of Syria after establishing the federalism,” Darar told Enab Baladi.

While some Arab and international news agencies promoted the manipulated version of Darar’s statement as a positive development, the real statement follows the general policy of the SDF, which is aimed at overthrowing not only Damascus government, but also at changing the Syrian constitution.

The Damascus government, the Syrian opposition and regionals powers like Turkey and Iran have stressed on many occasions that they will not accept a federal system in Syria.

The U.S. is now occupying north-east Syria. It wants to blackmail the Syrian government into “regime change”. The occupation is unsustainable, its aim is unattainable. The generals who devised these plans lack strategic insight. They listen to the wrong people.

The Islamic State no longer holds any significant ground in Syria and Iraq. What is left of it in a few towns of the Euphrates valley will soon be gone. Its remnants will be some of several terror gangs in the region. Local forces can and will hold those under adequate control. The Islamic State is finished. This is why the Lebanese Hizbullah announced to pull back all its advisors and units from Iraq. It is the reason why Russia began to repatriated some of its units from Syria. Foreign forces are no longer needed to eliminate the remains of ISIS.

In its UN Security Council resolutions 2249 (2015) for the fight against ISIS the UNSC was:

“Reaffirming its respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence and unity of all States in accordance with purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter,
…
Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter, … on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Da’esh, in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by ISIL … and entities associated with Al-Qaida … and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria;

There is no longer any “territory under the control of ISIL”. Its “safe havens” have been “eradicated”. The task laid out and legitimized in the UNSC resolution is finished. It is over. There is no longer any justification, under UNSC Res 2249, for U.S. troops in Syria or Iraq.

Other legal justifications, like an invitation from the legitimate governments of Syria and Iraq, could apply. But while Syria has invited Russian, Iranian and Lebanese forces to stay in its country it has not invited U.S. forces. These are now illegally occupying Syrian land in the north-east of the country. The Syrian government explicitly called it such.

(One wonder how long it will take the sanctimonious European Union to sanction the U.S. for its egregious breach of international law and for violating the sovereignty of Syria.)

According to official documents more than 1,700 U.S. troops are currently in Syria. The publicly announced number is only 500. “Temporary” forces make the up the difference. (Overall U.S. troop numbers in the Middle East have increased by 33% over the last four month. The numbers doubled in Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. No explanation has been given for these increases.)

The U.S. troops in Syria are allied with the Kurdish YPG. The YPG is the Syrian branch of the internationally designated Kurdish terrorist organization PKK. Only about 2-5% of the Syrian population are of Kurdish-Syrian descent. Under U.S. command they now control more than 20% of Syrian state territory and some 40% of its hydrocarbon reserves. This is thievery on a grand scale.

To disguise its cooperation with the Kurdish terrorists, the U.S. renamed the group into the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF). Some Arab fighters from east Syrian tribes were added to it. These are mostly former foot-soldiers of ISIS who changed sides when the U.S. offered better pay. Other fighters were pressed into service. The people of the Syrian-Arab city Manbij, which is occupied by the YPG and U.S. forces, protested when the YPG started to violently conscript its youth.

New troops were added to the SDF during the last days when ISIS fighters escaped from the onslaught of Syrian and Iraq forces in Abu Kamal (aka Albu Kamal aka Bukamal). They fled northwards towards YPG/U.S. held areas. Like other ISIS fighters the U.S. helped to escape their deserved punishment these forces will be relabeled and reused.

The Russian Ministry of Defense accused the U.S. of blocking the lower airspace over Abu Kamal while its Syrian allies were trying to liberate it. For eight days Russian high flying long range bombers had to come all the way from Russia to provide support for its troops on the ground. In a recent TV speech the leader of the Lebanese Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah, accused the U.S. troops in Syria of providing drone intelligence to ISIS in Abu Kamal. ISIS used it to shell Syrian and allied forces. Several high officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in such attacks. Nasrallah also said that the U.S. used electronic warfare measures to disable the radios of the attacking force. He said that it rescued fleeing ISIS troops. Nasrallah’s accusations are consistent with reports from the ground. (The U.S. and its allies also continue to supply other terrorist groups in north-west and the south-west of Syria.)

Neither Nasrallah nor the IRGC will forget those misdeeds. The operation commander of the IRGC, General Quasem Soleimani, recently reported to Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei:

All these crimes have been designed and implemented by US leaders and organizations, according to the acknowledgement of the highest-ranking US official who is currently president of the United States; moreover, this scheme is still being modified and implemented by current American leaders.

The U.S. has changed its rule of engagements and unofficially declared a no-fly zone for Russian and Syrian planes on the east side of the Euphrates. It says that it will attack any force that crosses the river to pursue ISIS. It is openly protecting its terrorists.

Ten days ago the U.S. Secretary of Defense General (rtd) Mattis announced U.S. intentions to illegally occupy Syria:

The U.S. military will fight Islamic State in Syria “as long as they want to fight,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday, describing a longer-term role for U.S. troops long after the insurgents lose all of the territory they control.
…
“We’re not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has traction,” he added.
…
Turkey said on Monday the United States had 13 bases in Syria and Russia had five. The U.S-backed Syrian YPG Kurdish militia has said Washington has established seven military bases in areas of northern Syria.

A report in today’s Washington Post is more specific. The fitting headline: U.S. moves toward open-ended presence in Syria after Islamic State is routed:

The Trump administration is expanding its goals in Syria beyond routing the Islamic State to include a political settlement of the country’s civil war ..
…
With forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies now bearing down on the last militant-controlled towns, the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria could be imminent — along with an end to the U.S. justification for being there.U.S. officials say they are hoping to use the ongoing presence of American troops in northern Syria, in support of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to pressure Assad to make concessions at United Nations-brokered peace talks in Geneva.
…
An abrupt U.S. withdrawal could complete Assad’s sweep of Syrian territory and help guarantee his political survival — an outcome that would constitute a win for Iran, his close ally.

To avoid that outcome, U.S. officials say they plan to maintain a U.S. troop presence in northern Syria — where the Americans have trained and assisted the SDF against the Islamic State — and establish new local governance, apart from the Assad government, in those areas.
…
“By placing no timeline on the end of the U.S. mission . . . the Pentagon is creating a framework for keeping the U.S. engaged in Syria for years to come,” [said Nicholas Heras of the Washington-based Center for a New American Security.]

Even the propaganda writers at the Washington Post admit that there is no longer any justification for a U.S. presence in Syria. The U.S. intent is to commit blackmail: “to pressure Assad to make concessions”. The method to do so is military “presence”. There is no way that Syrian government and its people will give in to such blackmail. They did not fight for over six years to give up their sovereignty to U.S. intrigue. They will call the U.S. bluff.

Source: Southfront

No military handbook includes “presence” as a military mission. There are no rules for such an undefined task. The last time the U.S. used the term was in the early 1980s during the civil war in Lebanon. The task of U.S. troops stationed in Beirut was defined as showing military “presence”. After such units and naval forces of the U.S. interfered on one side of the civil war, an aggrieved party took revenge against the U.S. and French military stationed in Beirut. Their barracks were blown up, 241 U.S. and 58 French soldiers died. U.S. military “presence” in Beirut ended.

The U.S. military “presence” in Syria is likewise doomed.

