Global Research

Saudi Arabia declared war against Yemen in 2015 with the aid and support of several other countries through the sale of weapons, logistics and intelligence services. 

Below is the summary of casualties and damages, 900 days from the outset of the war, provided by the Legal Center for Rights and Development, a civil society organization based in the capital of Sana’a, Yemen.

Source: amlashi / Legal Center for Rights and Development

Based in Sanaa, the LCRD, provides a daily update of  casualties:

Throughout the past decade, the UN General Assembly Third Committee has adopted the resolution: “Combating Glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

Every year the resolution is adopted by an overwhelming majority of UN member states, while the European Union, which, as the battleground of Nazism should have supported the resolution, merely abstains, and their fence-straddling raises disturbing questions about their actual tendencies. Japan’s abstention raises equally disturbing questions. The United States has consistently, and shockingly, opposed this resolution.

The resolution is sponsored by the Russian Federation, which together with its Soviet comrades, lost more than 30 million citizens in the struggle against the Nazi invasion. The resolution is co-sponsored by more than 35 member states, including many of the most fiercely anti-fascist countries, including China, which lost another 25 million Chinese citizens in the struggle against Japanese fascist invaders, North Korea, which suffered horrifically under Japanese imperialism, but ultimately triumphed in the struggle against Japanese colonization and fascism, and other co-sponsors include Cuba, Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Belarus, Angola, Venezuela, along with numerous developing countries. This resolution is voted on November 14.

The crucial question is why the United States, each year, has, almost in isolation, voted against this resolution, in violation of the will of the international community and the majority of the UN member states. Last year only the United States and Ukraine opposed this resolution, which was adopted as A/RES/71/179.

This current resolution states:

“Recognizing with deep concern the alarming increase in instances of discrimination, intolerance and extremist violence motivated by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Christianophobia and prejudices against persons of other ethnic origins, religions and beliefs,”

“Mindful of the horrors of the Second World War, and stressing in this regard that the victory over Nazism in the Second World War contributed to establishing the conditions for the creation of the United Nations, designed to prevent future wars and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

4. “Expresses deep concern about the glorification, in any form, of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials and holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, as well as by declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition and collaborated with the Nazi movement participants in national liberation movements.”

6. “Emphasizes once more the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that “any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime, its allies and related organizations, whether official or unofficial, should be prohibited by States, also emphasizes that such manifestations do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of the Second World War and negatively influence children and young people, and stresses in this regard that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS, and that failure by States to effectively address such practices is incompatible with the obligations of States Members of the United Nations under its Charter.”

“Notes with concern the increase in the number of racist incidents worldwide, including the rise of skinhead groups, which have been responsible for many of these incidents, as well as the resurgence of racist and xenophobic violence, targeting, inter alia, persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities or on any other grounds, including arson attacks on houses and vandalization of schools and places of worship.”

Perhaps the answer to the US position became visible with the election of a president of a failing capitalist economy, who captured the rage and frustration of an increasingly impoverished citizenry, and appears to condone the most loathsome scapegoating of minorities in America (and elsewhere). This reached a boiling point in Charlottesville in mid -August this year, during a rally of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, publicized, among others by Mike Enoch, who refers to African Americans as “animals,” extols fascism, is a cohort of Klu Klux Klan devotee David Duke and white-nationalist James Alex Fields, who drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer.

The President, to the shock and embarrassment of his allies, stated that there are some “very, very fine people” present at the neo-Nazi rally, though his daughter, Ivanka, a converted orthodox Jew, tweeted:

“There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazis.”

Coincidentally, this same August, 2017, two brilliant films opened to great acclaim, and suddenly disappeared from movie theatres. The first, “Detroit,” directed by Katheryn Bigelow, was extoled in a New York Times review:

“The film understands and strives to dramatize racism not as a matter of bad personal attitudes or equal and opposite prejudices, but rather as a structuring fact of American life, an apparatus of power, exclusion and control wielded against ‘them.’”

Although “Detroit” focuses upon an event in 1967, the Algiers Motel incident, simultaneously another film, “Whose Streets” appeared, and also quickly disappeared.

“Whose Streets” documents prevailing rampant racism, the recent murder of innocent unarmed black men by sadistic racist police armed with lethal weapons: the list is too long – Ferguson, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, etc. etc. This is the current criminal climate. The murder of Heather Heyer should be included, because neo-Nazism rears its bestial head too often in times of economic crisis, a crazed and enraged expression of powerlessness, which, with an increased militarization of police, sadistically targets the homeless, the vulnerable, the voiceless, the most impoverished.

The Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. reveals that 23 million Germans faced starvation at the time Hitler was voted inter power.

Racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, conspicuously increasing throughout Europe, have been written in invisible ink in the USA, no doubt underlying the US opposition to the UN Anti-Nazi Resolution. President Trump is the chemical substance that revealed this hidden writing to the naked eye.

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

While the orchestrated coup is afoot in Saudi Arabia, little attention is being paid to the potential disruption that such a fiasco may entail for the global oil markets. At the present juncture, the US’s stock of power has grown as a result of the rise to power of a more US-loyal and obedient Saudi prince, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) (image below). If the tragic prince manages to survive, the US will have in place a trigger happy and obedient anti-Iran monarch.

If he does not ascend to the throne and Saudi Arabia capsizes, US-led capital will still reap war-industry profits arising from the war-wreckage he leaves behind. Contingently upon the degree and duration of violence in cases of war, either across the strait of Hormuz and or by an internally collapsing Saudi Arabia, the levels of global oil supplies may chronically fall below demand. It so appears that no matter what happens in Saudi Arabia as a result of the coup, China may incur a loss.

However, does the rise of such a ghost/US-marioneted prince offset the recent American losses, and those of its allies, in Syria, Iraq and Yemen? Furthermore, would it not be the case that any serious disruption in Saudi Arabia, the US’s protégé nation that guarantees stability in the global oil market, would hold an increasingly grudging world hostage to the global hegemon. Questions of receding American power and imperialist racketeering come to mind, as they should.

Incidentally as well, whether MBS, the vengeful prince, can pull it off–given that he has eroded many of the outstanding sources of Saudi legitimacy – or whether Saudi Arabia will fragment following in the path of neighbouring states, are issues that cloud the stability of global oil supplies. This is a risk like no other in modern history. A protracted conflict either within Saudi Arabia or with Iran, one that is different from the ongoing Saudi aerial bombing of the starving Yemeni population, would be a first in recorded history, especially as it may entail chronic shortfalls in oil supply. Although the current oil market is buoyant partly citing political uncertainty behind the higher prices, the mainstream’s overrated ‘hypothesis of efficient markets’ cannot envisage a scenario of strategic shortfalls in oil production. Such scenarios are said to be algebraic-time incoherent (the steady state time we use to predict the future); these would-be events are entwined with the uncertainty of history, or with the way dominant political forces undergo a volte-face. At some time in mid-stream, people organised and in a position of power suddenly change their minds and change the course history. Fortunately, the actuaries of the mainstream cannot grapple with real or social time events, otherwise these would be hired to predict and abort the timing of the next revolution; the hope of billions around the planet for emancipation.

Playing with oil supplies is synonymous with the politics of brinksmanship. Oil is a strategic commodity for many reasons, foremost because it provides much of the energy required for world population growth. As oil and energy from oil to sustain or improve upon production levels fall below consumption for periods that exceed the drawing down of stocked reserves, the strategic impact of oil becomes all too clear for everyone to see.

It may be as well to recall that Saudi Arabia is peculiar in the world of oil production. It provides what is called a ‘production cushion’ by its ability to quickly pump additional oil (around 2 million bpd) to balance abrupt global oil shortages. Pari passu, instability in the Saudi state infuses a higher risk premium into the oil price, which otherwise would not be necessary. Needless to say, a scenario that includes a prolonged absence of such Saudi cushion qua safety valve and, possibly a decrease in Saudi oil supplies, spells disaster for most oil dependent states.

Of all the oil dependent states, China is the world’s biggest importer of oil. On the face of it, China may be hardest hit. In a sense, a significant drop in Saudi oil supplies may more than just dent the high Chinese rates of growth (the effect of high oil prices), it may bring a significant portion of its production capacity to a halt (the effect of oil shortages). As is already well known, China’s inexorable rise is anathema to US empire. An empire is not simply a big economic power. China is a big economic power, but it is neither an empire nor imperialist. Defining imperialism by the exploitation of wage labour would make the grocery store next door imperialist. The overly analytical minds of the mainstream employ such logic to define China as imperialist.

But then again, the mainstream is paid to exonerate the imperialist or the dominant actual and ideological force in history. Imperialism is a real and historically specific form of exploitation that draws wealth from whole nations by coercion and violence. Imperialism in the monopoly age is still more ferocious because it extracts more of the conquered peoples’ wealth by commodifying their lives. China, in particular, bore tremendous losses at the hands of a history ushered by western imperialism. An empire is something like the US empire, which is heir to centuries of accumulated European colonial and imperialist plunder along with, and this is a crucial point, the culture of ideas that justifies cold blooded expansion.

China, which until two centuries ago was the leading civilisation of the planet, has arisen and grown. All else remaining constant, within a decade or so and at the present rates of growth, China will even be bigger than the US in nominal dollar terms GDP. It is already bigger in terms of purchasing power parity exchange rates. A bigger China heralds a material rupture (a break with the past in the global balance of economic power); and as China becomes big enough, it also becomes inevitable for an ideological rupture to follow (a break with the past as US-dominant ideology changes).

The latter rupture, a dethronement of the dominant culture and ideology, of ways of knowledge and modes of social organisation, must follow either because of reasons related to a rising intrinsic ideology peculiar to China or because the rift that China creates leaves open the space into which new forms of political organisation and their corresponding novel ideas would grow. In short, there will be a change of power at the top of the global pyramid in the international division of labour. The degree of these global alternations potentially bears the long awaited civilizational turnaround: the dumping of the ‘kill the third-worlder and weep for him or her’ ethos of the white man’s burden, becomes likely. In a manner of speaking, ‘the East wind would have defeated the West wind,’ as per Mao Zedong.

Meanwhile, arresting the advance of China has become something of an American obsession. For those who stress that China is imperialist, they foresee a détente into which both imperialist powers (China and the US) would jointly east on imperial tribute– a sort of super-imperialism in which the US and China cohabitate and split the spoils from the rest of the world. Even if such a hypothesis were true, that is if China was imperialist, one is also reminded that inter-imperialist rivalry motivates warring because, under capitalism, all predatory parties take their cue from fetish-like market forces that are alienated from responsible social control – people fall victim to external market forces shaped by profit making. In such a world, objective circumstances that escape the command of reasonable people systemically lead capital, the class in control under capitalism, into war. There were always wars, but their frequency, causes and modes of realisation vary according to the historical periods in which they occur. Even under the two-imperialisms assumption, the US and China will collide. However, the reality remains that China is not an imperialist power by any stretch of the imagination. China is still shedding the shackles of years of colonial loot and wars of depopulation.

Worse yet, the current mainstream’s neurotic fixation with stymieing the ascent of China recommends a pre-emptive nuclear strike either within the intermediate term (the window of opportunity) or while the US still enjoys ‘nuclear primacy’ as one of the feasible political tools at the US’s disposal. With Trump at the helm, there is something to sombrely ponder about an inchoate president playing the role of madman at the pinnacle of an empire that contemplates the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike option. However, Trump is no exception to the streak of past US presidents. In the early 1980’s, Bush Senior would comfort himself with the thought that more Russians would die than Americans in case the US nuked the Soviet Union first.

The theory with which one may explain such presidential behaviour is called the madman theory. Apart from having nothing to do with theory, this theory has little to do with the personality of the incumbent president; playing mad is more a part of the job description of all US presidents in the nuclear age. What is additionally disconcerting however, is that the liberal bent of all such presidents, including their overall cultural environments, regards as primary bourgeois rights and ‘negative freedom’ (national defence and defence of interests in foreign territory) and only pays lip service to social rights or human lives. The proof for this is evidenced ex post-facto in the hundreds of millions of war and related deaths of the twentieth century.

As always, a western social fascism breeding in a liberal or bourgeois democratic receptacle combined with a primacy of politics or, the premise that imperialist aggression has primarily sociological causes, mean that no Chinese cant of ‘one tide lifting all boats’ can write off the prospect of outright or surrogate confrontations with the US. Placing the pursuit of power for stability of capitalist rule before instantaneous economic gains is the sociological underpinnings of imperialism. That is not to say that economics falls last; economics is determining in the last moment or after working people have been coerced or commodified by violence to extract the most value for price out of them. In most cases such a process, dubbed the law of value, involves depopulation by war, hunger or severe austerity.

Hence, the pursuit of power of which one speaks is not some psychological whim, it is the power that cements the rule of capital or the social relationship by which private gains expand by the commodification-consumption of man and the environment. In such a metabolic order (metabolic as in the making of wealth consumes more of man and nature), China cannot wiggle its way out of the US’s wrath (the commodification of its own people) and all at once climb the global economic ladder by stealth. As the chief capitalist power in history, the US is being led by its own objective and alien market forces: it necessarily must stop China. The case may be that it is only the reasonable view of some US strategists who foresee the prospects of any nuclear disaster as mutually assured destruction (a nuclear winter), which mitigates the realisation of that abominable first strike scenario.

With nuclear confrontation being remote (but still very real), China’s market-led expansion remains vulnerable so far as its trade routes fall in areas of US sponsored or instigated wars or states under the thumb of Uncle Sam, like the Gulf states. More to the point, China’s energy security and circuits are weak spots. The recent coup by the Hamlet-like prince destabilises that circuit in a region that exports a fifth of global oil supplies, which flow through the Hormuz strait on daily basis. Saudi Arabia itself produces nearly a sixth of global oil. For long, oil demand and supply run tightly close to each other, as they must. So, to restate the obvious, missile-lobbing within Saudi territory or across the waters of the Gulf harms all oil dependent countries.

Although China may incur serious shortages in the short to intermediate term, other powerful emerging countries such as India or Brazil will also lose. This begs the question: Can the US regulate the sabotage of oil supply and production across the oil dependent globe? With the US being the third largest exporter of oil and with its capacity to speedily increase production via unconventional drilling methods, it can be selective in choosing the parties it wants to bail out and the parties it wants to leave behind to agonise. For the latter group, their resources will be disengaged or be put up for grab at fire sale prices, and their capital could flow North to the safety of dollar markets. Just as every global recession has been so far, a war in Saudi or with Iran may turn out to be a wealth and value restructuring arrangement in favour of US empire.

For the US, it is the impact of the chronic oil shortage on China’s internal security that matters. China’s Achilles heel may still be the loosening of the centripetal pull of the Beijing authority upon the vast stretches of the successor state to the heavenly kingdom, as per any caricature reading of Chinese history. However, modernity and its trappings have eroded distances and homogenised traditions. The heavenly kingdom has become pretty much worldly with the speediest of trains. The effect of the oil shock may not shatter China, but can it bring its working population to endure the effects of severe austerity – up to the point of subversionary spill-over.  Put differently, can the shortages of oil combined with an overstretched Chinese credit market (China’s huge debts triggering a Minsky moment) precipitate a downward spiral steep enough to impel China into the sort of shock therapy and internal collapse that undermined the post-socialist Soviet republics?

The simple answer is no. To borrow from the catchphrases of the Great Recession: China is too big to fail. It is also growing in the safety of a regulated capital account – Minsky moments can be contained. At the present interval, some venture to ask what would happen if China decided to impose sanctions on the USA. China has enough partnerships for energy supply, productive capacity and financial wherewithal to withstand the shock and possibly use the opportunity to recapitalise with alternative energy sources at a rate fast enough that may become a historic landmark. The world has changed. China is the world leading auto-sufficient system of market accumulation. Short of nuclear first strike, the Chinese system is rooted in the protectionism of the socialist era and it is undefeatable. Meanwhile, apart from the US’s declining market share globally(around 15 percent while China’s is nearly 20 percent) and its receding hegemony, counting its recent losses in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and the hemming in of Iran and Turkey upon the northern border of historical Palestine (facetiously, the Medes and the Amorites are coming),these are the harbingers of US imperial twilight.

For long, no matter how foolish or miscalculating US empire appeared, was it right or wrong, the outcome of its actions favoured its status. The US could lose, but its very loss would be a win because there was no other power challenging its hegemony. History was American and in history there is no right and wrong. What was necessary for history, that is necessary to service the expansion of commodity production via a metabolic order auto-reproducing by value destruction and creation simultaneously (waste, wars, depopulation and environmental degradation are also production), was also borne out by the immediate politics of the Oval office. An identity or a complete reconciliation of historical necessity and immediacy in politics as chance was nearly always in evidence. The Hegelian utopia or an end of history in which necessity became chance materialised for a period after the fall of the Soviet Union. For instance, in 2003 the United Nations did not authorise the invasion of Iraq, but the US invaded; while there was no power to challenge its decision, the nexus of war and financial expansion played in its favour. So long as it was unchallenged, it had won whether it acted soberly or foolishly.

That ideality, the identity of necessity with coincidence, is no longer the case. The US had tried in vain to enact a no-fly zone over Syria, but was vetoed by China and Russia. More recently, the US’s attempts to sacrifice the Kurds in Iraq have failed. Its Saudi sponsored coup, a fratricidal spectacle torn from the pages of a Shakespearian play, will most likely ensue because MBS has confronted public power (the Leninist understanding of the deep state), the bureaucratic structure and the order of kinship and clientelism holding together the kingdom. The coup will fail also because no one is convinced that the coup is an anti-corruption campaign, when in fact the present king was most opposed to corruption investigations in the past.

The coup will decidedly fail because while the US held Saudi Arabia in a state of animated suspension to control/usurp its oil, it imposed upon that society an immutable state of consciousness re-enacted by a fabricated Islamic obscurantism; such stasis in which the colonial settlement of Palestine remained unforgiven would backfire if the gung-hoprince was to allegorically hoist the Zionist flag over Mecca. Saudi life before oil was of the typical peasant or nomadic structures in which everyone, men and women, worked and had a say in the decisions made. It was the combination of Euro-US imperialism that imposed an identity, which promotes idleness and segregation. However, the very reactionary identity cum social ideology erected by imperialism will at a moment’s notice reinvent itself as anti-imperialist. In Saudi Arabia, the credo of anti-Zionism was uncompromised in order to compete with the popularity of pan-Arabism. More important, the anti-Zionist struggle is contiguous to peoples’ liberation struggles in the region as a whole. Such legacies instilled at the popular level are the guarantee that the pro-Zionist/imperialist putsch will fail.

Of course, the imperialist sponsored Sunni-Shiite identity schism reared by the invasion of Iraq and its Bremer’s constitution is a sinkhole into which Iran had fallen, othering many into the Sunni hand-me-down imperialist rubric. But the recent gains of themulti-sectarian Arab Syrian army and the bitter victory of Yemen, a country that withstands a baleful famine in the process, had thrown a monkey wrench into the imperialist plot. The blowback from the defeat of the MBS-Zionist alliance/coup will air on the side of China. What China had sown into the Arab world, especially its long-standing support for the rights of the Palestinian people, will come to fruition.

Although the short-term impact of oil shortages on China may be dire, the boomerang effect upon a US empire auto-eroding by the practice of racism inside and outside, and the instigation of war to promote its growth by waste industry, can also be dire. However, just as there are imperialistically imposed identity-politics traps mitigating popular anti-imperialist unity in the Arab region, there are also similar hurdles of identity superseding class unity in the North. The dominant strand of Western/liberal Marxism voiding the necessity for ironclad popular organisation as undemocratic and swerving popular energy into futile academic tit-for-tats, does not bode well for the rest of the world. The results remain to be seen.

Dr. Ali Kadri is Senior Research Fellow, Middle East Institute (MEI), National University of Singapore. He was previously  visiting fellow at the Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and head of the Economic Analysis Section at the United Nations regional office for Western Asia.

Note

[1] Ali Kadri is author of The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World,  https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9789811048210

Featured image is from Energy and Capital.

Despite appearances and differing ideologies, both the Kurds’ SDF and ISIS are Western intelligence assets in Syria. Neither would exist in Syria without the West and its allies, and both serve to destroy the country.

The Empire’s anti-democratic SDF proxies are not defeating the U.S Daesh proxies. They are simply replacing them.

One might reasonably ask how two seemingly opposed terrorist groups could possibly share the same strategic purpose. The answer would likely escape the awareness of the fighters as well, and it certainly escapes the awareness of most Canadians, whose tax dollars are supporting the terrorists. But the answer isn’t that complicated.

Consider the similarities between the two groups:

• Both groups seek to illegally “impose their will” on Syria, and are effectively destroying Syria, contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of Syrians[1]
• Both groups seek to partition Syria
• Both groups require and receive support from the same aggressor nations
• Both groups engage in activities that are illegal under international law and punishable according to Nuremburg Principles

ISIS/Daesh serves the military strategy of “place-setter”[2], as outlined in an earlier article. Empire first infests an area with terrorists, then destroys the area, using the fake pretext of “going after terrorists”, subsequently, it channels the original terrorists elsewhere, and then replaces the former terrorists with new terrorist occupiers who are portrayed as “liberators”.

Syrian journalist Nasser Atta describes the following video as an ISIS convoy “carrying 4500 fighters and their families leaving Raqqa a month ago after an agreement with US-backed Kurdish forces”:

#Isis convey carrying 4500 fighters& their families leaving #Raqqa a month ago after an agreements with the US backed Kurdish forces. #Syria pic.twitter.com/n7S919TNy3

— Nasser Atta (@nasseratta5) November 14, 2017

Investigative journalist Sharmine Narwani describes the same strategy in these words:

Follow the OIL: ISIS was always a US asset employed to occupy areas and delineate new borders for the US and its allies to "liberate." Conquest masked as liberation. #Syria #Iraq #Kurds https://t.co/CLtyGRom0S

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) November 15, 2017

The West, their allies, and their proxies are not wanted in Syria. They are the problem, not the solution. Their foreign “interventions” in Syria amount to war crimes as policy.

Notes

[1] TESEV (2012) ‘The perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2011’, TürkiyeEkonomikveSosyalEtüdlerVakfi, Istanbul, February, online: http://tesev.org.tr/en/yayin/ the-perception-of-turkey-in- the-middle-east-2011/ Accessed 17 November, 2017

[2] Mark Taliano, “The Islamic State as “Place-Setter” for the American Empire. ISIS is the Product of the US Military-Intelligence Complex.” Global Research, 26 October, 2017.  (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-islamic-state-as-place-setter-for-u-s-empire-isis-is-the-product-of-the-us-military-intelligence-complex/5606371). Accessed 11 November, 2017

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stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Speech, media and academic freedom in America are threatened.

Forcing RT America to register as a foreign agent was a shot across the bow, an attempt to undermine its operations, wanting its reporting silenced.

Perhaps it signaled what’s ahead, an all-out assault on legitimate dissent, viewpoints challenging the official narrative, hard truths dark forces in America want suppressed, especially online, in RT’s case for its popular television news, information and commentaries.

Established in October 2000, The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) aims to monitor, investigate, and report to Congress on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.”

“The Commission is required to issue an annual report of its evaluation and findings.” Its latest report was wide-ranging.

Recommendations included, urging congressional “strengthen(ing) (of the) Foreign Agents Registration Act to require the registration of all staff of Chinese state-run media entities, given that Chinese intelligence gathering and information warfare efforts are known to involve staff of Chinese state-run media organizations and in light of the present uneven enforcement of the Act.”

Media in China and Russia aren’t “intelligence gathering and information warfare” operations – unlike US-led Western ones, functioning as press agents for wealth, power and privilege.

USCC accused Chinese state media of involvement in spying and propaganda. Forcing them to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) will be another body blow to media freedom.

Xinhua with offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco is notably targeted, the report saying:

“Xinhua serves some of the functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership on both domestic and international events.”

In testimony to the USCC, CIA/connected Freedom House said a “loophole” prevents requiring Xinhua and the People’s Daily staff from registering as foreign agents.

Bipartisan neocon US lawmakers are working on overhauling FARA in the wake of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manfort’s indictment on 12 counts, including operating as an unregistered foreign agent and false and misleading FARA statements – charges unrelated to Russia.

A previous article explained AIPAC has been an unregistered agent for Israel since 1953 – no charges ever brought for operating illegally, nothing holding it accountable for decades of deplorable actions, including support for Israeli high crimes, along with malicious lying, fear-mongering and promoting naked aggression against its adversaries.

Things in America are heading toward outlawing dissent, calling it a threat to national security, even treason, equating it to terrorism.

It’s a fundamental freedom, the hallmark of free societies, the highest form of patriotism – constitutionally guaranteed.

Yet it’s endangered by administration and congressional efforts to compromise it – perhaps heading toward eliminating the most fundamental of all rights.

Post-9/11 police state laws headed America toward tyranny. Is abolishing speech, media and academic freedom next?

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

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

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Featured image is from fara.gov.

Following intimidation and threats of arrest and asset seizure, Russia Today (RT) was forced to register as a foreign agent. According to a new report on U.S.-China relations, China’s Xinhua News Agency may be targeted next.

The report indicates that the news outlet has been responsible for gathering intelligence for the Chinese government, which lawmakers in the U.S. believe requires the reclassification of the news outlet as a “foreign agent.”

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), which “monitors” and “investigates” bilateral relations between the two countries and recommends legislation to lawmakers, has said Xinhua is part of a scheme by Chinese leadership to change global perception of the country and operates as an intelligence-gathering mission.

This annual report focused on Xinhua and its rapid growth across the globe, with now over 150 global affiliates. The outlet has also expanded rapidly within the U.S. now having offices in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

“Xinhua serves some of the functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership on both domestic and international events,” the report claimed.

The report recommends that lawmakers force Xinhua to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) because of its intelligence-gathering activities. This would require top-level employees to register with the Department of Justice and forfeit any and all required personal data and information.

In its decision to force RT to become FARA compliant, an outlet that services programs hosted by some of the U.S.’ own top journalists, the U.S. Congress called the outlet a “state-run propaganda machine.”

RT and Sputnik editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan called the move an affront to the principles of freedom of speech, which is embedded in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“The war the U.S. establishment wages with our journalists is dedicated to all the starry-eyed idealists who still believe in freedom of speech. Those who invented it, have buried it,” said Simonyan.

In a recent FOX News interview, Alternet Senior Editor, Max Blumenthal criticized congress’ decision to force RT to register as a foreign agent.

“I go on RT fairly regularly and the reason I do so is because the three major cable networks are promoting bombing and sanctioning half the world, at least the noncompliant nations in it, and RT is questioning that,” Blumenthal said.

“They let me talk about, for example, the real sources of foreign influence in this town including the Israel Lobby and organizations like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) which have been promoting a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, war on Lebanon, war on Iran, which is not required for some reason to register as a foreign agent, and I don’t know why that is.”

Featured image is from Flickr.

Snipers Fired At BOTH Police and Protesters In Ukraine

Remember the protests in Ukraine which led to the old leader being replaced?

If you’ll recall,  the ruthless slaughter of people by snipers was the event which turned world opinion against the Ukrainian President, and resulted in him having to flee the country.

Italy’s 11th largest newspaper – Il Giornale – reported on an admission by several of the snipers (Google translation):

“Everyone started shooting two or three shots at a time. It went on for fifteen, twenty minutes. We had no choice. We were ordered to shoot both on the police and the demonstrators, without any difference. I was totally outraged.

“So Georgian Alexander Revazishvilli remembers the tragic shootout of 20 February 2014 in Kiev when a group of mysterious snipers opened fire on crowds and cops massacring over 80 people. That massacre has horrified the world and changed the destiny of Ukraine by forcing President Viktor Yanukovich accused of organizing the shootout. But the massacre also changed the fates of Europe and our country, triggering the crisis that will lead to sanctions against Putin’s Russia. Sanctions revealed a boomerang for the Italian economy (Watch the video ).

Revazishvilli’s confessions and two other Georgians – gathered by writers in the documentary “Ukraine, the hidden truths” aired tonight at 23.30 on Matrix, Channel 5 – reveal a different and disconcerting truth. The truth of a massacre and the same opposition that accused Yanukovych and his Russian allies. Revazishvilli and his two companions – met and interviewed in the documentary – are a former member of the security services of former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and two former militants of his party. Hired in Tbilisi by Mamuka Mamulashvili, Saakashvili’s military adviser, are tasked with supporting – along with other Georgian and Lithuanian volunteers – ongoing demonstrations in Kiev in return for a $5,000 final fee.

***

The following day, Mamulashvili and the leaders of the protest explain to volunteers who will face a police assault at the Conservatory building and at the Ukraine hotel. In that case – he says – we must shoot at the square and sow the chaos. But one of the protagonists confesses to having received another explanation, much more comprehensive. “When Mamulashvili arrived, I also asked him. Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting – he replied that we can not go to the pre-election presidential elections. But who should shoot? “I asked. He replied that who and where it did not matter, you had to shoot somewhere so much to sow chaos. “

“It did not matter if we fired at a tree, a barricade, or the molotov. confirms another volunteer – what counts was sowing confusion.

BBC interviewed the head of the opposition’s security forces at the time, who confirms that snipers were killing both sides … protesters and police:

And the former Ukranian government security boss said the same thing. Specifically, he said:

Former chief of Ukraine’s Security Service has confirmed allegations that snipers who killed dozens of people during the violent unrest in Kiev operated from a building controlled by the opposition on Maidan square.

Shots that killed both civilians and police officers were fired from the Philharmonic Hall building in Ukraine’s capital, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine Aleksandr Yakimenko told Russia 1 channel. The building was under full control of the opposition and particularly the so-called Commandant of Maidan self-defense Andrey Parubiy who after the coup was appointed as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Yakimenko added.

So the chief of the government’s security forces, the head of the opposition’s security forces, and the snipers themselves  all admit the snipers were killing both protesters and police.

Similarly:

[Ukrainian Health Minister Oleh] Musiy, who spent more than two months organizing medical units on Maidan, said that on Feb. 20 roughly 40 civilians and protesters were brought with fatal bullet wounds to the makeshift hospital set up near the square. But he said medics also treated three police officers whose wounds were identical.

Forensic evidence, in particular the similarity of the bullet wounds, led him and others to conclude that snipers were targeting both sides of the standoff at Maidan — and that the shootings were intended to generate a wave of revulsion so strong that it would topple Yanukovych and also justify a Russian invasion.

And the Estonian foreign minister – after visiting Ukraine – told the EU foreign affairs minister that the Maidan opposition deployed the snipers – and fired on both the protesters and the police – to discredit the former government of Ukraine.

The Snipers Were Associated with the Maidan Protesters

While the mainstream media has proclaimed that the sniper fire was definitely from government forces, some of the above-cited sources dispute that claim.

Additionally, BBC reported at the time:

Reporting for Newsnight, Gabriel Gatehouse said he saw what looked like a protestershooting out of a window at the BBC’s Kiev base, the Ukraine Hotel.

BBC interviewed a Maidan protester who admitted that he fired a sniper rifle at police from the Conservatory, and that he was guided by a military veteran within the Maidan resistance. Here are actual pictures a reporter took of Maidan snipers, recently published by BBC:

(There were reportedly at least 10 Maidan snipers firing from the Conservatory.)

The Frankfurther Allgemein reported that Maidan commander Volodymyr Parasjuk controlled the Conservatory at the time:

Volodymyr Parasjuk – the leader in “self-defense units” of the revolution who had called the night of Yanukovich’s escape, on the stage of Maidan to storm the presidential residence one year ago.

On the day of the massacre Parasjuk was staying with his unit in the colonnaded building of the Kiev Conservatory right at the Maidan. In the days before the death toll had risen, and the fighters grew the conviction alone with limited power as before will not be able to overthrow Yanukovych. “There were at that time many guys who said you have to take the weapon and attack,” said Parasjuk recalls. “Many,” he himself had since long ago it had firearms, often their officially registered hunting rifles.

Tagesschau – a German national and international television news service produced by state-run Norddeutscher Rundfunk on behalf of the German public-service television network ARD – also reportedin 2014 that at least some of the sniper fire came from protesters.

And remember, the snipers who admitted firing at both sides were associated with Mikhail Saakashvili and his party.  Saakashvili was a huge supporter of the Maidan protesters from the very beginning.  As Newsweek reports:

Saakashvili was a supporter of the Ukrainian revolution since the beginning of Euromaidan ….

Indeed, the Maidan protesters who deposed the old Ukrainian prime minister were so pleased with events that they rewarded Saakashvili by appointing him leader of Ukraine’s largest region.

Former AP and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry summarizes what kind of guy Saakashvili is:

The latest political move by the … regime in Ukraine was to foist on the people of Odessa the autocratic Georgian ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, a neoconservative favorite and currently a fugitive from his own country which is seeking him on charges of human rights violations and embezzlement.

***

According to a New York Times profile last September, Saakashvili was there “writing a memoir, delivering ‘very well-paid’ speeches, helping start up a Washington-based think tank and visiting old boosters like Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state.”

McCain and Nuland were key neocon backers of the coup that ousted Yanukovych and touched off the bloody civil war that has killed thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, while also reviving Cold War tensions between the West and Russia. Before the coup, McCain urged on right-wing protesters with promises of U.S. support and Nuland was overheard hand-picking Ukraine’s new leadership, saying “Yats is the guy,” a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who became prime minister after the coup.

***

The Georgian prosecutors also have charged Saakashvili with human rights violations for his violent crackdown on political protesters in 2007.

Context: Sniper Attacks As False Flag Terror

Random shootings are a type of false flag terror.    For example, in 1985 – as part of the “Gladio” false flag terror campaign (see number 12) – snipers attacked and shot shoppers in supermarkets randomlyin Belgium, killing twenty-eight and leaving many wounded.

Shooting both sides is an especially big red flag for a false flag …

Specifically, when authoritarian regimes want to break up protests, they might shoot protesters. On the other hand, when violent protesters shoot government employees, they might be trying to overthrow the government.

But when secretive snipers kill both protesters and the police, it is an indication of a “false flag” attackmeant to sow chaos, anger, disgust and a lack of legitimacy.

This has happened many times over the years. For example:

• Unknown snipers reportedly killed both Venezuelan government and opposition protesters in the attempted 2002 coup

• Unknown snipers fired during Thailand’s 2010 protests, killing both police and protesters

• And see this and this

On November 8 Russia’s large mining group Norilsk Nickel announced it had begun operations at a new state-of-the-art Bystrinsky mining and processing plant outside of Chita in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai. Notable about the project is the participation of China, as well as the fact that four years ago the huge copper, gold and magnetite reserves of Bystrinsky were inaccessible to any market and completely undeveloped. It’s one example of the transformation of the entire economic geography of Eurasia that’s growing as a result of the close cooperation of Russia with China and especially with China’s Belt Road Initiative, earlier known as the New Economic Silk Road.

The Bystrinsky mining and processing complex is a $1.5 billion project with total ore reserves estimated at 343 million tons. The huge project is jointly owned by Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium and one of the largest producers of platinum and copper, along with CIS Natural Resources Fund, a Russian natural resources fund established by Vladimir Potanin, and by China’s Highland Fund. The new mine complex is some 400 kilometers by rail from the China border in Russia’s Siberian Far East.

Chinese participation is not surprising. China is the world’s largest importer of copper and much of the new mine production will be headed to China. China’s Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) that is seeing the construction of thousands of kilometers of new high-speed rail lines across Eurasia is creating a huge increase in demand for copper as well as steel and iron ore. The new Russian mining project includes construction of entirely new infrastructure of roads, rail spurs and enormous infrastructure in what was previously untouched wilderness. The mine, the largest private project in Russia’s Far East, will reach full capacity in 2019.

Bridging the Amur River

Another example of the transformation of the economic geography taking place between Russia and China is construction of the bridge over the Amur River or the Heilongjiang River as the Chinese call it. The new bridge will connect China with Russia in the far northeast of China in the region of Harbin. To have an idea of the vast distances across the largest country in the world, the Russian Federation, the Amur River Bridge is some 1000 kilometers east of the new China-Russia copper mining complex near Chita.

The new bridge, due to open in 2019, will be a major infrastructure link facilitating trade between Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast and China’s Heilongjiang Province with a rail and road bridge link spanning more than 2 km. A main immediate benefit of the new bridge will be economical transport of iron ore from the Kimkan open-pit mine in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast that is owned by IRC Limited of Hong Kong. The rail section will have both a standard gauge (1435 mm) track and a Russian gauge (1520 mm) track and a two-lane roadway for cars and truck transport.

In 2016, after several years of negotiations and overcoming of long-standing mistrust between the Chinese and Russian partners, construction began on the bridge. The Bridge will tie into the China mammoth Belt-Road Initiative by enabling transportation integration into the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor (CMREC) of the New Economic Silk Road. The Amur bridge will connect Heihe and the Russian Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk, the administrative center of Russia’s Amur Oblast where the Amur and Zeya Rivers meet. The Bridge will then make a connection to the Russian Trans-Siberian Railway and on to Vladivostok, the major Russian commercial port on the Pacific Ocean.

The Heilongjiang-Blagoveshchensk bridge is operated by one company, a Russia-China joint venture called Heilongjiang Bridge Company established in March 2016 in China and its affiliate in Russia was set up six months later.