The U.S. alliance with the YPG/PKK pushes Turkey into an alliance with Russia, Iran and Syria. Several thousand Turkish soldiers and civilians have died due to PKK attacks. Last week Russian transports planes crossed through Turkish air space on their flights from Russia to Syria. This was a first. The U.S. had urged its NATO allies, including Turkey, to prevent such flights and Russian planes had to take the longer route through Iranian and Iraqi air space. Due to the U.S. alliance with the YPG and for many other reasons Turkey feels alienated from the U.S. and NATO. It is moving into the “resistance” camp.

The northern border between Turkey and Syria is thus closed for U.S. supplies to its forces in north-east Syria. Towards the west and south Syrian forces and their allies prohibit any U.S. supplies. Iraqi Kurdish territory to the east is for now the only way for a land supply route. But the government in Baghdad is allied with Iran and Syria and it is pushing to regain control over all the border posts of Iraq, including those still held by the Kurds and used by the U.S forces. Several Iraqi militia who fought ISIS under Iraqi government command have announced their hostility to U.S. forces. The Iraqi government may try to reign them in but they will hardly vanish. The U.S. land supply route through Iraqi-Kurdish areas can thus be closed at any time. The same goes for any air space around Syria’s north-east.

The north-east of Syria is surrounded by forces hostile to the U.S. On top of that many Syrian people in the now occupied north-eastern Syria continue to be loyal to the Syrian state. Syrian, Turkish, Iranian and Hizbullah intelligence are working on the ground. There are lots of local Arabs hostile to Kurdish overbearance. The U.S. bases, outposts and all its transports in the area may soon come under sustained fire. While Russia said that it will not intervene against the U.S. allied SDF forces, many other entities have motives and means to do so.

The mission of the 1,700+ U.S. troops in north-east Syria is undefined. Their supply routes are unsecured and can be blocked by its enemies at any time. The local population is largely hostile to them. All of the surrounding countries and entities have reasons to attain the end of any U.S. presence in the area as soon as possible. It would require a ground force that is at least ten-twenty times larger to secure the U.S. presence and its communication and supply routes.

The presence is as useless and unsustainable as the southern U.S. presence at al-Tanaf.

Trump had spoken out against such occupation and interference in the Middle East:

The U.S. president [..] campaigned on a pledge to avoid getting sucked into intractable conflicts.

The military junta that controls Trump and the White House, (former) generals McMaster, Kelly and Mattis, are not acting in the interest of the United States, its citizens and troops.

They are following the call of the Zionist Jewish Institute for National Security of Americawhich is pushing for a war on all Iran related entities and interests in the Middle East. JINSA advertises its huge influence on the higher U.S. officer corps. It is not by chance that a recent speech at the Jewish Policy Center in Washington described The U.S. Military as a Zionist Organization. But like other such wish-wash, it fails to explain why unquestioned support for a colony of east-European racist in west Asia is of “American interest”.

The military mission of the U.S. occupation force in north-east Syria is undefined. It positions are not sustainable. The aim this “presence” is said to have is unattainable. There is no larger concept into which it fits.

The generals ruling the White House may be tactical geniuses in their fields. They are neophytes when it comes to strategy. They blindly follow the siren call of the Lobby only to again wreak the U.S. ship of state on the cliffs of Middle Eastern realities.

Marlon Brando talks about the treatment of native Americans or Indians at the hands of colonialists and the values of freedom and equality in USA. Please note that this video is not meant to offend anyone and is not against any race.

The only purpose is to educate people about true history as opposed to the history fed into the minds of people by film and education media.

.

Source: Mohammed Omer Arif / Youtube

Sacheen Littlefeather refusing to accept the Best Actor Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando for his performance in “The Godfather” – the 45th Annual Academy Awards in 1973. Liv Ullmann and Roger Moore presented the award.

Source: Oscars / Youtube

The slave auctioning of Africa migrants in Libya shows how humans are deprived of all dignity. We should renounce all forms of ideology and prejudice that reduce people to merchandise, writes DW’s Fred Muvunyi.

They are not animals, car spare parts or items of merchandise. They are Africa’s men, women, and children who are on the road to Europe, in search of a better life. Now they are being held in Libya and turned into slaves.

It beggars belief but they are indeed being offered up for sale, and the buyers are there, ready to pay any price, even as little as $400 (338 euros). The stature and age of those on sale determine how much the auctioneers can take.

Apparently, as seen in a CNN video, young men attract buyers quickly at an affordable price.

Click image to access CNN Video

The auctioneers are heard advertising a group of West African migrants as big strong boys for farm work. I never thought that the slave trade that flourished between the 16th and 19th centuries would return today, in the 21st century. Rights groups and governments are silent when such crimes against humanity are committed.

Read full article in Deutsche Welle here.

Following the meeting of Russia, Iran, and Turkey in Sochi, where the end of the war was announced and the beginning of the post-war regulation process meant to decide Syria’s future took place, the US media began reporting on the fact that the US plans to stay in Syria despite the collapse of ISIS, and also will use the Kurds to pressure al-Assad’s government.

1. This has been mentioned repeatedly: despite officially supporting Syria’s territorial integrity, unofficially they try to strike back for their strategic failure at toppling al-Assad’s government, which was unsuccessful mainly thanks to Russia and Iran. Washington repeatedly voiced its dissatisfaction with the way war in Syria went, along with anxieties regarding the consequences for the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia concerning the growing role of Russia and Iran in the region.
2. The White House does not state this officially, as the US understands the tenuity of its positions in Syria, because as far as international law is concerned, this is just another case of US aggression against a sovereign state. On the other hand, the US couldn’t care less about international law and sovereignty other than its own. But some things shouldn’t be said as they are out loud or you’ll look bad. You have to camouflage what you say, like inviting the unrecognized government of Rojava or inventing a non-existent UN permission to invade. The reporting mentioned above is useful, because it demonstrates real US intentions, and not declarative ones. This is useful because it shows there is no point in hoping that the US wants to negotiate and show “goodwill”.
3. Russia has led an informational and diplomatic campaign with the intent of driving the US forces out of Syria. The accusations by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense are officially supported by Syria, Turkey, and Iran as they are also interested in driving out the Americans out of Syria, because the US is the main obstacle to ending the war. Besides having common goals linked to keeping al-Assad in power and keeping Syria’s territory intact, Turkey and Iran pursue their own goals. Iran wants to secure the Shi’ite bridge between Tehran and Beirut (which may be hindered by the Syrian Kurdistan project), and Erdogan wants to weaken Kurdistan Workers’ Party and stop the Syrian Kurdistan from forming under control of Kurdistan Workers’ Party-affiliated organizations. Nobody wants to go to a full-fledged war with the US, but the now popular hybrid wars leave many avenues of combating the hegemon.
4. For now, the main strategy is involving reasonable Kurdish Rojava leaders in the conversation, so that the Kurds will be represented in the negotiations allowing them to find contact points with al-Assad regarding the future of the Kurds as a part of Syria. That’s why Russia put a stop to Erdogan’s ambitious plans regarding Afrin and tries to persuade Turkey that the Kurds can be negotiated with, and that nothing bad will come out of sitting with the Kurds, when you already sit down with much more radical organizations, which are considered “moderate terrorists” due to current political climate. Compared to them, some Kurdish groups are much more reasonable and legal, but only until the situation escalates past the point of no return.
5. If negotiations with the Kurds fall through, and the US will be successful in cultivating Kurdish separatism, than Plan B comes into action, which entails pressuring the Kurds with the following:
   • Syria, Turkey and Iraq can block the oil exports from Rojava, and ban imports to it, the very same threats previously used for trying to keep Iraqi Kurdistan in line. The US won’t be able to provide Rojava with all necessary supplies by air.
   • The Kurdish-Arab conflict can be escalated on the territories under the Kurdish control with the majorly Arab populace. This will sow disarray in Rojava, with possible creation of SDF opposed forces.
   • The Kurdish groups involved in the US plans can be designated as terrorist organizations (this will also lead to improving Russia’s and Syria’s relations with Turkey).
   • Russia can stop protecting Afrin. Iran and Iraq can block the border crossing at Faysh Khabur and cut economic and logistic ties between Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava.
   • The Syrian Army and Shi’ite units can do a repeat of Iraqi Kurdistan: they will make a deal with the reasonable organizations, and unreasonable ones will be crushed like Barzani.
   • The final solution: they can “release the Kraken” by letting the Turkish Army into Rojava under the pretense of “fighting terrorism”. This is an undesirable option, as it would make “friend Recep” stronger, but it isn’t out of the question completely.

In the end, there is a considerable amount of options to put pressure on Rojava if the US escalates the situation up to the level of unavoidable conflict, which, as the US periodically demonstrates, it seems to hope for, despite all the claims that they have no hidden agenda in Syria.

So far Russia and friends try to persuade the Kurds that they shouldn’t follow Barzani’s example and risk a scenario they will regret. You can yell “America is with us” and photograph girls holding assault rifles all you want, but when push comes to shove, the situation will escalate to a conflict completely out of the Kurds’ depth. As far as the US is concerned, the Kurds are only a means to an end, a fact that Washington doesn’t even hide anymore. The US wants to use the Kurds as fuel for the continuation of the war in Syria, showing no concern over the losses among the Kurds.

From this perspective, it would be best for everyone, including the Kurds, if Russia can make the Kurdish chiefs see the things the way it does. And if al-Assad and Erdogan soften their stances regarding the Kurdish question, they may find a compromise that would satisfy all sides.

Whether this is possible we’ll see in 2018. Russia is not interested in prolonging the Syrian war. Quite the opposite: the successful results should be diplomatically secured as soon as possible, which the US tries to hinder. This conflict demonstrates that despite the military collapse of ISIS, Syria still has a lot of problems that will have to be solved with the help of Iran and Turkey. But nobody said it would be easy.

Translated from Russian. Originally appeared at colonelcassad blog

Featured image is from South Front.

“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” – Samuel Beckett

Fat Man Little Boy

A new day breaks

The earth forever changed

Turns with an awful ache

And again the sun upon

Frosted morning fields

Roads lined with pickup

Trucks jeeps and vans

The animals flee from man

Boys play with their toys

Zoom focus boom god

And country beer broads

And banging this is the

Endtime winter coming on

The human hunting season

The newspaper reports

The arrest of two naked

Hunters in Michigan

Bare except for shoes

Saving I suppose their souls

The fat man opposite

The one with a gorilla’s gait

A teacher of the ancient

Tongue of Latin relates

Not Vergil’s rosy prophecy

Of an incipient golden age

And a savior’s birth

But the tale of his father-

In-law and how yesterday

Way up behind his old

House up on the mountain

Side he somehow shot

Gunned himself in the back

Of his meaty thigh

Or was shot by some

Unknown deer assailant

No one knows who or why

Later in another news

Paper a report reveals

How the cops barely

Could drag him out

Of the thick woods so

Fat was he enormous

Overwhelming too much

To bear unimaginable fact

Fat Man Little Boy

It wasn’t a toy

That shattered your world

Set blood dripping guts

Hanging carcasses to carve

Skin blackened in a flash

Everywhere everywhere no

Where to run escape flee

Forevermore forevermore

The animals are at it again

Flash run Fat Man Little

Boy the dear victims lie

Still eyes staring nowhere

Blood trickling from corners

Of gaping mouths victims

Before the deadly thrust

Of the great hunter’s

Perverted lust

Fat Man Little Boy

A new day breaks

The earth forever changed

Turns with an awful ache

The animals are at it

Again

Little Boy 6 August 1945 Hiroshima

Fat Man 9 August 1945 Nagasaki

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

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Both countries supply Riyadh with billions of dollars worth of weapons and munitions annually – fueling its killing machine, including by training its personnel.

Pentagon contractors are involved, cashing in on Saudi wealth. San Diego-based Kratos Defense & Security Solutions will be the prime contractor involved in training Riyadh’s navy.

The kingdom requested continuation of a naval training program inside and outside the country – so its naval forces can carry out missions in Yemen and elsewhere, massacring civilians, blockading the country.

Under the United States Military Training Mission to Saudi Arabia, USMTM trains, advises and assists the kingdom’s armed forces, including through military exercises and related activities.

USMTM is a joint US army, navy, air force and marine corps joint command, an extensive arrangement with the kingdom since the 1950s – under the 1951 Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement and later USMTM agreement.

It’s a fundamental component of the US/Saudi military relationship – negotiated by Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi king Abdul Aziz.

According to London’s Daily Mail, Britain is secretly training Saudi’s military, aiding its genocidal war in Yemen.

Dozens of UK military personnel are “teaching battlefield skills to soldiers who will be deployed in the so-called ‘dirty war,’ “ the Daily Mail explained – responsible for high crimes of war and against humanity.

Saudi terror-bombing massacres civilians daily. Blockade and war-related violence caused an epic humanitarian disaster, countless thousands of Yemenis perishing, millions facing potential starvation, young children harmed most.

Tory MP/former development secretary Andrew Mitchell blasted what he called “Britain’s ’shameful complicity’ in the suffering” of the Yemeni people.

Mistakenly released UK photos and information revealed its training mission – codenamed Operation Crossways.

Mitchell demanded Theresa May’s government explain Britain’s involvement in the war, flagrant international crimes, saying:

“I have no doubt parliament will require an explanation of this training mission in view of the high level of concern about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Yemen.”

Washington and Britain are longstanding imperial partners, waging war in multiple countries, including their diabolical involvement in Yemen.

Civilians are being massacred and starved to death. Every day, nearly 650 Yemenis children “are diagnosed as acutely malnourished,” according to the Daily Mail.

US and UK complicity in what’s going is the shame of both nations.

Their silence shows contempt for millions of suffering Yemenis – many perishing daily, young children most of all, a child dying every 10 minutes.

Update: Bitcoin’s surge continues as Asia re-opens, pushing the cryptocurrency above $9500 as Korea’s second largest bank tests Bitcoin vault and wallet services for its clients.

As Coinivore reports, Shinhan, the second largest commercial bank in South Korea by market valuation in the country is testing a Bitcoin vault and wallet service for its customers that is expected to be released by mid-2018.

A representative of Shinhan Bank told Naver News, a media publication in South Korea in an interview that the bank will launch a Bitcoin vault and wallet platform in response to recent hacking attacks of leading South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges including Bithumb.

“Shinhan is testing a virtual bitcoin vault platform wherein the private keys of bitcoin addresses and wallets are managed and issued by the bank. The bank intends to provide the vault service for free and charge a fee for withdrawals,” the representative said.

In 2016 the bank reported a total of US $192 billion in assets and over 13,000 employees according to News Bitcoin. The bank stated that the service wouldn’t be ready until the second quarter of 2018 but has begun testing the network for the services.