China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor

In 2014 at a meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan China’s President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the President of Mongolia Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, agreed to create a China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor (CMREC) which has become one of the six priority corridors of China’s Belt-Road Initiative, the first multilateral cooperation plan to form part of the Belt and Road Initiative. The CMREC will connect China’s Belt and Road Initiative with Russia’s proposal for a Eurasian Union and Mongolia’s Steppe Road program, promoting regional economic integration. The CMREC has two key traffic arteries: One extends from China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to Hohhot and on to Mongolia and Russia; the other extends from China’s Dalian, Shenyang, Changchun, Harbin and Manzhouli to Russia’s Chita, site of the major new Russia-China copper project .

Sino-Russian Investment Dollar Free

In September in Vladivostok the heads of the three countries of the CMREC agreed to closer cooperation in energy and mineral resources, high tech, manufacturing, agriculture and forestry, to widen services trade, and cooperation in education, science and technology, culture, tourism, medical care and intellectual property. This promises a major transformation to the three country region that during the tensions of the Cold War was severely underdeveloped and mutually isolated.

At the same September 7 meeting of the Third Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, China announced it was creating a $15 billion fund to finance further regional economic cooperation projects with Russia. China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang said that the investments would target manufacturing, resources exploitation, infrastructure, agriculture and tourism.

This follows a July, 2017 visit of Xi Jinping to Moscow where the two countries signed a series of economic cooperation agreements including creation of a new US$10 billion China-Russia RMB Investment Cooperation Fund, which will give access to RMB financing for Russian projects, including under both the One Belt, One Road and Eurasian Economic Union initiatives. One project in China’s Hainan calls for a $500 million (RMB equivalent) investment to develop industrial and innovation parks, high-tech healthcare services, tourism, social infrastructure, culture and art initiatives as priority areas. Hainan is a main portal of the China Maritime Silk Road infrastructure.

Additionally the Russia-China development fund is developing a huge project at the former Tushino airfield northwest of Moscow to include the Rostec City business park, apartments for 15,000 residents, plus schools and a clinic in a total investment of $1.5 billion ruble equivalent. The development involves Russian state-owned corporation Rostec Corporation as one of the key tenants, and Russian investment company Vi Holding as a developer.

Further agreement was made between the Russian and Chinese investment funds, together with Russian Export and FRC International, to establish a project trade named Dakaitaowa – meaning “to open a Matryoshka (Russian nesting) doll” in Chinese. The aim of the project is to promote further growth and export of GMO-free and ecologically clean Russian agriculture products to the Chinese market.

Moreover China has gained permission from Russia to offer settlement services in RMB in Moscow through the China ICBC bank. Thereby China and Russia have effectively bypassed dollar risk in their mutual economic investments.

All of this development, building up a new economic geography across the countries of Eurasia is a stark contrast to what Washington has done since September 2001. According to a new study by the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, Washington has spent a staggering $5.6 trillion on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan since 2001, more than three times what the Pentagon has claimed in official estimates.

Imagine the United States instead had spent $5.6 trillion on rebuilding America’s rotted $8 trillion infrastructure deficit in roads, rails, water, electric grids– what a boost for the American people and for the world it would be. They might even imagine peaceful cooperation in the emerging Russian-Chinese Eurasian development, a true win-win for the world.

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

Australia chose a rather round about, and dangerous way, of getting to the finals of the FIFA World Cup. Qualifying by playing a South or Central American opponent has its pitfalls, the most memorable being Argentina at the Allianz Stadium in 1993. On that occasion, the valiant Australians went down, if only just, losing the return leg in Buenos Aires after drawing in Sydney.

The Honduran side could not boast players of the ilk of Argentina, but they did have the element of anonymity and surprise. Their coach, Jorge Luis Pinto, was in a conservative frame of mind, attempting to asphyxiate play in the middle of the park. The hostilities at San Pedro Sula would also have benefited.

As matters transpired, the Australians managed to hold their own in the first away leg. With Honduras failing to squeeze anything into the Australian net at home, it was left to the Socceroos to do the rest in Australia, scoring three times, twice from penalties.

Luck was finally on the side of a team scolded and berated for stretches of the campaign. Their previous encounter with an unfancied Syria drew barbs of criticism. But after 22 games played over 29 months, Australia had booked its place in the 2018 World Cup in Russia, a point that took time to settle among the seventy thousand in attendance.

Seeing the Australians qualify belied a gruelling struggle and a campaign of hostility against the
Australian coach, Ange Postecoglou. Last month, a swirling question mark hovered over his future. Was his head on the chopping block? Had he, in fact, put it there himself?

“My focus,” he felt compelled to say in rather fatalistic fashion, “is these two games. If we don’t get through these two games, there’s no decision to make. That’s the one certainty.”

Australian fortune could be contrasted with violent sharpness of the fate of Italy. To not see the Azzurri reach the World Cup or the first time since 1958 was seismic, even unsettling. Not that Australian fans would have minded. Many still remember the encounter in round 16 of the 2006 World Cup, when Australia’s Lucas Neill tripped Italy’s Fabio Grosso in the Fritz Walter Stadium in Kaiserslautern. The resulting penalty was the only goal scored in the match. Italy would go on to win their fourth World Cup.

As Grosso would subsequently say,

“In this instance when Neill slid in, maybe I accentuated it a little bit. However, you must remember it was the last minute of an extremely difficult game and everyone was tired.”[1]

Australian fans were less forgiving about the showmanship: Grosso, so went the line, had cheated.

Before the spectators of the San Siro in Milan, Sweden managed to hold the Italians to a scoreless draw, winning by an aggregate of one goal over both legs. The Swedish side had effectively done what so many Italian sides have done before: defend their way to victory.

La Gazetta dello Sport went so far as to term the failure “the apocalypse”.

“We will not be with you and you will not be with us. Italy will not participate in the World Cup. There will be inevitable consequences.”

The most immediate consequence was the fate of Italy’s coach, Gian Piero Ventura, who seemed fairly phlegmatic about the axeman.

“Until the playoff we were progressing as foreseen, then we’ve been unlucky not to score against them. I apologize to the Italians. Only for the result, not for the effort we put in every game.”

It was certainly an effort that prompted questions. At home, the Italians could only muster a one all draw against Macedonia. In UEFA World Cup qualifying Group G, it finished five points behind group winners Spain, pitting them against the Swedes.

Ventura did not have long to wait for his fate.

“During a meeting called by FIGC president Carlo Tevecchio,” came a statement on Wednesday from the FIGC, “the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia was discussed.”

Rather brutally, the note goes on to mention the “first order of business” with finality: “from today onwards, Gian Piero Ventura is no longer coach of the national team.”[2] Ventura’s initial reluctance to resign, rather than face the sack, seemed to have been prompted by false hope, if not a total lack of awareness.

Oddly enough, his counterpart in Australia will not necessarily be faring much better. Postecoglou has never felt supported in his role in Australian football, and has his eye on an international football club. Australian football, he feels, has yet to discover self-respect.

Sweden’s Janne Andersson, in contrast, will be merrily preparing for their campaign in Russia. For football boffins of a slightly superstitious bent, the occasion of Sweden’s most successful World Cup was the very same tournament Italy failed to qualify for: 1958.

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

Notes

Saudi Arabia is bypassing Jordan in its headlong rush to normalise relations with Israel, offering concessions on Palestinian refugees which could endanger the stability of the Hashemite kingdom, and compromise its status as the custodian of the holy sites in Jerusalem, a senior official close to the royal court in Amman has told Middle East Eye.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of treating Jordan with contempt.

“He deals with Jordanians and the Palestinian Authority as if they are the servants and he is the master and we have to follow what he does. He neither consults nor listens to us,” the official said.

The alarm bells went off in Amman following semi-official leaks suggesting that Saudi Arabia was ready to surrender the Palestinian right of return in exchange for putting Jerusalem under international sovereignty as part of a Middle East peace deal that would facilitate the creation of a Saudi-Israeli alliance to confront Iran.

Such a deal would compromise the special status of Jordan as the custodian of the Haram al-Sharif, as stated in the peace treaty Jordan struck with Israel in 1994.

“Half the population of Jordan are Palestinians and if there is official talk in Riyadh about ending the right of return, this will cause turmoil within the kingdom. These are sensitive issues both for Jordanians from the East Bank and Palestinians,” the official said.

Jordanian backlash

In fact, 65 percent of the population of Jordan are Palestinian, mostly from the occupied West Bank. They have Jordanian citizenship and access to medical care, but they are under-represented in parliament, and have little presence in the Jordanian army and security services.

Furthermore, any attempt to give the Palestinians more rights in Jordan would provoke a backlash among the Jordanian population, the official observed.

He said any final status deal involving Palestinian refugees would have to include a compensation package to Jordan, which the kingdom would expect to receive as a state.

On the deal itself, the Jordanian official said that what was on offer to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was worse than before.

“He (MbS) is concerned about the normalisation of the Saudi relationship with Israel and he does not care about anything else. He needs a fig leaf to start off this normalisation,” the official said.

A separate Western source in contact with some Saudi princes independently confirmed the importance of Israel as a factor behind a wave of recent arrests in Riyadh targeting princes, business tycoons and other influential Saudis.

He said several of the people arrested under the guise of an anti-corruption campaign had acted as “gatekeepers for Saudi funding” going to Israel. He suggested that MbS wanted to keep a monopoly of these contacts for himself. For this reason, he questioned whether those arrested would be put on public trial, or whether there would be secret trials.

This source dismissed the notion that what was a taking place in Saudi was a genuine anti-corruption drive:

“The Saudi family do not rule Saudi Arabia. They own it. That is their view. They created the country. They own it, and therefore they cannot be corrupt.”

The Royal Court in Amman is also concerned by the pressure being applied on Jordan to join an anti-Iran campaign and the potentially dire consequences of what it considers “reckless” Saudi policies.

“Things in Syria are going to the benefit of Iran and its allies. The Jordanian approach was to try to open channels with Iran and Russia and to calm down the Iranians and have some sort of agreement in the south,” MEE’s source said.

“But the Saudis are in full confrontation mode, destabilising Lebanon. If Iran wants to retaliate, it could retaliate across the whole region, which could affect Jordan directly and that is the last thing Jordan would want them to do.”

When pressed by the Saudis, Jordan scaled back its diplomatic relations with Qatar, but notably did not cut them as Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt did on the day the blockade was announced. Jordan did, however, close the office of Al Jazeera, the Qatari television network which Saudi has called on Doha to shut down.

Unlike the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah has not been invited to go to Riyadh to express these frustrations in person. He has visited Bahrain, but went home shortly after.

Broken promises

The third source of Jordanian concern about the way Saudi is behaving is economic.

Jordan has lost money as a result of the regional boycott of Qatar, and is currently losing income it earned through the transit of goods. This is a result of the re-opening of a crossing between Saudi and Iraq at Arar, a crossing that had been closed for 27 years since Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Before Arar opened, all trade from Iraq passed through Jordan. With the opening of Arar, Iraq will start to use Saudi ports in the Red Sea to export to Europe, instead of the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

There is anger in the royal palace about promises of aid from Saudi Arabia, but no signs of the cash arriving in its bank accounts.

A separate Jordanian source told MEE:

“The Jordanian king and the Jordanian authority are angry about promises made by the Saudis  to compensate Jordan for its loss of income with Qatar, and the fact that nothing has been received from them so far.”

Jordan’s Aqaba port is losing business as a consequence of the blockade of Qatar (Creative Commons)

A fourth Jordanian grievance is MbS’s recent announcement of plans to build the high-tech mega city of Neom which is set to stretch across the kingdom’s borders into Jordan and Egypt. The official said that Jordan was “not well briefed” about the project, fostering the suspicion that the primary beneficiary in the city’s construction will not be Jordan or Egypt, but Israel which has established a regional lead in high-tech exports.

He said there were “some positive comments” on the Jordanian side, but overall it reacted cautiously to the announcement.

The official doubted whether Israel would be stampeded into a war with Hezbollah and suggested that MbS had miscalculated the reaction to his offensive on Lebanon, following the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s sudden resignation in Riyadh earlier this month.

Hariri, who is a Saudi citizen with significant business interests in the country, has not yet returned to Beirut and Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that he believed he was being detained there.

“The analysis of Jordan is that neither Israel nor the US will go for a war, and that we Jordanians will be saddled with the consequences of a direct confrontation with Iran and we will pay the consequences for this,” the official said.

Featured image is from PressTV.

Last year the African Union resisted Western pressure to intervene militarily in Burundi. On October 26, Burundi officially completed its withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) without being indicted. The next day the Non-Aligned Movement of 120 member nations rejected the UN Commission of Inquiry’s report accusing Burundi of human rights crimes within its own borders. That’s quite a list of anti-imperial accomplishments for a tiny East African nation that’s always ranked among the 10 poorest in the world.

Burundi is the first African nation to withdraw from the ICC’s jurisdiction. Neither the US, Russia, China, nor Israel have ever accepted its jurisdiction, and it has prosecuted Africans almost exclusively. In 2011, it indicted Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi for alleged human rights crimes and issued an arrest warrant that became part of NATO’s case for bombing Libya. Other African nations have said they plan to withdraw from the ICC as well, but they haven’t yet filed formal notice.

Western powers, NGOs, and press have accused Burundi of human rights abuse within its own borders but not of invading another country. I asked Canadian lawyer David Paul Jacobs, an expert in international law, to contextualize this distinction:

David Paul Jacobs: The context of this is that none of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals that sprang to life after the end of the Cold War had the power to indict any state or any other party for the crime of aggression. And that’s really important in this case because Burundi has made very credible claims that it’s been attacked by agents of neighboring Rwanda, but the attackers have escaped back into Rwanda, where they have state protection.

At the ICC, Rwanda is absolutely immune from prosecution for the crime of aggression against Burundi. The problem is that without a mechanism for trying crimes of aggression, what you’re left with is simply violence and problems going on within a state without the context. The fact that the violence and the problems within the state can be instigated by aggression from an outside state is outside of the court’s purview.

“Burundi has made very credible claims that it’s been attacked by agents of neighboring Rwanda, but the attackers have escaped back into Rwanda.”

To understand this, you have to roll the clock back to look at what should be our lodestone for understanding international law, and that is the Nuremberg Tribunal. And the Nuremberg Tribunal declared fairly famously that:

“War is essentially an evil thing, and the consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime. It is a supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulative evil of the whole.”

Within the Nuremberg Principles drafted after World War II there are three types of war crimes. One is the crime against the peace, which is initiating a war of aggression or a war contrary to international treaties. The other two subordinate crimes are crimes against humanity and war crimes, but it’s only those two subordinate crimes that the international criminal court, or any international criminal court, has the power to look at. So powerful states can and do accuse other states of those two crimes when they want to initiate “regime change.” 

Aggressor states such as Rwanda, or the United States, can thus wage war against other states with impunity at the ICC, as Rwanda has done in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or as the US has done in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, etc. These aggressor states enlist the international criminal courts to indict the leaders of their target states, and then these courts become accomplices in the supreme international war crime, which is the crime of aggression, also known as a crime against peace.

“Aggressor states such as Rwanda, or the United States, can wage war against other states with impunity at the ICC.”

Ann Garrison: So if an army invades another country, even with armed forces, fighter bombers, drones, and the other country captures and tortures some invading soldiers, the torture may be a crime that the ICC could prosecute, but the invasion would not.

DPJ: Yes, at the International Criminal Court.

However, invasion is in fact a war of aggression subject to judicial process at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which was created by the UN Charter and which codified the Nuremberg Principles drafted after World War II. The ICJ did try the United States for supporting the contra terrorists in Nicaragua, and the US argued that it was a humanitarian intervention. The ICJ responded that international law doesn’t recognize the legality of any such intervention and then found the US liable for its unlawful actions, but of course the US just ignored it.

The Nuremberg Principles, the UN Charter, and the International Court of Justice all preceded the international criminal tribunals which weakened the law which they codified. What’s called the “responsibility to protect” then weakened international law further and made the world a very dangerous place.

AG: Okay. Some African people, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have said that despite the ICC’s failings, it should continue to exist in the hope that it can be reformed because Africans living under dictatorship have no other legal protection from the human rights abuse of their own leaders. What’s your response to that?

DPJ: My guess is there are few Africans who say that. Burundi is the first country to formally withdraw from the ICC, but it’s not the first country to complain about it. South Africa’s withdrawal seems to be on hold at the moment because of technical issues. South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Justice wrote:

“The International Criminal Court isn’t the court we signed up for. It’s diverted from it’s mandate, and allowed itself to be influenced by powerful non-member states. We signed up for court that would hold human beings accountable for their war crimes regardless of where they were from. We perceive that it’s turning out to be a proxy instrument for these states. We see no need to subject ourselves to its persecution of African leaders and its regime change goals on the continent… . Given this continent’s history of colonialism, the problem is obvious.”

And the problem, of course, is the selective nature of prosecution before the ICC. Nobody can be confident that the ICC is going to punish what you described as dictators who are inflicting human rights abuses on their own country. One need only look at the examples like President Kagame of Rwanda, who is widely considered to be running a murderous dictatorship. Not just that, but he is guilty of violating the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

As you know, the UN has said that Rwandan forces have been responsible for the death of literally millions of people. How do we look at that? You say “Well, OK” to Kagame who has absolute immunity, as do the successive presidents of the United States and prime ministers of Britain who are complicit in illegal wars, and the death of hundreds of thousands of people in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the list could go on and on.

“What’s called the ‘responsibility to protect’ weakened international law and made the world a very dangerous place.”

AG: Okay, but we still have African people who imagine that the court could change. A Congolese author told me this week that he hoped the court would survive and be reformed, because Africans have no recourse if they’re living under dictatorship without a judicial system that could offer them any legal protection. And that’s even though the US and its Western allies have put many of those dictators in place.

DPJ: I think it’s quixotic to rely on a court with colonial roots and selective prosecution to punish their own leaders. To be fair, such a court would have to prosecute violations of sovereignty, which the ICC does not do. At the end of the day, one of the great things that happened at the end of World War II was the enactment of the UN Charter to prevent future wars. It said that each nation in the world was sovereign and equal. The idea that an extra-sovereign power has the power of life and death over your nation and your people, whether that’s the US military or a court, violates those principles. Another argument against the ICC is that the African Union itself is trying to create an international court that all African nations will join.

AG: That’s the African Court of Human and People’s rights that is hearing Victoire Ingabire’s appeal of her conviction and 15-year sentence in Rwanda, right?

DPJ: Yes.

***

David Paul Jacobs is a lawyer and an expert in international law practicing in Toronto.

Featured image is from Black Agenda Report.

Ever since the U.S. government dangled $160 million last December to combat Russian propaganda and disinformation, obscure academics and eager think tanks have been lining up for a shot at the loot, an unseemly rush to profit that is spreading the Russia-gate hysteria beyond the United States to Europe.

Now, it seems that every development, which is unwelcomed by the Establishment – from Brexit to the Catalonia independence referendum – gets blamed on Russia! Russia! Russia!

The methodology of these “studies” is to find some Twitter accounts or Facebook pages somehow “linked” to Russia (although it’s never exactly clear how that is determined) and complain about the “Russian-linked” comments on political developments in the West. The assumption is that the gullible people of the United States, United Kingdom and Catalonia were either waiting for some secret Kremlin guidance to decide how to vote or were easily duped.

Oddly, however, most of this alleged “interference” seems to have come after the event in question. For instance, more than half (56 percent) of the famous $100,000 in Facebook ads in 2015-2017 supposedly to help elect Donald Trump came after last year’s U.S. election (and the total sum compares to Facebook’s annual revenue of $27 billion).

Similarly, a new British study at the University of Edinburgh blaming the Brexit vote on Russia discovered that more than 70 percent of the Brexit-related tweets from allegedly Russian-linked sites came after the referendum on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union. But, hey, don’t let facts and logic get in the way of a useful narrative to suggest that anyone who voted for Trump or favored Brexit or wants independence for Catalonia is Moscow’s “useful idiot”!

This week, British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of seeking to “undermine free societies” and to “sow discord in the West.”

What About Israel?

Yet, another core problem with these “studies” is that they don’t come with any “controls,” i.e., what is used in science to test a hypothesis against some base line to determine if you are finding something unusual or just some normal occurrence.

In this case, for instance, it would be useful to find some other country that, like Russia, has a significant number of English speakers but where English is not the native language – and that has a significant interest in foreign affairs – and then see whether people from that country weigh in on social media with their opinions and perspectives about political events in the U.S., U.K., etc.

Perhaps, the U.S. government could devote some of that $160 million to, say, a study of the Twitter/Facebook behavior of Israelis and whether they jump in on U.S./U.K. controversies that might directly or indirectly affect Israel. We could see how many Twitter/Facebook accounts are “linked” to Israel; we could study whether any Israeli “trolls” harass journalists and news sites that oppose neoconservative policies and politicians in the West; we could check on whether Israel does anything to undermine candidates who are viewed as hostile to Israeli interests; if so, we could calculate how much money these “Israeli-linked” activists and bloggers invest in Facebook ads; and we could track any Twitter bots that might be reinforcing the Israeli-favored message.

No Chance

If we had this Israeli baseline, then perhaps we could judge how unusual it is for Russians to voice their opinions about controversies in the West. It’s true that Israel is a much smaller country with 8.5 million people compared to Russia’s 144 million, but you could adjust for those per capita numbers — and even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that Israel’s interference in U.S. policymaking still exceeds Russian influence.

It’s also true that Israeli leaders have often advocated policies that have proved disastrous for the United States, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement of  the Iraq War, which Russia opposed. Indeed, although Russia is now regularly called an American enemy, it’s hard to think of any policy that President Vladimir Putin has pushed on the U.S. that is even a fraction as harmful to U.S. interests as the Iraq War has been.

And, while we’re at it, maybe we could have an accounting of how much “U.S.-linked” entities have spent to influence politics and policies in Russia, Ukraine, Syria and other international hot spots.

But, of course, neither of those things will happen. If you even tried to gauge the role of “Israeli-linked” operations in influencing Western decision-making, you’d be accused of anti-Semitism. And if that didn’t stop you, there would be furious editorials in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media denouncing you as a “conspiracy theorist.” Who could possibly think that Israel would do anything underhanded to shape Western attitudes?

And, if you sought the comparative figures for the West interfering in the affairs of other nations, you’d be faulted for engaging in “false moral equivalence.” After all, whatever the U.S. government and its allies do is good for the world; whereas Russia is the fount of evil.

So, let’s just get back to developing those algorithms to sniff out, isolate and eradicate “Russian propaganda” or other deviant points of view, all the better to make sure that Americans, Britons and Catalonians vote the right way.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Featured image: Uncontacted people, like these pictured in iconic aerial photos released in 2011, are the most vulnerable people on the planet (Source: Survival International)

Ten indigenous people – including women and children – were murdered in the Javari Valley region of the Amazon in September this year, according to reports. Their bodies were alleged to have been mutilated and dumped in a river. The attack was believed to have been carried out by gold miners, two of whom were later recorded bragging about it in a local bar.

This is not the story of some conquistadors or rubber tappers in the colonial era. This happened in 2017 – just weeks ago – in the present-day Republic of Brazil. Despite all of the apparent “progress” that humanity has made over the past few centuries, whole populations of indigenous peoples are still being systematically annihilated by land invaders and colonists.

Extremely vulnerable

Outside indigenous rights circles, many people are still amazed at the very existence of uncontacted tribes. The popular assumption is that that era is over: the entire world has been colonized and brought over into the industrialized mainstream.

But as extraordinary aerial photos released by Survival International in 2008 and again in 2011 revealed, this simply isn’t the case. There are people, in the Amazon and elsewhere, who choose to reject contact with the mainstream.

They are not backward and primitive relics of a remote past. They are our contemporaries and a vitally important part of humankind’s diversity.

Uncontacted tribes are living self-sufficient and diverse ways of life, hunting, foraging, growing food in gardens and holding on to their own languages, mythologies, and perspectives on the world. They have every right to carry on doing so, and we in the outside world have a deep responsibility to ensure that they are able to.

Of course, not everyone shares this view. There have always been people willing to forcibly contact isolated tribes. Whether it’s evangelical missionaries determined to impose their theology, or opportunist land grabbers looking to make a quick buck, there is a long and bloody history of genocidal violence against tribal people.

Uncontacted tribes are extremely vulnerable not only to violence from outsiders who want to steal their land and resources, but also to diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance. It makes uncontacted tribes the most vulnerable peoples on the planet.

Agribusiness lobby

Recently contacted people still suffer from serious infections, which can wipe entire peoples out. The Ayoreo in Paraguay are still battling a mysterious TB-like illness which was introduced by ranchers in the 1990s.

As shocking as it is, violence like that allegedly inflicted on the Indians last month is not unprecedented. It probably isn’t even that uncommon.

Survival has been warning for years of “hidden genocides” taking places in the depths of the Amazon. Evidence of this often emerges long after the fact. Here at least, we were able to see clearly the horror that many uncontacted people face, and the fate that could face many other tribes without robust protection of their lands.

All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Without this, many risk going the way of the Akuntsu, a small Amazonian tribe now reduced to just four members after brutal violence by ranchers in the 1980s.

Dismayingly, the current Brazilian government is unwilling to provide such protection. President Michel Temer and his administration are very closely tied to the country’s all-powerful agribusiness lobby – the big landowners who dominate the country’s lucrative agricultural industries. The government has made extensive cuts to FUNAI, the government agency responsible for protecting indigenous lands.

Deep forests 

Brazilian politicians have not done nearly enough to prevent massacres like that which reportedly took place last month. As far as they are concerned, it seems, indigenous people and their right to their land are at best a nuisance, at worst a roadblock to profit that needs to be forcibly removed.

This flies in the face of Brazil’s constitution and international law. It’s also fundamentally immoral – allowing the genocide of entire peoples and the carving up of the Amazon for the enrichment of a few vested interests.

But there is some hope. Where uncontacted peoples’ land rights are respected, they continue to thrive. We know there are more than a hundred such tribes around the world, for example, and since the flurry of attention they’ve received over the last nine years, a swelling global movement calling for their land rights has emerged.

Bringing together indigenous organizations, environmental and human rights activists, A-list actors like Gillian Anderson and Sir Mark Rylance, and energetic members of the public around the world, more and more people are raising their voices and pressing governments to act for uncontacted tribes.

And the pressure has told. In April 2016, the Brazilian minister of justice was pressurized into signing a decree to demarcate land for the highly vulnerable Kawahiva tribe, who are living on the run in the deep forests of Matto Grosso state.

Contemporary societies 

It’s in all our interest to prevent the annihilation of uncontacted tribes. Their knowledge is irreplaceable and has been developed over thousands of years. They are the best guardians of their environment, and evidence proves that tribal territories are the best barrier to deforestation.

Survival International is doing everything it can to secure uncontacted tribes’ land for them, and to give them the chance to determine their own futures. It’s a fight we’ve been leading since 1969.

Tragedies like that which reportedly took place in the Amazon are certainly demoralising, and it is shattering to have to hear about incidents we were unable to prevent. But we won’t give up until we have a world where tribal peoples are respected as contemporary societies and their human rights protected.

Lewis Evans is a campaigner at Survival International.

This week, Edward Herman passed away at age 92. He will be remembered. His lifelong stance against war and social injustice will forever live in our inner consciousness.

His writings on Manufactured Consent reveal the inner workings of  today’s media propaganda. In the words of Edward Herman:

 “The New York Times is a great newspaper, but arguably this very fact helps make it a great instrument for the engineering of consent to lots of problematic and sometimes very nasty policies and pieces of reality.”

This article on the central role of the New York Times was first published by Z Communications and Global Research in October 2012.

From the very inception of Global Research, we have published Edward Herman’s writings (2003-2017).

The Archive of Prof. Edward S. Herman’s writings on Global Research includes a list or more than 60 articles. 

Edward S. Herman has been a source of inspiration to many of us including thousands of Global Research readers.

We have over the years communicated by email, but I have not had the opportunity of meeting Edward Herman. 

Michel Chossudovsky, November 16, 2017

***

On  October 11, 2011, Paul Krugman asserted on his blog that he had the privilege of writing two columns a week for “the world’s greatest newspaper,” the New York Times (NYT). The NYT is surely an outstanding paper, with exceptionally wide scope, many good journalists on board and publishing many interesting and enlightening articles. But if the standard by which we judge greatness is the quality of its service to the public interest, to the 99 percent who don’t own or advertise in newspapers or TV networks, or control or benefit directly and heavily from other corporate and financial entities, and/or exercise substantial influence on governments, the paper’s greatness is debatable.

In fact, a case can be made that the NYT is the world’s greatest—or at least most important—organ of state propaganda. Because of its great prestige, its being pegged as a “liberal” newspaper, and the paper’s allowing just enough dissent to give the appearance of balance and to make its most serious apologetics seem credible, the general public is not aware of how often and how effectively the paper serves the imperial state, normalizing U.S. imperial ventures and putting them in a favorable light—and providing systematic apologetics for abuses by it favored clients. The editors even belatedly admitted their war-supportive bias in the run-up to the UN Charter-violating and lie-based Iraq war. They are clearly doing the same in the case of Iran, where the paper has had almost daily accounts of Iran’s alleged moves toward nuclear weapons capability, while working on the premise that Israel’s (and the U.S.’s) actual nuclear weapons, and almost daily and credible threats, are perfectly acceptable and understandable and don’t even constitute essential context in discussing the Iran menace.

The paper has preserved its high reputation even as it has been repeatedly guilty of serious failures in its basic newspaper function, at huge social cost. The classic illustration is provided in their own editorial “The Lie That Wasn’t Shot Down” (ed., June 18, 1988), which acknowledged that their earlier furious news-editorial-propaganda barrage of 1983 claiming a deliberate and knowing Soviet destruction of the civilian Korean airliner 007 was based on a lie. Significantly, the counter-evidence cited in the five-years-late editorial was not uncovered by the paper’s own staff, but by a congressperson’s inquiry. So they swallowed an official lie that served the official party-line and the ongoing process of demonization of the “evil empire,” but despite all their resources never got around to examining whether it was valid.

When this great newspaper is in a propaganda mode, which is often, and especially where foreign policy and “national security” matters are at issue, their biases are frequently blatant and even amusing. This can often be read in their word usage and headline policy which discloses their bias at a glance. For example, their party-line hostility to Hugo Chavez has been steadfast, and even led them to editorialize in favor of the soon to be aborted 2002 coup d’etat, with the editors claiming that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chavez, a ruinous demagogue, [who] stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona” (ed., “Hugo Chavez Departs,” April 13, 2002).

The editors quickly changed their minds as the coup was reversed and the editors were subjected to sharp criticism for unprincipled behavior, acknowledging that Chavez’s “forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington…which we shared, [but] overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer” (ed., “Venezuela’s Political Turbulence,” April 16, 2002). But the editors had cheered it, and had misrepresented the facts: the “ruinous demagogue” didn’t “step down,” his performance had not been “ruinous” as had been, for example, Yeltsin’s in Russia, lauded by the editors, and ending democracy does not terminate a threat to democracy, either in Venezuela in 2002 or Chile on 9/11/73.

The incident revealed that the establishment party-line bias of NYT editors runs deeper than their commitment to democracy. More recently, William Neuman’s “Chavez, After Treatment for Cancer, Gets His Bluster Back and Flaunts It” (January 22, 2012) is a simple and easily replicable illustration of the institutionalized presence of an anti-Chavez bias. “Bluster” and “flaunts” are snarl words that the paper wouldn’t use for high-level U.S. or UK politicians, but are standard for Chavez.

This kind of language would also not be used to describe Argentinian state terrorists during the years of military rule (1976-1983) or Augusto Pinochet in Chile, at least during the time when they were in power (see my The Real Terror Network). It was amusing to see that the December 11, 2006 NYT obituary for Pinochet by Jonathan Kandell was entitled “Augusto Pinochet, 91, Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile, Dies.” While he was in power, the NYT very rarely referred to him as a “dictator” and I don’t believe they ever said that he “ruled by terror.” But with Pinochet dead and long out of power, the paper can combine “dictator” and “rule by terror” in the very title of an article on him.

The official party-line is now hostile to Vladimir Putin and surely not because of any undemocratic or corruption factors, which were perfectly acceptable and even encouraged in the Yeltsin and early Putin years, with the editors describing Yeltsin’s 1996 electoral victory as “A Victory for Russian Democracy” (July 4, 1996), which it certainly wasn’t, but it was a triumph of a man who was taking our orders. No, Putin’s problem is his decline in willingness to take orders and, notably, his resistance to the U.S.-NATO push for clienthood and subservience on a global basis, with Russia, like China, constituting an alternative potential center of power. The result is that the NYT selects as newsworthy, and pushes anything, that will now put Putin in a bad light.

Thus, the trial and imprisonment of the “Pussy Riot” trio in 2012 is given intensive, page-one coverage, with a characteristic slant and misinterpretation that meets the political demands for denigration, including outrage that a mere “stunt” attacking Putin results in a jail sentence (David M. Herszenhorn, “Anti-Putin Stunt Earns Punk Band Two Years in Jail,” August 18, 2012). That it was carried out in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, which invited police action and that it was a police action sought by church authorities, rather than political officials, is buried.

The subtitle is “Trial of Three Women Put Intense Focus on Free Speech.” But “Pussy Riot” members had carried out other actions elsewhere without jailing as had many others, so was it a challenge to free speech in Russia or was it a stunt that could be mobilized by anti-Putin (and pro-Western) forces as part of a larger propaganda campaign? Does this case tell us anything useful about free speech in Russia?

Isn’t it amazing to see it taken up by Amnesty International (AI), Avaaz, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) with such aggressiveness? AI and HRW neglected the important case of Julian Assange and the serious official U.S. campaign against whistleblowers and contributors of ”material aid” (undefined) to terrorists (see Diana Johnstone, “Pussy Riot and Amnesty International: The Decline of Political Protest,” Counterpunch, August 28, 2012). Would the NYT ever give such intensive and positive publicity to Americans interrupting church services to make a political point or carrying out illegal acts of protest against U.S. training-of-state-terrorists pro- grams at the School of Americas or nuclear weapons facilities?

The Moscow protests against Putin have not only been featured heavily in the NYT, with photos, but here also you can find language that is reserved for propaganda service. Thus, a rally in Moscow is described as “vast” with a crowd of tens of thousands (the organizers claimed 120,000) and a challenge to Putin’s authority, all within a single headline (Ellen Barry and Michael Schwirtz, “Vast Rally in Moscow Is a Challenge to Putin’s Power,” December 24, 2011). The same Times reporters write that, “After Election Putin Faces Challenges to Legitimacy” (March 5, 2012). Putin received a larger percentage of the votes than did Bush or Obama, but you will not find the NYT mentioning any challenge to an elected U.S. president’s “legitimacy.” Such language is reserved for hostiles.

The NYT has long been unfriendly to labor unions and in favor of “reform” here and across the globe, “reform” meaning “flexible” labor markets and more compliant or disappeared unions. This may strike people as implausible given the liberalism of the paper, but it is an establishment newspaper. While it expresses regret that inequality has grown so great and it may oppose crude attacks on labor, still the underlying forces damaging labor and escalating inequality have been openly supported. The Times’s leading liberal for many years, Anthony Lewis, was enthused that Margaret Thatcher had put labor in its place and he and the editors both supported the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and castigated labor for opposing it.

The Times had only modest and scattered coverage of the Reagan-business community attacks on organized labor in the 1980s, even though many of these attacks were in violation of the law, and although they were badly weakening an important civil society institution that protects ordinary citizens both in the workplace and political arena and was arguably essential to a real rather than nominal democracy.

Business Week wrote in 1994 that “over the past dozen years…U.S. industry has conducted one of the most successful union wars ever,” assisted by “illegally firing thousands of workers for exercising their right to organize.” But you would hardly know this reading the New York Times (or for that matter its mainstream colleagues).

I was still intrigued to see a recent Times article by Liz Alderman with the title “Italy Wrestles With Rewriting Its Stifling Labor Laws” (August 11, 2012), with the word stifling repeated on the continuation page. The article rests almost entirely on the claims by members of one Italian family business of their multiple difficulties: that they won’t hire because they can’t fire workers in a business downturn; that they can’t fire for theft without an airtight case; that taxes to support an “extensive social welfare net” are burdensome; and workers can stay on three years beyond retirement age even if superior and cheaper replacements are available.

No contesting or qualifying sources are introduced, so that the benefits of these laws and taxes to workers are not mentioned and evaluated. Only the costs to business and their further macro effects are deemed relevant. “Italy” and the NYT want “reform.”

The New York Times is a great newspaper, but arguably this very fact helps make it a great instrument for the engineering of consent to lots of problematic and sometimes very nasty policies and pieces of reality.

Edward S. Herman is a media critic, economist, and author of  numerous books, including The Politics of Genocide (with David Petersen).

Reported by Pravda.ru (November 8, 2017), the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada “will introduce a relevant paragraph into the law about the reintegration of the Donbass, which the parliament is to consider in the second reading on November 16…”.