The service will incur zero fees to deposit Bitcoin to store in their cold storage instead a slight fee will be taken during the withdrawal process. They will also be rolling out a mobile app that will contain a dashboard for viewing stats and deposit information for their customers.

It’s unclear whether or not Shinhan will offer Bitcoin brokerage and trading services to enable their existing clients and customers to purchase or sell Bitcoin.

South Korea has been a hub for cryptocurrency and somewhat of a safe haven for established digital currencies since, unlike other countries, they have embraced digital currency as a means for change. Earlier this month, Choe Heung-sik, chief of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), stated that the South Korean government would not impose strict regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges in the foreseeable future.

“Though we are monitoring the practice of cryptocurrency trading, we don’t have plans right now to directly supervise exchanges. Supervision will come only after the legal recognition of digital tokens as a legitimate currency,” Choe said.

Truly allowing the growth of Bitcoin, as of this writing, South Korea holds the largest markets in Bitcoin exchange Bithumb with a volume traded of $356,126,000 today at the time of this writing.

*  *  *

Update: Bitcoin has continued to soar intraday – now topping $9,300 – with a total market cap over $156 billion, leaving the cryptocurrency worth more than Merck, Disney, and GE.

Coinivore notes that the digital currency, once a toy for computer nerds, is now soaring in price, triggering a new gold rush. Is it just another bubble, or a glimpse into a radically different financial future?

As Rick Falkvinge, CEO of BitCoin Cash and founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, warns “bitcoin is an extinction-level event for banks” and probably governments too…

*  *  *

As we detailed earlier, less than 24 hours ago, we noted that Bitcoin had broken above the recent resistance level around $8,300 and hit a fresh all time high of $8,650, observing that the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is now rising at a pace that has put the $10,000 price target by both Mike Novogratz (and Jose Canseco) firmly in its sights.

It didn’t take long however for bitcoin to find a new round of eager buyers, and in early Asian trading, a burst of buying out of Korea’s Bithumb exchange, has sent bitcoin surging another several hundred dollars higher, and around midnight ET bitcoin had surpassed $9,000, sending its market cap to $150 billion, making it more valuable than corporations like Siemens, Mastercard or McDonald’s.

The sharp gains come as the combined market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies also peaks at new highs – currently standing at just shy of $300 billion.

At this rate of appreciation, the crypto may hit the key psychological level of $10,000 in under a week. Needless to say, the long term chart is about as exponential as it gets, so as usual, buyer beware.

Bitcoin started the year just above $1,000, and the YTD gain is now over 900%, which however pales in comparison to Ether’s nearly 5,000% YTD return and Litecoin’s 20x.

However, it’s not just Asian demand as CoinTelegraph reports that in a sign of growing mainstream acceptance, digital currency exchange Coinbase now boasts more accounts than brokerage firm Charles Schwab.

According to its website, Coinbase has 13 mln users while the number of Schwab brokerage accounts stood at 10.6 mln as of the end of 2016. These numbers don’t paint a complete picture, since the amount of assets controlled by Schwab certainly vastly exceeds those of Coinbase users. Nevertheless, the actual number of users indicates a massive volume of adoption, as the public begins to dabble in cryptocurrencies. Coinbase user numbers have grown by 167% this year.

One month ago, Mike Novogratz was the first to predict a $10,000 price in 6 to 10 months. It may come in that many weeks instead.  As a store of value, Novogratz likened bitcoin to digital gold, and said the technology is beginning to make “more and more sense” as we move increasingly into the digital. Novogratz continued to say that, while bitcoin is a bubble, the mania is justified, because it is a technological advancement that promises to fundamentally alter our lives.

“Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live,” he said. “The railroad bubble. Railroads really fundamentally changed the way we lived. The internet bubble changed the way we live. When I look forward five, 10 years, the possibilities really get your animal spirits going.”

Bitcoin is set to become “the biggest bubble of our time,” he added, and could reach $10,000 very soon due to fast-building interest. In retrospect, he may be right much faster than even he anticipated.

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

Andrzej Duda afirmou que em seu país não há lugar para xenofobia, antissemitismo  e “nacionalismo doentio”. Mas nada parece conter o terrorismo branco-religioso ocidental.

O presidente polonês tem condenado o ódio expressado na manifestação massiva do último dia 11 em Varsóvia pela independência da Polônia em 1918, organizada por grupos de ultra-direita em que prevaleceram, entre cerca de 60 mil participantes, discursos xenófobos, racistas e religioso-extremistas.

Enquanto líderes e diplomatas poloneses em alguns lugares do mundo, inclsive no Brasil, tentam desmentir o caráter agressivo da manifestação pública no país europeu oriental baseada na supremacia branca e na aversão às diferenças étnicas e religiosas, a condenação do chefe de Estado da Polônia, o ultra-conservador Andrzej Duda, foram as mais duras até agora enquanto, em território polonês, a discussão segue intensa entre membros do governo e na própria sociedade em relação à natureza xenofóbica da passeata.

Embora tenha contado com a participação pacífica de famílias, a comemoração pelos 99 anos da independência dos impérios austro-húngaro, prussiano e alemão ao final da I Guerra Mundial, foi até o final coordenada por grupos declaradamente nazi-fascistas que, entre outras coisas, bradavam: “A Europa será branca ou inabitável”, “Sangue puro, mente esclarecida”.

Uma grande faixa trazia a inscrição “Deus Vult” em letra gótica que, em latim, significa “Deus quer assim”, lema utilizado na Primeira Cruzada “cristã” no século XI quando o exército religioso europeu assassinou islamitas e judeus na chamada Terra Santa. Este brado tem sido constantemente repetido na Europa nos últimos anos pela direita radical, a fim de manifestar repúdio ao Islã.

Determinado manifestante entrevistado pela TVP, rede de TV estatal local conservadora e pró-governo Andrzej Duda, de ultra-direita, disse: “Tire os judeus do poder!”, “Grande marcha de patriotas”. Em suas transmissões, a TVP descreveu o evento como aquele que atraiu a maioria dos poloneses comuns expressando amor pela Polônia, não pelos extremistas.

Enquanto o presidente Andrzej Duda tem afirmado que não há, em seu país, lugar para xenofobia, nacionalismo patológico e antissemitismo, o porta-voz do Ministério das Relações Exteriores israelense, Emmanuel Nahshon, qualificou o evento de “perigosa marcha de elementos extremistas e racistas”.

A sável incantentativa de se construir uma outra narrativa em relação às mais manifestações nazistas na Polônia, aplicando-a um caráter pacífico como tem feito o MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre) através da manipulação das informações, deve-se exatamente ao projeto ocidental de demonização das diferenças, especialmente dos muçulmanos e árabes em geral a fim de que os porões do poder imperialistas do lado de cá do mundo deem prosseguimento à agenda coercitivo-expansionsta baseada na propalada “Guerra ao Terror”, faxina étnica e Cruzada moderna sob verniz moralista.

Diante disso, não supreende o profundo interesse do próprio MBL na questão polonesa, já que o movimento é financiado por bilionários norte-americanos enquanto a Polônia tem sido nos últimos anos a maior parceira de Washington na Europa, e ainda mais: nas proximidades da fronteira russa.

Edu Montesanti

www.edumontesanti.skyrock.com

A pós-verdade, considerada palavra do ano no final de 2016 pelos dicionários de Oxford, foi definida por estes conforme a seguinte tradução livre: “Relaciona-se ou denota circunstâncias nas quais fatos objetivos exercem menos influência na formação da opinião pública, que os apelos à emoção ou à crença pessoal”.