This decision which is expected to by ratified by the Parliament, would be followed by a presidential decree signed by President Petro Poroshenko, “after which Russian diplomatic institutions in Ukraine, and Ukrainian ones in Russia will be closed”. Pravda.ru, 

The logic of the parliamentary decision is that “as soon as the Verkhovna Rada approves the law on the reintegration of the Donbass, Russia will be recognized [by Kiev] as an aggressor country”.

“Preserving diplomatic relations after this will be a criminal act on the part of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. In fact, these relations have already been terminated. There are no ambassadors, and the diplomats, who work in the embassies are not diplomats of the first rank. We need to have this move recorded on the legislative level,” Vinnik said. (Pravda.ru)

There is no confirmation that this decision has been ratified.

The Suspension of Bilateral Trade

The economic and geopolitical ramifications of this decision are far-reaching.

They affect bilateral trade between Ukraine and Russia which is already at an all time low. In 2013, prior to the EuroMaidan crisis (February 2014), 24% of Ukraine’s exports were directed to Russia.

Ukraine’s transborder exports to Russia in 2013 amounted to $15 billion. In 2014 they were of the order of 9.8 billion declining to $3.6 billion in 2016, representing about 8% of Ukraine’s trade. These figures do not account for bilateral commodity trade between Russia and Donbass in the wake of the Euromaidan, Nor do they account for internal trade between Crimea and the Russian Federation.

The Resumption of Military Operations against Donbass

The decision of the Kiev Parliament would also provide a de facto “green light” to resume military operations directed against Donbass. Needless to say, they foreclose the reaching of a peace agreement.

In recent developments which have a direct bearing on the parliamentary decision, the Kiev government has  put Airborne Commander Lieutenant General Mykhailo Zabrodskiy, in charge of military operations against Donbass.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense: Zabrodskiy was appointed due to his “immense experience” and abilities of  in “planning military operations of various kinds.” (Kyiv Post Report, November 9, 2017).

The real reason for Zabrodskiy’s appointment is his close relationship with the US military and the Pentagon.

Zabrodskiy received advanced training at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The College includes a  School of Advanced Leadership and Tactics (SALT) for high ranking military officers. Essentially, Zabrodskiy is a US protégé, who is now head of the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” (ATO) directed against Donbass, in close liaison with the Pentagon.

Lethal Defensive Weapons for Kiev

On November 15, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy “called on Washington to provide lethal defensive weapons to Kyiv.”

“Today we had a strategic and constructive meeting with newly appointed U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Wess Mitchell. His visit is a reassurance of the U.S. support to Ukraine. I called on the U.S. State Department to provide lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine,” Parubiy wrote on Twitter on November 15 after a meeting with Mitchell. (Interfax, November 16, 2017)

The Featured image is from PravdaReport.

Some western “Liberals” and “Leftists” pay homage to Yassin al-Haj Saleh, an intellectual leftist of the ‘Syrian Revolution’. In fact Saleh represented only a tiny part of Syria’s left. He was ‘persecuted’ because he aligned himself with the 1980 and 2011 bloody uprisings by the sectarian Muslim Brotherhood, and their international Salafist (al Qaeda) supporters. In the end he had to flee for his life from those same sectarian terrorists.

With popular forces in Syria and Iraq destroying the globalised sectarian jihadist mercenaries – sponsored principally by Washington and the Saudis – some ideologues in colonial cultures still keep alive the romantic idea of a ‘Syrian Revolution’, that somehow tragically failed. This is also a myth propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood and their western sponsors, to cover an otherwise naked aggression against Syria.

It is a myth that matters much less now, as such propaganda no longer has the capacity to fuel deeper NATO intervention in Syria. Yet it seems important for the self-image of small groups of western pseudo-leftists, who committed themselves to the cause of ‘red-washing’ Washington’s latest war of aggression, backed by the most reactionary forces in the region.

By pseudo-leftist I mean those fanatic ideologues who cling to their fantasies, showing little interest in what the masses of ordinary people want. Those ‘Syrian Revolution’ fans betrayed the Syrian people, just as they betrayed the people of Libya, Cuba and many other  small countries, when under attack from the big powers.

But imagine the western pseudo-leftist’s delight on meeting an apparently like-minded individual Syrian. Enter Yassin al-Haj Saleh, author and proud backer of what he imagined might be a socialist revolution in Syria. His aptly titled book ‘The Impossible Revolution’ (Haymarket Books September 2017) spells out his failed dream and angry disillusionment. He claims to have been caught between “the hammer of Bashar al Assad’s counter-revolution and the anvil of his reactionary Islamic fundamentalist opponents”. On closer examination, his personal dilemmas seem entirely of his own making.

Saleh was jailed for 16 years (1980-96) under Hafez al Assad, for what he and his fans and publisher call ‘activism’. Does this mean ‘dissident’ or ‘peaceful protestor’? In fact his party had aligned itself to the bloody and sectarian Muslim Brotherhood insurrections of 1979-1982. In this article I will discuss the implications of that decision.

Conditions in prison were terrible he says, but adds that he read “hundreds of books [and] … I learned more there than at university”. Not all prisons allow for such study. He had been a member of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau), and so boasts socialist credentials. In 2011 he joined the ‘revolution’, moving from East Ghouta to Raqqa. There, fearing DAESH in 2013 he left the country. He survived the ordeal and published his book in 2017.

His US publisher portrays Yassin Al-Haj Saleh as “the intellectual voice of the Syrian revolution”. In the book Saleh presents a bleak portrait – but one which will probably appeal to western cynicism – of “three monsters … treading on Syria’s corpse”:

(1) the Assad regime and its allies,

(2) DAESH/ISIS and the other jihadists, and

(3) the West (the USA, UK, France, etc).

In other words, a plague on all their houses. Such cynicism, if popular, is weak analysis.

We know from independent Turkish pollsters TESEV that, by the end of 2011, only 5% of Syrians supported ‘violent protest’, the lowest figure in the region (c.f. 33% in Tunisia and 31% in Palestine) (TESEV 2012: 15). The big influx of foreign jihadists in 2012 would have hardened views against jihadist violence. And we know that the Syrian Arab Army, after some relatively small defections in the first year, did not fracture on religious grounds, as the Salafists had hoped.

The key problems with promotion of a figure like Saleh, to keep afloat the romantic idea of a failed ‘revolution’, are these:

(a) the self-serving story hides who this new hero is and what forces in Syria he might represent;

(b) the idealistic narrative (for a ‘democratic and egalitarian Syria’, etc) hides the actual historical forces of the Syrian insurrections; and

(c) in particular, it whitewashes Saleh’s own foolish collaboration with sectarian Islamists.

You don’t have to buy Saleh’s book, as most of his arguments appear in an extended interview with Ashley Smith, in the US journal International Socialist Review. Smith is a member of the US International Socialist Organization, a Trotskyist group drawing on the ideas of the late Tony Cliff.

Prominent amongst those ideas is Cliff’s theory of ‘state capitalism’, which suggests that there has never been a true ‘socialist’ revolution and that all capitalist and ‘state capitalist’ nation-states must be smashed and rebuilt. That line is quite consistent with support for attacks on any state, progressive or otherwise, as also with alliance with imperialism and reactionary forces to do so. To what extent that sort of Trotskyism is consistent with Saleh’s view is another matter.

However we know these things about Saleh. First, his Communist Party (Political Bureau) faction was a tiny ‘Maoist’ splinter from Syria’s main Communist Party, back in the late 1970s. The main reason for this split was that Saleh’s faction wanted to ‘form an alliance’ with the Muslim Brotherhood, as they engaged in a series of sectarian attacks on the Syrian state (Gambill 2001). Most Syrian communists sided with the Ba’ath socialist state. However Saleh and his former leader, Riyad al Turk, persisted in their subordinate ‘alliance’ with the al Qaeda linked Muslim Brotherhood, into the 2000s (Pace 2005).

What precisely was Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood doing, back in 1979? Let’s read it from the late British writer Patrick Seale:

“The artillery school massacre of June 1979 marked the start of full-scale urban warfare against Alawis [and] against Ba’ath party officials … when cornered they often blew themselves up with grenades … In Aleppo between 1979 and 1981 terrorists killed over 300 people, mainly Baathists and Alawis but including a dozen Islamic clergy who had denounced the murders” (Seale 1988: 324-325).

All the other opposition parties, including most communists, rejected the Muslim Brotherhood’s sectarian terror; but not Saleh’s sect. Collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists is why Saleh received a long jail term in 1980, not because he was simply an ‘activist’.

Muslim Brotherhood terror has been romanticised over the years. At the end of the 1979-1982 attacks a final Brotherhood insurrection at Hama city was put down by Hafez al Assad. Revisionist historians these days, including many western writers, claim there was a large ‘civilian massacre’ at Hama in May 1982. For example author Rafaël Lefèvre (2013: 77) credulously reports: “While initial reports suggested 10,000 civilians were killed, other reports put the number as high as 40,000”. This is poor revisionist history.

Seale (1988: 333-334) observes that Hama 1982 was a serious conflict, not a ‘civilian massacre’. The Hama insurrection “was a last ditch battle” for the Brotherhood and it “raged for three grim weeks .. many civilians were slaughtered in the prolonged mopping up … in nearly a month of fighting about a third of the historic inner city was demolished”. On overall casualties he notes that “government forces too suffered heavy losses to snipers .. and grenades”, while total losses of life were controversial even at the time, “with government sympathisers estimating a mere 3,000 and critics as many as 20,000”.

The ‘civilian massacre’ mythology tries to hide the Brotherhood’s hand in initiating the violence, as recurred in Daraa and Homs in 2011. US intelligence back in 1982 had no such illusions. Of course the US had quietly backed those who financed and armed the Brotherhood’s attacks on Syria (the Saudis, the King of Jordan, Saddam Hussein and others). But Washington’s intelligence was dry and pragmatic, in its final assessment of May 1982:

“the Islamic Revolution in Syria, the Nom de Guerre for the Muslim Brotherhood … [spoke of] the rebels’ seizure of the city and the execution of some 50 “spies and informers” … about 3,000 government forces had been killed, according to the communique … the total casualties for the Hama incident probably number about 2,000. This includes an estimated 300-400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s elite Special Apparatus … the Syrian Government defeated the fundamentalist[s] … most Syrians, regardless of their difference with the present government, do not want the Muslim Brotherhood in power … [but] their modus operandi will continue to be terrorism, particularly bombings and assassination” (DIA 1982: 6-7).

Even if Saleh was young in 1980, most of the political prisoners with whom he shared prison time would have been Muslim Brotherhood. He was certainly not unaware of their approach to ‘revolution’ when he joined their next major insurrection in 2011. Indeed he says

“When the [2011] revolution broke out I went into hiding … [and] while I was writing I was directly involved in the struggle” (Smith 2017).

His greatest claim to fame was to be one of the founders of the ‘Local Coordinating Councils’ (LCCs), indeed he says he was “the main author of the first political statement LCCs issued in June 2011” (Smith 2017). This tells us that the apparently secular language of the LCCs masked the faces of Muslim Brotherhood collaborators.

In any case, we know that the LCCs were little more than a fig leaf on the thoroughly sectarian insurrection, dominated by Syrian Muslim Brotherhood groups until 2012. Then they were displaced from leadership by their international jihadist partners, in the form of Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria, set up as a support group for the Syrian Salafis) and DAESH / ISIS, an outreach of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). As I wrote in my book The Dirty War on Syria (Anderson 2016: 83-84), the LCCs were seen as having a mainly media or PR role in 2011 (Asi Abu Najm 2011) and, by 2013, they were embedded with the Islamist groups, mainly reporting on jihadist casualties (LCC 2013).

Yassin al-Haj Saleh says he fled from East Ghouta to Raqqa, before leaving the country. However his early presence in Douma (East Ghouta) demonstrates how reliant he had become on his Salafist partners. For many years Douma had been dominated by Jaysh al Islam, in alliance with Jabhat al Nusra. Although the civilian population there has been decimated, from many thousands fleeing the conflict, it remains one of the few areas in Syria with a social base for sectarian extremists. The same can be said about Raqqa. Both areas had a strong, reactionary culture, with women in burkas and families preferring to send their children to a Salafist-led mosque than to school.

The US certainly knew from early days that this ‘revolution’ (1) was being led by extremists and (2) wanted to create a sectarian Islamic state in eastern Syria. US intelligence in August 2012 observed that “Internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction. The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria … there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality [i.e. Islamic State] in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor) and this is exactly what [the US and its allies] want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime” (DIA 2012 in Hoff 2015).

Washington knew it and most Syrians knew it. The head of the Syrian Brotherhood, Muhammad Riyad Al-Shaqfa, issued a statement on 28 March 2011, which left no doubt that the group’s aim was sectarian and their target was what they perceived as a secular state. The enemy was “the secular regime”, he said, and Brotherhood members “have to make sure that the revolution will be pure Islamic, and with that no other sect would have a share of the credit after its success” (Al-Shaqfa 2011).

International jihadists, in the form of Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria) appeared in Homs in early 2011, specifically to help the Farouq Brigade (then the largest ‘FSA’ group) with its infamous genocidal slogan ‘Alawis to the tomb, Christians to Beirut’ and genocidal practice: the sectarian murder of supposedly apostate Muslims and the ethnic cleaning of Christians. Those slogans and practice were reported as early as 5 April 2011 (Farrell 2011) and in the New York Times in May (Shadid and Kirkpatrick 2011).

Tens of thousands of Syrian Christians from Homs were indeed driven to Beirut (CNA 2012). Claims that the “Assad regime” was behind the sectarianism were simply dishonest. Whatever their views of the Ba’athist system, most Syrians, and particularly the minorities, swung behind the Syrian state and the Syrian army very quickly.

As international jihadists (mainly from the Arab world, North Africa, the Caucasus and Europe) joined the Syrian Salafis in large numbers in mid-2012, even the western media began reporting that these were fanatics, not revolutionaries.

Well before DAESH / ISIS came across from Iraq to Syria the ‘Free Army’ leaders were complaining that the Syrian President had at least “70 percent” support in Aleppo (Bayoumy 2013); that the local people,

“all of them, are loyal to the criminal Bashar, they inform on us” (Abouzeid 2012); and that the people are “all informers … they hate us. They blame us for the destruction” (Ghaith 2012).

But, they went on to say, they had God on their side. James Foley, himself subject to a theatrical style execution by DAESH in 2014, reported two years earlier that the FSA ‘rebels’ had little public support. Indeed one leader promised Aleppo ‘would burn’, because the people there did not support the ‘revolution’ (Foley 2012).

Unpopularity is fatal to a revolution; to a religious fanatic it is merely inconvenient.

It is impossible that Saleh – an ideological fanatic, but an educated fanatic – did not know all this. Even if he himself was not an sectarian Islamist, he knew that the extreme sectarians with whom he collaborated in 1979 and again in 2011 were leading his ‘revolution’.

Saleh maintains his own self-serving myths about the conflict: that the ‘Assad regime’ was the source of sectarian violence, that Sunni Muslims and Kurds were oppressed, and that the US and its minions really supported the Assad Government. Saleh claims that the Obama administration (despite its repetitive and imperious ‘Assad must go’ demands) really wanted “regime preservation not regime change” (Saleh in Smith 2017).

It is hard to see how any reasonable person can take this seriously. We even have admissions from senior US officials, including former Vice President Biden and former head of the US military Martin Dempsey, that the ‘Arab Allies’ of the US financed every jihadist group from the ‘Free Army’ to DAESH / ISIS, precisely to get rid of Assad. More recently, former Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassim admitted that his little petro-state coordinated with Saudis, Turkey and the US to support all anti-Government jihadist forces (Syriana Analysis 2017).

Saleh’s former mentor, Riyad al Turk (who “liked” Saudi-backed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri), was calling for US military assistance in 2005 to help “the opposition” get rid of the Assad Government (Pace 2005). Of course he did not represent the Syrian Opposition. In the Damascus Declaration (2005), while making harsh criticisms of the Baathist system, most Syrian opposition groups specifically renounced violent attacks on the state and outside intervention. The Muslim Brotherhood and its hangers on, in contrast, always wanted violence with US and/or NATO assistance.

Saleh’s claim to fame as a secular communist against ‘the regime’ is undermined by how unrepresentative his small group was of Syria’s communists. He, like al Turk, criticises most other communists who “supported the regime” (Smith 2017). So how much support did his faction have? Al Turk maintained “we don’t announce how many members we have” (Pace 2005), but Gambill (2001) suggests it was “very little”.

Syria’s main Communist Party split in the mid-1980s (over Gorbachev’s policies), into two groups. Both stood candidates in the Peoples’ Congress (Majlis al Shaab) elections of 2007, 2012 and 2016, gaining 8, 11 and 4 MPs out of 250, respectively. That indicates that Syria’s main communist parties had electoral support of between 80,000 and 140,000 Syrian voters (IDEA 2017; Syrian Parliament 2017). We have no way of knowing how much support there ever was for the Communist Party (Political Bureau), or its successor the ‘Syrian Peoples Democratic Party’. But ask yourself, how many genuinely secular Marxists would collaborate with sectarian, al Qaeda styled Islamists?

The inescapable conclusion is that Saleh’s romanticised ideas failed and he was lucky to escape with his life. He certainly would have been in danger from both the Syrian Army and DAESH. But he and his tiny faction did not represent any significant part of the Syrian left. They were distinguished mainly by their collaboration with the Brotherhood groups and their al Qaeda allies, before they disappeared entirely from the scene.

After his successive failures Saleh blames everyone (Bashar al Assad, alQaeda/ISIS, the West) but himself. Yet it seems he has become a useful figure for western pseudo-leftists (who never could identify an actual Syrian armed group that they supported) to point at and say “Look, there really was a left revolution in Syria! Here he is!”

Pseudo-leftists in western countries – who for years held on to the Washington-promoted fiction of a ‘Syrian Revolution’ – are desperate for token Syrian ‘hero’ on which to hang their fantasies. That could be an ex-Islamist or an ex-communist; they don’t look too closely to see where these people come from. This desperation highlights their failure to confront actual history, and to care about the things that matter to ordinary people.

Sources

Abouzeid, Rania (2012) ‘Aleppo’s Deadly Stalemate: A Visit to Syria’s Divided Metropolis’, Time, 14 November, online: http://world.time.com/2012/11/ 14/aleppos-deadly-stalemate-a- visit-to-syrias-divided- metropolis/

Al-Shaqfa, Muhammad Riyad (2011) ‘Muslim Brotherhood Statement about the so-called ‘Syrian Revolution’’, General supervisor for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, statement of 28 March, online at: http://truthsyria.wordpress. com/2012/02/12/muslim- brotherhood-statement-about- the-so-called-syrian- revolution/

Amazon (2017) Promotion and reviews of Saleh’s book ‘The Impossible Revolution’, online: https://www.amazon.com/ Impossible-Revolution-Yassin- al-Haj-Saleh/dp/160846850X

Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, Montreal

Asi Abu Najm (2011) ‘Syria’s Coordination Committees: a Brief History’, Al Akhbar, 1 October, online: http://english.al-akhbar.com/ node/764

Bayoumy, Yara (2013) ‘Insight: Aleppo misery eats at Syrian rebel support’, Reuters, 9 January, online: http://www.reuters.com/ article/2013/01/09/us-syria- crisis-rebels- idUSBRE9070VV20130109

CNA (2012) ‘Syrian violence drives 50,000 Christians from homes’, Catholic News Agency, online: http://www.catholicnewsagency. com/news/syrian-violence- drives-50000-christians-from- homes/

Damascus Declaration (2005) ‘The Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change’, English version in Joshua Landis blog ‘Syria Comment’, 1 November, online: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/ Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/ 2005/11/damascus-declaration- in-english.htm

DIA (1982) ‘Syria: Muslim Brotherhood pressure intensifies’, Syria360, May, online: https://syria360.files. wordpress.com/2013/11/dia- syria- muslimbrotherhoodpressureinten sifies-2.pdf

Farrell, Shane (2011) ‘Lebanese Christians react to regional instability’, Now Media, 5 April, online: https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/ reportsfeatures/lebanese_ christians_react_to_regional_ instability

Foley, James (2012) ‘Syria: Rebels losing support among civilians in Aleppo’, PRI, 16 October, online: https://www.pri.org/stories/ 2012-10-16/syria-rebels- losing-support-among- civilians-aleppo

Gambill, Gary C. (2001) ‘Dossier: Riyad al Turk’, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Middle East Forum, Vol 3 No 9, September, online: https://www.meforum.org/meib/ articles/0109_sd1.htm

Ghaith, Abdul-Ahad (2012) ‘The people of Aleppo needed someone to drag them into the revolution’, The Guardian, 28 December, online: http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2012/dec/28/aleppo- revolution-abu-ali-sulaibi 

Hoff, Brad (2015) ‘2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”’, Levant Report, 19 May, online: https://levantreport.com/2015/ 05/19/2012-defense- intelligence-agency-document- west-will-facilitate-rise-of- islamic-state-in-order-to- isolate-the-syrian-regime/

IDEA (2017) ‘Syrian Arab republic, Total vote, Parliamentary elections, 1994-2016, online: https://www.idea.int/data- tools/question-countries-view/ 437/274/ctr

LCC (2013) ‘Dignity Strike … We make our revolution by our own hands’, Local Coordination Committees of Syria, December, online: http://www.lccsyria.org/3528

Lefèvre, Rafaël (2013) Ashes of Hama: the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Hurst and Company, London

Pace, Joe (2005) ‘Riyad al Turk, interviewed by Joe Pace on Mehlis, the Opposition, Ghadry’, Joshua Landis Page, October 22, online: http://joshualandis.oucreate. com/syriablog/2005/10/riad-al- turk-interviewed-by-joe-pace. htm

Seale, Patrick (1988) Asad: the struggle for the Middle East, University of California Press, Berkeley

Shadid, Anthony and David D. Kirkpatrick (2011) ‘Promise of Arab Uprisings Is Threatened by Divisions’, New York Times, 21 May, online: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 05/22/world/middleeast/22arab. html?pagewanted=all

Smith, Ashley (2017) ‘Revolution, counterrevolution, and imperialism in Syria, Interview with Yassin al-Haj Saleh’, International Socialist Review, Issue #107 online: https://isreview.org/issue/ 107/revolution- counterrevolution-and- imperialism-syria

Syrian parliament (2017) Syrian Peoples’ Assembly, online: https://web.archive.org/web/ 20121008210031/http:// parliament.sy/forms/cms/ viewStatistics.php ; and Inter-Parliamentary Union (2016) ‘SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC: Majlis Al-Chaab (People’s Assembly)’, online: http://archive.ipu.org/ parline-e/reports/2307_E.htm; and as compiled in Wikipedia ‘Syrian parliamentary elections’ 2007 / 2012 / 2016, online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Syrian_parliamentary_election, _2007

Syriana Analysis (2017) ‘Hamad Bin Jassim: We Supported Al-Qaeda in Syria’, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=9f33l30kQxg

TESEV (2012) ‘The perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2011’, Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfi, Istanbul, February, online: http://tesev.org.tr/en/yayin/ the-perception-of-turkey-in- the-middle-east-2011/

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].’

On November 11, distinguished scholar, political economist, media analyst/critic, peace champion Ed Herman passed away at age 92.

It was fittingly on the 99th anniversary of WW I’s end. Endless wars followed “the war to end all wars” – a legacy of mass slaughter and destruction Herman deplored, championing elusive world peace.

Along with his friends and family, I mourn his passing, a valued friend and colleague, a contributor to my 2014 book, titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III.”

He and other distinguished contributors made the book successful, published in Russia and France.

Ed Herman’s writing inspired my own. His books and many others by distinguished authors launched my second career – following years in small business.

His writing on Srebrenica explained what I earlier called more myth than massacre, saying:

“(E)vidence for a massacre, certainly of one in which 8,000 men and boys were executed, has always been problematic, to say the least…”

“(T)he ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars…”

“(T)he link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent.”

In his book “The Politics of Genocide, co-written with David Peterson, the authors explained that genocides in Kosovo and Rwanda were used by the West to advance its geopolitical/economic agenda.

Manufacturing Consent, co-authored by Noam Chomsky, was Herman’s best remembered work, his masterwork, mostly written by him.

It explained the “propaganda model,” controlling the public message by filter(ing) (disturbing truths), leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or air.

Today’s media are in crisis, free and open societies at risk by mass-produced fiction substituting for vital facts – alternative spaces the only sources of real news and information, mostly online.

Herman’s message and presence will be sorely missed, his spirit immortal. His last hurrah tour de force Monthly Review essay critiqued the deplorable state of today’s major media, saying:

Establishment “publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting” – calling dissenting viewpoints “fake news.”

“(T)hey…provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.”

New York Times “(f)ake news on Russia (dates) at least as far as the 1917 revolution.” It rages on steroids today.

Herman’s essay covered an array of important issues, including the CIA’s 1954 coup, toppling Guatemala’s democratic government, NYT and other media propaganda supporting what happened.

He explained Times fake news during the Vietnam War, the attempted 1981 papal assassination, the purported “missile gap” between America and Russia based on Big Lies, and so-called “humanitarian intervention” in Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

Media propaganda sanitized war, suppressing the country’s rape and destruction, its balkanization for easier Western control.

Herman discussed the disgraceful demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russophobia, the New York Times playing a leading role, inventing nonexistent threats, ignoring US-led NATO “expansion up to the Russian borders and first-strike-threat placement of anti-missile weapons in Eastern Europe,” along with endless wars of aggression against sovereign independent states threatening no one.

He ended his detailed essay, saying Trump administration actions “deal(t) a blow to any further rapprochement between the United States and Russia.”

“The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party” continue preventing world peace.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) called Ed Herman a “master of dissent.”

His life’s work was dedicated to inspiring new generations to work for the society he envisioned – moral, righteous, free, just, egalitarian at peace.

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

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

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Five years is a long time in the life of a child – and for the child’s parents. Five years can be a period of profound change, growth and development. But if Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has his way, millions of American kids will continue to eat harmful amounts of at least two dangerous pesticides for at least that long.

Those pesticides are chlorpyrifos and phosmet, two chemically related insect killers that can permanently damage a child’s developing brain, according to analyses by the EPA’s own scientists. These pesticides persist as residues on some of the most popular foods in kids’ diets. Yet both will likely be used on agricultural crops until at least 2022.

One of Pruitt’s very first moves as EPA administrator was an eleventh-hour cancellation of a ban on chlorpyrifos, which had been ordered during the Obama administration. Pruitt overturned a multi-year effort by the agency to address new and troubling evidence that organophosphate pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos and phosmet, are highly toxic to kids.

Beginning in the late 1990s, the EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funded several long-term studies of the effects of pesticide exposure on children. By 2011, three studies clearly showed remarkably similar effects of organophosphate exposure during pregnancy, including lowered cognitive abilities of 6- to 9-year-old children born to exposed mothers. The children who participated in those studies are now attending or graduating from high school, but organophosphates are still contaminating fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and oils.

The EPA’s recent health risk assessment for phosmet concluded that children’s health is threatened by current exposures from food. Infants and children ages 5 and younger have the greatest exposures of any age group. The most significant sources of phosmet exposure in children’s diets are peaches, peas, apples, blueberries, milk and contaminated drinking water.

But don’t count on any quick action from Pruitt to protect kids from phosmet exposure. Phosmet was last re-registered in 2006, and as with chlorpyrifos, the EPA is required to update its safety assessment by 2022. A lawsuit by advocacy groups compelled the Obama-era EPA to prioritize a quicker review of chlorpyrifos’ toxicity. But as Deputy Administrator Nancy Beck confirmed in a letter to EWG President Ken Cook, the Trump EPA will allow these harmful chemicals on food crops for at least five more years.

Another crucial decision on pesticides and kids is looming. When pyrethroid insecticides were developed, they were touted as a safer alternative for controlling insects. But six recent studies find that pyrethroids may pose risks to children’s brain and behavioral development similar to those of organophosphates. This includes permethrin, which the Department of Agriculture has detected on three-fourths of samples of conventionally grown spinach, and which is also used in lice shampoos, mosquito-repellent clothing and other household pest treatments.

In one study of more than 600 American children 8 to 15 years old, those with detectable pyrethroid residues in their urine were twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD as other children. Biomonitoring by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that children 6 to 11 years old have greater exposures than teens and adults. Exposures to one key pyrethroid metabolite – a chemical formed by the breakdown of the pesticide in the human body – increased by 50 percent in children between 2000 and 2010.

This week EWG submitted formal comments urging Pruitt to halt the pyrethroid safety assessment until the EPA has fully considered risks to childhood brain and behavioral development. We implored the EPA to assess the results of the six recent studies linking children’s pyrethroid exposures to brain and behavioral changes.

Ultimate responsibility for protecting children from brain-damaging pesticides rests with one person: Scott Pruitt. So far, he has used his immense power not to protect kids, but to protect the interests of chemical agribusiness. If the EPA continues on this path, it would effectively derail the agency’s pesticide program.

We hope we’re wrong. Pruitt could change course and begin taking seriously his job as chief advocate for environmental health and the safety of American children, before more kids are harmed for life by pesticides on their food. With nearly 4 million children born every year in the U.S., the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Featured image is from the author.

Dan La Botz: The Catalan independence movement and its suppression by the Spanish state have garnered the attention of the world. What has been your attitude toward the question of Catalonia?

Josep Maria Antentas: My traditional position is the defense of the right to self-determination, with the idea that when a group wises to exercise this right its position must be made specific. In the current situation and since the independence movement began in 2012, the defense of a “Yes” vote has a more democratic content than the “No” vote, which is associated exclusively with the reactionary defense of the Constitution and the political regime.

DL: So you called for voting yes on the referendum recently organized by the Catalonia government?

JMA: My position is that a “Yes” in the referendum now is the position that makes it possible to break with the post-Franco political framework. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that independence has to be the endpoint; an eventual Catalan Republic could confederate or federate with Spain afterwards, or could at least ask to do so. And there might be other options.

DL: What has been the impact of this process on the Spanish state?

JMA: The impact of the independence process on the Spain as a whole is complex because, in the short term, the Spanish right uses it to cohere its social base and in the last weeks we are experiencing a shift towards the right in the Spanish political and social life. But at the same time, it is the principal threat to the political regime created in 1978.* If Catalonia became independent, it is unlikely that the political regime of 1978 could survive. Such a crisis could open the opportunity for change in the Spanish state as well. The strategic, decisive question is how to link the independence movement—without dissolving its demand, with a perspective of breaking with the 1978 regime within the state as a whole. This requires combining unilateral action from Catalonia with the struggle within the Spanish state as a whole in favor of a new majority politics of the left. But this center-periphery dialectic is complex and neither Catalan independence movement, nor the forces of the Spanish left such as Podemos know how to do it.

DL: What is the social base of the independence movement?

JMA: The independence movement is principally based in the middle class, public employees, and youth. The Catalan government is an alliance between the neoliberal right party PDeCAT (Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català or Catalan European Democratic Party) and the center-left ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya,Republican Left of Catalonia). But since the movement began the relation of forces between these two groups has been displaced towards the ERC, while the PDeCAT has lost support. If there are elections on December 21, and the the two parties renew their alliance, the ERC will take control. Or, to put it another way, on the one hand, the Catalan right is playing a central role, but, on the other hand, it has been overwhelmed in a process that benefits the center-left independence forces.

DL: What has been the role in all of this of the CUP (Candidatura d’Unitat Popular or Popular Unity Candidacy), the farther left political party? And can you explain what has happened to Together We Can (En Comú Podem)?

JMA: CUP is an independence party and the principal force of the Catalan anti-capitalist movement. It went from 3 percent to nine percent of the vote in the last five years. It’s independence project goes beyond official “independence pure and simple” and links the national question with the social issues and defends an explicit anti-capitalist and anti-1978 regime position. It is a militant, combative force with a participatory and anti-bureaucratic culture. But it remains excessively trapped in the role of honest guarantor that the independence process be carried out to the end, of pressure on the government so that there is no step backwards, and it had no strategy whatsoever for attracking the social base of the left that remains outside of the movement.

DL: And what are the obstacles that the left faces?

JMA: The principal problem is that Catalonia’s radical left is divided: a part, CUP, is totally inside the movement; the other part (led by Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona and leader of En Comú Podem) is outside and maintains a passive wait-and-see attitude. I think that one has to be both within and outside of the movement, to support it insofar as it has democratic demands that would break with the old regime, but without necessarily sharing its strategy and its objective. The fact is that a part of the left has been totally outside, and that has given the right greater maneuvering room.

En Comú Podem supports the right to self-determination but it is not pro-independence. It has an anti-austerity program though not anti-capitalist. It defended the necessity of having a referendum on independence in agreement with the Spanish government, but it did not support the holding of the uni-lateral referendum on October 1, even though it considered the “mobilization” to be legitimate. But, as I said, it’s passive and wait-and-see attitude has prevented it from intervening.

DL: And where are the working class in all of this? My understanding is that the Catalan working class diverse, multinational. How does that affect things?

JMA: Yes, a central part of the Catalan working class, in particular the traditional industrial working class, has its origins in immigration from the South of the Spanish state in the 1970s. We should also point out that in Catalan society there is a generalized used of both Catalan and Spanish and that the population in general is bilingual, even though part of the population prefers to use either Catalan or Spanish in their daily activities.

At the same time, Catalonia as well as the Spanish state has in the last two decades experienced a strong immigration coming from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and also Asia, so the society has become multiethnic and multilingual. But both Catalan and Spanish politics, including the social movements, nevertheless remain quite “white” and “indigenous” [meaning the native-born people of the region].

The part of the working class that participate in the movement are the public employees (education and health) and young college graduates who can’t find decent, full-time jobs. The traditional industrial working class and the working class youth with less education have kept their distance from the movement. There are two reasons for that: First, they have less identification with the Catalan national question, since the bulk of Catalonia’s industrial working class is made up of immigrant workers who came form the South of Spain in the 1970s. Second, the disintegration of working class society and politics has led to a general crisis of the labor movement.

During the Franco dictatorship, the national question and the social question tended to become coordinated because they had a common enemy: the dictatorship. It was a period of working class hegemony within the Catalan nationalist movement. This situation began to change in the 1980s when the conservative nationalism of Jordi Pujol, the leader of the CDC (Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya or Catalonian Democratic Convergence) from 1974 to 2003, became hegemonic, while the working class lost its central social and political position in Catalan political life. The fact the independence movement, which erupted as a mass movement in 2012, only defended independence and disassociated itself from “other” demands, particular from the concrete criticism of the politics of austerity, has been an important strategic error and has made it more difficult to involve the working class and the left’s social base.

DL: So, given all that you have told us, how does this movement move forward?

JMA: Since the Spanish Republic’s proclamation on October 27, the Catalonian government was totally paralyzed. It never thought that things would go so far and didn’t foresee going beyond a symbolic declaration. Since October 27 there has been an absolute vacuum of leadership and an absence of guidance. All of the strategic limits of the catalan government and the social organizations that drive the movement were suddenly exposed. The dissolution of the Catalan government by the Spanish state through the application of Article 155 of the Constitution, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government’s announcement of Catalonian election on December 21, and the jailing of part of the Catalan government (the other part is in exile in Brussels), which put the independence movement in defensive position.

DL: What then are the priorities of the left in this context?

JMA: It is necessary to defend unity of action in the street (demonstrations, etc.) but to remain politically independent of PDeCAT and ERC, with our own slogans within the movement (in particular emphasizing the idea of the need to open the process toward a constituent assembly in Catalonia, as a way of putting the social and democratic aspects at the center of the discussion, and not only debating “independence.”

DL: So what is the strategy and what are the prospects as the Spanish state now plans to hold elections in Catalonia on December 21?

JMA: The December 21 the Spanish government called elections immediately after the dissolution of the Catalan government. They have been imposed by force. But all of these Catalan parties are going to participate in them, since there is no other realistic alternative. All of the forces against the bloc representing the regime of 1978 are going to state in their programs opposition to the dissolution of the Catalan government and the demand for freedom and amnesty for those who have been arrested. But beyond this shared defensive element, the fundamental strategic question is to establish a democratic roadmap of rupture with the regime of 1978 that unites the independence forces and those that are not pro-independence but defend the right to self-determination.

Note

*The “regime of 1978” refers to the political and institutional framework of the established by the approval of the Constitution of 1978 which resulted from the agreement reached between the anti-Franco forces and a section of reformers within the Franco regime and which marginalized those who rejected the agreement and favored a “break.” This gave rise to a kind of democratic state that conserved important aspects of the Franco regime and which didn’t change substantially the dominant power block.

Featured image is from Socialist Project.

We bring to the attention of our readers the official statement issued by the White House and The Kremlin pertaining to meetings of the two presidents on the margins of the APEC Summit conference in Vietnam. (emphasis added by Global Research on important concepts. Although other issues of  international concern were no doubt discussed, the joint statement pertains exclusively to Syria.

***

President Trump and President Putin today, meeting on the margins of the APEC conference in Da Nang, Vietnam, confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS in Syria. They expressed their satisfaction with successful U.S.-Russia enhanced de-confliction efforts between U.S. and Russian military professionals that have dramatically accelerated ISIS’s losses on the battlefield in recent months.

The Presidents agreed to maintain open military channels of communication between military professionals to help ensure the safety of both U.S. and Russian forces and de-confliction of partnered forces engaged in the fight against ISIS. They confirmed these efforts will be continued until the final defeat of ISIS is achieved.

The Presidents agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria. They confirmed that the ultimate political solution to the conflict must be forged through the Geneva process pursuant to UNSCR 2254. They also took note of President Asad’s recent commitment to the Geneva process and constitutional reform and elections as called for under UNSCR 2254.

The two Presidents affirmed that these steps must include full implementation of UNSCR 2254, including constitutional reform and free and fair elections under UN supervision, held to the highest international standards of transparency, with all Syrians, including members of the diaspora, eligible to participate. The Presidents affirmed their commitment to Syria’s sovereignty, unity, independence, territorial integrity, and non-sectarian character, as defined in UNSCR 2254, and urged all Syrian parties to participate actively in the Geneva political process and to support efforts to ensure its success.

Finally President Trump and President Putin confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an interim step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce ceasefire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict. They reviewed progress on the ceasefire in southwest Syria that was finalized the last time the two Presidents met in Hamburg, Germany on July 7, 2017.

The two presidents, today, welcomed the Memorandum of Principles concluded in Amman, Jordan, on November 8, 2017, between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America. This Memorandum reinforces the success of the ceasefire initiative, to include the reduction, and ultimate elimination, of foreign forces and foreign fighters from the area to ensure a more sustainable peace. Monitoring this ceasefire arrangement will continue to take place through the Amman Monitoring Center, with participation by expert teams from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Russian Federation, and the United States.

The two Presidents discussed the ongoing need to reduce human suffering in Syria and called on all UN member states to increase their contributions to address these humanitarian needs over the coming months.

In addition, President Trump noted that he had a good meeting with President Putin. He further noted that the successful implementation of the agreements announced today will save thousands of lives‎.

In an updated study, Reuters news agency has identified 3,810 neighborhoods where recently recorded child lead poisoning rates are at least double those found in Flint, Michigan during the height of that city’s water crisis in 2014 and 2015. In some 1,300 of these “hotspot” communities, the percentage of children six and under with elevated lead levels was at least four times the percentage in Flint during the peak of the crisis.

In pockets of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning has spanned generations, Reuters reported that the rate of elevated tests over the last decade was 50 percent or higher. An interactive map released with the study shows one census tract in Buffalo, New York—a former steel and auto center that, like Flint, has suffered decades of deindustrialization—where 68 percent of the children had high levels of lead.

Map of lead concentrations in the United States

The ingestion of any amount of the heavy metal, whether through tainted water, lead-based paint, contaminated soil or fumes and dust, can do irreparable harm to children. This includes impeding the development of the brain and nervous system, lowered IQ, memory loss, hearing and speech problems, and behavioral and attention-related problems. The toxin, which remains in the body and can be passed on for generations, is also responsible for a host of adult health problems, including decreased kidney function, high blood pressure, tremors and infertility.

In the year following the switchover of Flint to water from the polluted Flint River, which caused leaching from the city’s antiquated lead pipe system, five percent of the children who had their blood tested showed lead levels in excess of five micrograms per deciliter. This is the threshold requiring immediate public health intervention, according to the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which acknowledges that there is no safe level of exposure to lead.

Reuters used data collected by the CDC based on neighborhood-level blood testing results for 34 states and the District of Columbia. As devastating as the results are, they do not provide a full picture. The CDC funds 35 state and local health departments for lead surveillance. Reporting is voluntary in the remaining states, many of which do not have staff to collect data. Despite the well-known public health hazard, the US government does not require reporting and does not oversee the systematic collection and analysis of data on lead poisoning.

Dr. Kim Cecil of the Cincinnati Lead Study shows how the brain is damaged by lead poisoning

Reuters says this is the first look at data broken down by census tracts, which are small county subdivisions averaging 4,000 citizens, or by zip codes, with average populations of 7,500. In December, Reuters noted that far from being the exception, Flint did not even rank among the most toxic cities in America. It pointed to Warren, Pennsylvania, a town on the Allegheny River, where 36 percent of the children tested had high lead levels, to a zip code on Goat Island, Texas, where a quarter of tests showed poisoning.

The newest map includes additional data collected this year by Reuters from Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Vermont, North Carolina, New York City and Washington, D.C. The newly identified areas with high levels of child lead poisoning include a historic district in Savannah, Georgia, areas in Rutland, Vermont near a popular skiing area, and a largely Hasidic Jewish area in Brooklyn, New York.

Like Flint, which has acres of land polluted by General Motors and other industrial firms, impoverished homes with peeling paint, and underground lead water mains and service lines, the areas throughout the US with the worst lead poisoning are invariably working class and poor.

There has been a sharp decline in poisoning since lead was removed from paint in 1976 and gasoline in 1995, the latter after more than a decade of resistance by the oil industry. The elimination of lead poisoning, however, is not possible due to lead pipes, residual lead paint in poor urban and rural areas, and former or current industrial sites polluted with lead.

The Flint River

“The dramatic decline in blood lead over the last several decades in the US is a public health triumph, resulting from control of lead in gasoline, paint, food, water, soil, consumer products and other sources,” said Marc Edwards, a professor of environmental and water resources engineering at Virginia Tech University, who was instrumental in exposing the lies of state and local officials who claimed that Flint’s water was safe.

He continued:

“Before the increased use of lead in paint and gasoline, lead in water was once the dominant source of human lead exposure in the United States, and it was generally acknowledged to cause widespread lead poisoning, fatalities and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Flint is yet another reminder that we must remain vigilant to harm caused by all lead sources, especially lead pipes, which are out of sight and out of mind. It is also the only government-owned source of lead, which directly affects potable water, a product intended for human consumption. Flint is just the most recent example of how this inherent conflict has harmed people.”

The poisoning of Flint was brought into the national and international spotlight only due to the courageous efforts of the city’s working class residents and science professionals like Edwards and pediatrician and public health advocate Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha. She was denounced by Governor Rick Snyder’s office for “slicing and dicing” the results of blood samples.

Flint became a symbol of everything that was wrong in America: corporate and political criminality and the indifference of both the Democrats and Republicans to the plight of working people. The media, celebrities and politicians from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders poured into the town and legal proceedings were initiated against several lesser figures involved in the crime and cover-up. More than three years since the switch to the Flint River, however, nothing has been done to make the residents whole.

The new report from Reuters has been largely ignored by the rest of the corporate-controlled media, which originally presented the Flint crisis as an anomaly, until it was unable to deny the massive and nationwide scale of the problem. Far from committing the necessary resources, including an estimated $500 billion to $1 trillion to replace the nation’s lead pipes, the Obama and Trump administrations have failed to provide any significant funding to address this public health care threat, even as they have squandered trillions on bank bailouts, military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Trump’s 2018 budget request includes a $1.2 billion, or 17 percent, cut to the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

All images, except the featured, are from the author.

The United States received no permission from the United Nations to intervene in Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

“We were surprised to hear a statement made by US Defense Secretary James Mattis when talking to the US media representatives on November 13 that the US Armed Forces are in Syria “with the permission of the UN,”” Zakharova said.

Her comments were made on Monday after Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that Washington’s intervention in Syria had been approved by the United Nations.

“I want to remind you that the Security Council is the only body under the UN Charter that is entitled to take decisions on using military force in the international community,” she said, adding that no such decision has been taken. “The US units are there in disregard of the country’s legitimate government in fact acting as occupants,” the diplomat stressed.

Zakharova emphasized that the US tries to “withhold part of Syrian territory.”

“The task, which is again seen as part of this approach, is to achieve the necessary result of settlement by force,” she said.

“We are very concerned by the US attempts to settle in someone’s house while they apparently do not bring peace and calm to that house. We hope that the US will still formulate its fair and legal position on the issue of its presence in Syria, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier said,” Zakharova said.

This follows on from an earlier report by FRN of Jim Jatras, a former US diplomat and adviser to Senate Republic leadership, who also said Washington is violating international law by intervening in Syria following on from Mattis’ false claims.

Featured image is from the author.

A new CNN investigation has uncovered a network of slave markets operating in warehouses in various cities across Libya six years after NATO-led intervention in the country toppled the government of Muammar Gaddafi in support of US and UK backed rebels. And not only did CNN confirm the presence of slave auctions where human beings are being sold for as little as $400 in “liberated” Libya, but CNN’s crew was actually able to film a live auction in progress, while also gathering the testimonies of multiple victims.

Though CNN’s footage and accompanying report is shocking, such practices have been quietly documented for years, and clear warnings were issued starting in early 2011 that Libya’s black as well as migrant population would be the first to fall victim at the hands of the Islamist Libyan rebels that NATO’s war empowered. From the outset critics of Western intervention in Libya loudly sounded the alarm of a genocide against black Libyans in progress committed by the very rebels the US, UK, France, and Gulf allies were arming – a fact so well-known that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was personally briefed and warned on the matter.

The Dangerous Myth of Gaddafi’s “African Mercenaries” 

Among the foremost of these early critics at the time, Maximilian Forte, Associate Professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, published a 2012 book which exhaustively documented racially motivated crimes which came early and often during the armed uprising. His book, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa, contains essential summary context laying out the role that international media played in 2011 and after, including CNN itself, in fueling the xenophobic campaign to scapegoat Libya’s over one million strong black population as “pro-Gaddafi mercenaries”.

According to Professor Forte:

Racial fear and xenophobia were at the very crux of the first public calls for Western military intervention, and were the basis for the first utterance of the need for a “no-fly zone” … The myth of the “African mercenary” was useful for the Libyan opposition, the NTC [National Transitional Council] and the militias, to insist that this was a war between “Gaddafi and the Libyan people,” as if he had no domestic support at all…

As Patrick Cockburn explained, the insurgents’ “explanation for the large pro-Gaddafi forces was that they were all mercenaries, mostly from black Africa, whose only motive was money.”

Gaddafi’s ‘pan-Africanist’ policies such as aggressive support for the creation of the African Union (in 2002), and a relatively open immigration policy allowing for the influx of sub-Saharan African migrants to work on Gaddafi’s massive building projects, stirred resentment and discontent within broader Arab Libyan society in the decade leading up to the 2011 war. This was the historical background which set the stage for the anti-Gaddafi rebels’ extraordinary claim that sub-Saharan “foreign mercenaries” were being used en masse by Gaddafi to target protesters (later proven false).

And these historic ethnic and racial dynamics were well understood by the US government long before official support to Libyan militant groups began – militants which were not only shown to have al-Qaeda links, but which declared “open season” on all black Libyans and migrant workers during the revolution. As the CIA’s own historical analysis of Libya’s internal dynamics spells out:

QADHAFI in 1998 adopted a decade-long pan-African policy that enabled large numbers of sub-Saharan migrants to enter Libya without visas to work in the construction and agricultural industries. Although sub-Saharan Africans provided a cheap labor source, they were poorly treated and were subjected to periodic mass expulsions. By the mid-2000s, domestic animosity toward African migrants…

Similar to later developments in Syria, the media would uncritically echo whatever the “freedom fighting” rebels would feed it, thus this black foreign mercenary trope became an unquestioned reality spread from rebel propagandists to the Western public. Libyan opposition members even began claiming to be victims of wild attacks by roving bands of machete-wielding pro-Gaddafi blacks wearing tell-tale yellow hard hats – a symbol which also falsely began to be associated with “Gaddafi’s savage mercenaries” – resulting in subsequent mass arrests and executions of innocent black migrant construction workers.

CNN Spread the “Black Mercenary” Lie

The end result would of course be the widespread targeting and scapegoating of an entire ethnic population within Libya. This is demonstrated, for example, in the most well-known example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.

A widely circulated photo from the Libyan war which shows rebels threatening to shoot a black man.

But it is important to remember that CNN itself at the time regularly promoted the false “black mercenary” narrative which helped fuel and excuse such atrocities, even though it is now much belatedly investigating and decrying Libya’s current migrant slave auctions, while leaving out the essential context which enabled such horrors in the first place. For example, the following February 2011 CNN reporting relied on unnamed opposition sources during the earliest days of the conflict to say:

Residents said hundreds of mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa had been killed or captured while fighting for Gadhafi, but much of the army appears to have gone over to anti-government forces.

And a separate CNN article from the same month – though acknowledging that no CNN journalists were even inside the country – still uncritically reported:

Clashes broke out between a large crowd of demonstrators and people who appeared to be African mercenaries in the center of the city, according to an activist.

Yet another broadcast segment from February 2011 – the clip of which appears to have since been deleted from CNN’s site (but which is available on YouTube), asks the question: in Libya “just who is doing the dirty work?” – while answering that Gaddafi imported Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries to crack down on civilian protesters.

And those few examples are but a tiny sampling of CNN’s consistent spreading the dangerous myth throughout the early stages of the conflict – to say nothing of how ubiquitous the false rebel claims became among mainstream media generally.

US-backed Rebels and Ethnic Genocide

One of the few international correspondents to actually report the truth in real time while writing from inside Libya was The Independent’s (UK) Patrick Cockburn. In an August 2011 story he wrote as if attempting to warn the world about the future war crimes to come at the hands of the US-backed rebels:

The rotting bodies of 30 men, almost all black and many handcuffed, slaughtered as they lay on stretchers and even in an ambulance in central Tripoli, are an ominous foretaste of what might be Libya’s future. The incoming regime makes pious statements about taking no revenge on pro-Gaddafi forces, but this stops short of protecting those who can be labelled mercenaries. Any Libyan with a black skin accused of fighting for the old regime may have a poor chance of survival.

Subsequent stories of widespread torture and executions of black Libyans included a 2012 report in UK media which involved anti-Gaddafi “revolutionaries” filming themselves torturing black prisoners, making them eat the former Libyan national flag.

If reporters like Cockburn and even prominent human rights organizations (see Human Rights Watch, September 2011, Libya: Stop Arbitrary Arrests of Black Africans) understood what was happening months prior to height of NATO’s military campaign in support of the rebels, which ended in the brutal torture and field execution of Gaddafi, then what did one of the prime US architects of the war, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton know and when did she know it?

Then Secretary of State Clinton posing with Libyan rebel commanders.

What Hillary Knew

The answer lies in a March 27, 2011, intelligence brief on Libya published by WikiLeaks. The brief, which was made public in 2015 as part of a large batch of Hillary emails released by the State Department, was sent by long time close adviser to the Clinton family and Hillary’s personal intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, and contains clear reference to rebels summarily executing “all foreign mercenaries” – which had already become the common euphemism for black Libyans then being targeted by the US-supported rebels.

Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary:

Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.

Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troopscontinue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…

Hillary Emails show UK, French, Egyptian special forces were secretly in Libya providing arms to "protestors" https://t.co/SyRhaYeLGI

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 25, 2016

And further interesting is that the line immediately following the acknowledgement of war crimes against “foreign mercenaries” indicates that a long time CIA supported Libyan exile was then taking command of the very militants committing those summary executions.

The email continues:

 At the same time Colonel Khalifa Haftar has reportedly joined the rebel command structure, in an effort to help organization the rebel forces.

Khalifa Haftar has since 2011 become a mainstay in Libya’s post-Gaddafi chaos, heading up one of the three to four governments (at any given time) claiming authority in the war-torn country. Haftar has been widely acknowledged as the “CIA’s man” during his two decade long exile in the US, as a BBC profile explained: “His proximity to the CIA’s headquarters in Langley hinted at a close relationship with US intelligence services, who gave their backing to several attempts to assassinate Gaddafi.”

CIA’s Khalifa Haftar and Mass Executions

Meanwhile, Haftar is currently being eyed by international prosecutors for continuing to commit war crimes in Libya. One month ago The Guardian reported, “Ex-CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, due to meet Italian officials in Rome, ordered soldiers to kill prisoners, according to legal experts.” The Guardian cites video evidence which proves he continues to be “complicit in calling for extrajudicial killings.”

And yesterday Al Jazeera reported that a formal suit has been filed against Haftar at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “carrying out mass executions and torture.” Another recent Guardian report which details torture and rape being carried out against prisoners held under Haftar’s militia alliance, includes the following eyewitness account of the torture of African migrant detainees: “There was a black man, a migrant. In the evening, they threw him into one of our cells: ‘You rape this guy, otherwise, you’re dead!’”

Then Secretary of State Clinton understood in early 2011 what was happening concerning the rebel genocidal targeting of black Libyans and African migrants, yet pushed to arm the rebels and overthrow Gaddafi anyway. She was given the intelligence brief which gave evidence this was happening on March 27, 2011. But even without such a classified intelligence report personally delivered to her, such war crimes were so well known that a full month prior on February 28, 2011, Al Jazeera could publish the following story entitled, African Migrants Targetted in Libya:

 As nations evacuate their citizens from the violence gripping Libya, many African migrant workers are targeted because they are suspected of being mercenaries hired by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.

Dozens of workers from sub-Saharan Africa are feared killed, and hundreds are in hiding, as angry mobs of anti-government protesters hunt down “black African mercenaries,” according to witnesses.

“No Regrets”

But even years later, as such race-based war crimes have now been exhaustively documented, Hillary has consistently indicated that she has no regrets. Though her beloved Libyan rebels, legitimized and empowered through broad support from the West, were literally killing people based on the color of their skin, not a single one has ever been convicted in a court of law or punished for their crimes.

Moreover, Hillary has never so much as hinted at the problem, though her public stature would allow her a world-wide platform to speak against atrocities at any time, possibly preventing further crimes. Instead, she has simply chosen to conclude her role in the tragic story of Libya with her crazed and gleeful declaration of “we came, we saw, he died.”

All images in this article are from Zero Hedge.

Featured image: Nepal village near Annapurna (Source: Robyn Wilson)

Rural Nepalese villages are putting a number of innovative green measures in place to safeguard their future.

Landlocked within the rocky Himalayan region, Nepal is extremely vulnerable not only to climate change but to various natural disasters.

In April 2015, the country was left devastated by an earthquake that measured up to 8.1 in magnitude (within the most severe earthquake class bracket) and killed nearly 9,000 people.

Rainwater harvesting

According to the United Nations Programme in Nepal, there were more the 27,000 deaths in the country between 1971-2007 due to natural disasters – that’s an average of two deaths a day.

An increase in climate change and the future risks presented by natural disasters place an urgency of Nepalese villages to become more resilient and adaptable to environmental change.

Agriculture and energy are the two main areas where villagers are implementing a mix of traditional and innovative measures to combat this, including clean energy projects, organic farming methods, recycling schemes and the creation of a self-sustaining eco-village.

“We have rainwater harvesting, solar energy and use cow dung and urine to create organic pesticides,” begins Bishwo Raj Adhikari – the creator of the Annapurna Eco-village.

“There used to be lots of chemical usage and artificial fertilisers in my village but we have started a campaign to lower the use of chemicals, which is helping our soil and improving our lifestyle.”

More mosquitos

Bishwo and his family set up the village, which is located at the foot of the Himalayas’ Annapurna range, in 2004 as a lodge for trekkers as well as a meditation and yoga retreat for tourists who want to escape the city and experience a little nature but it is fair to say that the village is much more than a tourist get-away.

The family have created an impressive farm, growing a variety of fruits, vegetables, coffee and sugar cane, whilst using their livestock’s waste to create organic pesticides and fertilisers.

A trained porter and trekker for over 20 years, Bishwo knows the Himalayan region intimately and explains how the environment in which he has spent a large part of his life has change significantly over the years.

Bishwo says that in traditionally cooler regions like the lower Mustang district, he has started seeing an increase in different species, which are typically drawn to warmer climates.

“I see more mosquitos now in Jomsom when I go trekking as well as more leeches and snakes. This has changed a lot since 1991 when I started as a porter.”

First stopover

Climate change is also having a negative effect on region’s crops, according to Bishwo, who says Hemja village, which is famous for its orange groves, nowadays has trouble growing orange trees at all.

Tourism is also playing a part in this environmental change as well as a lack of environmental awareness among some of the villages – particularly when it comes to littering.

There are no bins available along the trekking routes and there are no formal recycling schemes in place within the communities, which leads to many tourists and locals frequently littering plastic bottles and packaging along the trekking route.

Bishwo and his family have set up a recycling scheme at their village to tackle this and are reaching out to nearby families, schools and hospitals to increase environmental awareness and encourage people to reduce their waste.

Elsewhere, an innovative scheme to tackle littering is taking place in the picturesque village of Ghandruk, which is a popular first stopover for trekkers on their way to Annapurna.

Micro hydropower 

Local mothers, with help from The Alternative Energy Promotion Centre and the Annapurna Conservation Project, have begun to sell filtered jars of water to locals and trekkers.

The scheme has had a number of benefits. Not only does it utilise the electricity created by the region’s Bhurgyu Khola Micro Hydropower for the filtration system but it reduces the need for plastic water bottles and empowers the local women, who run the business.

Other clean energy initiatives in the region have been making headway. The United Nations Development Programme in Nepal is now well in to its Renewable Energy for Rural Livelihood project, which started in 2014.

The scheme, which runs until 2019, was set up to provide electricity through renewable energy schemes to the 30 per cent of rural Nepalese households, who have no access to power.

Among its achievements is the completion of 423 micro hydropower plants across Nepal, which collectively have a capacity of 9.1MW and have connected over 94,131 households.

Nature and climate

The RERL scheme has also installed two biomass gasifiers in Sarlahi District, on the south west border of Nepal, and has plans to build further hydropower plants and solar PV systems across the country.

Clearly there is plenty of scope for Nepal to lead the way on clean energy, with an abundance of mountains and hills as well as the potential to replicate some of the green initiatives that are already taking place in certain villages.

Bishwo hopes that his eco-village can become a model for other Nepalese families in the region. With further support from the government Bishwo believes that green schemes “could save Nepal’s culture, nature and climate”. ”

Robyn Wilson is a freelance journalist currently writing and travelling across Asia. She is a former news editor at Construction News. She blogs at Weird Fishes and tweets at @RobynFWilson.

Are the days of the free and open Internet numbered?

The Internet is certainly used for all sorts of horrible things, but it has also allowed ordinary people to communicate on a mass scale that would have been unimaginable decades ago. 

In the old days, if you wanted to reach large audiences of people with your information you always had to go through corporate gatekeepers.  But today, anyone with an Internet connection can literally broadcast whatever they want to say to the whole world.  Personally, my wife and I have always been amazed at how many people we are able to touch all over the planet from our little home in the mountains.  Over the past seven years our websites have been viewed more than 100 million times, and we receive emails about our work from people all over the globe.

Unfortunately, major changes may soon be coming to the Internet. The election of Donald Trump really angered the elite, and they are blaming the power of the Internet for his victory. They insist that something must be done “for the good of democracy”.

For example, in an opinion piece for the Guardian, U.S. Senator Al Franken proposed that it is time for the U.S. government to step in because Google, Facebook and Twitter have failed to prevent the spread of propaganda, misinformation, and hate speech…

As lawmakers grapple with the revelations regarding Russia’s manipulation of social media during the 2016 election, many are shocked to learn the outsized role that the major tech companies play in so many aspects of our lives. Not only do they guide what we see, read, and buy on a regular basis, but their dominance – specifically in the market of information – now requires that we consider their role in the integrity of our democracy.

Last week’s hearings demonstrated that these companies may not be up to the challenge that they’ve created for themselves. In some instances, it seems that they’ve failed to take commonsense precautions to prevent the spread of propaganda, misinformation, and hate speech.

Those are very ominous words.

So precisely what would constitute “propaganda”, “misinformation” or “hate speech”?

When you start regulating speech, you cross a very dangerous line.  There is a reason why our founders guaranteed us freedom of speech in the Bill of Rights, because if we don’t have the freedom to say what we want then what do we really have left?

During the presidential election, there was a lot of talk about Hillary Clinton’s health.  The mainstream media insisted that she was just fine, and they accused those of us in the alternative media that were questioning her health of engaging in “propaganda” and “misinformation”.  Well, it turns out that we now know that Clinton’s health was so bad that Donna Brazile was actually considering replacing her as the nominee, and so it was actually the mainstream media that was putting out “propaganda” and “misinformation”.

Any effort to institute some sort of “truth police” would take us significantly down the road to totalitarianism, but apparently that is what Franken wants.  In fact, he is openly suggesting that it is time for government regulators to step in…

Instead of simply trusting the big tech companies to police how their services are being used and abused, Franken suggested that regulators need to step in. Lawmakers should take a closer look at the influence technology plays in the everyday lives of Americans by conducting “vigorous oversight in the form of investigations and hearings to fully understand current practices and the potential for harm,” the Minnesota senator said.

“I’m hopeful that recent events will encourage regulators, as well as a broader contingent of my colleagues — on both sides of the aisle — to give this issue the attention it deserves,” he said.

So once government regulators begin regulating speech on the Internet, where will it end?

Will everything that we do on the Internet have to be evaluated for “truthiness” before it is allowed to be posted?

And who decides what the “truth” actually is?

I am a big believer in the marketplace of ideas.  I have always been convinced that if everyone is allowed to openly share what they believe that the truth will win in the end.

Of course the elite are scared of the free exchange of ideas, because that gives the people way too much control over their own destiny.  Prior to the Internet age, they were always in control of the flow of information in our society, but now things have changed dramatically.

They desperately want to get control of the Internet, because they want things to go back to the way that they used to be. But we can’t allow that to happen, and so we must greatly resist any attempts to regulate speech on the Internet.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Featured image is from the author.

The European Union (EU) is launching the construction of an authority to monitor and censor so-called “fake news.” It is setting up a High-Level Expert Group on the issue and soliciting criticisms of “fake news” by media professionals and the public to decide what powers to give to this EU body, which is to begin operation next spring.

An examination of the EU’s announcement shows that it is preparing mass state censorship aimed not at false information, but at news reports or political views that encourage popular opposition to the European ruling class.

The term “fake news” is taken from the campaign in the United States promoting unsubstantiated accusations that Donald Trump’s victory was attributable to Russian manipulation of the 2016 US presidential elections that publicized material harmful to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. This campaign has developed into ever more aggressive demands for censorship of the Internet to prevent the expression of critical views and social protests.

At one US Senate hearing on the issue, former FBI officer Clint Watts called for censorship in front of sympathetic US Senators, who denounced Russia for supposedly trying to “amplify racial and social divisions” in America. Watts said, “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

The EU’s anti-“fake news” censorship body serves the same basic political ends. It aims to create conditions where unelected authorities control what people can read or say online.

“We live in an era where the flow of information and misinformation has become almost overwhelming,” EU Vice-President Frans Timmermans declared.

He added that the EU’s task is to protect its citizens from “fake news” and to “manage the information they receive.”

According to an EU press release, the EU Commission, another unelected body, will select the High-Level Expert Group, which is “to start in January 2018 and will work over several months.” It will discuss “possible future actions to strengthen citizens’ access to reliable and verified information and prevent the spread of disinformation online.” Who will decide what views are “verified,” who is “reliable” and whose views are “disinformation” to be deleted from Facebook or removed from Google search results? The EU, of course.

As in the United States, the EU anti-“fake news” campaign flows out of operations against Russia and attempts to shield from criticism the ever more unpopular EU policies—in particular, the accelerating turn by the European bourgeoisie towards militarism and authoritarian rule.

According to its press release, the EU’s new initiative began with the establishment by the EU Council, in March 2015, of the “East Strategic Communication Task Force” (East Stratcom). This was shortly after Washington and Berlin successfully organized a regime change operation in February 2014 in Ukraine, via a putsch led by the pro-Nazi, anti-Russian Right Sector militia that toppled a pro-Russian government in Kiev. This led to a bitter civil war in Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine that was still raging at the beginning of 2015.

The EU was well aware of the fascistic character of its Ukrainian allies. The EU Parliament had just voted in 2012 for a resolution formally denouncing one of the parties it put in power in Kiev, Svoboda. Stating that Svoboda’s “racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values,” the EU Parliament appealed to democratic political parties “not to associate with, endorse, or form coalitions with this party.”

After US and European imperialism put Svoboda in power, however, European media denounced as a “supreme lie” criticism that the EU was working with neo-fascists, which it called “lying Russian propaganda.”

These are the reactionary political roots of the anti-“fake news” campaign in Europe in general, and of East Stratcom in particular. According to the current EU press release, the agency was set up “to identify, analyse, and raise awareness of Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns on a daily basis.” Its mission statement declares its top purpose is to ensure “Effective communication and promotion of EU policies towards the Eastern Neighbourhood,” that is, to promote the EU’s aggressive policies and its links to neo-fascists in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and beyond.

The situation emerging in Europe is a warning to the working class. A body set up to promote forces like Svoboda and the Right Sector, which glorifies the Ukrainian forces who participated in the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews in the USSR during World War II, is to lead a drive to censor the Internet and official public life in Europe. Police-state rule in Europe is actively being prepared.

This reflects a historic collapse of democratic forms of rule across the continent that has developed over decades. The quarter century since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the USSR has seen austerity at home and escalating NATO wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe. European capitalism is bankrupt, and nearly a decade after the 2008 Wall Street crash, economic inequality is reaching levels incompatible with democratic forms of rule.

With tens of millions of unemployed and youth left with no future, social anger has reached explosive levels. The EU’s Generation What poll earlier this year found that more than half of European youth would be willing to participate in a “mass uprising” against the existing order. The response of European imperialism is to prepare repression and authoritarian rule at home, while denouncing criticism of its policies as “fake news” and Russian propaganda.

Significantly, a key battleground of the EU “fake news” campaign is Spain. Last month, Madrid suspended Catalonia’s elected government amid mass protests in Barcelona, after police assaulted peaceful voters in the October 1 Catalan independence referendum. Berlin, London and Paris all issued statements backing Madrid. Spanish General Fernando Alejandre threatened Catalonia with military intervention and hailed the Spanish army “of all epochs,” implicitly including the 1939 invasion of Catalonia by fascist dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

Predictably, European media, the Spanish government, and East Stratcom are launching a campaign to denounce criticism of Madrid’s policies, and EU support for them, as “fake news.” On Monday, the British Guardian reported, “Officials working at the East Stratcom taskforce in Brussels say they have seen an increase in disinformation linked to the Catalan referendum, in line with the explosion of media interest in the story.”

To illustrate the alleged “upsurge in pro-Kremlin disinformation and false claims about the political crisis in Catalonia,” the Guardian cited a Facebook post by Moldovan politician Bogdan Țîrdea that stated:

“EU officials supported the violence in Catalonia.”

As in Ukraine, the ruling elite attacks such statements as “fake news” and Russian propaganda not because they are false, but because they threaten to provoke political opposition at home.

Claims that Russia and its allies in Eastern Europe instigated the Catalan crisis or used it to smear the EU are lies refuted by Madrid’s own statements. Over a week after the October 1 referendum, Madrid hailed Moscow’s reactionary support for its internal repression. Spanish Ambassador to Russia Ignacio Ibanez Rubio said,

“Spain endorses Russia’s official stance. From the very beginning, Russia has recognized that this is an internal affair of our country… So we are very pleased with Russia’s stand on the crisis in Catalonia.”

The accelerating moves towards police-state rule in Europe and the media campaign against Russian “fake news” again underscore the significance of the World Socialist Web Site’s reporting, its opposition to the EU, and its struggle against Google’s attempts to censor it. It is emerging as the leading voice against the drive to legitimize authoritarian rule and far-right politics in Europe.

On November 15, Ahrar al-Sham officially declared a start of the operation to capture the Armored Vehicle Base and the nearby area from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.

Ahrar al-Sham, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and Faylaq al-Rahman launched their advance on November 14. Since then, an intense fighting has been ongoing in the area.

However, the official Ahrar al-Sham offensive declaration means that this is not a limited effort. The ceasefire region in Eastern Ghouta collapsed.

On November 15, the SAA and its allies captured the villages of Hazm, Kikiyah, al-Arfa and Rabdah from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in northern Hama.

Meanwhile, the HTS-linked news agency Iba’a announced that HTS recaptured Sarha village and Sarha hill in the nearby area. According to Iba’a, the SAA lost at least 3 soldiers and a battle tank in the clashes.

On the same day, six Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bombers carried out a massive strike on ISIS targets near the border city of al-Bukamal.

According to the Russian and Syrian defense ministries, al-Bukamal should be in hands of pro-government forces and only few ISIS members remained in the city. However, according to photos and videos from the area, clashes are still ongoing there.

The Hezbollah media wing in Syria claimed that the US-led coalition is hindering the SAA efforts to establish control over al-Bukamal. The coalition is reportedly jamming the SAA communications and even blocking some part of the airspace over al-Bukamal.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq, claimed that ISIS members killed 7 SAA members, destroyed a bulldozer, a battle tank and damaged another battle tank in the al-Bukamal area.

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The truth of corporate journalism, and the great irony of its obsession with ‘fake news’, is that it is itself utterly fake. What could be more obviously fake than the idea that Truth can be sold by billionaire-owned media dependent on billionaire-owned advertisers for maximised profit?

The ‘mainstream’ worldview is anything but – it is extreme, weird, a product of corporate conformity and deference to power. As Norman Mailer observed:

‘There is an odour to any Press Headquarters that is unmistakeable… The unavoidable smell of flesh burning quietly and slowly in the service of a machine.’ (Mailer, ‘The Time Of Our Time’, Little Brown, 1998, p.457)

A prime example of ‘mainstream’ extremism is the way the UK’s illegal wars destroying whole countries are not an issue for corporate moralists. Physicians for Global Responsibility estimate that 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. And yet it is simply understood that UK wars will not be a theme during general elections (See here and here). By contrast, other kinds of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ are subject to intense scrutiny.

Consider the recent resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and his replacement by Prime Minister Theresa May’s Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson. Fallon resigned after it was revealed that he had ‘repeatedly touched the broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer’s knee at a dinner in 2002’.

Fallon was damaged further by revelations that he had lunged at journalist Jane Merrick:

‘This was not a farewell peck on the cheek, but a direct lunge at my lips.’

The Commons leader Andrea Leadsom also disclosed that she had complained about ‘lewd remarks’ Fallon had made to her.

Sexual harassment is a serious issue, despite the scoffing of some male commentators. In the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens shamefully dismissed women’s complaints as mere ‘squawking’.

But it is strange indeed that, while harassment is rightly deemed a resigning offence, other ‘inappropriate behaviour’ leaves ‘mainstream’ commentators completely unmoved.

Fallon voted for both the 2003 war that destroyed Iraq and the 2011 war that wrecked Libya. He voted for war on Syria. He voted for replacing the Trident nuclear missile system. Earlier this year, he even declared that Britain would be willing to launch a nuclear first strike.

After he was made Secretary of Defence in July 2014, Fallon oversaw the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia waging war on Yemen. Two years later, Campaign Against Arms Trade reported that UK sales to Saudi Arabia since the start of the war included £2.2 billion of aircraft, helicopters and drones, £1.1 billion of missiles, bombs and grenades, and nearly half a million pounds’ worth of tanks and other armoured vehicles. British sales of military equipment to the kingdom topped £1.1bn in the first half of this year alone.

In December 2016, Fallon admitted that internationally banned cluster munitions supplied by the UK had been used in Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign. Six months earlier, Amnesty International had reported that British-made cluster bombs were being used in attacks on civilians that had claimed the lives of children. For none of these horrors did Fallon resign.

So what kind of conflict are these weapons fuelling? The Guardian reports this week:

‘Yemen is in the grip of the world’s worst cholera outbreak and 7 million people are already on the brink of famine.’

In July, Reliefweb reported:

‘The scale of the food crisis in conflict-ridden Yemen is staggering with 17 million people – two thirds of the population – severely food insecure and seven million of these on the verge of famine.’

Director-General of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, José Graziano da Silva, has described Yemen as the UN’s ‘largest humanitarian crisis today’, noting that conflict and violence have disrupted agriculture, with violence intensifying in areas most short of food. In December 2016, a study by UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, found that at least one child was dying in Yemen every 10 minutes. The agency found that, since 2014, there had been a 200 per cent increase in children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, with almost half a million affected. Nearly 2.2 million children were in need of urgent care.

This week, the Saudi-led coalition declared it would close Yemen’s borders to prevent an alleged flow of weapons from Iran, after it intercepted a missile attack by Houthi rebels near Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Johan Mooij, Yemen director of Care International, commented:

‘For the last two days, nothing has got in or out of the country. Fuel prices have gone up by 50% and there are queues at the gas stations. People fear no more fuel will come into Hodeidah port.’

He added:

‘People depend on the humanitarian aid and part of the cholera issue [is] that they do not eat and are not strong enough to deal with unclean water.’

There have been ‘daily airstrikes in Sana’a,’ Mooij said, adding: ‘People fear the situation is escalating.’

On Monday, the UN’s World Food Program said that, out of Yemen’s entire population of 28 million people, about 20 million, ‘do not know where they’re going to get their next meal’. These are Fallon’s millions, May’s millions, the ‘mainstream’s’ millions.

In the Independent, Mary Dejevsky made the only mention of Yemen in an article discussing Fallon’s resignation that we have seen in the national corporate press:

‘In the Middle East [on Fallon’s watch], the UK made great efforts to maintain its alliance with Saudi Arabia – and the arms sales that went with it – playing down the desperate plight of Yemen which was a by-product of this policy.’