Sobre este último ponto, a crença pessoal, vale ressaltar que se refere ao fato de que indivíduos, certamente os mais incautos, comodistas e sectários, tendem a buscar e proporcionar maior credibilidade a notícias, verdadeiras ou não (isso acaba não importando muito no subconsciente do consumidor de desinformação, que não aceita ter seu pequeno mundo confrontado), que melhor se moldem a seus valores e fobias, algo também conhecido como “anestesia psicológica”.

Enquanto se crê muito bem informado e até um potencial “expert” em assuntos mundiais que acaba falando como intelectual, portando-se como intelectual, fazendo amor como intelectual, o sujeito está nada mais que fazendo as vezes do perfeito fantoche, grande imbecil nas mãos do poder estabelecido.

E para a afirmação das notícias falsas, fenômeno absolutamente previsível há cerca de uma década e meia, uma preferência e até defesa de “curtinhas” no meio jornalístico incluindo as faculdades, têm desempenhado papel crucial: “notícias” cada vez mais reduzidas, a gosto (em grande parte induzido) de consumidores de informação sem muita disposiçao para ler (no caso particluar do Brasil, velha característica sempre incentivada pelos sucessivos governos e pelos próprios meios de comunicação), ou “cacos de notícias” completamente descontextualizados.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads. I think everybody who reads the independent media knows that. But those who are strung to CNN and Time Magazine might have understood otherwise. Lies by omission: The danger of nuclear annihilation is not front-page news, nor is America’s “Killing Fields” in Yemen where children are dying as a result of a US enforced blockade on food and medicine.

America’s wars are portrayed by the media as humanitarian endeavors. “The Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine provides a framework  which justifies military action.

Dear Readers: when war is upheld as peacemaking, conceptualization is no longer possible. Once the Lie Becomes the Truth, there is No Moving Backwards. Insanity prevails. The world is turned upside down. 

The Western media and politicians, in chorus, have obfuscated the unspoken truth, namely that the US-NATO led war destroys humanity. 

On this Thanksgiving Weekend our thoughts are with Native Americans “in recognition of the suffering they have endured since Europeans first began their conquest of indigenous lands over 500 years ago.”

Our thanks to our contributors who are scattered across the globe. To the best of our abilities, Global Research seeks to  report with accuracy, insight and commitment to social justice and a World without war. 

There is no such thing as a “Just War” as put forth by the U.S. and its allies with the relentless support of the corporate media. 

Without the daily gush of war propaganda, America’s military endeavors would fall flat. The criminal nature of US foreign policy would be fully revealed. 

Our objective is to reverse the tide of media disinformation, protect independent thought and uphold “Net Neutrality”.  

No easy task. And that’s why we Need the Support of Our Readers

Michel Chossudovsky, November 25, 2017

We ask that you consider making a donation to Global Research with a view to supporting the endeavors of the GR Team.  

Click the Donate Button (right)

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The FCC’s Order Is Out: It Will End Net Neutrality and Break the Internet. We’ve Read It, and Here’s What You Need to Know

By Matt Wood and Gaurav Laroia, November 25, 2017

On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai released his draft order to completely eradicate Net Neutrality.

Trump’s FCC Chairman to End “Net Neutrality”. The Plan to “Kill Digital Democracy” 

By Stephen Lendman, November 22, 2017 

His plan will let ISP giants establish toll roads or premium lanes, charge extra for speed and free and easy access, control content, as well as stifle dissent and independent thought – a dismal prospect.

A Less than Modest Proposal to End the War in Yemen. “I am Writing This on Thanksgiving Eve”

By George Capaccio, November 26, 2017

In Plymouth, hundreds will gather for a Day of Mourning in recognition of the suffering Native Americans have endured since Europeans first began their conquest of indigenous lands over 500 years ago. … For that matter, every day lately has become a day of mourning as I reflect upon my country’s role in the starvation and slaughter of the people of Yemen.

US-DPRK: How the US “Observed” the 1994 “Agreed Framework”

By Dr. Konstantin Asmolov, November 25, 2017

Let us start with the fact that the Agreed Framework was not an official form of diplomatic treaty and it would be more appropriate to name it a Framework Arrangement (this is also suggested by the word Framework in it), since the word “agreement” by default would create the false impression that it was not a gentleman’s agreement but a ratified treaty.

One Year Later, Fidel’s Thinking on Cuba-U.S. Relations Still Principal Guide

By Arnold August, November 25, 2017

On Dec. 17, 2014, the world witnessed the simultaneous surprise announcements by presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama to re-establish diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States after more than five decades. However, the fallacy was floated that this decision represented a step toward “normalization.” On that day, Obama claimed that the move was intended to “begin to normalize relations between our two countries.” Nevertheless, as historic as this decision was regarding the reopening of the respective embassies, it did not at all mean that the path was in fact toward normalization. It was nothing of the sort.

US and South Korea Announce Plans for Massive Air Force Exercise Aimed at North Korea

By Common Dreams, November 25, 2017

The early December drill comes as tensions continue to rise over North Korea’s nuclear program and Trump’s persistent antagonization of the nation’s leader.

Violence against Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Manus Island and the Clearing of Lombrom Naval Base

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 25, 2017

It was another etching in a chronicle of extended violence. For days, resistance by refugees and asylum seekers against forced removal from the Lombrom Naval Base on Manus Island had taken very public form. Images of defiance and distress were receiving international attention. With no electricity, with water supplies destroyed, things were getting dire.

Video. 9/11 Truth: A Government Researcher Speaks Out, 9/11 Evidence and NIST

By AE911Truth, November 25, 2017

In August 2016, Peter Michael Ketcham, a former employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), began looking into the reports his agency had released years earlier on the collapse of the World Trade Center. What he found shook him to the core.

The border wall with Mexico, Donald Trump‘s proposed monument to nativism and bigotry is, according to an October story from NBC News, at least 10 months away from “meaningful construction.” It currently has no funding from Congress nor from Mexico, contrary to reports from Trump’s fever dreams. This reality hasn’t dimmed the visions of dollar signs in the eyes of America’s largest corporations, which, according to a new report from Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy, New York Communities for Change, and the Partnership for Working Families, are behind a company making one of the wall prototypes and stand to benefit handsomely.

The report, “Wall Street’s Border Wall,” reveals that far-right billionaire Robert Mercer’s firm Renaissance Technologies, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo are all invested in Sterling Construction, the largest U.S.-based company building a prototype of the wall.

“It’s always been clear that Trump’s border wall had no real benefit or justification—and now it’s clear that it could serve to further enrich his wealthy friends,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, in a statement announcing the report.

A protest in New York City to hold the companies accountable is planned for Friday, November 17.

“Wall Street leaders across the political spectrum have positioned themselves to benefit financially from Trump’s wildly unpopular and expensive border wall,” the report notes.

The revelations come on the heels of  fight to protect undocumented immigrants, particularly those known as Dreamers, who came to the United States as children. Under the Obama administration, they were protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allowed them to go to school and work. In September, Donald Trump announced he would phase out the program, giving only a month for current recipients to renew and 800,000 Americans uncertain as to whether they’d be able to live in the only country they’ve ever known. Compounding the situation, those who sent in their renewal applications well in advance of the October deadline were falsely labeled as late.