Mass death, Iraq and Libya destroyed, millions of lives torn apart, profiteering in the billions from the torture of an impoverished, famine-stricken nation – none of this was deemed worthy even of mention in considering the record of Fallon and his ‘inappropriate behaviour’.

As for his replacement, the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow tweeted a link to his blog piece titled: ’10 things you might not know about Gavin Williamson’. Vital facts included news that the new Defence Secretary ‘kept a pet tarantula called Cronus on his desk’, ‘likes hedgehogs’, ‘is only 41’, and ‘went to a comprehensive school’.

Sparrow was adhering to the journalistic convention that parliamentary politics should be depicted as a light-hearted, Wodehousian farce. It is all a bit of a laugh – everybody means well. Despite Williamson’s lethal new role, the word ‘war’ was not mentioned.

Preoccupied with spiders and hedgehogs, Sparrow found no space to mention that Williamson ‘almost always voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseas’. He voted for war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. He voted against the Yemen motion put before the House of Commons in October 2016 that merely called on the Government to suspend its support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces in Yemen until it had been determined whether they had been responsible for war crimes. The motion was defeated by 283 votes to 193, telling us everything we need to know about the ‘mainstream’s’ much-loved myth that British policy is motivated by a ‘responsibility to protect’.

The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted a link to the BBC’s own comedy profile, which also discussed the tarantula and other nonsense, and made no mention of Williamson’s record on war. We asked Kuenssberg:

‘Will you be asking him if he has any regrets on voting against the Yemen motion to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, given the vast civilian crisis?’

We received no reply.

The extreme cognitive dissonance guiding ‘mainstream’ moral outrage was again highlighted by the Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, who tweeted:

‘Can’t help thinking that now would be quite a good time for the first ever female defence secretary, really’

We asked:

‘What difference would it make to the civilians dying under our bombs in Yemen and Syria? Isn’t that the key issue on “defence”?’

Hinsliff did not reply. But the answer, of course, is that it would make no difference at all.

Yesterday’s coup in Zimbabwe is of global interest. The country is one of the few that have long resisted the colonial “western” attempts to control its mineral and agricultural riches. Such coups are often driven by the CIA or other “services”. But there is no evidence yet that this is the case here. Local rivalry is for now the more plausible explanation.

Since 1980, when Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain, the country is ruled by Robert Mugabe. He has run an anti-colonial and socialist policy. Unfortunately his economic policies, together with “western” sanctions and currency manipulations, have devastated the country’s economy. In 2000 Mugabe ousted some 4,000 white farmers who had owned and ran large estates. In a sweeping land reform the farms were split into plots and redistributed to local people. Agricultural productivity tanked and has since not fully recovered. A deep economic crisis with high unemployment ensued.

Mugabe is now 93 years old and apparently frail. There has long been infighting over his succession. Mugabe’s wife “Gucci” Grace Mugabe and her children are well known for being exceptionally corrupt and prodigal when it comes to their personal amenities. On November 5 Grace Mugabe asked her husband to be named as his successor.

On November 6 then Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a 73-year-old lawyer and veteran of the liberation wars, was ousted after a conflict with Grace Mugabe. Mnangagwa allegedly planned [long backgrounder] to form a unity government with the opposition and to bring back some of the white farmers. It is claimed that he has British backing but that the U.S. and the EU oppose him.

The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party is split in its loyalties to these two persons. The G40 “youth-wing” is following Grace Mugabe while the old guards of the party despise her.

Yesterday the military moved into the capital Harare. At 4am this morning Major-General Sibusiso Moyo appeared on TV and announced that it has taken control. It denies that coup has taken place. In a statement the military “guaranteed” Mugabe’s safety and said that it was only targeting “criminals” around him. Mugabe and his family have been put under house arrest. There has been so far no fighting and no visible public opposition to the “non-coup coup”. Traffic and life in the capitol appears to be normal (vid).

According to the African editor of the partly Soros funded IRINnews:

Obi Anyadike @Enugu62 5:02 AM – 15 Nov 2017This is all to do with stopping Grace Mugabe from taking over. The assumption is the military will keep Robert Mugabe on ice. Purge those around him. Bring back ex-VP Emmerson Mnangagwa from South Africa. And have him anointed at the ZANU-PF congress in December.

Your host has not followed the developments in Zimbabwe diligently enough to reliably predict the consequences of this development. Please use the comments to add your knowledge to the above wrap-up.

Just finished viewing the final season’s episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards, based on the British mini-series of the same name. It vividly portrays how the political system works, or rather ‘fails to work’. The treachery, lies, power struggles, ambition on steroids, even cold blooded murder are all embraced by the hypocrisy of a corrupt top heavy empire… whether it be the British or our own. House of Cards shows what this Amerikan empire is: a tragic black satire that takes no prisoners.. excepting of course the multitude of enemy combatants via our phony and illegal so called ‘ Wars’.

Each time this writer tunes into  or channel surfs through C-Span to watch our ‘government at work’ , it disgusts me! The entire Congress, with few exceptions, is part of this ‘bought and paid for’ Two Party/One Party empire. They bicker and quarrel over the few crumbs from the table of the super rich who pull their strings.

We all know that this newest ‘stooge’ at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is probably the worst yet… however not too far below the rest of the bunch. All in all, these presidents and their entourages in Congress and the White House all make sure that their corporate donors  and the Pentagon get first dibs on the feast of our tax revenues. Of course, the greatest propaganda tool, as old as Methuselah, is the fear card. If you get the suckers to fear for their lives, you control the game. Ditto for the fear of losing out to the hordes of ‘People of color’, legal or not, that have come or are coming to take their jobs and move in next door.

Ever notice how all that our politicos from both phony parties spend most of their TV time talking about is the ‘next election’. They will stand there in front of the cameras and not really address the fact that half of our tax money goes to military related spending. Or that they, our elected officials and public servants, have a better and NO Cost health care coverage than most of their constituents.

On top of that the suckers keep electing millionaires and mega millionaires to represent them. Meanwhile, we keep spending AND sending our military all over the globe to ‘Patrol for the Super Rich’. Then they wonder why they hate us. Well, the Chinese and the Russians are lining up a multitude of nations to join with them in a new ‘Silk Road  of commerce’ , circumventing the US petrodollar. All that our ‘Masters of Empire’ can come up with is to threaten war. Even that will fail , as will this ‘Empire of Cards’… unless…. we push out the gang of them and pull back the empire. Hope Springs Eternal.

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]

Thirty eight years ago, in 1979, a revolution against a client regime installed and propped up by the United States succeeded in Iran. This was followed by the establishment of an independent state, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Ever since, the US’s presence, plans and attempts to maintain, deepen and expand its dominance throughout the Middle East has been seriously challenged  and thwarted.

Hence, the US has persistently sought to make up for this loss and to this end, has supported individuals, tendencies and terrorist groups to bring down the revolutionary establishment in Iran  and  returning the old order of neo-colonial dependence. The hallmark of these attempts has been its support of the infamous Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, in his aggressive war (1980-1988) against the newly founded Islamic Republic in Iran and its active involvement in Saddam’s many war crimes, including the widespread use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and civilians. However, in spite of the huge number of dead and injured, the extensive infrastructural destruction and social detriments, this war failed to derail the revolutionary objective of independence from foreign control.

Faced with the repeated and very costly failures of its military plans, the US  found it more feasible to invest more heavily on political approaches vis-a-vis Iran. Therefore, political plans had to be devised and/or cultivated to crush the strong waves of liberation from foreign domination and the struggle for independence in Iran. These plans had to also look beyond Iran; to the larger Middle East, which had been awakened and moved to action by the resistance struggle in Iran, particularly in Palestine which had suffered for decades under criminal Israeli occupation, and in Lebanon, devastated by its colonial past, Israeli aggression and foreign interventions.

Therefore, as early as the mid-1980s, the US and its allies, determined to impose crushing international sanctions on Iran, accused  Iran of threatening international peace through its support for Palestinian and Lebanese freedom fighters – labeled as ‘terrorists’-, its alleged interference in the internal affairs of regional states closely dependent on the US, and Iran’s missile and civilian nuclear programs.

To this end, through fabrications, extensive lobbying and use of pressure in the international scene, the US succeeded in pushing through United Nations Security Council resolutions which placed Iran under international sanctions (2006) for its peaceful nuclear activities.

The UNSC sanctions were followed by the illegal US/EU comprehensive sanctions in 2011 targeting Iran’s financial system, shipping and energy industry. Sanctions dealt a heavy blow to the nation’s  petroleum dependent economy but also had unintended positive consequences, in that, Iran’s chronic and deep-rooted dependence on its petroleum sales changed in favour of a more diversified economy and Iran’s flourishing nuclear activity made a huge leap forward, in both qualitative and quantitative terms.

However, after more than a decade of diplomatic interactions with world powers, which became  significantly more meaningful towards the end of this period with Zarif as Foreign Minister, Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment and its pursuit of other peaceful nuclear activities was recognised. This important recognition came through after two years (2013-2015) of extremely tight negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran.

This achievement was set in the context of a multilateral agreement, namely, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The achievement was hard won due to the forces bluntly opposed to the multilateral negotiations. These most notably included neo-con members of the US Congress, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The change in the US administration, and especially with the person of Trump in office, who saw the JCPOA as the “worst deal ever” provided the US neo-cons, Israel and Saudi Arabia with an extraordinary opportunity. Now, there was the unprecedented possibility to significantly increase the pressure on Iran, particularly through reinstating, and strengthening the old sanctions and devising new ones.

Therefore, they tried extremely hard to pressure the P5+1, the European Union side in particular, into accusing Iran of being in violation of the nuclear agreement. They tried equally hard to force a renegotiation of the nuclear agreement.

Having failed on both counts to reinstate international sanctions on Iran and to terminate the JCPOA, the Trump administration is now working desperately to pressure the big powers and the EU in particular, regarding the need to limit and to stop Iran’s formidable, though proven defensive, conventional missile program and Iran’s outstanding and growing regional influence.

Iran’s civilian nuclear activity is fundamentally very important to the country’s technological and industrial development. In contrast, the missile defense capability is of strategic importance to Iran’s defense and essential defence and security needs, with highly positive implications for the preservation of regional and international peace and security.

Iran’s civilian nuclear activity and its missile defense capability are both strategically very important to the country’s technological and industrial development on the one hand, and its essential needs for national defence and security, on the other.

These capabilities, however, are basically of a hard nature which many countries possess in various degrees. In contrast, regional influence is in essence a soft national capability, one which cannot be taken away, transferred or bought overnight. In this respect, it is potentially a most important national capability, deeply rooted in the beliefs, culture and history of a nation and a region.

With this in mind and in the context of the on-going political developments in the Middle East, it is necessary to examine why the US is so deeply concerned about Iran’s regional influence? I will next examine what in the US’s view is threatened by Iran’s regional influence. (To be continued)

Two figures tower over the idea, and the realisation, of industrial America. The first is Henry Ford, whose factory process dedicated to mass car production featured specifically focused machinery, a moving assembly line, and a linear process of interdependent tasks. The second giant in this regard is Frederick W. Taylor, whose principles of scientific management involved the division of factory work into small and simple tasks in a coordinated, sequential manner in the name of maximum efficiency.

Both figures propelled standardisation, the finding of a mass produced common ground, the production, in fact of commonness. Intellectually, it might have been deadening, but mass production suited mass consumption. What, then, of this creep into other areas of society, including that of the university?

In her novel Look at Me (2001), Jennifer Egan sketches one of her characters as an atomised intellectual who claims that the “narrative of industrial America began with the rationalisation of objects through standardisation, abstraction and mass production”. It concluded “with the rationalisation of human beings through marketing, public relations, image consulting and spin.”[1]

The modern academy, far from being immune to this rationalisation, has capitulated to the Fordist-Taylor approach with enthusiastic abandon. The Fordist academic is a spineless, compromised product, an offspring cowardly in meetings, a lazy collaborator seeking to maximise production gains with minimal effort and one suspicious of individuality.

There are two vectors of influence here. The first is university managerialism, the propelling force behind the assembly line of dross and drudgery that is modern academic publishing, promotion and committees. The other is the idiosyncratic nature of the academic profession, populated by individuals who tend to be the first to fold before the next rationalising government scheme, the next foolish innovation, offering token, feeble resistance.

Bill Readings, in his bleak but seminal work University in Ruins (1997) made the important point that the university has been essentially prized away from the nation-state. The university has ceased “its role as producer, protector, and inculcator of an idea of national culture.”[2] The university, in fact, has become the inculcator of a service, economic culture, one marked by fictional work plans, aspirational production targets, and unrealistic aims termed “development goals”.

Liz Morrish, writing from her perspective as a former British academic, outlines a range of skin crawling measures that typify the Fordist academic work place. “Research grant capture” has become an obsession. The “research excellence framework,” underwritten by “anticipatory performance management”, has been fashioned as a weapon, while research areas are singled out for targeting and saturation.[3] Intellectual curiosity is stomped upon and people are pushed down in what has been termed the “anxiety machine”.[4]

The Fordist academic, insecure and compromised, loathes individual aptitude and sterling initiative and loves the sharply cut corner, the quick fix, the rapid option. This form of propagated laziness has its distinct outcomes. Research, something to be usually savoured as singularly individual, with its raw delights, its fresh uncovering, be it in an archive, a collection, or laboratory, is outsourced, cast aside to a graduate student, or, in some cases, an undergraduate student of potential.

A philosophy has become de rigueur in some departments: making students undertake what can only be regarded as one bit research subjects that are overseen (read plundered) by slothful academics desperate to obtain the necessary points to stay in the good books of promotion, or, in some cases, survival.

Along with the tendency of appropriation comes that of trend subjects, glossed in temporary sexiness like fashion. In Australia, for instance, that mantle must go to domestic violence, a field so narrow in its realisation and analysis it is bound to sunder in due course.

Faddism – the embrace of what might be termed a niche market – is rampant in academic opportunism. New terms are sought to give the illusion of weight and substance. Take “digital humanities” with its vaguely grounded offshoots such as “digital criminology”, “digital ethnography”, “digital bollocks”. These airy topics supply the recipes to rewrite the same paper fourteen times within the Fordist caste of mind, provided that the wording in the title is slightly different. As Ford himself opined, he could make his car in any colour as long as it was black.

One of the most conspicuous casualties of the Fordist academic are students, designated as clients and consumers rather than learning pupils with curious minds. There are academics, for instance, who refuse to teach, taking pride in avoiding it altogether. They claim to be the sacred thinkers, when all they essentially do is redistribute already overly baked bones from one cemetery to another.

Nor is there ever a guarantee given to those who dare attend a modern class that their work will be graded by the instructor, the person who ventured to teach them to begin with. In some cases, the task is understandably impossible in the environment of mass production. Classes of five hundred make such a hope unrealistic. The same cannot be said for smaller classes.

Teaching duties are thereby sessionalised, initiating what can only be described as a new form of inferior, diminished pedagogy managed by the vulnerable and terrified. In some cases, department or discipline heads parachute individuals with inferior credentials to teach in degrees that they do not have, at levels that they never possessed. Collusion is manufactured across the board: never let qualifications stand in the way of the smelly deal. Such are the makings, and work, of the Fordist academic in full flow. The “intellectual hooligans”, as Michael Oakeshott termed them in 1950, are well and truly in the building.

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

Notes

Russian State Duma on Wednesday passed in the third and final reading the bill require mass-media outlets operating in the country but funded from abroad to register as foreign agents.

The tyrants of Saudi Arabia developed a plan that sells away Palestine. They see this as necessary to get U.S. support for their fanatic campaign against their perceived enemy Iran.

An internal Saudi memorandum, leaked to the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar, reveals its major elements. (Note: The genuineness of the memo has not been confirmed. In theory it could be a “plant” by some other party. But Al-Akhbar has so far an excellent record of publishing genuine leaks and I trust its editors’ judgement.)

According to the memo the Saudis are ready to give up on the Palestinian right of return. They forfeit Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem and no longer insist of the status of a full state for the Palestinians. In return they ask for a U.S.-Saudi-Israeli (military) alliance against their perceived enemy on the eastern side of the Persian Gulf.

Negotiations on the issue were held between the Saudis and the Zionist under the aegis of the United States. Netanyahu and Trump’s “shared personal assistant, wunderkind Jared Kushner”, is the point men in these negotiations. He made at least three trips to Saudi Arabia this year, the last one very recently.

The Saudi operations over the last month, against the internal opposition to the Salman clan as well as against Hizbullah in Lebanon, have to be seen in the context and as preparation of the larger plan. To recap:

• Last week the current front-man of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, was ordered to Riyadh. There he was told to accept whatever will be presented as U.S. peace plan or to resign. He was urged to cut all Palestinian ties with Iran and Hizbullah:

Since the warnings, which could threaten the new Palestinian unity agreement signed by Fatah and the Iranian-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian media displayed a rare degree of unity in recent days by coming out against Iran.

• On November 6 a letter by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo to Israeli embassies was intentionally “leaked“. In it Netanyahoo urges his diplomats to press for full support for the Saudi plans in Lebanon, Yemen and beyond. On the same day Trump tweeted:

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump – 3:03 PM – 6 Nov 2017
I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing….

(The tweet was heavily promoted by Saudi Twitter bots.)

• The Saudi tyrant abducted the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, and declared waron the country. The purpose of this move is to remove or isolate Hizbullah, the Shia resistance of Lebanon which is allied with Iran and opposes the Saudi plans for Palestine.

• On November 11 the New York Times reported on the U.S. drafting of a “peace plan” but provided little detail. The chance for such a plan to succeed was described as low.

The left-wing Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar has obtained a copy of the plan (Arabic) in form of a memorandum by the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir to the Saudi clown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (English machine translation):

The document, which is being unveiled for the first time, proves all that has been leaked since President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia last May on the launch of US efforts to sign a peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This was followed by information on the exchange of visits between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, the most important being the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince to the Zionist entity.The document reveals the size of concessions that Riyadh intends to present in the context of the liquidation of the Palestinian issue, and its concern to get in return the elements of power against Iran and the resistance, led by Hezbollah.

The Saudi foreign ministry memo starts by laying out its strategic perspective:

To face Iran by increasing sanctions on ballistic missiles and reconsidering the nuclear deal, the Kingdom has pledged in the strategic partnership agreement with US President Donald Trump that any US-Saudi effort is the key to success.
…
Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement with Israel involves a risk to the Muslim peoples of the Kingdom, because the Palestinian cause represents a spiritual and historical and religious heritage. The Kingdom will not take this risk unless it feels the United States’ sincere approach to Iran, which is destabilizing the region by sponsoring terrorism, its sectarian policies and interfering in the affairs of others.

The Saudi paper describes the issues and process steps towards a deal in five points:

First: The Saudis demand a “parity of the relationship” between Israel and Saudi Arabia. On the military level they demand that either Israel gives up on its nuclear weapons or Saudi Arabia is itself allowed to acquire such.

Second: In exchange Saudi Arabia will use its diplomatic and economic power to push through a ‘peace plan’ between Israel, the Palestinians and Arab countries along the lines that the U.S. will lay out. Within such a peace plan the Saudis, according to the memo, are willing to make extraordinary concessions:

• The city of Jerusalem would not become capital of a Palestinian state but be subjected to a special international regime administered by the United Nations.
• The right of return for Palestinian refugees, who were violently expelled by the Zionists, would be given up on. The refugees would be integrated as citizens of those countries where they currently reside.
• (No demand for full sovereignty of a Palestinian state is mentioned.)

Third: After reaching an agreement of the “main principles of the final solution” for Palestine between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. (Israel), a meeting of all foreign ministers of the region would be convened to back these up. Final negotiations would follow.

Fourth: In coordination and cooperation with Israel Saudi Arabia would use its economic power to convince the Arab public of the plan. The point correctly notes “At the beginning of normalizing relations with Israel, normalization will not be acceptable to public opinion in the Arab world.” The plan is thus to essentially bribe the Arab public into accepting it.

Fifth: The Palestinian conflict distracts from the real issue the Saudi rulers have in the region which is Iran: “Therefore, the Saudi and Israeli sides agree on the following:

1. Contribute to counter any activities that serve Iran’s aggressive policies in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia’s affinity with Israel must be matched by a sincere American approach against Iran.
2. Increase US and international sanctions related to Iranian ballistic missiles.
3. Increase sanctions on Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism around the world.
4. Re-examination of the group (five + 1) in the nuclear agreement with Iran to ensure the implementation of its terms literally and strictly.
5. Limiting Iran’s access to its frozen assets and exploiting Iran’s deteriorating economic situation and marketing it to increase pressure on the Iranian regime from within.
6. Intensive intelligence cooperation in the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking supported by Iran and Hezbollah.”

The memo is signed by Adel al-Jubeir. (But who were the ‘advisors’ who dictated it to him?)

The U.S. plan for peace in Palestine is to press the Palestinians and Arabs into anything Israel demands. The Saudis will agree to that, with minor conditions, if only the U.S. and Israel help them to get rid of their nemesis Iran. But that is impossible. Neither Israel nor the U.S. will agree to a “parity of relationship” for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia lacks all elements to become a supreme state in the Arab Middle East. Iran can not be defeated.

Iran is the at the core of the Shia constituency and at the core of resistance to “western” imperialism. Shia and Sunni aligned populations in the Middle East (ex Egypt) are of roughly equal size. Iran has about four times the number of citizens the Saudis have. It is much older and cultured than Saudi Arabia. It has an educated population and well developed industrial capabilities. Iran is a nation, not a conglomerate of desert tribes like the desert peninsula under al-Saud. Its geographic position and resources make it unconquerable.

To defeat Iran the Saudis started proxy-wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and now Lebanon. They needed foot soldiers to win these wars. The Saudis hired and sent the only significant infantry they ever had at their disposal. Their hordes of al-Qaeda and ISIS fanatics were defeated. Tens of thousands of them have been killed on the battle fields in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Despite a global mobilization campaign nearly all the potentially available forces have been defeated by the local resistances on the ground. Neither the colonial settler state nor the U.S. are willing to send their soldiers into battle for Saudi supremacy.

The grant plan of the Trump administration to achieve peace in the Middle East is high on hopes but lacks all the necessary details. The Saudi’s promise to support the U.S. plan if the Trump administration is willing to fight their nemesis Iran. Both leaderships are hapless and impulsive and both of their plans have little chance of final success. They will be pursued anyway and will continue to create an enormous amount of collateral damage. The Zionist entity feels no real pressure to make peace. It is already dragging its feet on these plans and will try to use them to its sole advantage.

Featured image is from Mondoweiss.net.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

It’s high time it happened. The foundation is a notorious money-laundering, pay-to-play, self-enrichment racket for the Clintons, masquerading as a charitable NGO, RICO crimes if taken that far.

In a November 13 letter to House Judiciary Committee members, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he directed senior federal prosecutors to recommend whether appointing a special counsel is warranted to investigate alleged Uranium One “unlawful dealings related to the Clinton Foundation and other matters,” adding:

“These senior prosecutors will report directly to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, as appropriate, and will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.”

“This will better enable the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General to more effectively evaluate and manage the caseload.”

Sessions responded to House Judiciary Committee Republicans, holding an oversight hearing into the issue.

His letter came the day before he’s scheduled to appear before the committee to address the status of any ongoing DOJ investigations.

On November 3, Trump tweeted:

“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems.”

Undemocratic Dems will likely howl if a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate Clinton Foundation activities.

During his January confirmation hearing, Sessions said he’d recuse himself from any investigations involving Hillary, given his support for Trump during the presidential campaign.

He recused himself as well from special council Robert Mueller’s witch-hunt investigation into any improper or illegal Trump campaign ties to Russia.

According to Circa.com, “(m)ultiple sources (said) requests sent to the Department of Justice over the past year have led to ongoing investigations” into Clinton Foundation activities, along with improper unmaskings of Americans.

Hillary’s involvement as secretary of state in the controversial uranium deal involved Canadian company Uranium One, a majority-owned Rosatom subsidiary, Russia’s atomic energy agency.

Under US law, uranium is a strategic asset. Any deals involving it must be approved by seven US cabinet members, including the secretaries of state and treasury.

After the deal was announced, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 by a Russian investment bank involved in the uranium deal – for a Moscow speech, an obvious conflict of interest given his role in the sale.

The Clinton Foundation got millions of dollars in contributions from Uranium One investors. A thorough investigation into all its shenanigans is long overdue.

A Final Comment

Reportedly, numerous past major Clinton Foundation donors stopped contributing since Trump was elected president. Bill and Hillary likely exhausted their political influence to sell.

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

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

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

On November 14, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) repelled a joint advance of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Rahman in the Eastern Ghouta de-escalation zone, near Damascus.

The militants attacked the Armored Vehicle Base near the village of Harsta from the northern and eastern directions and used a car bomb to break the SAA defense there. They failed to achieve their goal. SAA Major General Walid Khawashqi was killed during the clashes.

The so-called opposition sees the expected defeat of ISIS as a threat to its security because it would allow the SAA to focus on the militant-held pockets across Syria.

In northern Hama, the SAA and the NDF have liberated the villages of Hasnawi, Qasr Shawi, Muwaylih Shamali, Mhassar, Rabiah, Hamra Silos and Mhassar Hill. The government advance came amid the continued tensions between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement in the southwestern Aleppo countryside. This opens an additional opportunities for government forces to expand their control in the area close to Abu ad Duhur.

In eastern Deir Ezzor, the SAA Tiger Forces advanced towards the city of al-Bukamal, captured the village of Bir Daham, the hill of Milhim and entered the Ward fields.

The situation in al-Bukamal itself remains unclear. The SAA and Hezbollah are clashing with ISIS there.

Russia has never promised the US and Israel a withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on November 14. He added that the presence of Iranian forces in the country is legitimate.

Lavrov denied Israeli media reports that the US-Russian ceasefire agreement in southern Syria included a Russian commitment to ensure that Iranian-backed forces would withdraw from Syria.

“If you look at who is the greatest danger, it’s just the wards of the United States, various foreign terrorists, militants who are attached to those groups of armed opposition that the US supports,” Lavrov added.

Lavrov’s statement proved that Moscow has much less understanding with Washington and Tel Aviv than the Israeli media wants to show.

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Introduction

Saudi Arabia has built a powerful network of regional and local political, military and economic relationships incorporating a shared extremist-religious affiliation.  As a result, despite its reputation as a backward despotic clerico-monarchy with an extreme dependency on oil sales, it has become a deadly political force in the Middle East and beyond.

To understand the dynamics and projections of Saudi power it is important to identify and analyze how it uses its use military, religious and economic weapons.

Saudi Arabia: Senility and Mercenary Protection

Saudi Arabia has bankrolled and supplied violent mercenary armies in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Philippines, Malaysia and several other Asian and African countries.

The Saudi’s intolerant Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam and its commercial mercenaries act to overthrow and shatter Arab regimes and societies that have independent modern, nationalist and secular leadership or practice multi-ethnic or multi-religious tolerance.  They also target republics with Shia-majority governments opposed to Saudi-Wahhabi domination in the Middle East.

Saudi’s goal has been to shred modern, multi-ethnic societies and impose brutal ‘follower’ regimes, which will shield the senile Arab monarchs from overthrow by internal and external popular, nationalist and democratic forces.

Saudi Arabia’s Purchase of Global and Regional “Allies”

The Saudis monarchy finances and props up unpopular, anti-democratic regimes in order to secure military allies and sources of mercenaries: Saudi oil wealth has paid for military officers and troops from Pakistan, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan to impose its hegemonic ambitions.

Saudi Arabia has longstanding economic and military ties with the US, UK, France and other NATO countries. US military bases and arms, as well as British and French arms sales, serve as payments for praetorian guards of the narrowly based despotism.

Saudi oil wealth has financed thousands of overseas religious schools and cultural centers to teach the most intolerant form of Wahhabi Islam. They award scholarships to talented young Muslims willing to spread Wahhabi propaganda and recruit mercenaries and political activists to advance the Saudi Monarch’s projections of global power.

Saudi Arabia has long established de facto linkages with Israel, despite their superficial religious differences, based on their intense racist tribalism and common opposition to independent Iran and secular, nationalist Arab states, like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and popular liberation movements in the Middle East.

In large part, the Saudi Monarchy survives on ‘borrowed power’ – trading oil wealth for military and financial advisers. The fundamental Saudi weakness and political pathology become clear when they choose to attack and blockade the militarily weakest and most vulnerable countries in the Middle East: Yemen and Qatar.

Despite billions of dollars spent in dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Yemen and arming thousands of mercenaries, the Saudi-proxies have at most conquered a third of that devastated country and less than a quarter of its starving population. The Saudi ‘princes’ have committed the most vicious war crimes in the course of their war on Yemen: destroying most of the vital infrastructure, killing thousands, spreading cholera by bombing the water treatment system and starving millions of civilians in its attempt to force submission.   Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia has suffered numerous cross border attacks and even a recent Yemeni rebel missile strike against its main airport.

Qatar aroused Saudi wrath for its independent regional oil diplomacy – including seeking friendly relations with its huge neighbor, Iran. The furious Saudis financed three regional dictatorships, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE, to join a boycott against tiny Qatar. These actions have boomeranged on the Saudis, leading to increased Qatari trade deals with Iran and Iraq, effectively by-passing the mighty Saudi king’s sanctions. It is increasing obvious that the decrepit Saudi monarchy cannot effectively flex its flabby muscles against its own backwater neighbors.

Saudi projections of power beyond its immediate neighborhood have equally failed to enhance the monarchy’s image as a global power. Saudi-funded ISIS mercenaries have been decisively defeated, destroyed by Iraq-Shia forces and by the Syrian government-Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah alliance in Syria. As a result the volunteer mercenaries have grabbed their salaries and fled back to their home countries to create mischief.

Saudi-backed mercenary terrorists in Afghanistan are being marginalized by the Taliban, who may still enjoy some residual Saudi largesse but pursue their own nationalist agenda.

The Saudis signs off on covert operations with Israel, a case of mutual manipulation based on their common enmity to Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemen. This has resulted in a strange marriage of Saudi Wahhabis, Wall Street Zionists and fanatical Israeli militarists.

Donald Trump’s ‘Saudi’ Moment: Waltzing with Mohamed bin Salman

In early November 2017, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), arrested 30 ministers and generals, an ‘Arab Warren Buffet’ billionaire and 11 bloated princes, seizing nearly a trillion dollar in assets. This was the biggest purge in Saudi history.  A few more disposable princes met early deaths in the process.

MBS cloaked his power grab as part of an ‘anti-corruption’ campaign to cleanse the state bureaucracy and replace them with appointments directly loyal to MBS. The Crown Prince has packaged his coup as a ‘historic transformation’ – purging the old guard to bring about the monarchy’s modernization. Most observers dismiss MBS’s ‘good government’ rhetoric as ‘BS’ and a thin cloak for his consolidation of a personal dictatorship.

The Crown Prince’s idea of ‘modernization’ has been accompanied by regional military provocations, threats, and domestic factional wars. MBS’s blueprint for the ‘transformation’ of Saudi Arabia may not attract the kind of foreign investment he needs. MBS’ move to blockade tiny Qatar, where a strategic US airbase and thousands of American troops are stationed, provoked Pentagon disapproval.

MBS ordered the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al Hariri, a puppet of the Saudi monarchy and a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, to fly to Riyadh and announce his resignation on Saudi TV. He read a script denouncing Iran and Hezbollah (member of the current Lebanese governing coalition) as plotting Hariri’s assassination. So that no one would fail to catch the connection with MBS, Hariri has gone into hiding in Saudi Arabia and refuses or is unable to fly home.

MBS’s plan to seize power was first cleared with the US following a mid-year meeting with President Trump. The impending purge was signed off with a two billion dollar oil deal between Washington and Riyadh.

The despotic, but ‘visionary’, Crown Prince offered Wall Street the Saudi ‘crown jewels’, promising to privatize ARAMCO the trillion dollar state oil company. He offered multi-billion deals to US and EU investors to build modern megacities for Saudi citizens to replace the lethargic corrupt oil-based Princes, bureaucrats and holy men.

Saudi regional war maneuvers and the ongoing domestic coup provoke fear of greater regional instability among investors. MBS’s anti-Iranian rhetoric and wild threats to attack Teheran may have excited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his new White House poodle, US President Donald Trump, but this has not impressed the Generals in Trump’s Cabinet or the Wall Street bankers.

MBS’s unstable regime, his war mongering and the sell off of oil does not add-up to the kind of political and economic foundations necessary for a modern, sophisticated diversified economy. Most observers conclude that the sale of ARAMCO is a one-off deal with few spin-offs in terms of skilled jobs, local enterprises and economic diversification.

At present, MBS has ‘won over’ the deposed and highly unpopular former ruler of Yemen, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. His powers of persuasion have worked their magic on the elusive or ‘self-exiled’ former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the geographically befuddled American President Trump. MBS hires the most senior ex-pat executives from the US and UK to run the oil sell off. He intends to market himself as a ‘modernizing despot’ – at least until the next princely intrigue boots him from power. Meanwhile he settles back as a ‘modern’ Middle East potentate, protected by tribal clans, despised by his people, privately ridiculed by his overseas flatterers and expertly ‘serviced’ by expats-on-the-make. No doubt he would be humored by any clown occupying the US White House.

For now, the Saudis can still attract mercenaries, beat up and starve millions of Yemenis, sell oil and continue to finance terrorist bombings in Beirut, Baghdad, Paris and . . . New York!

Conclusion

Saudi Arabia and Israel play the key roles in anchoring the ‘arc of reaction and terror’ in the Middle East. Both foment wars, finance terrorism and spread ethno-religious fragmentation leading to millions of refugees.

Saudi Arabia’s ‘Crown Prince MBS’ competes with Israel’s Netanyahu in concocting the most outrageous warmongering slander against Iran, preparing the world for global conflagration.

MBS is actively serving the Israelis by fomenting sectarian divisions in Lebanon to provide Israel with an excuse to attack Hezbollah and millions of Lebanese civilians. MBS claims that a single missile from Yemen that hit the Riyadh airport was a full declaration of war by Teheran . . . as if the Saudis’ starvation blockade and daily bombing of Yemeni cities would not warrant any counter-attack.

The war fever in Riyadh is a cover for MBS’s political impotence and a ‘clever ploy’ to distract from the infantile game of rotating princes and clan intrigues.

MBS, for all his modernizing clichés and carefully groomed public relations persona, circulated by the corrupt Western media, is still the aspiring head of a tribal army, dependent on a fragile alliance with unreliable allies: The Egyptian high command and troops despise the bloated Saudis; Bahrain’s ruler is propped up by Saudi mercenary forces; the Saudi masses are held in check by tribal warlords and their torturers; and the imported workforce and armies of foreign domestic servants are brutalized, raped and cheated. Hardly an inspiring leader of Saudi Arabia’s emergence from the Middle Ages.

The Crown Prince is sitting on a powder keg threatening to shatter the political alignments in the Middle East and the global financial and oil markets. Saudi Arabia is a fragile regime with a long and scrawny reach. The current rulers imagine their borrowed power and palace intrigues can flourish on such rotten foundations and with a despised oligarchy.

The first missile that MBS dares to direct at Teheran will mark the downfall of the House of Sand. The entire Middle East and global markets will plunge into a profound crisis. Oil prices will soar, stock markets will crash and Israel will go to war against Hezbollah. Donald Trump will send US forces to confront with the well-armed and highly patriotic Iranians on their soil. Iraq and Syria will confront the US regional puppets, the Kurds. China, Russia and India wait to sign on huge oil deals. The US fracking industry will celebrate as oil prices set new highs.

Saudi Princes will flee to Europe, leaving hundreds of thousands of servants in the lurch. Perhaps they will have to prepare their own coffee! Trump will issue a ‘Tweet to Action to All Americans’ – Marines to the oil wells! Makes America Great Again on the tired backs of our GIs! AIPAC will secure a unanimous vote in the American Congress declaring that Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are really part of the Greater Israel.

With historic high oil prices, Venezuela will recover, pay its debts, finance its social agenda, re-open its schools and clinics and re-elect a socialist president. 

A consortium of western investors will take over, after the Saudis have folded their tents and fled to Central London, and flood the oil markets. But that is a long-term scenario…or is it?

Reports from the capital of the Horn of Africa state of Somalia indicate that a convoy of African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and United States troops was attacked by the guerrilla forces of Al-Shabaab on November 14.

A vehicle was utilized in the operation which took place in Weydow village on the road linking the capital of Mogadishu to the Afgoye. (Garowe Online, Nov. 14)

Although a statement from Al-Shabaab indicated that five U.S. soldiers were killed in the explosion this has not been confirmed by Pentagon sources.

These offensive operations on the part of Al-Shabaab are occurring in conjunction with the escalation of Pentagon drone and fighter aircraft attacks inside the country. President Donald Trump since taking office in January has issued orders mandating the deployment of additional troops to Somalia along with an intensified bombing campaign targeting what it describes as Al-Qaeda and ISIS linked elements.

On November 14, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) claimed it had killed “militants” at a location 60 miles from the Mogadishu. The term “militants” is meant to refer to Al-Shabaab.

However, there is no evidence that those who were killed and injured fell into the adversarial category outlined by the Pentagon.

Further justifying its military tactics in Somalia, the U.S. diplomatic corps announced several months ago that its personnel had received threats from the Islamist groups. Meanwhile no specific evaluation of the effectiveness of such bombing and drone strikes are relayed to people in the U.S., Somalia or the international community.

Such bombing raids by AFRICOM are often framed as being conducted in support of and in cooperation with the Somalian Federal Government based in Mogadishu. Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that the Pentagon is clearly in charge of making these military decisions.

During the previous week, on November 9, AFRICOM in another press release said it had conducted a similar attack supposedly against Al-Shabaab. The organization has been a focal point for U.S. intervention in Somalia since 2010 when the previous Union of Islamic Court (UIC) split over a decision to enter into an alliance with the interim federal regime which is propped up by Washington and the European Union (EU). Al-Shabaab has continued its war against the western-backed government in Mogadishu over the last seven years.

In regard to the November bombings, AFRICOM said:

“In coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Somalia against al-Shabaab on Thur., Nov. 9 at approximately 3 p.m. local Somalia time, killing several militants. The operation occurred in the Bay Region of Somalia, about 100 miles west of the capital, Mogadishu.”

This same statement went on to firmly assert as it relates to its future plans that:

“U.S. forces will continue to use all authorized and appropriate measures to protect Americans and to disable terrorist threats. This includes partnering with AMISOM and Somali National Security Forces (SNSF); targeting terrorists, their training camps and safe havens throughout Somalia, the region and around the world.”

Impact of AFRICOM Strategy on the Overall Security and Stability of Somalia

AFRICOM was officially launched in February 2008 and has been based in Stuttgart, Germany within the European Union (EU). Since its founding, a major operational base for the command has been in Djibouti also in the Horn of Africa like Somalia. This base was strengthened and enhanced under the former administration of President Barack Obama who escalated the number of Pentagon troops deployed in over 30 states in the region.

Thousands of U.S. troops are stationed at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti which is being utilized as a staging ground for AFRICOM and other military operations in both African continent and the Middle East, particularly with specific reference to the Pentagon role in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The geographic proximity between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula has facilitated the merger of strategic planning involving these respective areas.

Security in Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Iraq has worsened since the advent of AFRICOM. The intervention of the Russian Federation in Syria was a critical turning point in late 2015 in the war to bolster and stabilize the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

In corporate and western governmental reports on the security situation in Somalia it is routinely announced that Al-Shabaab has been driven out of the capital of Mogadishu since 2011. Despite these platitudes whose origins emanate from the Pentagon, the Islamist guerrilla organization is still capable of engaging in deadly attacks in the capital.

On October 14 a bomb attack in Mogadishu resulted in the deaths of over 400 people. This vehicular weapons assault may have been connected with an expulsion from the Somalia National Army of an officer disgruntled with the course of the protracted war.

Reduced funding for the 22,000 AMISOM troops from various regional and continental states which have occupied Somalia with Pentagon and EU support for a decade is creating panic among both the western-backed regime in Mogadishu and neighboring states. Uganda, which supplies a majority of these AMISOM troops have urged the western imperialist states and the United Nations to maintain funding levels for the mission. The Somalian government is also keen to continue the AMISOM presence since its own internal existence depends upon them.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir visited his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni during November 13-15 where the issue of Somalian security was discussed. Both presidents urged the western governments to continue their financial and logistical support for AMISOM.

Somalian attack on April 9, 2017

Ugandan President Museveni pledged that he could send an additional 5,000 troops to serve under AMISOM if funding was maintained. This position converges with the Trump administration which cautioned against any drawing down of AU forces.

U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer Wohlers Marion emphasized:

“We do not support further drawdown of forces beyond that level at this time, due to ongoing security concerns. The United States supports a conditions-based Amisom drawdown that is tied to the development of capable, professional Somali security forces.” (Africanews.com, Nov. 12)

This State Department statement came in the aftermath of an announcement by AMISOM envoy Francisco Madeiro who indicated that the forces would be reduced by 1,000 personnel in order to transfer their responsibilities to the Somalian military. The possible reduction in forces would involve five African states reducing their troop levels by four per cent. To ease the reduction, each country would deploy 500 police officers in a plan to train members of the Somalia security forces.

AU Needs Independent Force to Guarantee Security and Development

What is never mentioned in these discussions are the need for African states to develop their own continental enforcement and peacekeeping methodology which is independent of the U.S. and the EU. If these objectives could be realized, the need for AFRICOM, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would be unnecessary.

The drought in Somalia has resulted in agricultural failures leading to huge food deficits. Over the last decade famine has been a recurrent problem in the region. If the situation could be stabilized the governments in the Horn and East Africa as a whole could turn their attention to the boosting of food production, water resource development and sustainable economic development.

Periodic bombing by the U.S. military will only dislocate more people in Somalia and throughout the region. Millions are already internally displaced as well as becoming refugees in neighboring states. This vicious cycle of dependency and imperialist militarism must be arrested in order to create an environment conducive to self-reliance, genuine independence and territorial sovereignty.

It was certainly a show, but getting to the meat of it was difficult. US President Donald J. Trump, on his return from an Asian tour lasting twelve days, had set out to “correct” mistakes made by those who had come before him. The fear, however, was that he was going to make a fresh number of his own.

There was little by way of actual achievement, though the board of errors was far from stacked. Making America Great Again remains slogan, catchphrase and capturing, nothing more. Instead, there conceded reaffirmations, a grand rehash of the obvious.

“I vowed I would reaffirm old alliances and form new friendships in pursuit of shared goals. Above all I swore that in every decision, every action I would put the best interest of the American people first. Over the last 10 months travelling the globe and meeting with world leaders, that is exactly what I have done.”

The November 15 press release from the Office of the Press Secretary painted something more profound and industrious. There are bold capitals in the text, robustly insistent language on “investing in American workers”. The claim that the president personally “secured new projects and deals that will bring investment back to the United States and employ American workers” is charming in its captioned neatness.

Some specific pointers were made on “the conclusion of $12 billion in commercial agreements” with Vietnam; the announcement by South Korean companies of 64 new projects “that will invest more than $17 billion in the United States over the next four years, as well as plans to purchase $58 billion in the United States goods and services, including $23 billion in energy purchases”; and a conjured amount of $250 billion in Chinese trade and investment deals.

The greatest illusion of all, and one that will only be confirmed over time, is the notion that fair and reciprocal trade is somehow being given a push along. US deficits are being tackled with aplomb; trade surpluses being sought. The Donald is supposedly there, steering MAGA programs, and reassuring his constituents that he is “working to end years of one-sided and unbalanced trade that has left too many Americans behind.”

The South Koreans, we are assured, were encouraged to recapitulate the promise to “quickly renegotiate the US-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) and to reducing the United States’ trade deficit with the Republic of Korea”. Those in Beijing were told about “the importance of rebalancing the bilateral economic relationship” while bilateral trade language was all the rage with Vietnamese officials.

Critics back home were chewing over the usual obsessions: what did Trump really do about the North Korean situation? Had he been credible in reassuring Washington’s worried neighbours? Did he show genuine grit in discussions with President Xi Jinping of China? Things had certainly been busy on the North Korean score, and Trump and Kim Jong-un have been continuing their now regular bilateral trade in insults.

On Sunday, Trump suggested that Kim was “short and fat”, though he hoped that someday, the squabbling leaders would be friends.[1] Such are the stratospheric heights of modern nuclear diplomacy, conducted via social media.

The latest bit of spice in this encounter is an editorial from Pyongyang’s party newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

“The worst crime for which he can never be pardoned is that he dared [to] malignantly hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership. He should know that he is just a hideous criminal sentenced to death by the Korean people.”[2]

Pro-Hillary Clinton fans would find it hard to demur, and may well be nursing fantasies towards that end.

CNN, however, pondered the Trump report card on responding to North Korea with headshaking disapproval, and could only see sparse efforts: the chalking up of fresh Japanese sanctions “and a verbal commitment from China to increase pressure on North Korea.”[3]

Yet again, the press gallery was keen to see what “visible progress” had been made regarding the cessation of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Given that Pyongyang’s efforts are designed to fortify its position vis-à-vis any genuine diplomatic settlement with the United States, such points are meaningless.

As for the actual progress made on the issue, the stalemate continues. Washington’s North Asian allies are perplexed and troubled, but continued insistence on the denuclearisation agenda as a start rather than an outcome persists like a nag. The focus, in the meantime, is immediately instrumental and far from constructive, with the president reaffirming “his commitment to enhance Japan’s and the Republic of Korea’s defence capabilities and to defend both countries against North Korean aggression.”

So assured, yet empty, and very much in keeping with the screening of the Trump presidential reality show.

“My fellow citizens,” he trumpeted, “America is back, and the future has never looked brighter.”

Back from where? One can only wonder in fascinated bemusement.

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

Notes

One of rock’s greatest albums is Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon.

This somber, surrealistic album paints a picture of what society has become, both 44 years ago and now. Such is this present Amerikan Empire, replete with our phony wars, excessive militaristic mindset and of course the drive for super wealth by greedy corporations and equally greedy individuals.

Those of us who “knew better” foresaw the economic bubble burst of 2008 years before it occurred. So many of our friends and neighbors cared not a damn about the phony wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and later on against Libya and now proxy wise in Syria.

No, all most of them cared about, and still care about, is making dough on the market or becoming either home flippers or land lords (notice how I separate the two words for better effect — as land lord comes straight out of feudalism). The rest of these apathetic fellow citizens, if not in the financial position to attain the ranking of entrepreneur, simply focus on more and cheaper shopping opportunities as the adopted “Children of Wal-Mart.”

It’s OK for a police officer to kill an unarmed civilian, especially if the victim happens to be of dark skin. It’s OK to march with Nazi-era torches and chant anti Jewish slogans and have your president “pass” on real condemnation. Ditto for the so called Israeli leadership, usually so sensitive to any truthful dissent against their horrific polices, always ready to play the Holocaust card. Trump and Netanyahu’s silence is not golden!

What is really troubling is the multitude of white and non-Jewish (even some Jews too) citizens we mingle with each and every day, who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it all! Just as so many out there, white and even black, the so called sports journalists, who continue to downplay or criticize Colin Kaepernick and his protest. They usually deal the **** card of how this is sports and should not be the arena for political or social protest.

Oh really, you black and white yuppie so-called pundits! If you were back in this writer’s day during the Vietnam disgrace, you would have just sat back and kept silent as tens of thousands of your peers were DOA in some rice paddy, along with tens of thousands of innocent Vietnamese civilians. All murdered by this empire to keep its Military Industrial engine full of gas… and profit (Read General Smedley Butler’s 1935 essay War is a Racket).

Americans need to begin acting like Americans again, and say NO to empire and YES to saving our towns, cities and states from the predators who now run things. To use a “play on words” from Pink Floyd: There is no dark side of the empire… it’s ALL dark!

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , New York, longshoremen. He has been a freelance columnist since 2001, with more than 300 of his essays posted on sites like Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, “It’s the Empire… Stupid” with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]

This article was originally published by World News Trust.

Featured image is from thesleuthjournal.com.

More than 400,000 civilians of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta are still besieged and face the worsening humanitarian situation, said Stephane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, during a regular briefing at the UN Headquarters in New York on November 7.

The cease-fire regime has been established there since July 2017, as this area is one of four de-escalation zones. At the same time, Eastern Ghouta is occupied by various militant groups as Jaysh Al-Islam, Faylaq Al-Rahman, and Jabhat Al Nusra.

The humanitarian aid from the Syrian government, Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), UN and Russia on a regular basis is delivered to Eastern Ghouta despite regular provocations and mortar shillings of the militants.

Not so long ago, on November 12, joint UN and SARC humanitarian convoy of 24 trucks arrived in Duma, Eastern Ghouta. Two weeks earlier, on October 30, 49 trucks loaded with vaccines, food, drinking water, and necessities made it to the areas of Kafr Batna and Sacqba to help more than 40,000 people.

Earlier, on September 24, another humanitarian convoy with the assistance of Russia entered Eastern Ghouta. The convoy delivered food, medicine and warm clothes for the locals. Later, it became known that most of the supplies had not reached civilians and fell into the hand of Faylaq Al-Rahman and al-Nusra militants, who took all the goods to their warehouses.

Consequently, it is exactly the militants who aggravate the humanitarian situation in Eastern Ghouta, what has been exactly mentioned by Dujarric. In fact, the militants deprived seriously ill women and children of the opportunity to get daily necessities and medicine. It seemed that the United States works hard to achieve exactly this goal: the White House administration has made every effort to deliver humanitarian aid to the starving militants.

By the way, without going into too much detail, the Western Mass Media has supported the disinformation campaign of the opposition militants on Facebook and Twitter going by the name #AssadBesiegesGhota.

The authors of the campaign created a series of short messages, tweets, photos, and videos, which mainly depict sick and malnourished children with only one purpose – to evoke feelings of pity and compassion among users of social networks around the world.

This action was initiated to show the world community that the people of Eastern Ghouta suffer from hunger. The West tries to make Bashar Assad and the Syrian Arab Army guilty instead of the militants who control the region.

However, the disinformation campaign is gaining further momentum. On November 13, the second phase of the campaign with the hashtag #BreakGhoutaSiege.

Most likely, the aim of the campaign is to make the Syrian government lift the siege on Eastern Ghouta. For its part, Assad’s government believes that the siege on Eastern Ghouta is a necessary measure since if withdrawn, militants will be able to obtain weapons and ammunition from their Western sponsors, regroup or leave the area under the guise of civilians.

Despite the scale of the disinformation campaign, it won’t affect the conduct of a successful counter-terrorism operation in Eastern Ghouta. The residents of the Damascus countryside are tired of living next door to militants and hope for the assistance of the Syrian government.

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

The Democratic Party is experiencing its downfall. As we all know, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Donna Brazile has revealed the level of corruption of the Democratic party involving Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign. To be clear, Donna Brazile has been working for the Democratic Party establishment since 1976 when she volunteered for the Carter-Mondale Presidential campaign as a teenager, then went on to work for other Democratic candidates including Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt and Al Gore. However, it is also important to note that Donna Brazile’s revelations about the Democratic Party is not new. Besides, maybe you heard, a group of truth seekers led by someone who goes by the name of “Julian Assange”, the founder of Wikileaks exposed to the public what happened during the election campaign in regards to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders when he released leaked emails from the former chairman of the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign, John Podesta in 2016.

Brazile only confirmed what we already knew in her new book ‘Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House’ on how the Democrats ran their campaign in a somewhat undemocratic fashion (not that the Democrats nor the Republicans were ever democratic to begin with). With that being said, some uncomfortable truths about the Democratic party was exposed and that does deserve some attention. Brazile did open “a can of worms” about the Democratic party’s racism and sexism from within which is nothing new, but it does shine a new light on how the Clintons and the DNC operate from someone who was within the campaign. At the same time, Brazile manages to continue the same propaganda used by Hillary and the DNC against Russia for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

Racism and the Democratic Party

What Brazile did expose (sort of) was the ongoing racism that continues within the Democratic party today. The Washington Post (for the record, I hate using The Washington Post as a “source” but for this case, I will make an exception) reported on what Brazile wrote in her book on how the Democrats treated her:

“I’m not Patsey the slave,” Brazile recalls telling them, a reference to the character played by Lupita Nyong’o in the film, “12 Years a Slave.” “Y’all keep whipping me and whipping me and you never give me any money or any way to do my damn job. I am not going to be your whipping girl!”

What Brazile should have done was read a little history about the Democratic Party and she would have realized what it stood for back then and what it stands for today. As we know, the Democratic Party is on the same page with the Republicans when it comes to U.S. foreign policy to maintain its global hegemony. However, when it comes to domestic issues, the Democratic Party has been associated with racists for a very long time. To prove it, here are two quotes from two U.S. presidents from the Democratic party, Harry S. Truman (the Democrat who authorized the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and Lyndon B. Johnson. President Truman once said the following:

I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n*gger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a White man from dust, a n*gger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America

Wow! Here is another quote by President Lyndon B. Johnson who was quoted as saying “I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” These statements coming from U.S. Presidents should not be so surprising given the fact that racial divisions were high during those times. The Democratic Party is as phony and as wicked as the Republican Party make no mistake about that. There is a misconception that the Democrats fight for the poor people or for the minorities and that they stand for democratic rights and principles, but that is the furthest from the truth. Here is a video that exposes the Democratic Party:

The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party

It is also important to understand that the Democrats is not any better than the Republicans when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. Both political parties maintain the same foreign policies that initiate endless war, political instability and poverty all around the world. The Democrats and Republicans have the same goal and that is to expand and maintain the power and influence of the American empire. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura once said the following which describes both political parties in the U.S. in a nutshell:

The thing is, and Americans are starting to realize this now, that while street gangs are violent, the Democrats and Republicans are worse. They are worse because their decisions affect your life

The Alleged Murder of Seth Rich? 

According to an article by The Daily Caller ‘Donna Brazile Has A Theory About Who Killed Seth Rich’ where Brazile explains her theory on the murder of the DNC staffer named Seth Rich which is absurd:

I felt some responsibility for Seth Rich’s death. I didn’t bring him into the DNC, but I helped keep him there working on voting rights. With all I knew now about the Russians’ hacking, I could not help but wonder if they had played some part in his unsolved murder. Besides that, racial tensions were high that summer and I worried that he was murdered for being white on the wrong side of town. [My friend] Elaine expressed her doubts about that, and I heard her. The FBI said that they did not see any Russian fingerprints there.

Brazile repeatedly returns to the subject of being haunted by Rich’s murder, even though other Democrats have pounced on anyone who suggested that the murder was anything other than a robbery gone wrong. The DNC data staffer was killed days before Wikileaks began publishing its emails, and his valuables were not taken

It is noted that Brazile did dedicate part of her book to Seth Rich calling him a patriot:

In loving memory of my father, Lionel Brazile Sr., my beloved sister, Sheila Brazile, my fearless uncles Nat, Floyd, and Douglas, Harlem’s finest, my aunt Lucille, my friend and mentor, David Kaufmann, my DNC colleague and patriot, Seth Rich, and my beloved Pomeranian, Chip Joshua Marvin Brazile (Booty Wipes). I miss y’all

For arguments sake, let’s just say that the Russians since the U.S. government and the Mainstream-Media (MSM) accuse the Kremlin (which has been going on for more than a year now and still no proof, and the MSM wonders why they are losing viewers!) for hacking the U.S. elections, did kill Seth Rich. The next obvious question would be, why? Wouldn’t the email’s from the DNC’s server that were sent to Wikileaks which had clear evidence of the Clinton campaign undermining Bernie Sanders which angered his supporters, divided the Democratic party ‘s voting base and weakened any chance of Clinton winning the presidency have benefitted the Russians? The Russians would have no logical reason to murder Seth Rich at that point, but that is just my opinion. As for Seth Rich being murdered in the wrong side of town for being white does not make sense either because he was murdered on his side of town where his neighbors happen to be mostly white. It was reported that there was an increase of robberies in his Washington D.C. neighborhood, but nothing was taken from him.

Remember when Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appeared on Dutch TV and was asked

“The stuff that you’re sitting on, is an October Surprise in there?”

and Assange replied with

 “WikiLeaks never sits on material” he continued “Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material, and often very significant risks. There’s a 27-year-old that works for the DNC who was shot in the back, murdered, just a few weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the streets in Washington.”

Donna Brazile, the MSM, the Democrats and the majority of Republicans continue to blame Russia for hacking the DNC’s email servers which seized emails from John Podesta, (who worked under both Obama and Bill Clinton administrations) and sent them to Wikileaks exposing how the DNC undermined the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Since the U.S. Presidential elections, politicians from both sides of the aisle continue to blame Russia for Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump. And it looks like blaming Russia will continue as long as Trump remains in office. So you will have to brace yourself for the same nonsense until the 2020 elections and if Trump wins again, guess what? you will continue to hear about Russia interfering in the 2016 elections until 2024!

Uh-Oh, The Russians are Coming to Get Donna and the DNC!

According the Washington Post ‘Donna Brazile: I considered replacing Clinton with Biden as 2016 Democratic nominee’:

Brazile describes her mounting anxiety about Russia’s theft of emails and other data from DNC servers, the slow process of discovering the full extent of the cyberattacks and the personal fallout. She likens the feeling to having rats in your basement: “You take measures to get rid of them, but knowing they are there, or have been there, means you never feel truly at peace.”

Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life, shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her and installing surveillance cameras at her home. She wonders whether Russians had placed a listening device in plants in the DNC executive suite.

At first, Brazile writes of the hacking, top Democratic officials were “encouraging us not to talk about it.” But she says a wake-up moment came when she visited the White House in August 2016, for President Obama’s 55th birthday party. National security adviser Susan E. Rice and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. separately pulled her aside to urge her to take the Russian hacking seriously, which she did, she writes.

That fall, Brazile says she tried to persuade her Republican counterparts to agree to a joint statement condemning Russian interference but that they ignored her messages and calls

The interesting part of Brazile’s accusations about the Clinton campaign is that the elections was “rigged” then she claims that she called it a “cancer.” Brazile wrote an article for Politico.com on November 2nd titled ‘Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC’ and said the following:

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.

I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.

“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”

On November 7th, Brazile said that she never used the word “rigged” in her book (but she did use the word in the article I just mentioned for Politico.com) where she claims that she used the word “cancer” in regards to the amount of debt the Democratic party was in, therefore bypassing Hillary Clinton’s theft of the presidential nomination from the Bernie Sanders campaign on ABC’s ‘The View.’ Actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg asked Brazile about the DNC stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders:

GOLDBERG: So you know, people are upset. And you know –you understand– so explain why you didn’t realize people would take the idea of Hillary bailing out the party years before, whenever she did it, as something that was bad, and robbed Bernie of his ability to be president. That is the message that is being put out in your name. 

BRAZILE: First of all, I never used the word ‘Rigged’ in my book. I said that — I used the word ‘Cancer.’ That I was uncomfortable with the cancer that I found when I became [DNC] chair. 

I didn’t know how deeply in debt our party was. And when I learned that Hillary was bailing us out… giving us $3.5 million per month to keep us floating, I appreciated that. But what I wanted control over, Whoopi, was, if I raise a dollar, a dollar-fifty, I wanted to spend my money without asking permission. 

When Donald Trump said last year, ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ It is August 19… What I wanted to do was … was to fight back. 

I knew Donald Trump was doing more than just trying to rattle African-Americans. We had been hacked, so I knew he was playing a game. And I wanted to respond. I had to respond with a column. I wanted to respond with ads, I wanted to respond with poster, more activity across the country. 

And that’s why I told Bernie: ‘I found the cancer. I’m not killing the patient.’ I’m not killing my party. Because my party was more than electing the president. It was the Senate, Congress, and let me just say, there were things on the ballot other people didn’t see. I saw Obamacare, I saw climate change, a kid growing up in poverty like myself, who wanted a White House and a president who would care for them

So she used the word “cancer” instead of “rigged” O.K. However, Brazile continued to blame the Russians of hacking the elections to get Trump in office so that they can have better relations even though U.S.-Russia relations are at an all-time low. Brazile went on to say that “I cannot clean up our democracy if we have a foreign government interfering and the President of the United States will not help clean up our democracy.” On the November 5th episode of This week with George Stephanopoulos, once again Brazile blamed the Russians:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Passionate Democrats who say they feel betrayed by all this. Any regrets?

BRAZILE: Do I regret taking on a job the second time in my life as chair of the party, cleaning up everyone’s mess, taking all of the incoming, being unable to spend funds that I raised? Do I regret being on the road 100 percent of the time, being hacked by the Russians, being — being harassed, getting death threats? Do I regret any of that? George, was worse than Hurricane Katrina in terms of the emotional toll. But do I regret stranding up for what is right, helping Hillary Clinton, helping the Democratic Party?

And let me just say this, as somebody who went through the hacking experience, being able to tell the truth about what happened with the Russians, the attack on our government do I regret any of that? No. I wish I could have done more, George

What Brazile did is continue the “Russia did it” fairy tale. She even “wondered” if the Russians had anything to do with the murder of Seth Rich floated the idea that some disgruntled African-American’s who crossed Seth Rich’s path in their Washington D.C. neighborhood might have killed him sounds more like her book should be placed in the fiction section of the bookstore alongside Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather’since Brazile talks about how she “feared for her own life” and that “shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her” is being a little bit dramatic, don’t you think? Perhaps she wants to promote her book by adding a little suspense to her personal story.

There is an element of truth in terms of “rigging” the 2016 elections in favor of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders but clearly, Brazile is following the same propaganda by the Democratic Party by blaming Russia for hacking the U.S. elections that supposedly put Trump in office while ignoring the fact that many voted for Trump in hopes that he would fix the economy or because they just despised Hillary Clinton in general. On her theories on who could have possibly murdered Seth Rich offers no real evidence, just pure speculation that the Russians might have something to do with it. ‘Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House’ is propaganda. It has the same old story of demonizing Russia, perhaps any mention of Russia these days might increase her book sales.

This article was originally published by Silent Crow News.

The crisis in the Middle East is developing further.

In Saudi Arabia, the purge continued. According to Middle East Eye, senior Saudi figures were tortured and beaten in the purge under the banner of an anti-corruption movement, conducted by current Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

He has overseen arrests of hundreds of people, including senior royals, ministers and tycoons, with some of them reportedly being tortured so badly during their arrest or subsequent interrogations that they required hospital treatment. Even Prince Bandar bin Sultan — Saudi Arabia’s most famous arms dealer, longtime former ambassador to the US, and recent head of Saudi intelligence — was reported to be among those detained as part of the purge.

If confirmed, this will be the most significant and high profile case of this purge, even above that of high profile billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, considering Bandar’s closeness to multiple US administrations.

This comes amidst rumors that King Salman was set to make his son king. Speculation peaked when Al-Arabiya tweeted, then quickly deleted, details of the allegedly imminent Mohammed bin Salman’s ascension ceremony. These rumors were not confirmed. However, Prince Mohammed already plays a key role in decision making at almost all levers of government.

The Crown Prince also accused Tehran of delivering missiles to Yemen’s Houthi forces for use against the kingdom that he described as “direct military aggression”.

The United States also chimed in and said “there have been Iranian markings on those missiles.”

The Arab League will hold an extraordinary meeting on November 18 at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss “violations” committed by Iran in the region, with Saudi Arabia rumored to mobilize fighter jets.

Houthi forces have threatened to attack oil tankers and warships of Saudi Arabia and its coalition in response to the Saudi-led naval blockade of Yemen.

Ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is still in Saudi Arabia, with his movements reportedly controlled by the Saudis.

An oil pipeline between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain exploded, with Bahrain accusing Iran of blowing it up. Israel is beyond itself with Iran and Hezbollah increasing their influence in the region and in Syria. The Israeli media claimed that the US and Russia have reached an agreement, which would push Iranian-backed forces from an area close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. However, this likely an example of wishful thinking. Iran is reportedly building a permanent military base in Syria. Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Tel Aviv “will not allow the Shi‘ite axis to establish Syria as its forefront base” and threatened to bomb it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tel Aviv has informed Moscow and Washington that Israeli forces will continue to take action in Syria according to its interests despite any ceasefire established there.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Saudi Arabia of encouraging Israel to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said that the US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel are planning a war against Lebanon.

Lacking a clear strategy for their involvement in the Middle East, Washington is forced to play second fiddle to its “allies”. Trump’s administration’s bold claims against the 2015 Iran nuclear accords and Iran in general only stir up the anti-Iranian block in the region.

The conflict is developing in its own way, with the conflicting sides immersed so deep that it proves more and more difficult for them to stop even if they wanted to. Now, the sides are finalizing the coalition, which may participate in the expected standoff and blame each other setting preconditions for a war.

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Featured image is from South Front.

Edward S. Herman died on November 11, 2017, at the age of 92. Fortunately, it was a peaceful death for a supremely peaceful man. In all he did, Ed Herman was a tireless champion of peace.

Ed Herman could be considered the godfather of antiwar media critique, both because of his own contributions and because of the many writers he encouraged to pursue that work. Thanks to his logical mind and sense of justice, he sharply grasped the crucial role and diverse techniques of media propaganda in promoting war. He immediately saw through lies, including those so insidious that few dare challenge them, such as the arrogant presumption by the U.S. War Party of the “right to protect” and the “need to prevent genocide”, to justify the oxymoronic “humanitarian war”.

He saw that these pro-war lies flourish on the basis of what he called the distinction between “worthy and unworthy victims” persistently drawn by apologists for United States militarism. The million of victims of United States bombings, sanctions, regime changes and undercover assassinations are not considered calls to arms. Washington think tanks do not draw moral conclusions concerning the victims of Dresden, Hiroshima and Vietnam. But the public is endlessly exhorted to indignation concerning victims whose misfortune can serve as casus belli for the latest U.S. aggression.

Imperialist Party Line hypocrites predictably pretended not to understand this distinction, and deliberately misinterpreted Herman’s exposure of this propaganda device to falsely accuse him of “denial” – when all he was denying was the pretext for more war.

The date of Ed Herman’s death carries an irony that he might have appreciated. It was the 99^th anniversary of the armistice that brought an end to the wholesale slaughter of World War, a date that should above all be a reminder that war is senseless mass murder. Europe sacrificed its future and a generation of its youth to a pointless struggle, because masses of people accepted the propaganda that portrayed the other side as an evil threat. Yet today, the United States, by proclaiming that day to be Veterans Day, subtly turns it into a glorification of war, by requiring public honor for soldiers who died – worthy victims. The unworthy cause always hides behind the worthy victims.

Ed Herman was not only a courageous political commentator, of rigorous honesty, who constantly dared challenge official lies with careful and factual analysis. He was also an extraordinarily good man, outraged against injustice but always kind and gentle, generous and considerate.

He personified human qualities that currently appear to have gone out of style. Prominent among these qualities was modesty. He generously encouraged other writers, and greatly enjoyed working with others, notably Noam Chomsky, as co-author. He had no vanity. His most famous work, Manufacturing Consent, a more or less permanent worldwide best-seller, is widely attributed to Noam Chomsky – although Chomsky himself, in recognition of Herman’s leading role in developing the book’s ideas, insisted in putting Herman’s name ahead of his own in non-alphabetical order. It never seemed to occur to Ed Herman that he never had the recognition he deserved.

He had no children, and after she suffered a disabling accident, he cared for his wife Mary for the last years of her life before she died in August 2013, after 67 years of marriage. His pleasures were simple: he enjoyed a good meal and he loved cats, especially the strays who were lucky enough to find him. He never expected gratitude, but there are so many of us, human and feline, who have reason to say, thank you, Ed Herman, for the life you gave us.

One of the greatest and sweetest media critics ever, Edward S. Herman, has passed away. Ed was the main author of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, written with Noam Chomsky—the 1980s masterwork that exposed how elite US media typically function as propaganda organs for US empire and militarism.

In 1984, when I was part of a lawyers’ delegation monitoring an “election” in death squad-run El Salvador, I remember a gaggle of progressive attorneys at the Salvador Sheraton tussling with each other to get their hands on a shipment of hot-off-the-press copies of Demonstration Elections, Ed’s devastating book (with Frank Brodhead) on the US “staging” elections as PR shows to prop up repressive puppet regimes, from the Dominican Republic to Vietnam to Salvador.

He also wrote or co-wrote such classic works of political and media criticism as The Political Economy of Human Rights (with Chomsky); The Real Terror Network; Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda; andThe Global Media (with Robert McChesney).

A longtime friend and supporter of FAIR, he wrote  “By Any Means Necessary: The Ultra-Relativism of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page”  (9–10/95) and “Good and Bad Genocide: Double Standards in Coverage of Suharto and Pol Pot” (9–10/98) for FAIR’s magazine Extra!.

A highpoint of my life was flying with Ed across the Atlantic to Brussels to speak alongside him before the European Parliament on the problem of media conglomeration, a hearing organized by the European Greens.

As happened too often, Ed’s name went unmentioned in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting; when Will (Matt Damon) says to his therapist (Robin Williams) that Howard Zinn’s People’s History is a book that will “fuckin’ knock you on your ass,” the therapist responds: “Better than Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent?”

I asked Ed if he felt left out. Not at all—the movie “will bring our book more attention, more readers.” Pure Ed.

***

Jeff Cohen is the founder of FAIR. He’s now the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College.

Peter Davis directed the brilliant 1974 documentary Hearts and Minds about the Vietnam conflict (I refuse to use the term ‘War’ as Congress has not declared war since WW2). This is a ‘must see’ for anyone who wishes to experience the ‘yin and yang’ of our involvement there. Equally evident to any viewer is how adept those who control our current empire are in gaining support for their phony endeavors abroad. Davis had so many interesting interviews with just about every type of American as to their views about Vietnam. He used actual film clips revealing our destruction of that once beautiful country… a country that many Americans today would fail to find on a World Atlas.There are two interesting and highly enlightening interviews that Davis conducted in the film, plus footage of a former POW returning to his hometown in New Jersey.

Let’s begin with that one: Navy Lt. George Coker was filmed addressing an auditorium of elementary Catholic school kids. He made some interesting statements during his Q& A session with what looked like seven and eight-year-olds: “If you ever have to go to war, and unfortunately someday you WILL  have to go to fight a war..” and when asked about what Vietnam looked like: ” … Vietnam was very pretty if it wasn’t for the people. The people over there are very backward and primitive and they make a mess of everything!”  Great role model for young impressionable kids George, especially when you kept referring to the enemy as gooks.

David Emerson, father of a Navy pilot killed in Vietnam, seemed like a wonderful and soft-spoken guy. He reminded me of my Uncle Pasquale, who had that same sweetness about him. You know, not a bad bone in his body. Interviewed at home with his wife in 1973, Emerson had these beliefs: “There is NO sacrifice in vain…that is the price you pay for freedom… and it is the kind of risk that you take to preserve the kinds of ideals that we have.” When asked about the course we had been taking in Vietnam, Emerson said: “I think that you do rely on somebody like President Nixon for leadership, and I think his team of people with him are outstanding… To me, the leadership he has shown and the decisions that he has made are what I would expect from the president of this country, and the actions he has taken are the actions I would expect from the president of this country.” One would surmise that David Emerson was ‘out to lunch’ when Nixon did his Christmas carpet bombing in 1969, or when our pilots overwhelmed both the South and North Vietnamese people with incendiaries like Napalm… melting away the flesh like wax off of a candle!

Davis interviewed pilot Randy Floyd, who felt so ashamed of the murder and terror he caused innocent civilians that he broke down continually during the interview. After he composed himself Floyd made this key observation: “Americans have worked extremely hard NOT to see the criminality that their officials and their policymakers have exhibited.” How intuitive for not only 1974 Amerika, but for 2017 Amerika as well. Ever wonder how many fine and decent friends and neighbors of ours still hold this ‘My country right or wrong’ attitude?

This empire is so adept at stirring up deep-seated patriotic passions in many of us… to the detriment of our moral compass! Since 9/11 our leaders have been given a ‘free pass’ by our embedded media and our citizenry. Phony wars and occupations with Good Kill drone missile attacks on innocent civilians using a hijacked flag and ‘Support our brave troops’ mantra have mesmerized many of us. If anyone really did ‘support’ our troops they would never have sent them overseas in the first place! Instead, we get every sporting event started with the honor guard, the giant flag across the field or arena and some ‘God bless Amerika’ claptrap.

Ask Vietnam vets like Randy Floyd if God blessed Amerika during the Vietnam disgrace, and ask the same of Iraq Veterans for Peace if God blesses our jackboot in the Middle East now. Sadly, regardless of whether Clinton or Trump won the last election, this obscene military spending will continue as will our empire being all over the globe. This intentional use of the words  ‘heroes’ and ‘warriors’ to describe our current military personnel is an affront to all those brave young men and women who gave their lives in WW2 to stop the Axis juggernaut. To label the unfortunate parents of our dead soldiers as ‘Gold Star’ is another bitter taste of propaganda to justify the evil that our empire is doing. As with the needless sacrifice of our young Amerikans during Vietnam, ditto for the use of them again in these Middle Eastern ‘phony wars’.  It is time for the real patriots to win back the Hearts and Minds of our own people and say ‘Enough is enough!

Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. A graduate of Brooklyn College (class of ’74 with a BA in Speech & Theater), he is a free lance columnist posted on World News Trust, Nation of Change Blog, Op Ed News, Global Research, TheSleuthJournal.com, The Intrepid Report, Information Clearing House, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch and many other sites worldwide. Philip can be reached at [email protected]

This article was originally published by NationofChange.

Featured image is from the author.

“We should be trying to foster the growth of two-way trade, not trying to put up roadblocks, to open foreign markets, not close our own.”

President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), in a radio address to the Nation on free and fair trade and the budget deficit, May 16, 1987.

“Genuine free traders look at free markets and trade, domestic or international, from the point of view of the consumer (that is, all of us), the mercantilist, of the 16th century or [of] today, looks at trade from the point of view of the power elite, big business in league with the government.”

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), American economist, (in a 1983 article, ‘The NAFTA Myth’, Mises Daily, Nov. 30, 2013)

“…I do think we’re much safer and I hope that [another financial crisis] will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will be.”

Janet Yellen (1946- ), U.S. Federal Reserve Chair, (statement made on Tuesday, June 27, 2017, in London U.K.)