The report also exposes the hypocrisy of these institutions and their stances on immigration. Robert Mercer may be open about his connections to Steve Bannon and Breitbart News, but other companies “have set themselves up to benefit from these draconian provisions, even as some of these same companies’ CEOs have publicly claimed to support DACA and DREAMers.”

Many of these companies are also behind private immigrant detention centers, pointing to, as the report states, a “growing alignment between the financial elite and the white nationalist right.” JPMorgan donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo are the two largest funders of private prisons in the country.

Now the coalition behind “Wall Street’s Border Wall” is taking their message to the streets. On Friday, November 17, the groups will march and rally in front of the headquarters of three of the companies behind the wall. They’ll start at BlackRock and continue on to Renaissance Technologies and JPMorgan.

They’ll be marching for people like Jonathan Cortés, a member of Make the Road New York who spent over two months at a private detention center in Arizona. “It’s so sad to me that the same companies that are financing private immigration detention centers, like the one where I was held in Arizona in terrible conditions, are also putting their money towards Trump’s racist wall project,” Cortés said. “It seems to me that these companies and their CEOs just don’t have a heart—and that, instead of caring about our communities, they prefer to benefit from an anti-immigrant agenda.”

Read the full report.

Ilana Novick is an AlterNet contributing writer and production editor.

Featured image is from Prazis/Shutterstock.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

The so-called House and Senate Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has everything to do with transferring more of the nation’s wealth from ordinary people to corporate predators and super-rich households.

It has nothing to do with benefiting ordinary Americans, including its fast-disappearing middle class, or creating jobs.

Trump and congressional GOP claims otherwise are bald-faced lies. According to the Tax Policy Center (TPC) analysis of the Senate bill, modest tax cuts for ordinary Americans will become increases for many in later years, saying:

“On average in 2027, taxes would rise modestly for the lowest-income group, change little for middle-income groups, and decrease for higher-income groups. Compared to current law, 9 percent of taxpayers would pay more in 2019, 12 percent in 2025, and 50 percent in 2027.”

Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) published “13 terrible things about the Senate GOP tax plan:

1. America’s top 1% benefits greatly.

2. By 2027, 87 million middle class households will pay higher taxes than today.

3. Medicare will be cut by at least $25 billion in 2018, around $400 billion over ten years, likely much more. Other cuts affect agricultural subsidies, financial help for students, military retirement benefits and more.

4. Corporate tax cuts come at the expense of leaving millions of households with health insurance – denying them a fundamental human right.

5. Tax cuts for ordinary Americans are temporary, permanent for corporate predators – already paying minimum taxes by scamming the system, including by holding wealth offshore.

6. America’s deficit will rise by at least another $1.4 trillion, likely multiples this amount over 10 years – endangering Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other vital programs.

7. America’s super-rich benefit hugely – from the pockets of most others.

8. Jobs creation is stifled by encouraging offshoring and profit-shifting overseas.

9. Offshore tax dodgers get a $565 billion tax cut windfall on trillions of dollars held abroad, a tax avoidance scheme encouraged, not challenged.

10. Deducting state and local taxes ends, harming the middle class, especially in high-tax states like New York and California.

11. The Senate plan saves Trump, and others super-rich elites like him, millions of dollars annually in taxes – by repealing the alternative minimum tax (ATM).

12. Many super-wealthy heirs avoid paying estate taxes.

13. The Senate plan reneges on Trump’s pledge to close the “carried interest” loophole, benefitting Wall Street crooks.

Some “middle class miracle,” Trump’s colossal Big Lie about the scheme. He and other super-rich Americans will benefit hugely, their gains from the pockets of ordinary people.

I came across this story whilst investigating something else and thought our readers might like to learn a little more of this interesting individual who became deeply involved in some of America’s biggest conspiracy theories.

Just to be sure though, this is the exact definition of a conspiracy theory. It is an “explanation of an event or situation that invokes an unwarranted conspiracy, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors. Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts”.

In America, conspiracy theories are a part of cultural life, sometimes a way of interpreting and narrating politics as part of an oppositional viewpoint. Sometimes it constitutes an attractive, even engrossing means of engaging in politics. However, on occasions, someone ‘deep dives’ into the subject and surfaces with some quite amazing revelations. Mae Brussell was one of those people. Read on…

Mae Magnin Brussell was born May 29, 1922 – She was the daughter of a Wilshire Temple Rabbi and granddaughter of I. Magnin of the I. Magnin clothing stores in the USA. Mae grew up in comfort. She attended Stanford University in Palo Alto and received an Associate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She married and had five children – and was a well known American radio personality.

Distraught by the murder of President Kennedy, Mae purchased all 26 printed volumes issued by the Warren Commission report, and attempted to make sense of them by cross-indexing and referencing the entire work. Mae was disturbed by the contradictory information and unreported realities that she discovered in her investigation. As a result, she subscribed to many major newspapers and magazines, whose stories she filed and organised, uncovering connections and patterns behind government and corporate malfeasance that she found disturbing.

Her career in radio started in May 1971, when as a guest on the independently owned radio station KLRB, she questioned the 26-volume Warren Commission Hearings. At the time, Mae suggested Lee Harvey Oswald might not have been the only person involved in the assassination of the president. She became a weekly guest. Shortly after, she became the host of Dialogue: Conspiracy  (later renamed World Watchers International). From 1983 to 1988, she hosted the same show on KAZU, a radio station based in Pacific Grove.

Additionally, she wrote articles that were published in The Realist, a magazine published by Paul Krassner. An impressed John Lennon donated money so Krassner could afford to print Mae Brussel’s work.

Mae came to plot the patterns, interconnections and vast other gross criminalities which were in her eyes the shadow thrown by the cabal who had committed the JFK assassination.

“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dictated that line in a memo he issued on Nov. 24, 1963, the day Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman was being transported to the Dallas County Jail after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The memo is one of at least 52 records never previously made public that were included in the recent release of about 2,800 unredacted government documents related to Kennedy’s murder in Dallas two days earlier. Donald Trump approved withholding an undisclosed number of other documents pending a 180-day national security review. However, contrary to what the public have been told, there are still over 30,000 documents that remain sealed, which continues to fuel theories that Oswald did not act alone much as Brussell was saying at the time.  In fact it is now commonly understood by many Americans that “the Oswald lone wolf fairy tale has long been abandoned by the public.”

All these years later and a recent poll found just last month that only 33 percent of Americans believe that one man was responsible for the assassination. A majority, 61 percent, think that others were involved in a conspiracy. In pretty much every demographic, most respondents believed that Oswald didn’t act alone.

In her radio broadcasts, Mae became so effective by naming names and putting together the pieces of the horror puzzle, that she received death threats one of which was from Sandra Good from the Manson family. The Manson Family was a former cult, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. Manson’s followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969.

On December 16, 1970, Mae’s daughter Bonnie Brussell was killed in a car accident which Mae believed was a warning to her. Other threats were made when she linked elements of the U.S. military to satanic cults and practices. These death threats eventually took their toll and she ceased radio broadcasting but continued producing to make shows in her home and mail them to subscribers.

The accuracy of Mae Brussel’s research is testified to by the accuracy of some of her spectacular predictions.

Trouble in Jonestown

A total of 909 individuals died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by Jones. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at Port Kaituma, including United States Congressman Leo Ryan, an act that Jones ordered. Four other Temple members committed murder-suicide in Georgetown at Jones’ command.

While some refer to the events in Jonestown as mass suicide, many others, including Jonestown survivors, regard them as mass murder. All who drank poison did so under duress, and almost a third of victims (304) were minors. It was the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001

In August 1977 (Broadcast #282) Mae discussed Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple’s move to Guyana. She speculated it might be a training camp for assassination teams. This was more than a year before the 909 members of the church were massacred on November 18, 1978. What then took place were the assassinations that subsequently included the congressman.

Trouble in Reagan’s government

On March 29, 1981, much of Mae’s broadcast was spent discussing the power- struggle within the Reagan Administration and asked who will kill off senior team members first. The following morning President Reagan was shot in Washington D.C. by John Hinkley Jr.

Apparently, Hinckley’s motivation for the attack was to impress actress Jodie Foster, over whom he had developed an obsession. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21, 1982 even though the prosecution reports declared him legally sane. The not-guilty verdict led to widespread dismay, and, as a result, the U.S. Congress and a number of states rewrote laws regarding the insanity defence. Hinkley is free and lives with his mother.

RFK Assassination

On May 29, 1968 Mae confronted Rose Kennedy at the Monterey Peninsula Airport and handed her a note telling her Robert F. Kennedy would soon be assassinated. A week later he was shot to death at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian/Jordanian immigrant, was convicted of Kennedy’s murder and sentenced to death in 1969, although his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972. Speculation has arisen that this was a mind control experiment conducted by the CIA. See  video: The Strange case of Sirhan Sirhan

The “War on Terror”

Mae Brussell predicted the “War on Terror”, writing in 1974:

“We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and “predictions” that have already been planned to come true.“

Death

Whilst in the midst of a far-reaching investigation into the Presidio child molestation case Mae was hit with a fast-onset cancer and died on October 3, 1988; she was 66 years old.

Mae Brussell once remarked

“There is nothing worse than looking back and regretting not having done what was important to you. Don’t die before you’re dead.”

Of course, all of these claims could simply be coincidence. But then again – the phrase conspiracy theory was originally a pejorative connotation developed in the 1960s by the CIA, with an implication that the theorist was paranoid to discredit John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

Who’s to know!

All images in this article are from TruePublica.

The Chinese Ambassador to India suggested that his country could rename and even reroute the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, popularly known as CPEC, in order to appease New Delhi.

His Excellency Mr. Luo Zhaohui proposed this controversial idea in a speech at the Centre for Chinese and South-East Asian Studies late last week, which is the second time that he spoke about it when considering that the first instance was half a year ago in May. It’s difficult to interpret why this is being brought up yet again, though there are two branches of understanding that can help with figuring out what might be going on. The first one of course is that the Ambassador isn’t serious about the proposal and is simply bringing it up for diplomatic reasons and in order to temporarily alleviate India’s hysterical jingoistic worries about CPEC. That’s indeed very possible, though the second school of thought on this topic is equally plausible as well, and it’s that Beijing might actually be somewhat serious about this suggestion.

To explain, China would ideally like for India to join its One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, as the complementary synergy between these two Asian Great Powers could literally have world-changing consequences for International Relations, but New Delhi’s ultra-nationalist government has thus far refrained from this due to its maximalist approach to the Kashmir Conflict and fears of being inundated with Chinese goods. In an attempt to temper their unease, Ambassador Zhaohui proposed that China could “create an alternative corridor through Jammu and Kashmir, Nathu La pass or Nepal to deal with India’s concerns”, which would in essence connect over two billion people and create a powerhouse of geopolitical gravity if it was successful.

The problem, however, is that this is more of a liberal fantasy than a functional plan when considering that all indicators point to India’s reluctance to ever agree to this proposal, especially since the South Asian state is in the process of formulating a 100-year-long strategy with the US, as revealed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier last month. Therefore, it’s fair to suppose that any members of China’s permanent military, intelligence, and especially diplomatic bureaucracies – or “deep state” – who believe in this are followers of the liberal school of thought, which might also suggest that some of them might even believe the unfounded fake news reports about Pakistan’s stability and security, ergo why they would publicly entertain renaming and potentially even rerouting CPEC.

The $250 billion worth of deals that Trump agreed to during his visit to the People’s Republic a few weeks ago might have also had an influence on Ambassador Zhaohui’s revival of his curious proposal, whether as a symbolic diplomatic gesture or a serious initiative. At the end of the day, however, it’s very unlikely that China would ever reroute CPEC because of the grand strategic purpose that the project fulfills in providing Beijing with reliable overland access to the Indian Ocean through which almost all of its Eastern Hemispheric trade traverses, and as for renaming this project, it can’t do so unilaterally without Pakistan’s approval and that won’t ever happen because CPEC has become inseparable from the country’s 21^st-century international branding.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Nov 24, 2017:

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

Featured image is from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

During the Great Depression, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) provided financial help to children of low or no-income families.

The program later provided significant federal and state funding to needy families. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty established the Office of Economic Opportunity, administering federal funds to aid impoverished Americans.

It was part of his Great Society, expanding on FDR’s New Deal, including establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 – essential programs, along with Social Security, targeted for elimination by cutting their benefits.

Social Security is weakened by way understating inflation, paying less to eligible recipients than they’d get otherwise.

During the neoliberal 90s, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation (“welfare reform”) Act (PRWORA) changed eligibility rules – abolishing AFDC, the new program beginning on July 1, 1997.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) set five-year time limits. It gave states fixed block grants to administer at their discretion. Americas most needy are especially vulnerable during economic hard times when reduced federal aid exacerbates dire conditions.

Under TANF, recipients must work or receive job training, even during hard times when employment is hard to find.

Single mothers with young children are greatly harmed. During their early formative years, children need extra parental care. TANF recipients are required to find jobs with 24 months of receiving aid.

From 1970 to 1996, financial aid for poor families with children fell by over 40% in two-thirds of the states, adjusted for inflation.

As of July 2017, TANF benefits for impoverished families of three with no other support is 60% of poverty-level income – extreme deprivation for affected households.

In 2015, less than 25% of poor families with children received TANF aid – compared to over two-thirds of eligible households in 1997. In 14 states, only around 10% of impoverished families got TANF benefits.

The 2009 Recovery Act included TANF Emergency Fund aid. In September 2010, it wasn’t renewed. Budget-strapped states continue force-feeding harsh cuts, vulnerable residents harmed most.

In 2015, a book by Johns Hopkins sociologist Kathryn Edin and Univ. of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions director Luke Shaefer, titled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” was stunning.

It reported this level of extreme poverty affects about 1.5 million US households with 2.8 million children – surviving on practically nothing. It’s hard to imagine.

The Clinton co-presidency promised to “end welfare as we know it.” Trump intends doing him one better, wanting sharp TANF cuts, deplorably saying “people are taking advantage of the system” – no evidence proving it, according to Edin.

He intends pushing for greater welfare cutbacks once tax cuts for corporate predators and super-rich Americans are enacted into law – provided House and Senate members agree on so-called tax reform, likely but not certain, plenty of opposition flack to deal with, whether enough to kill it remains to be seen.

Likely early next year, details on Trump’s welfare cuts will be announced. According to his Domestic Policy Council director Paul Winfree, he and another staffer are “working on a major welfare reform program.”

Their proposal will be included in a 2018 Trump executive order, outlining administration principles, directing federal agencies to draft recommendations for federal legislation.

Congressional leaders were told this is coming next year. According to Edin, TANF greatly reduced aid to needy families. It never became a “springboard to work.”