***

Sudden changes in trade and tax policies, the likes of those considered by the Trump administration, could be very disruptive to macroeconomic equilibrium, especially if they result in a sudden burst of inflation and in rapid interest rate hikes. Indeed, raising taxes on imports, repatriating large corporate profits parked overseas and increasing the fiscal deficit, when the economy is running at close to full capacity, can result in both demand-led and supply-led inflation. This could come much faster than most people expect, if all these measures are implemented in the coming years.

After 35 years of declining inflation and declining nominal and real interest rates since 1982, the tide is about to turn, partly as a consequence of the populist and protectionist policies of the Trump administration. With widely unexpected higher inflation rates and higher interest rates just around the corner, protectionist trade policies and higher fiscal deficits just as the Fed embarks upon a series of interest rates increases could have recessionary consequences. Moreover, since the end of the 2008-09 recession in June 2009, the influence of the 9.2 years economic cycle cannot be underestimated.

Let us see why.

1. Trump’s trade policies will be inflationary

For President Donald Trump and his advisors, international trade is some sort of a zero-sum game. It is, in their eyes, a win/lose proposition. When countries enter into multilateral international trade and investment agreements, some countries are said to “win” and some other countries are said to “lose”. Over time, such a trade theory has been completely discredited. Indeed, nothing can be further from the truth, because in most cases, international trade is a win/win proposition, in which workers, investors and consumers win on both sides.

International trade is what makes economies prosper, and all countries benefit from international trade, to various degrees. Most economists agree that, in the current state of economic development of most industrial countries, trade protectionism is a dead end, which can be dangerous for the U.S. economy and its trading partners, such as Canada.

However, what Donald Trump seems to believe in—judging by his pronouncements at least—is ‘managed international trade’ and government planning, preferably in a bilateral way, not in one particular economic sector for social and economic reasons, but for all sectors of the economy. Such a system was tried in the old Soviet Union, and that economic system collapsed in 1991.

In fact, Donald Trump professes to want to repudiate sixty years of increased multilateral economic cooperation between countries, based on economic laws and macroeconomic accounting. His goal is to adopt a mercantilist and protectionist approach to international economic relations, i.e. develop a positive trade balance with other countries. Such an approach would be a throwback to a theory that was prevalent in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. In other words, this has been tried many times before.

If the Trump administration were to get his protectionist way and were allowed by the U.S. Congress to play the apprentice sorcerer with international trade and international investment, the latter will contract, labor productivity will fall and costs of production will rise, jobs will be lost, real incomes will decline even though some money wages would increase, inflation will rise and the same for nominal interest rates. It would only be a matter of time before there would be a return to a 1970-style stagflation.

2. Trade facts regarding the United States.

In 2016, total U.S. trade deficit in goods and services was $502 billion. Indeed, during that year, the U.S. imported for $2.711 trillion of goods and services while exporting $2.209 trillion.

In the same year, the U.S. registered a deficit in goods only totaling $750 billion, while realizing a trade surplus of $248 billion in service trade (financial, insurance and banking services, royalties and license fees, transport and business services, etc.). This is an indication that the U.S. service industry is very competitive in the global market and this has created a lot of jobs in the United States. This services trade surplus helps offset the deficit in goods.

3. Adjustments in the overall U.S. balance of payments

Of course, this is not the end of the story. The reason the U.S. economy can buy more goods than it makes, in a given year, is due to the fact that it borrows capital (savings) from other countries, on a net basis. Such net borrowings from foreign lenders helped cover its current account deficit and kept American consumption spending high. This also helped to finance part of the huge fiscal deficits registered year after year by the U.S. government. In 2016, for example, the U.S. government domestic fiscal deficit was $552 billion. 

Thus, the main reason why the United States, as a country, has a trade deficit is because it overspends and does not save enough, especially its government with its multiple costly wars abroad (US$5.6 trillion spent on wars, directly and indirectly, since 2001).

The United States as a whole is spending more money than it makes. This results in a chronic domestic fiscal deficit, and this means also that the United States, as a country, must borrow from foreign lenders to finance its external deficit. In other words, the United States lives beyond its means. However, American politicians want to lower taxes by a whooping $1.5 trillion US, over the next ten years, and increase the central government’s fiscal deficit. They do not seem to see the link between their public dissaving and their external indebtedness and external trade deficit. 

President Donald Trump professes to want to correct U.S. trade deficits in goods and services by unilaterally reducing American imports and by increasing exports. But international trade is a two-way street: countries pay for their imports with their exports. Such a beggar-thy-neighbor approach could easily lead to trade wars, and the result could be catastrophic. If this were to happen, indeed, the entire international trade system would contract and this would bring about a worldwide economic downturn from which no country would escape. 

The Trump administration should avoid making rash decisions regarding the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took years to be negotiated and implemented. The very idea of killing a successful and functioning trade agreement in the hope of starting from scratch is a most hazardous proposition. It could have dire economic and political consequences. Such a rash decision would carry a lot of risks and would not be a wise move.

Basically, if a particular country really wants to reduce its trade deficit with other countries, it would need to borrow less and save more. Tinkering with border excise taxes and other protectionist policies would not change the basic underlying cause of the foreign deficit.

4. The U.S. dollar role as an international currency could be in jeopardy

Part of the U.S.’s annual trade deficit with the rest of the world results from the fact that a big chunk of multilateral international trade is financed in U.S. dollars and that the U.S. dollar is used as a reserve currency by many countries. Other countries pay the United States for using banking services in U.S. dollars. Such external revenues are called seigniorage. This allows the United States to import more goods than it exports and to borrow funds from abroad at a subsidized rate.

Indeed, the United States, because of the size of its money and capital markets, is the owner of a global reserve currency, the American dollar. This ensures a strong demand for U.S. dollars and for U.S. debt instruments. Imagine what the cost of imported goods in the U.S. would be if there was a drop in the demand for the U.S. dollar?

Some countries have attempted recently to use other currencies to finance their international trade. For instance, China has pressed Saudi Arabia to accept its currency, the yuan, as a mode of payment for its oil imports. In addition, the International Monetary Fund presently recognizes the Chinese currency as an international reserve currency. If the U.S. were to withdraw from its policy of international economic cooperation, its economic and financial influence would decline and some other country could likely pick up the relay.

5. Tax policies can be inflationary if they over-stimulate an economy already running at full capacity

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress would like to substantially reduce personal and corporate taxes and seem willing to accept a substantial rise in the yearly fiscal deficit and in the U.S. public debt. Ironically, if this fiscal policy were to lead to more U.S. foreign borrowings, it would partly contradict the objectives pursued with the trade policy. Indeed, such increased borrowing abroad would strengthen the foreign exchange value of the U.S. dollar, and would encourage imports while hurting exports. A larger fiscal deficit would also put pressures on interest rates. Financial markets (bonds and stocks) would suffer and this would have a recessionary effect on the economy.

All this would happen, when income and wealth inequalities in the U.S. are the highest in a century and when the huge speculative bubble in the financial markets could burst at any moment.

Conclusion

I would recommend that the Trump administration coordinate its trade and tax policies. It should be careful not to upset the economic apple cart when it deals with the existing system of international trade and investment, and it should be careful not to overheat an economy running at close to full capacity. Otherwise, it may be sowing the seeds of the next economic recession.

This article was first published on The New American Empire 

Economics Professor Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, and of “The New American Empire”.

Featured image is from Watching America.

It’s newsworthy that CIA head Mike Pompeo recently met with Bill Binney – who designed the NSA’s electronic surveillance system – about potential proof that the DNC emails were leaked rather than hacked.

It’s also noteworthy that the usual suspects – Neocon warmongers such as Max Boot – have tried to discredit both Binney and Pompeo.

But there’s a huge part of the story that the entire mainstream media is missing …

Specifically, Binney says that the NSA has long had in its computers information which can prove exactly who hacked the DNC … or instead prove that the DNC emails were leaked by a Democratic insider.

Remember – by way of background – that the NSA basically spies on everyone in America … and stores the data long-term.

After the story of Pompeo’s meeting with Binney broke, Binney told Washington’s Blog:

Here’s what they would have from the programs you list [i.e. NSA’s Fairview, Stormbrew and Blarney spying programs, which Edward Snowden revealed] plus hundreds if not thousands of trace route programs embedded in switches in the US and around the world.

First, from deep packet inspection, they would have the originator and ultimate recipient (IP) of the packets plus packet series 32 bit number identifier and all the housekeeping data showing the network segments/path and time to go though the network.  And, of course, the number of packet bits. With this they would know to where and when the data passed.

From the data collection, they would have all the data as it existed in the server taken from.  That’s why I originally said if the FBI wanted Hillary’s email, all they have to do is ask NSA for them.

All this is done by the Narus collection equipment in real time at line rates (620 mbps [mega bits per second,] for the STA-6400 and 10 gbps [giga bits per second] for the Insight equipment).

Binney explained what these numbers mean:  Each Narus Insight device can monitor and record around 1,250,000 emails each second … or more than 39 trillion emails per year.

Wired reported in 2006:

Whistle-blower Klein allegedly learned that AT&T was installing Narus boxes in secure, NSA-controlled rooms in switching centers around the country.

Binney told us there are probably 18 or so Narus recording systems throughout the U.S. deployed by the NSA at AT&T facilities, drawing our attention to the following NSA document leaked by Edward Snowden:

And this AT&T graphic:

(Binney has figured out their locations from publicly-available sources. He has also mapped out similar monitoring systems at Verizon facilities.)

Binney also sent me hard-to-find company literature for Narus.  Here are some interesting excerpts:

NarusInsight …

• Provides full visibility into network traffic …
• Analyzes at macro or micro level targeting specific or aggregate full-packet data for forensic analysis

And:

Universal data collection from links, routers, soft switches, IDS/IPS, databases, etc. provides total network view across the world’s largest IP networks.

Binney also pointed me towards a couple of network engineering principles that show that figuring out who hacked the emails (or proving they were leaked) is well within NSA’s capabilities.

Initially, when data is transmitted online, it is sent using the TCP/IP Packet format.  Put simply, data is not sent in a vacuum, but rather as part of a bundle containing a lot of other information.

Here’s the TCP part of the bundle:

And here’s the IP part of the bundle:

So any data analyst can learn a tremendous amount about the source address of the sender, the destination address of the receiver and a boatload of other information by using a “packet sniffer” to  inspect the “packets” of information being sent over the web.

Additionally, it’s simple to conduct “traceroute” searches. “Traceroute” is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol network.

Wired reported in 2006:

“Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”

So NSA can easily basic packet sniffers and traceroutes, And see this.

Remember, Edward Snowden says the NSA could easily determine who hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails:

Even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, #XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 25, 2016

Binney told us:

Snowden is right and the MSM is clueless.

***

Do they have evidence that the Russians downloaded and later forwarded those emails to wikileaks? Seems to me that they need to answer those questions to be sure that their assertion is correct.

***

You can tell from the network log who is going into a site.  I used that on networks that I had.  I looked to see who came into my LAN, where they went, how long they stayed and what they did while in my network.

Further, if you needed to, you could trace back approaches through other servers etc. Trace Route and Trace Watch are good examples of monitoring software that help do these things.  Others of course exist … probably the best are in NSA/GCHQ and the other Five Eyes countries.  But, these countries have no monopoly on smart people that could do similar detection software.

He explained:

If it were the Russians, NSA would have a trace route to them and not equivocate on who did it.  It’s like using “Trace Route” to map the path of all the packets on the network.  In the program Treasuremap NSA has hundreds of trace route programs embedded in switches in Europe and hundreds more around the world.  So, this set-up should have detected where the packets went and when they went there.

He added:

As Edward Snowden said, once they have the IP’s and/or other signatures of 28/29 [the supposed Russian hacking groups] and DNC/HRC/etc. [i.e. the DNC and Hillary Rodham Clinton], NSA would use Xkeyscore to help trace data passing across the network and show where it went. [Background.]

In addition, since Wikileaks is (and has been) a cast iron target for NSA/GCHQ/etc for a number of years there should be no excuse for them missing data going to any one associated with Wikileaks.

***

Too many words means they don’t have clear evidence of how the data got to Wikileaks.

And he stressed:

If the idiots in the intelligence community expect us to believe them after all the crap they have told us (like WMD’s in Iraq and “no we don’t collect data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans”) then they need to give clear proof of what they say. So far, they have failed to prove anything.

Which suggests they don’t have proof and just want to war monger the US public into a second cold war with the Russians.

After all, there’s lots and lots of money in that for the military-industrial-intelligence-governmental complex of incestuous relationships.

***

If you recall, a few years ago they pointed to a specific building in China that was where hacks on the US were originating. So, let’s see the same from the Russians. They don’t have it. That’s why they don’t show it. They want to swindle us again and again and again. You can not trust these intelligence agencies period.

And he told Newsweek:

U.S. officials “know how many people [beyond the Russians] could have done this but they aren’t telling us anything. All they’re doing is promoting another cold war.”

Binney … compared allegations about Russian hacks to previous U.S. fabrications of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the bombing of North Vietnam in 1964.

“This is a big mistake, another WMD or Tonkin Gulf affair that’s being created until they have absolute proof” of Russian complicity in the DNC hacks, he charged during a Newsweek interview. He noted that after the Kremlin denied complicity in the downing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1983, the U.S. “exposed the conversations where [Russian pilots] were ordered to shoot it down.” Obama officials “have the evidence now” of who hacked the DNC, he charged. “So let’s see it, guys.“

NSA either doesn’t have solid evidence of Russian hacking of DNC emails – which means the Russians didn’t do it – or those with the power to demand NSA produce the evidence simply haven’t asked the right questions.

In a recent incident in the United States, yet another unarmed man was shot dead by police after opening his front door in response to their knock. The police were going to serve an arrest warrant on a domestic violence suspect – the man’s neighbour – but went to the wrong address. See ‘Police kill innocent man while serving warrant at wrong address’.

For those who follow news in the United States, the routine killing of innocent civilians by the police has become a national crisis despite concerted attempts by political and legal authorities and the corporate media to obscure what is happening. See ‘Killed by Police’ and ‘The Counted: People killed by police in the US’.

So far this year, US police have killed 1,044 people. In contrast, from 1990 to 2016, police in England and Wales killed just 62 people. See ‘Fatal police shootings’.

Of course, these murders by the police are just the tip of the iceberg of police violence as police continue to demonstrate that the freedoms ‘guaranteed’ by the Fourth Amendment have been eviscerated. See ‘What Country Is This? Forced Blood Draws, Cavity Searches and Colonoscopies’.

So why are the police so violent? you might ask. Well, several scholars have offered answers to this question and you can read a little about what they say in these articles reviewing recent books on the subject. See ‘The Fraternal Order of Police Must Go’ and ‘Our Ever-Deadlier Police State’.

While there is much in these works with which I agree – such as the racism in US policing and the corruption of the legal system which is used to violently manage oppressed peoples in the name of ‘justice’ while leaving the individuals, banks and corporations on Wall Street unaccountable for their endless, ongoing and grotesque crimes against society, the economy and the environment – I would like to pose a deeper question: Why are police in the USA so terrified? This is the important question because only people who are terrified resort to violence, even in the context of policing. Let me explain why this is the case and how it has occurred in the police context in the USA.

Violence does not arise ‘out of nowhere’. And, sadly, its origin can be traced to what is euphemistically called the ‘socialization’ of children but which is more accurately labeled ‘terrorization’. You might think that this sounds extreme but if you spend some time considering the phenomenal violence – ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ – that we adults inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day – see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’– while deluding ourselves that we are preparing them to become just, decent and powerful citizens, then you might be willing to reconsider your concept of what it means to nurture children. Tragically, we are so far from any meaningful understanding of this notion, that it is not even possible to generate a widespread social discussion about how we might go about it.

So, having terrorized children into submission so that they unthinkingly and passively accept their preordained role in life – to act as a cog in a giant and destructive enterprise which they are terrorized into not questioning and over which they have no control – each of them takes their place in the global ‘economy’ wherever they can find a set of tasks that feels least painful. The idea of seeking their true path in order to search out their own unique destiny never even occurs to most of them and so they lead ‘shadow lives’ endlessly suppressing their awareness of the life that might have been.

Some of these individuals end up as recruits at a police training facility, where they are further terrorized into believing an elite-sponsored ideology that precludes genuine appreciation of the diversity of people in the community they will later police (that is, terrorize) in the name of ‘law and order’. After all, elite social control is more readily maintained when people, including the police, live in fear.

Police training further terrorizes the individuals involved and militarizes policing by encouraging recruits ‘to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies’; the equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang grenades and Armoured Personnel Carriers, evoke a sense of war. See ‘War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing’.

But it doesn’t end with terrorization during childhood and then police training. Police practice functions within a long-standing cultural framework which has both wider social dimensions and narrower, localized ones. And this cultural framework has been changing, more quickly in recent years too. Unfortunately, more than ever before, this framework is increasingly driven by fear and older, delusional social expectations that police are there to maintain public safety or defend the community from criminal violence have given way to militarized assumptions, language and procedures that regard virtually everyone (and certainly indigenous people and people of color) as both dangerous and guilty until proven otherwise and treat the family home and car as targets to be ‘neutralized’ with military-style tactics and weapons. And this trend has been accelerated under Donald Trump. See ‘Trump to lift military gear ban for local police’.

By triggering fear and using military-style tactics and weapons, however, the very essence of the relationship between police and civilians is more rapidly, completely and detrimentally transformed in accord with elite interests. It equates law-enforcement with counter-terrorism and community safety with social control.

Fundamentally, of course, this plays its part in ensuring minimal effective resistance to the broader elite agenda to secure militarized control of the world’s populations and resources for elite benefit.

This transformation in the relationship between police and civilians has been accelerated by training US police in the use of military tactics that the Israeli military employs against the occupied Palestinians. See ‘Israel trains US law-enforcement in counter-terrorism’.

But consider the implications of this.

As Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, has noted in discussing this phenomenon: US police are learning paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics from the Israeli military, border patrol and intelligence services, which enforce military law.

‘If American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their rights and use force to hold down a subject population’. See ‘US Police Get Antiterror Training In Israel’.

Moreover, the most tangible evidence that the militarized training is having an impact on US policing is that both Israel and the US are using identical equipment against demonstrators, according to a 2013 report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and photographs of such equipment taken at three demonstrations in the USA. ‘Tear gas grenades, “triple chaser” gas canisters and stun grenades made by the American companies Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. were used in all three U.S. incidents, as well as by Israeli security forces and military units.’ See ‘US Police Get Antiterror Training In Israel’.

Given the sheer terror that drives Israeli military policy towards occupied and militarily undefended Palestine, it is little wonder that this fear is transmitted as part of any training of US police. All knowledge and technology is embedded with emotion, and fear is utterly pervasive in any military activity. Especially when it is directed in pursuit of unjust ends.

So what can we do?

If you are interested in working to reduce police fear and violence, you will get plenty of ideas in the document ‘A Toolkit for Promoting Justice In Policing’ which is summarized here: ‘15 Things Your City Can Do Right Now to End Police Brutality’.

If you want to organize a nonviolent action while reducing police fear to minimize the risk of police violence, there is a comprehensive list of guidelines here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

If you want to work towards ending the underlying fear that drives police (and other) violence, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’. In essence, if you want powerful individuals who are capable of resisting elite social control, including that implemented through police violence, then don’t expect children terrorized into obedience by parents, teachers and religious figures to later magically have this power.

And if you are inclined to resist violence in other contexts, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’, signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and/or using the strategic framework explained in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy for your peace, environmental or social justice campaign.

Why are the police so terrified? Essentially because they were terrorized as children and then terrorized during police training to violently defend elite interests against the rest of us. Elite control depends on us being too terrified to defend ourselves against their violence.

If humans are to survive this elite-driven onslaught, we need people courageous enough to resist police violence and other elite-driven violence strategically. Can we count on you?

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

“Let me be clear: The use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.” – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, January 15, 2016, warning the warring parties in Syria

“People are dying; children are suffering not as a result of an accident of war, but as the consequence of an intentional tactic – surrender or starve. And that tactic is directly contrary to the law of war.” – US Secretary of State John Kerry, February 1, 2016, denouncing atrocities in Syria

***

As Americans get ready for Thanksgiving 2017 over-eating, their government is on the verge of successfully starving millions of Yemenis to death by siege warfare. The US naval blockade of Yemen has been unrelenting since March 2015. The US Navy is an essential element of this perpetual war crime, this endless assault on a civilian population of about 25 million. This is the kind of collective punishment of innocents that we once put Nazis on trial for at Nuremberg. The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual, however, advises (section 5.20.1, page 315) that: “Starvation is a legitimate method of warfare.” So now the US is a blithe mass-murdering state with impunity, qualities hardly ever mentioned in the world’s freest media (with one remarkable exception in Democracy NOW, where coverage of Yemen has been excellent at least since 2009).

Well, never mind, at least Taylor Swift’s reputation is soaring and everyone gets to throw figurative rocks at Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and other serial predators. Predator is also the name of one of the US drones that the US President sends to assassinate people who may or may not have done anything wrong, but who showed up at the wrong time on the wrong list, and what more due process do those un-white foreign people deserve anyway? You don’t hear Congress complaining, do you? Or mainstream media? Or the courts? This is beyond bipartisan thrill killing, this is national consensual mass murder.

OK, to be fair, there has been some tepid, insincere, sporadic objection to wiping out millions of innocent people. Why, just as recently as October 10, The New York Times ran an op-ed article – NOT an editorial – that began with a pretty fair summary of the carnage being visited on Yemen by the US and its allies:

Imagine that the entire population of Washington State — 7.3 million people — were on the brink of starvation, with the port city of Seattle under a naval and aerial blockade, leaving it unable to receive and distribute countless tons of food and aid that sit waiting offshore. This nightmare scenario is akin to the obscene reality occurring in the Middle East’s poorest country, Yemen, at the hands of the region’s richest, Saudi Arabia, with unyielding United States military support that Congress has not authorized and that therefore violates the Constitution.

The headline on this op-ed piece is “Stop the Unconstitutional War in Yemen,” which is something of a deception since the war is truly criminal by any standard of international law and its “unconstitutionality” is but one aspect of its overall criminality. Like the Times, the authors of the op-ed have yet to face the raw criminality of the aggressive war on Yemen. The authors are three members of Congress, two Democrats, Ro Khanna of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, together with a rare Republican of some integrity, Walter Jones of North Carolina. But they do not call out the gross criminality of American siege warfare against Yemen, they come hat in hand arguing that the war is unconstitutional because Congress hasn’t approved it formally. Congress has approved it with silence. No party leadership on either side has joined with these three in their gentle effort to “Stop the war.” These three Congress members, with Republican Thomas Massie, were the original sponsors of the House resolution introduced September 27, as a hint “to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.” The resolution has so far gathered an additional 42 co-sponsors (one more Republican) from the House’s 435 members. One measure of where we are as a country is that something as bland and incomplete as this resolution is seen somehow as a radical act that gets little support in Congress or coverage in the media, where the forced starvation of millions of people is not a big issue.

Yemen is a nation under siege from the air with daily bombings. The Saudis and their allies control the air over Yemen, which has almost no air force and almost no air defenses. Nothing flies in or out of Yemen without Saudi permission, which is rarely given, even for food or medical supplies. The Saudi air force could not function without American support. US military forces select targets, provide intelligence, re-fuel Saudi jets in mid-air and repair them on the ground. Every bomb that falls on Yemen has American fingerprints on it, especially the cluster bombs (another war crime) made in America.

Yemen is a nation under siege from the water, where the US Navy enforces a blockade not only of food, medicine, and other humanitarian relief coming in. The US Navy also turns back Yemenis trying to flee, essentially reducing their choices to risking drowning or starvation. And thanks to the effectiveness of the blockades, there is a massive risk of cholera in Yemen as well, as the US and its allies deliberately wage biological warfare in Yemen as well.

Yemen is a nation under siege on the ground. The Saudis control Yemen’s northern border, which has been under dispute between the two countries for decades. Nothing crosses the border into Yemen without Saudi permission, mostly granted to artillery fire. Little effectual return fire comes from Yemen. Yemen’s eastern border is with Oman, which is a friendly state. In between Oman and Yemeni population centers in the west, the territory is mostly controlled by al Qaeda and ISIS, with the Saudi-backed puppet regime tucked in around Aden. All of those forces oppose the Houthis in control of the northwest, which has been their homeland for centuries. Just to be clear: the US is deliberately starving a population that is fighting al Qaeda and Isis.

With its recent governmental purges, Saudi Arabia maybe have become the second most dangerous nation in the world. Not to worry, the USA is still Number One. But the US/Saudi axis can hardly be much better news for the region than it is for Yemen.

On November 8, the United Nations and some twenty international relief agencies issued a statement of alarm at and opposition to the US/Saudi-enforced siege on Yemen. The human cost of two and a half years of US/Saudi aggression is already unforgivably punishing and cruel. Now the US/Saudi siege threatens unprecedented catastrophe:

There are over 20 million people in need of humanitarian assistance; seven million of them are facing famine-like conditions and rely completely on food aid to survive. In six weeks, the food supplies to feed them will be exhausted. Over 2.2 million children are malnourished, of those, 385,000 children suffer from severe malnutrition and require therapeutic treatment to stay alive. Due to limited funding, humanitarian agencies are only able to target one third of the population (7 million)…. outbreaks of communicable diseases such as polio and measles are to be expected with fatal consequences, particularly for children under five years of age and those already suffering from malnutrition … the threat of famine and the spread of cholera … deadly consequences to an entire population suffering from a conflict that it is not of their own making.

Also on November 8, the day of the statement of alarm, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock briefed the UN Security Council on the crisis in Yemen. The briefing was secret, on the request of Sweden. After the briefing, Lowcock met with reporters. He warned that, unless there is a significant, massive humanitarian response soon:

There will be a famine in Yemen. It will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year where tens of thousands of people were affected. It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011. It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims.

The aggression against Yemen has been a nexus of war crimes from the beginning, when it was sanctioned by the Obama administration to appease Saudi peevishness over international peacemaking with Iran on nuclear development. For almost three years, Yemen has been a holocaust-in-the-making, with this difference: turning most of the country into a death camp, with America’s blessing and collusion. Repubs will choose to confirm 300 unqualified judges before they’ll choose to intervene in one criminal war, and mostly Democrats will not seriously object to either choice.

If the United States doesn’t kill you, it’s perfectly happy to let you die (what health care?). The question – with hope embedded – is whether most Americans support the legal reign of terror that is Pax Americana. Given US treatment of Americans from Ferguson to Flint to Standing Rock to Puerto Rico, the prospect is grim.

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

This article was originally published by Reader Supported News.

Featured image is from Hugh Macleod / IRIN/Creative Commons,

The overall figure was comfortable, though hardly dashing. 62 percent of Australians (7.82 million) decided that same sex marriage was a perfectly feasible, even desirable notion, while 38 percent (4.87 million) did not.[1]

Out of 150 federal seats, 133 registered affirmative totals in returning their response to the question “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”. All states featured majorities, while some so-called conservative states – Queensland and Western Australia, for instance – registered higher percentages than, for instance, New South Wales. Notable federal seats with large yes votes were Melbourne (84 percent); Sydney (84 percent) and Brisbane (80 percent).

The result for New South Wales was deemed an odd one by some commentators, given that Sydney is the place of the annual Mardi Gras, vulgarly cosmopolitan, brash and open. But this reductive simplicity belies the important fact that Sydney, and New South Wales, more generally, have diverse populations, many non-English speaking and reluctant to embrace the language of rainbow sexuality.

The pattern in Western Sydney was of deepest interest to Antony Green and the political science fraternity keen to peer through the electoral glass darkly. Twelve seats in Sydney, nine Labor and three Liberal, voted against marriage equality.

Blaxland, the seat of former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, registered a thumping no vote of 74 percent. Watson, the seat of Labor front bencher, Tony Burke, furnished the Australian Bureau of Statistics a figure of 70 percent. These results again showed how postal plebiscites that require scrutiny of what would otherwise be private matters tend to ruffle, even damage. The bag of prejudice is always a deep one.

It also followed that such strong no votes in specific seats would face some tip-toeing candidates keen to avoid those culturally sensitive voters. Particular interest will be paid to the seat of Bennelong, whose previous sitting member, John Alexander, had to resign for being a dual national.

Same-sex marriage, noted Green, does not fit into the class structure of Australian political thinking. Even today, however odd that note rings in discussions, electoral assessments tend to fall to demographic variables, and brute figures of income and living, rather than abstract values. Cultural values, in other words, tend to be nudged into the background, if, indeed, they actually figure at all.

It is precisely these cultural values that are going to play out in Parliament. This ceremonially farcical show, costly and non-binding, was meant to give conservatives enough ammunition to avoid a same-sex marriage vote while giving the false impression that this was plausibly democratic. (Should prejudice ever be democratised?) The same tactic had been deployed in sinking the Republican debate in the 1990s by Prime Minister John Howard.

Having confronted the spectre of a significant yes vote, the strategy now is to water the pre-existing Dean Smith bill, embraced across parties, in favour of more discriminatory provisions under the guise of human rights. The discussion, claimed Senator Matt Canavan, had to continue, parliamentarians not being automatons in the service of the elector.

Unfortunately for Canavan, it was precisely the fact that parliamentarians had abdicated their legislative role in this matter that perpetuated this exercise. Conservative members of parliament are already insisting that parents have rights to shift children from schools that insist on a radical sex education agenda. Specific dispensations for prejudice will be sought.

Members of the same-sex marriage community have also jumped the gun in some instances, presuming that the passage of legislation will be automatic, a smooth matter without hiccups. Proposals were made on the lawn of the Victorian State Library in Melbourne. Corks were popped, champagne guzzled.

The celebrity circuit, ever keen to lend loud voices to causes, was triggered in communal enthusiasm. “It’s a g’day,” tweeted US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. “Way to go Australia.”[2] Singer Sam Smith jumped on Twitter with a sequence of crying face and rainbow emojis.

Much of the delight and ebullience centred on this vote being one of love. Such formulations on human institutions are rarely accurate. Marriage and love were only coupled as a fairly modern, middle-class phenomenon, and a general postal vote favouring same-sex marriage is probably more accurately termed one of fairness than emotional indulgence.

Few other communities in a social sense have been singled out as singular, marginal, and peculiar relative to rights and liberties. Such private realms should rarely be the preserve of the state. But the state will now determine whether the Marriage Act will be altered. Now, the tune may well change, but it is bound to be jarring at points. The judgments are far from over.

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

Notes

In an article by Thai PBS titled, “US cuts 2018 funding for demining operations in Cambodia,” it’s revealed that next year’s meager $2 million in US government funding for demining operations of US unexploded ordnance (UXO) in eastern Cambodia leftover from the Vietnam War has been discontinued without warning or explanation.

The move caused confusion across Cambodia’s government, as well as across partner nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia participating in the US program.

Speculation over the move revolves around growing tensions between Washington and Phnom Penh as the United States desperately attempts to reassert itself in Asia Pacific, while Asian states – including Cambodia – continue to build closer and more constructive ties with Beijing at the expense of Washington’s waning influence.

Cambodia has recently exposed and ousted a myriad of US-funded fronts posing as NGOs and independent media platforms executing a campaign of US-backed political subversion. This includes the disbanding of the Cambodia National Rescue opposition party and the arrest of its leader, Kem Sokha, who bragged of his role in a US conspiracy to overthrow the Cambodian government and install him into power.

Tensions in Cambodia represent a wider, regional trend where US footholds face increasing scrutiny and resistance as Washington’s abuse of “NGOs,” “rights advocacy,” and “democracy promotion” is systematically exposed and rolled back.

Cut or Renewed, US UXO Assistance is Meaningless  

The US embassy in Cambodia would claim after receiving backlash for the move that the US had unilaterally decided to shut down funding in order to open up bidding for a new and “world-class removal program” – the details of which have yet to be confirmed or released.

The US boasts that it has spent “more than 114 million dollars” over the past 20 years to clear explosives it itself helped drop on Cambodia as part of its nearly two decades-long war in Vietnam and wider intervention in Southeast Asia – or in other words – the US has spent over 5,000 times less in 20 years on removing UXO in Cambodia than it does annually on its current military operations around the globe. In fact, a single F-35 Joint Strike Fighter warplane costs roughly the same amount of money the US has spent on demining Cambodia over the last 20 years.

There are an estimated 6 million pieces of UXO still littering Cambodia, which since the end of the Vietnam War and the rule of the Khmer Rouge have cost nearly 20,000 Cambodians their lives – with casualties still reported monthly.

Efforts that last 20 years, cost as little as a single warplane in Washington’s current arsenal, and still leave people dead or maimed monthly indicate efforts that are halfhearted – a diplomatic stunt more than sincere reparations or humanitarian concern.

Doubling Nothing is Still Nothing 

In neighboring Laos, the United States left an estimated 80 million submunitions littering the country, or about 11 for each man, woman, and child that lives there. 20,000 people have also been killed by UXO in Laos and many more have been maimed.

According to the Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme (UXO LAO), 444,711 submunitions (about 0.55%) have been destroyed between 1996 and 2010. Despite the dangerous and exhausting work, eliminating 0.55% of the 80 million submunitions still littering the country amounts to virtually nothing.

Global Research’s work is critical in the face of mainstream media disinformation with to the danger of nuclear war. See our selection below. 

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The Situation in North Korea is Terrifying: US-ROK Military Threats Are Provocations for Nuclear War

By Carla Stea, November 15, 2017

Any attempt to accuse the DPRK of “provocation”is flagrant prevarication, as the provocations, and threats to the survival of North Korea described in this appeal to the Secretary-General reveal the US-south Korean  preparation for imminent attack and obliteration of North Korea.

Syria: Media Disinformation Campaign, Blaming Assad for Alleged Famine in Terrorist-Held East Ghouta, Fake Accounts, Photos

By Sophie Mangal, November 14, 2017

The mainstream media are trying to convince everyone that an appalling famine in East Ghouta was caused by Assad’s blockade.

Meanwhile, humanitarian aid is regularly delivered there, but the terrorists do their best to prevent civilians and their children from obtaining it.

Saudi-Israeli Collusion? Is Israel Seeking Role as Leader of the Sunni Bloc?

By Jonathan Cook, November 14, 2017

Israel has instructed its overseas embassies to lobby their respective host countries in support of Saudi Arabia and its apparent efforts to destabilise Lebanon, a recently leaked diplomatic cable shows.

Trident Nuclear Safety Reports Suppressed by British Ministry of Defence

By Rob Edwards, November 14, 2017

Annual reports from the MoD’s internal watchdog, the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR), have been abruptly classified as secret. Published for the last ten years, the reports have repeatedly warned of the dangers of spending cutbacks, staff shortages and accidents.

US Neglects the Safety of Nuclear Power Plants in Europe

By Vladimir Odintsov, November 14, 2017

According to a study by the European Commission, nuclear power generates 27% of electricity in the EU. According to the European Nuclear Society (ENS), about 200 nuclear power units are currently operating or are being constructed in Europe. Strict monitoring measures are applied to all operating and developing NPPs not only from the countries that build these facilities, but also from international organizations.

EU Member States Take Major Step Toward a European Army

By Peter Schwarz, November 14, 2017

The European Union has taken a major step toward developing the capacity to wage war in the future independently of and, if necessary, against the United States.

The Middle East has been descending into a turbulent situation and it has been a normal trend since a while that one crisis is succeeded by another political flashpoint. While Saudi Arabia’s feud with Qatar is still beating the drum, a new turmoil this time in Lebanon is looming. Almost certain, the Lebanon fiasco is the the result of confrontation and power-play between two ideological and religious poles – Saudi Arabia and Iran. 

According to The Guardian, midway through the meal with the visiting French cultural minister, Françoise Nyssen, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri received a call and his demeanor changed. He excused himself and left for the airport, without his aides. Later on November 4, Hariri appeared reading out his resignation in Riyadh. It was instantly assumed by the people of Lebanon and others that he was forced into stepping down and possibly held under house arrest.

In his resignation speech, Hariri blasted at Iranian influence in his country and revealed that he resigned to escape falling into the same fate his father, Rafik Hariri, faced in 2005 when he was assassinated by a car bomb allegedly guided by agents associated with Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Yet, Hariri didn’t look panicked about Hezbollah before. In his remarks, he surprisingly blamed Hezbollah for imposing itself on the country and doing the bidding of its main backer, Iran in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region.

As Hariri settled back into Riyadh, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas – whose administration last month reconciled with Hamas, which has received support from Iran – was also summoned to Riyadh to meet King Salman.

The chances are low for a possible hot war between two rivals. Although the two nemesis adversaries might walk back from the cold war, Lebanon would have to bear the brunt of possible economic sanctions by Saudi Arabia.

Now the reason why Lebanon is unable to mop up the government from Hezbollah’s presence even though Saad Hariri is a dual Saudi-Lebanese citizen and intimate to Saudi Arabia’s Government is that the Lebanese Political System necessitates different religious groups to share power: Lebanon’s prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim, the President must be a Maronite Christian and the Parliamentary speaker must be a Shiite Muslim.