Welfare benefits already are minimal, way below what’s needed. Further cuts will cause more harm than already to America’s most vulnerable.

Trump’s initial 2018 budget proposal, revealed last March, sought cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants for students and other programs.

His ultimate aim, along with GOP hardliners, is eliminating social justice in America altogether – wanting more of the nation’s resources available for its privileged class, militarism and warmaking.

The country already is unsafe and unfit to live in. A few more years of Trumpism and GOP extremism will make it impossible except for the privileged few.

“(Maidan) Protesters naively believed that if they overthrow current government, which was corrupted and inefficient, they will achieve all their aims. In fact, since the result (comes) from the very foundations of this social system it was impossible by changing the government. And what is important is that this indignation of people was used, I believe, by external forces to achieve their aims, which were very different from what was pursued by rank and file participants of these events.”

-Ruslan Dzarasov (from this week’s interview.)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Four years ago this week, following the Ukrainian president’s decision to abandon an agreement to enhance trade ties with the European Union and pursue closer relations with Russia, small protests started to emerge in Kiev which would eventually grow to major clashes with police in broad-based demonstrations. The Euromaidan movement was born! [1]

Ultimately, events in February in front of the Ukraine parliament, would lead to the departure of President Yanukovych and the installment of a new Western-friendly government. [2]

The new authority in Kiev, and the spectre of ultra-nationalist influence threatening ethnic Russians in the east of the country led to the secession of Crimea and similar efforts in the Donbass region, in particular, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. [3]

A civil war has persisted in which Russia is accused of exerting its influence. With rebels in the east entrenched and successfully fending off the Ukraine government’s ‘anti-terrorism’ operations, a cease-fire process has been put in place. [4]

In recent weeks representatives of Russia and the U.S. have been discussing the terms by which U.N. ‘peacekeeping’ forces may be dispatched to the region. [5]The full institutional weight of the U.S. government, so far excepting President Trump, is promoting the transfer of $47 million worth of lethal defensive weapons to Kiev for use in the Donbass. [6]Further, a proposal is before the Ukrainian parliament, otherwise known as the Verkhova Rada, which would, if passed, declare Russia and ‘aggressor’ country, and move to suspend trade ties with it. The so-called Re-integration Act would also likely trigger the resumption of military operations in Donbass. [7][8]

It has been difficult to engage the broader public in a proper conversation about how to direct policy toward the Donbass conflict, especially as it is obscured by narratives painting Russia and its involvement as a menace. [9]

On this week’s installment of the Global Research News Hour, two analysts present an in-depth perspective on the political and economic history of the nearly four year old conflict, probe the way the international community has inserted itself into the situation, and ascertain what prospects for peace and recovery remain for this troubled Eastern European country.

Ruslan Dzarasov heads the department of Political Economy at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. His field of research includes Keynesianism and Marxism, and analysis of the Soviet experience and liberal reforms among others. On September 30, 2017 he presented at the University of Manitoba on the subject of post-Communist Russia, global capitalism, and the Ukraine crisis, as part of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group’s Revolutions conference.

Roger Annis is a socialist, trade union activist and retired aerospace worker based in Vancouver, B.C. He has written several articles on peace and social justice issues, and edits the NEW COLD WAR website.

Both men spoke to the Global Research News Hour at the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg, in an interview recorded on October 2nd, 2017.

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Notes:

1. Iryna Stelmakh and Tom Balmforth (Nov 21, 2014), ‘Ukraine’s Maidan protests – one year on’, RFE/RL, published in The Guardian;  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/21/-sp-ukraine-maidan-protest-kiev
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RyOaFwcEw
3. https://www.rbth.com/international/2016/09/05/the-minsk-agreements-2-years-2-deals-but-no-peace-in-ukraine_627177
4. ibid
5. https://www.unian.info/politics/2249989-stratfor-hints-of-a-shift-in-the-ukraine-conflict.html
6. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/will-president-trump-finally-arm-ukraine
7. https://www.unian.info/politics/2252461-weeks-milestones-budget-and-christmas-in-parliament-anti-corruption-mess-and-avakov-the-constitutionalist.html
8. https://www.globalresearch.ca/will-ukraine-cut-diplomatic-relations-with-russia-will-kiev-resume-military-operations-against-donbass/5618506
9. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-nyts-yellow-journalism-on-russia/5609286

Featured image: Net neutrality supporters hold signs in front of the White House. (Photo: Joseph Gruber/Flickr/cc)

After one commissioner called the FCC’s newly-released plan to roll back net neutrality “worse than one could imagine,” a second commissioner is now calling voters to make sure the proposal by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai does not go through.

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed published Thursday—entitled “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality“—Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel points to the overwhelming public support for net neutrality and the ongoing questions about validity of anti-net neutrality public comments submitted to FCC, as well as what appear to be tens of thousands of missing comments.

“If the idea behind the plan is bad, the process for commenting on it has been even worse,” she writes.

Rosenworcel decries Pai’s plan as “a lousy idea. And it deserves a heated response from the millions of Americans who work and create online every day.”

Killing net neutrality, she adds, means

your broadband provider could carve internet access into fast and slow lanes, favoring the traffic of online platforms that have made special payments and consigning all others to a bumpy road. Your provider would have the power to choose which voices online to amplify and which to censor. The move could affect everything online, including the connections we make and the communities we create.

This is not the internet experience we know today. Americans should prevent the plan from becoming the law of the land.

In short, she writes, the American public needs to “Make a ruckus,” including by targeting other members of the FCC.

Rosenworcel has also made recent rallying cries to save net neutrality on social media. On Wednesday, she tweeted a link to Pai’s proposal and wrote:

“Don’t boo. Read it. Then roar.  It’s time to make a ruckus. It’s time to #SaveNetNeutrality.”

This is the @FCC plan to roll back #NetNeutrality: https://t.co/05owAva2hu.

Don't boo. Read it. Then roar.

It's time to make a ruckus. It's time to #SaveNetNeutrality.

— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) November 22, 2017

Her op-ed came a day after Democratic FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Pai’s proposal is “worse than one could imagine” and released a fact sheet (pdf) explaining its consequences to the net as we know it, as Common Dreams reported.

As NBC News outlines, the resistance to Pai’s plan is intensifying.

“While the topic of net neutrality is certainly one that can be described as ‘wonky,'” the reporting notes, “it’s still something that could affect every person who uses the internet.”

Among those catalyzing the resistance is digital rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Corynne McSherry, legal director at EFF, wrote this week,

“Instead of responding to the millions of Americans who want to protect the free and open Internet, the FCC instead is ceding to the demands of a handful of massive ISPs, like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.”

The group is also urging open internet supporters to contact their members of Congress to fight any rollback of net neutrality.

Digital rights group Fight for the Future is also urging constituents to press their lawmakers to stop the plan, and is calling for protests at Verizon retail stores nationwide on December 7.

Verizon is being targeted, a call-to-action explains, because Pai “is a former top lawyer for Verizon, and the company has been spending millions on lobbying and lawsuits to kill net neutrality so they can gouge us all for more money.”

#NetNeutrality is NOT DEAD YET. Congress has stopped FCC votes before. Do NOT give up!

1) RETWEET this to help spread the word that we can still stop this.

2) CALL your lawmakers: https://t.co/S8d0OxZQe0

3) PROTEST at Verizon stores on Dec 7: https://t.co/OvdNJe0Idh pic.twitter.com/oPXgyGRsam

— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) November 21, 2017