Iran bears measurable power and stake in the Lebanese political base that supports Hezbollah, the country’s most powerful military and political organization. Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah dislike each other: Saudi Arabia once referred to Hezbollah as “the party of the devil”, and in revenge words, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah termed it “more evil than Israel”.

Saudi Arabia is emboldened to take the lead of a string of regional crises especially after the US President Donald Trump acceded to the presidency last year. Trump’s offensive words against Iran in the September UN General Assembly and anti-Iranian sentiment is delivering a boost to Saudi Arabia’s conspiracies in the Middle East.

Israel and Saudi Arabia both aspire to subvert Hezbollah which is constitutes a strong ally of Iran. A great deal of force that fought the ISIS to death in Syria and Iraq was mobilized by Hezbollah which turned into a nightmare for Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which supported ISIS-Daesh.

Hezbollah keeps sending reinforcements into Houthis ranks in Yemen to stand up to Saudi Arabia’s incursion. Two days after Hariri’s resignation, Saudi authorities blamed Hezbollah and Iran for a rocket fire from Yemen that struck Riyadh airport.

To obscure the reality and sidestep a mass of criticism, Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon of plotting the assassination of Hariri. Saudi Arabia knew that Hariri hadn’t “done enough” to counter Hezbollah. The latter could be supported by Hezbollah leader Nasrallah’s response to Hariri’s forced resignation and detention in Saudi Arabia which he called an insult and asserted that he be returned to Lebanon.

The ISIS was wiped out owing in part to Hezbollah with the support of Iran.

Israel and Hezbollah had a deadly clash in 2006 when the two exchanged rocket fires and left hundreds of dead on the both sides. Israel shares role with kindred Saudi Arabia to get Hezbollah out of their way. Robert Malley, the vice president for policy at Crisis Group, wrote in The Atlantic:

“For months now, [Israel] has been sounding alarm bells about Hezbollah’s and Iran’s growing footprint in Syria, and more particularly about the Lebanese movement’s soon-to-be-acquired capacity to indigenously produce precision-guided missiles — a development Israeli officials view as a potential game changer they must thwart”

Saudi Arabia and Iran’s frayed ties further soured in 2016 when Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran was stormed by an angry mob. Saudi Arabia’s resentment compounded towards Iran after it struck the “nuclear deal” with the US with a view to curbing its “international isolation”. Breaking off with Qatar over warmness to Iran also contributed to duo’s polarity.

Israel wouldn’t attempt for another ambitious plot unless Hezbollah is shattered. The Lebanon conspiracy seems to be economic rather than warfare. Saudi Arabia may unleash a flurry of sanctions such as boycotting and blocking of economic corridors with other Arab states to dry out the militant group’s ramifications in and out of Lebanon. By possibly cutting off diplomatic relations, air and ground corridors and other sanctions just like Qatar went through, Saudi Arabia might want to force Hezbollah into downhill.

Mr. Hariri’s resignation ruined a political deal among rival factions that contributed almost totally into making Hariri the Prime Minister and Michel Aoun – a political ally of Hezbollah – the president of the State last year. The coalition Government included Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s cul-de-sac has not happened at random or suddenly, it is rather the outcome of a sequence of events that came to a head. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman is in quest of kicking out every obstacle out of his way to succeed King Salman. He and the UAE’s crown prince Mohammad bin Zayed believe that the time is ripe to play power  –in close liaison with Washington?– against Tehran.  They realize that Iran’s influence has reached out to Baghdad, Damascus, Gaza and Beirut, while also seeking inroads into Yemen and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has accused Iran of direct military aggression.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince as a young indoctrinated prospective ruler would assume the kingship with a ton of crises instigated by the same rule. He’s demonstrating that he will be proactive and confrontational. His endorsement of authorizing women to drive in Saudi Arabia is a bid to garner support among Saudis. He ordered the arrest of almost 50 Saudi royals, military officials and dignitaries as well as 11 princes under the guise of anti-corruption crackdown. It is all meant for new waves of unrest and disorder in years to come.

The 12-day tour through Asia by President Donald Trump has underscored the reality that American imperialism—a declining power wracked by external challenges and internal crises—is the most volatile and destabilising factor in world politics. Trump generated even greater trepidation about his administration’s policies than existed before the tour began.

The immediate issue is if, or when, Trump will act on his threats to “totally destroy” North Korea if the Pyongyang regime does not capitulate to the US demand for “complete and verifiable denuclearization.” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has, thus far, rejected that demand.

Despite numerous hints of behind-the-scenes negotiations to try to reach some form of compromise, Trump’s bellicose and categorical rhetoric on the floor of the South Korean parliament last week has left his administration with little room to manoeuvre. He vowed that he would “not allow” the North Korean regime to possess intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could reach the United States. His stance was unconditionally endorsed by Japan, Australia and South Korea.

For the White House to back down and accept North Korea possessing nuclear-armed ICBMs would be a debacle for Trump, under conditions in which his presidency is already under siege from his domestic political rivals. There would be savage recriminations within his administration, the military-intelligence establishment and the American ruling class as a whole.

The question posed by the WSWS in its September 6 perspective still looms over the world: “Will Washington go to war to make good on its war rhetoric? Have the threats themselves—and the determination to prove they are not mere bluffs—become a driving force in the march to a potential nuclear war?”

A similar question can be posed concerning the administration’s trade policies. In speech after speech, Trump denounced the World Trade Organisation and the multilateral trade and investment arrangements that the US itself established following World War II to regulate conflicts among economic competitors. He categorically vowed to pursue an uncompromising “America First” agenda that would require every country to substantially reduce its trade surpluses with the US.

Trump levelled this demand not only on “strategic competitors” such as China. He also threatened Japan and South Korea, among the closest US allies in the region, as well as the countries that the US is seeking to bring under its strategic umbrella, such as Vietnam and India.

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit China | November 10, 2017 (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

The Chinese regime’s response has been to push ahead with its efforts to develop new regional and international trade and investment arrangements that exclude the US and lessen its reliance on the American market.

At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam, countries were wooed by Beijing with the prospect of lucrative involvement in its ambitious “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) strategy. The Chinese regime’s aim is to develop transport and energy networks across the Eurasian landmass, and forge close links between the major world production centres and markets of East Asia and Western Europe.

Pakistan, the under-developed Central Asian states, Russia, and the East European states stand to potentially benefit from multi-billion dollar land-based projects. The maritime links involve plans for large-scale Chinese investment in ports and infrastructure in South Asia, East Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

At the East Asia Summit (EAS) in the Philippines, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the 10 member-states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) held a further round of talks toward the formation of Beijing’s proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

While two US allies, Japan and Australia, succeeded in delaying any final agreement until next year, the momentum toward its establishment was obvious. The bloc, which excludes the US, would forge closer links within a group of countries that is already significantly integrated by global production networks. Combined, they generate some 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and include half its population.

The logical extension of the RCEP—through the OBOR scheme—would be the incorporation of Russia, Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The Obama administration’s alternative was the US-dominated “Trans Pacific Partnership” that would exclude China until it deregulated protected sectors of its domestic economy. Trump repudiated the TPP, however, on his first day as president, on the protectionist grounds that it gave member-countries greater access to American markets.

The Japanese ruling class, which is just as opposed to a Chinese-centred bloc as Washington, is still pushing for the TPP to be established without US participation. Even if the bloc is ultimately formed, it would be dwarfed in size, scope and ambition by the RCEP.

Throughout his Asian tour, Trump caused eyes to roll with his bluster that the rise and rise of the US stock market demonstrated the “strength” of the American economy. Both in the US and internationally, every serious economic analyst is warning that Wall Street is a speculative house of cards, propped up by the continuous injections of funds from the Federal Reserve Bank and rising levels of high-risk debt.

After decades of relative decline in comparison to its imperialist rivals in Europe and Japan, as well as newly-emerged economic centres such as China, American imperialism is in a decrepit state. While a tiny layer of billionaire oligarchs control almost incomprehensible amounts of wealth, the vast mass of American workers face declining living standards, decaying infrastructure and ever more naked police-state repression.

Trump personifies the degeneration and desperation of the American ruling class. Across Asia, he could do little more than demand that countries purchase more American goods, or face sanctions. At times, the US president came across as a standover man for the American military-industrial complex, insisting that governments buy “billions” more of US-manufactured aircraft, warships and missiles.

To the extent that Trump did seriously propose that Asian-based corporations shift production to the US, it was on the unstated premise that American wages and conditions are being driven so low that they are “competitive” with those in what were once labelled the “cheap labour” countries.The only success of Trump’s tour, if it can be called that, was that Japan, Australia and India—countries whose ruling elites are as crisis-stricken as their American counterparts—indicated their support for a “Quadrilateral” alliance to militarily confront China and seek to shatter its growing regional and international influence.

Trump’s tour of Asia marks a new nadir in the strategic position of the United States. The tremendous danger that faces the international working class, however, is that the American ruling class still possesses a vast war machine and has demonstrated, time and again, its preparedness to use that weaponry to retain its global dominance.

O ex-deputado estadual João Vicente Goulart atualmente no Partido Pátria Livre (PPL-DF), filho do ex-presidente João Goulart (1961-64), manifestou recentemente a disposição de se candidatar à Presidência do Brasil. “O PPL está decidindo se vai lançar um nome à Presidência da República que possa sensibilizar mais o eleitor com um programa de governo independente, sem máculas, com história de lutas e propostas claras para a Nação brasileira”, diz o possível presidenciável na conversa a seguir.

O pré-candidato analisa, de maneira altamente crítica, a conjuntura brasileira com especial atenção às reformas do governo Temer, “um engodo entreguista que está vendendo a Pátria”, além de apresentar propostas concretas para que o País saia deste atoleiro ao mesmo tempo que, segundo o ex-parlamentar, possui “a mais reacionária bancada ruralista do mundo”.

“Jango Filho” condena também o que chama de golpe parlamentar contra a ex-presidente Dilma Rousseff, segundo ele “tomada de assalto pelos ratos que habitavam o porão do navio, um verdadeiro complot (…) apoiados por um presidente da Câmara ladrão, corrupto, embusteiro e golpista como era o deputado Eduardo Cunha, partícipe e subchefe da quadrilha que hoje comanda o País”.

Em abril, João Vicente Goulart desfiliou-se do PDT, partido que ajudou a construir “nos momentos mais difíceis” e pelo qual fora deputado estadual de 1983 a 1987 pelo Rio Grande do Sul. O motivo foi a aliança partidária com o governador Rodrigo Rollemberg (PSB), que à época inviabilizou a entrega do terreno onde seria construído o Memorial da Liberdade e Democracia Presidente João Goulart (imagem abaixo), última obra do arquiteto Oscar Niemeyer.

“Cassou Jango, meu pai, pela segunda vez”, indignou-se então o atual vice-presidente nacional do PPL, qualificando a atitude do governador braziliense de “covarde”. “Depois de tudo pronto, Rollemberg cassou o terreno quando começamos a botar os tapumes da obra”, lamenta o filho do ex-presidente Jango, em conversa particular com esta reportagem.

Logo após sua desfiliação do PDT, João Vicente, 8, ex-presidente do Instituto de Terras, ex-sub-secretário de Agricultura e ex-presidente do Banco da Terra no Rio, disse que a aliança do PDT com o PSB é formada “em nome do pragmatismo fisiológico, eleitoreiro e das piores práticas políticas que esta figura, disfarçada de ‘socialista’, pratica também contra o povo do Distrito Federal”.

Nesta entrevista “Janguinho”, nascido no Rio em 22 de novembro de 1956, também comenta o quanto seu pai Jango – inédito promotor, em toda a história do Brasil, das Reformas de Base que em pleno auge da Guerra Fria incluíam reforma agrária e limitação das remessas de lucro ao exterior, entre outras tantas medidas altamente populares que, jamais, seriam minimamente abordadas sequer verbalmente por nenhumpresidente da República que o sucedeu – influencia seu caráter até os dias de hoje, e sua própria carreira política: “Ensinamentos que levarei como exemplo até o fim dos meus dias”, afirma o pré-candidato à Presidência do Brasil.

Prime Minister Theresa May used her speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet—a gathering of the City of London—Monday evening to launch an attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Describing Russia as a threat to “open economies and free societies,” she accused the Putin regime of “seeking to weaponise information” and planting “fake stories” so as to “sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions.”

A Downing Street source acknowledged that she was not responding to “any specific event” and May herself gave no evidence to back up her assertions.

Her claims underscore how unsubstantiated allegations of Russian “interference” and “fake news” have become the refuge of choice for crisis-ridden politicians the world over.

May’s Mansion House speech was made on the eve of the return of the European Union Withdrawal Bill to parliament. Eight days of “line by line” examination of the bill—aimed at incorporating EU legislation into British law—will take place between now and Christmas, in what has been likened to “guerrilla warfare” as each clause is bitterly contested.

Her tirade against Russia must be seen in this context. Its aim was to conceal the divisions within the British bourgeoisie over Brexit, which threaten the downfall of her own government, and to direct social and political tensions outwards, against “foreign” powers.

May did not accuse Moscow of interference in the 2016 EU referendum, which returned a narrow Leave majority. To do so would contradict her repeated claim that Brexit is the “will of the people”—a self-serving mantra that reflects the dominance of hardline Brexiteers within the Tory Party and her own cabinet.

A majority of the ruling elite, however, including substantial sections of the City, are gravely concerned at the impact of EU withdrawal on the interests of British imperialism. Represented politically by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party—especially its Blairite wing—these layers are toying with trumped up allegations of Russian meddling to overturn the referendum result.

For May to play fast and loose with anti-Russian propaganda, despite its potential damage to her own cause, illustrates the scale of the crisis she confronts. Having lost two cabinet ministers to scandals in the space of a week, May announced Friday she would put an amendment enshrining in law the date Britain leaves the EU—at 11 p.m., March 29, 2019.

It became clear that this move was in line with demands of leading Brexiteers when a secret letter from Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to May, marked “for your eyes only,” was leaked at the weekend.

The joint by-line is significant given that it was Gove who publicly torpedoed Johnson’s bid for Tory party leadership last June. With the clock ticking on Brexit, they have joined forces to oppose any retreat from or dilution of EU withdrawal.

Their letter, EU Exit—Next Steps, complained of “insufficient energy” on Brexit in parts of the government, demanded that any transition period be concluded by June 2021, and pressed May to ensure maximum support for this among the UK’s negotiating team by “clarifying their minds” and helping them “internalise the logic.”

The result has been to fuel the cross-party, pro-Remain opposition. Led by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, some 300 amendments have been tabled to the bill, including a number by Tory rebels.

These centre on the use of so-called Henry VIII clauses giving ministers executive powers to force through legislation, the role of the European Court of Justice during any transition period and the constitutional position of the devolved administrations after Brexit—especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland which voted to Remain.

May’s exit deadline only added another bone of contention to this list, with pro-EU Tory MP Dominic Grieve describing it as “thoroughly stupid” for limiting Britain’s room for manoeuvre in EU negotiations. Labour, for its part, wants “exit day” to be after an unspecified transition period of several years, while the Liberal Democrats favour a second referendum.

Should any of the amendments get the support of more than 11 Tory MPs the government faces defeat. The prospect of this is reinforced by reports that 40 Tory MPs have put their name to demands for May to resign—just eight short of the number needed to force a leadership challenge.

It was to forestall a Tory rebellion that Brexit Secretary David Davis announced a last-minute concession Monday—just prior to May’s Mansion House speech—that parliament could vote on a final deal between the UK and the EU. But this is a take-it-or-leave-it vote, with rejection meaning the UK will exit without agreement—precisely what the Remain faction fears most of all.

As a result, Davis’ “olive-branch” only ratcheted up tensions further, with Tory MP Anna Soubry describing it as “insulting,” “meaningless” and only adding to the government’s “grave difficulty” over Brexit.

While Britain’s parliament tears itself apart over whether it can vote on a final deal, there is no guarantee that the EU is even prepared to offer one. Last week the EU’s chief negotiator, Michael Barnier, again ruled out any progress to talks on future UK-EU trade relations without agreement on the “divorce” terms.

The EU summit on December 14/15 will decide whether “real and sincere progress” has been made regarding the UK’s outstanding financial contributions—estimated at about €60 billion (£53 billion), the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and the rights of EU citizens in Britain.

May’s weakness is only strengthening the resolve of Germany and France that no concessions can be made. They are not prepared to help a prime minister in hock to a hardline anti-EU faction, especially when she—and indeed her government—might not be around for much longer.

Barnier acknowledged that the EU was making “technical preparations” for a collapse of negotiations, while on Tuesday Manfred Weber, a key ally of Germany’s Chancellor Merkel, warned “the clock is ticking.” Speaking in advance of talks requested by May in London today, Weber said it did not look as if the EU would be “entering into the second phase” of negotiations in December, adding “we need to warn the British government… to put proposals on the table.”

Sections of the EU are recklessly stoking the factional infighting within British political circles—nowhere more so than regarding the Irish border. The EU has suggested that Northern Ireland could remain in a customs union or the single market after the UK exits, obviating the restoration of a “hard border” between north and south.

This was rejected by Davis who said it would only create another new border instead, this time within the UK, between Northern Ireland and the mainland. Britain would not accept any arrangement that cost the UK’s “constitutional and economic integrity,” he said.

Dublin denounced Britain for trying to dictate Ireland’s future, while leading EU officials accused May of placing her political survival—her government is kept in power by the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland—above the interests of the Irish people.

In the Observer Sunday, European parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt referred to the 1998 Belfast agreement that ended The Troubles in Northern Ireland by bringing Sinn Fein into a power-sharing executive. He warned that avoidance of a hard border was “crucial to safeguard peace and to preserve the Good Friday Agreement, which was brokered with the active participation of the European Union. … I hope the British government will do what is right for all the people of Northern Ireland. The peace process should transcend domestic party politics.”

A stark difference between today’s Washington and when I was here as a young Associated Press correspondent in the late 1970s and the early 1980s is that then – even as the old Cold War was heating up around the election of Ronald Reagan – there were prominent mainstream journalists who looked askance at the excessive demonization of the Soviet Union and doubted wild claims about the dire threats to U.S. national security from Nicaragua and Grenada.

Perhaps the Vietnam War was still fresh enough in people’s minds that senior editors and national reporters understood the dangers of mindless groupthink inside Official Washington, as well as the importance of healthy skepticism toward official pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence community.

Today, however, I cannot think of a single prominent figure in the mainstream news media who questions any claim – no matter how unlikely or absurd – that vilifies Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country. It is all Russia-bashing all the time.

And, behind this disturbing anti-Russian uniformity are increasing assaults against independent and dissident journalists and news outlets outside the mainstream. We’re not just entering a New Cold War and a New McCarthyism; we’re also getting a heavy dose of old-style Orwellianism.

Sometimes you see this in individual acts like HuffingtonPost taking down a well-reported story by journalist Joe Lauria because he dared to point out that Democratic money financed the two initial elements of what’s now known as Russia-gate: the forensic examination of computers at the Democratic National Committee and the opposition research on Donald Trump conducted by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

HuffingtonPost never contacted Lauria before or after its decision to retract the story, despite a request from him for the reasons why. HuffPost editors told a BuzzFeed reporter that they were responding to reader complaints that the article was filled with factual errors but none have ever been spelled out, leaving little doubt that Lauria’s real “error” was in defying the Russia-gate groupthink of the anti-Trump Resistance. [A version of Lauria’s story appeared at Consortiumnews.com before Lauria posted it at HuffPost. If you want to sign a petition calling on HuffPost to restore Lauria’s article, click here.]

Muzzling RT

Other times, the expanding American censorship is driven by U.S. government agencies, such as the Justice Department’s demand that the Russian news outlet, RT, register under the restrictive Foreign Agent Registration Act, which requires such prompt, frequent and detailed disclosures of supposed “propaganda” that it could make it impossible for RT to continue to function in the United States.

This attack on RT was rationalized by the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” that was, in reality, prepared by a handful of “hand-picked” analysts from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. Their report included a seven-page addendum from 2012 accusing RT of spreading Russian propaganda – and apparently this Jan. 6 report must now be accepted as gospel truth, no questions permitted.

However, if any real journalist actually read the Jan. 6 report, he or she would have discovered that RT’s sinister assault on American democracy included such offenses as holding a debate among third-party candidates who were excluded from the Republican-Democratic debates in 2012. Yes, allowing Libertarians and Greens to express their points of view is a grave danger to American democracy.

Other RT “propaganda” included reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests and examining the environmental dangers from “fracking,” issues that also have been widely covered by the domestic American media. Apparently, whenever RT covers a newsworthy event – even if others have too – that constitutes “propaganda,” which must be throttled to protect the American people from the danger of seeing it.

If you bother to study the Jan. 6 report’s addendum, it is hard not to conclude that these “hand-picked” analysts were either stark-raving mad or madly anti-Russian. Yet, this “Intelligence Community Assessment” is now beyond questioning unless you want to be labeled a “Kremlin stooge” or “Putin’s useful idiot.” [An earlier State Department attack on RT was equally ridiculous or demonstrably false.]

And, by the way, it was President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who testified under oath that the analysts from the three agencies were “hand-picked.” That means that they were analysts personally selected by Obama’s intelligence chiefs from three agencies – not “all 17” as the American public was told over and over again – and thus were not even a full representation of analysts from those three agencies. Yet, this subset of a subset is routinely described as “the U.S. intelligence community,” even after major news outlets finally had to retract their “all 17” canard.

So, the myth of the intelligence community’s consensus lives on. For instance, in an upbeat article on Tuesday about the U.S. government’s coercing RT into registering as a foreign agent, Washington Post reporters Devlin Barrett and David Filipov wrote,

“U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the network and website push relentlessly anti-American propaganda at the behest of the Russian government.”

In the old days, even during the old Cold War and President Reagan’s ranting about “the Evil Empire,” some of us would have actually examined the Jan. 6 report’s case against RT and noted the absurdity of these claims about “relentlessly anti-American propaganda.” Whether you want to hear the views of the Greens and Libertarians or not – or whether you like “fracking” and hate Occupy Wall Street – the opportunity to hear this information doesn’t constitute “relentlessly anti-American propaganda.”

The U.S. government’s real beef with RT seems to be that it allows on air some Americans who have been blacklisted from the mainstream media – including highly credentialed former U.S. intelligence analysts and well-informed American journalists – because they have challenged various Official Narratives.

In other words, Americans are not supposed to hear the other side of the story on important international conflicts, such as the proxy war in Syria or the civil war in Ukraine or Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Only the State Department’s versions of those events are permitted even when those versions are themselves propagandistic if not outright false.

For example, you’re not supposed to hear about the huge holes in the Syria-sarin cases, nor about Ukraine’s post-coup regime arming neo-Nazis to kill ethnic-Russian Ukrainians, nor about Israel’s evolution into an apartheid state. All right-thinking Americans are to get only a steady diet of how righteous the U.S. government and its allies always are. Anything else is “propaganda.”

Also off limits is any thoughtful critique of that Jan. 6 report – or apparently even Clapper’s characterization of it as a product of “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies. You’re not supposed to ask why other U.S. intelligence agencies with deep knowledge about Russia were excluded and why even other analysts from the three involved agencies were shut out.

No, you must always think of the Jan. 6 report as the “consensus” assessment from the entire “U.S. intelligence community.” And you must accept it as flat fact – as it now is treated by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other mainstream news outlets. You shouldn’t even notice that the Jan. 6 report itself doesn’t claim that Russian election meddling was a fact. The report explains, that “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

But even quoting from the Jan. 6 report might make an American reporter some kind of traitorous “Russian mole” whose journalism must be purged from “responsible” media and who should be forced to wear the journalistic equivalent of a yellow star.

The Anti-Trump/Russia Hysteria

Of course, much of this anti-Russian hysteria comes from the year-long fury about the shocking election of Donald Trump. From the first moments of stunned disbelief over Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the narrative was put in motion to blame Trump’s victory not on Clinton and her wretched campaign but on Russia. That also was viewed as a possible way of reversing the election’s outcome and removing Trump from office.

The major U.S. news media quite openly moved to the forefront of the Resistance. The Washington Post adopted the melodramatic and hypocritical slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as it unleashed its journalists to trumpet the narrative of some disloyal Americans spreading Russian propaganda. Darkness presumably was a fine place to stick people who questioned the Resistance’s Russia-gate narrative.

An early shot in this war against dissenting information was fired last Thanksgiving Day when the Post published a front-page article citing an anonymous group called PropOrNot smearing 200 Internet news sites for allegedly disseminating Russian propaganda. The list included some of the most important sources of independent journalism, including Consortiumnews.com, apparently for the crime of questioning some of the State Department’s narratives on international conflicts, particularly Syria and Ukraine.

Then, with the anti-Russia hysteria building and the censorship ball rolling, Congress last December approved $160 million for think tanks and other non-governmental organizations to combat Russian propaganda. Soon, reports and studies were flying off the shelves detecting a Russian behind every article, tweet and posting that didn’t toe the State Department’s line.

The New York Times and other leading news organizations have even cheered plans for Google, Facebook and other technology companies to deploy algorithms that can hunt down, marginalize or eliminate information that establishment media deems “fake” or “propaganda.” Already Google has put together a First Draft coalition, consisting of mainstream media and establishment-approved Web sites to decide what information makes the cut and what doesn’t.

Among these arbiters of truth is the fact-check organization PolitiFact, which judged the falsehood about “all 17 intelligence agencies” signing off on the Russian “hacking” claim to be “true.” Even though the claim was never true and is now clearly established as false, PolitiFact continues to assert that this lie is the truth, apparently filled with the hubris that comes with its power over determining what is true and what is false.

But what is perhaps most troubling to me about these developments is the silence of many civil liberties advocates, liberal politicians and defenders of press freedom who might have been counted on in earlier days to object to this censorship and blackballing.

It appears that the ends of taking down Donald Trump and demonizing Vladimir Putin justify whatever means, no matter the existential danger of nuclear war with Russia or the McCarthyistic (even Orwellian) threats to freedom of speech, press and thought.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Featured image is UN Photo.

We bring to your attention this incisive article by Boaventura de Sousa Santos on the history and contradictions of the World Social Forum (WSF) founded in 2001 as well as introductory text by Michel Chossudovsky pertaining to the corporate funding of the WSF.

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The World Social Forum (WSF) and the Corporate Funding of Social Activism

by Michel Chossudovsky

The World Social Forum operating under the banner of  “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.

From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization and confronting neoliberalism. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.

De Sousa Santos raises two important questions:

“Could the WSF be a truly world, progressive forum if the big NGOs (non-governmental organizations)  were in control to the detriment of the small ones and grassroots social movements?”

“Could there be, behind the ideology of consensus, the iron hand of some entities, individuals, or positions?

Who are these Big NGOs which have put forth an ideology of consensus dominated by “some entities”?

While the stated objective of the WSF is to fight neoliberalism, the unspoken truth is that from the very outset, the WSF has been funded by the protagonists of neoliberalism, namly corporate foundations. And the so-called Big NGOs have in this regard been co-opted.

The objective from the outset in 2001 was to subdue, control and manipulate the People’s movement.

The Ford Foundation (which has links to the CIA) provided funding under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program during the first three years of the WSF starting in 2001.

When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford Foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.

The WSF (among several sources of funding) today is supported by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE). 

This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001, it had an observer status on the WSF International Council.  

In 2013, the Rockefeller Brothers representative Tom Kruse co-chaired EDGE’s program committee. At the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse was responsible for “Global Governance” under the “Democratic Practice” program. Rockefeller Brothers grants to NGOs are approved under the “Strengthening Democracy in Global Governance” program, which is broadly similar to that put forth by the US State Department.

A representative of the Open Society Initiative for Europe currently (2016) sits on EDGE’s Board of directors. The Wallace Global Fund is also on its Board of Directors. The Wallace Global Fund is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now (which supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the US).

In one of its key documents (2012), entitled Funders Network Alliance In Support of Grassroots Organizing and Movement-Building  (link no longer available) EDGE acknowledged its support of social movements which challenge “neoliberal market fundamentalism.” including the World Social Forum, established in 2001:

“From the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (1994) to the Battle in Seattle (1999) to the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the TINA years of Reagan and Thatcher (There Is No Alternative) have been replaced with the growing conviction that “another world is possible.” Counter-summits, global campaigns and social forums have been crucial spaces to articulate local struggles, share experiences and analyses, develop expertise, and build concrete forms of international solidarity among progressive movements for social, economic and ecological justice.”

But at the same time, there is an obvious contradiction: another world is not possible when the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of corporate donors firmly committed to neoliberalism and the US-NATO military agenda.

The Consortium of Donors (EDGE) confirmed its commitment (at the 2016 Montreal WSF) as follows:

“…to develop an intersectional space for funders and various movement partners – organizers thought leaders and practitioners – to build alignment by cultivating a shared understanding of the visions, values, principles and pathways of a “just transition.”  (See http://edgefunders.org/wsf-activities/)

“Just Transition” implies that social activism has to conform to a “shared vision” with the corporate foundations, i.e. nothing which in a meaningful way might upset the elite structures of global capitalism.

From the standpoint of the corporate donors “investing in the WSF” constitutes a profitable (tax deductible) undertaking. It ensures that activism remains within the confines of  “constructive dialogue” and “critique” rather than confrontation. Any deviation immediately results in the curtailment of donor funding:

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

The limits of social dissent are thereby determined by the “governance structure” of  the WSF, which was tacitly agreed upon with the funding agencies at the outset in 2001.

How best to control grassroots dissent against global capitalism?

Make sure that their leaders can be easily co-opted and that the rank and file will not develop “forms of international solidarity among progressive movements” (to use EDGE’s own words), which in any meaningful way might undermine the interests of corporate capital.

The mosaic of separate WSF workshops, the relative absence of plenary sessions, the creation of divisions within and between social movements, not to mention the absence of a cohesive and unified platform against the Wall Street corporate elites, against the fake US sponsored “global war on terrorism”, which has been used to justify US-NATO’s  “humanitarian R2P interventions (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, etc).

The corporate agenda is to “manufacture dissent”.“The limits of dissent” are established by the foundations and governments which ultimately finance this multimillion dollar venue.

What ultimately prevails is a ritual of dissent which does not threaten the New World Order. Those who attend the WSF from the grassroots are often misled by their leaders. Activists who do not share the WSF consensus will ultimately be excluded:

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

“Another World is Possible” is nonetheless an important concept, which characterizes the struggle of the peoples movements against global capitalism Worldwide.

While  there have been several important accomplishments of the WSF, largely as a result of the commitment of grassroots activists, the stated goal of fighting neoliberalism was scrapped from the very outset. What remained was the rhetoric of fighting neoliberalism.

Among the two major accomplishments are the participation of the WSF in the February 2003 Worldwide protest against the US led war on Iraq. The WSF has also supported progressive movements and governments, particularly in Latin America.

Activism is being manipulated:  “Another World is Possible”  cannot, however, be achieved under the auspices of a WSF which from the outset was funded by global capitalism and organized in close liaison with its corporate and government donors.

This is the key issue which has to be addressed.

Reinventing the WSF ? Or

Rebuilding Real Social Activism? The latter requires as a very step the ditching of the corporate donors, followed by the building of a real Worldwide grassroots social movement committed to fighting neoliberalism with independent sources of funding. No easy task.

Michel Chossudovsky, November 14, 2017

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Reinventing the World Social Forum?

by Boaventura De Sousa Santos 

The World Social Forum (WSF) met for the first time in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001. This was an event of extraordinary importance. It signaled an alternative form of globalization to the globalization being promoted by global capitalism, at a time when capitalism was increasingly assuming it is most exclusive and antisocial version: neoliberalism.

the WSF “put on the international agenda the struggles of the movements and social organizations fighting all over the world against the many faces of social exclusion: economic, racial, ethno-cultural, sexist, religious, etc.”

The WSF was, at the same time, both a symptom and a potentiality of the hope harbored by the oppressed social groups. It emerged as a world vocation in Latin America, because the subcontinent was then the world region where the popular classes were more consistently translating hope into forms of progressive government.

Such hope, both utopian and realistic, had been recently reignited in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, from 1998 onwards, and would go on sparking with the new governments of Lula da Silva (Brazil) and Nestor Kirchner (Argentina), in 2003, and, in the following years, Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Manuel Zelaya (Honduras), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), and Pepe Mujica (Uruguay). With the WSF, a decade of hope was inaugurated and, starting from the subcontinent, projected throughout the whole world. Only in the subcontinent did it make sense to speak of “21st-century socialism,” even if the concrete political practices had little to do with the discourses.

The great novelty of the WSF and its most precious asset was that it facilitated relations of mutual knowledge among the social movements and organizations involved in all kinds of struggles in different countries and according to historically very distinct political cultures. At the beginning, such an objective was well served by a culture of free and consensual discussion, as well as by the refusal of the WSF, as such, to make any political decisions. Which does not mean that, from the very beginning, there was no political debate among the more committed activists, a debate that became increasingly intense in the course of time.

Political Issues of Debate in WSF

Here are some of the main issues. Could the WSF be a truly world, progressive forum if the big NGOs (non-governmental organizations) were in control to the detriment of the small ones and grassroots social movements? If those in more need for the solidarity of the WSF could not afford to participate? If the dominant forces in the WSF did not fight against capitalism, rather fought, at most, against neoliberalism? Could there be, behind the ideology of consensus, the iron hand of some entities, individuals, or positions? If no political decisions were allowed, what would the point be of continuing to meet and repeat ourselves? Since there were no structures to organize the debates, those who felt troubled by these issues gradually withdrew. Nonetheless, the genius of the WSF was to go on attracting, over more than ten years, new movements and organizations.

However, by the end of the first decade of 2000 the international conjuncture had changed in ways that were dramatically opposed to the objectives of the WSF. Undermined by their own internal contradictions, the progressive governments of Latin America were in crisis. U.S. imperialism, which had been focusing on the Middle East for a decade, came back in force to the continent. The first signal was the forced resignation, in 2009, of President Manuel Zelaya, a democratically elected president. [Ed.: see Bullet No. 290] It became the first test of a new kind of institutional coup under democratic guise. It would repeat itself in Paraguay in 2012 [Ed.: see Bullet No. 657] and Brazil in 2016 [Ed.: see Bullet No. 1249]. Neoliberalism, fully backed now by global financial capitalism, invested strongly against every policy of social inclusion. The financial crisis provoked the social crisis and, as a result, the movements had to focus on national and local struggles. Actually, these struggles were increasingly more difficult because of repression and persecution. Under the excuse of the “war on terror,” the paranoia of surveillance and security rendered extremely difficult even the international mobility of activists, as witness Montreal 2016, when more than 200 visas were refused to activists of the global South.

Under such circumstances, what would the viability and usefulness of the WSF be?

At a time when not only social policies but also democracy itself are at risk, would the continuity of the WSF be sustainable, a WSF reduced to a mere forum of debate and self-prevented from making decisions at the exact moment when neofascist forces were taking power? Such questions indicated an existential crisis of the WSF.

The crisis reached its utmost at the meeting of the International Council (IC) in Montreal, when this organ refused to take a position against the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. I left the meeting feeling that the WSF was at a crossroads: either it would change or it would perish. For the past months, I have been thinking that it would agonize and slowly perish. Lately, however, as I watch the dynamism of the preparation of the WSF of Salvador (March 13-17, 2018), I concluded that the possibility of change is there, and that the WSF may yet adjust to the dramatic conditions and challenges of the present time.

What Are the Necessary Changes?

Proposal 1

During the forthcoming WSF in Salvador, a plenary assembly will be convened with only one item on its agenda: alteration of the Charter of Principles. Proposals will be accepted up to the previous day. The assembly board composed of three members of the local Salvador committee and two members of the IC will be in charge of organizing the vote. The Popular University of Social Movements (PUSM), of which I am a representative, is preparing to present the following proposal:

“According to its terms, the WSF proclaims to be an organization and a process committed to defending and strengthening democracy, and claims competence to make political decisions whenever democracy is in danger. Concrete political decisions are made by the movements and organizations in charge of promoting each meeting of the WSF, whatever their geographic or thematic scope. The political decisions are valid within the geographic and thematic scope in which they are made.”

Proposal 2

The current IC moves to suspend itself and open itself to a refoundational debate to be concluded in the plenary assembly of Salvador. The proposal being prepared by the PUSM addresses the following items:

• The IC is hereupon to be composed of permanent members (those who are already and have declared to wish to continue to be permanent members) and an equal number of members elected at the Salvador WSF from among organizers and participants, bearing in mind diversity of countries, cultures, and struggles. Such will be the composition of the IC until the next WSF. The following WSF will have sovereignty to vote other proposals.
• The IC is an organ for reflection, guidance, and facilitation. It has competence to decide, among several proposals, the venue of the next meetings of the WSF.

Proposal 3

The decisions of the WSF will be made at the plenary assemblies of the different Forums and will concern the scale and topic that presided over the meeting.

The Salvador WSF is perhaps more needed today than the Porto Alegre one was at the time. Will there be conditions not to squander this (last?) opportunity?

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is an activist in the WSF from the very beginning, a member of The International Council as a representative of the Popular University of the Social Movements, author of The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond (2006). London: Zed Books.

First published in the Bulletin Intercoll, Novembre 2017.

Featured image is from the author.