Activist Sam Walton and Rev Daniel Woodhouse have been acquitted after breaking-in to BAE Systems factory to ‘disarm’ Typhoon fighter jets.
BAE’s Typhoon fighter jets are being used by Saudi-led forces in the ongoing bombardment of Yemen. The UK has licensed £3.8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the bombing began in March 2015.
This afternoon, Reverend Daniel Woodhouse and Sam Walton, a Quaker activist from London, were found not guilty at Burnley Magistrates Court, following their arrest for trying to disarm Typhoon fighter jets at BAE Systems’ site in Warton, Lancashire on 29 January 2017.
Their aim had been to stop the jets, which had Saudi markings painted on them, from going to Saudi Arabia where, the pair claim, they would be used to support the ongoing bombing of Yemen. Sam and Daniel successfully argued that their intention was to save innocent lives and prevent war crimes, by physically disabling the warplanes.
The two campaigners broke in via a fence on the perimeter of the site, and got within five feet of the warplanes before being stopped by BAE security.
The court heard evidence about the scale of the brutal bombardment, and the many serious accusations of war crimes that have been made against the Royal Saudi Air Force.
In delivering comments on his judgement District Judge James Clarke said:
“They were impressive and eloquent men who held strong views about what they were doing and what they wanted to achieve. They impressed me as being natural in their delivery and honest throughout their evidence…”
“I heard about their belief of BAE’s role in the supply of aircraft to Saudi Arabia. I heard about their beliefs regarding the events in Yemen, that they include the death of civilians and the destruction of civilian property, and the basis for their belief that this amounted to war crimes…”
“However, having considered in full the defence under sec 5 Criminal Damage Act 1971, I find the defendants not guilty.”
Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed £3.8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, including:
£2.6 billion worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)
£1.1 billion worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)
£572,000 worth of ML6 licences (Armoured vehicles, tanks)
In a joint statement, Sam and Daniel said:
“We did not want to take this action, but were compelled to do so in order to stop the UK government’s complicity in the destruction of Yemen. Thousands of people have been killed in the brutal bombardment, while companies like BAE Systems have profited every step of the way.
This vindication from the Courts is further evidence of the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy that underpins so much of UK foreign policy. It is time for the government to stop putting arms company profits ahead of human rights. We do not regret taking action, and would do it again in a heartbeat. The only thing we regret is that we were not able to finish the job.”
Criticism of Saudi Arabia not helpful for arms sales
This week, Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon told the House of Commons Defence Committee
“We’ve been working extremely hard on the batch two deal. I’ve traveled to Saudi Arabia back in September and discussed progress on the deal with my opposite number, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia – and we continued to press for a signature or at least a statement of intent as we’ve done with Qatar. I have to repeat sadly, to this committee, that obviously other criticism of Saudi Arabia, in this Parliament, is not helpful and …I’ll leave it there, but we need to do everything possible to encourage Saudi Arabia towards batch two. I believe they will commit to batch two and we need to work away on the timing.”
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:
“These comments from the Secretary of State for Defence are disgraceful. He is calling on other parliamentarians to join him in putting arms sales ahead of human rights, democracy and international humanitarian law.
The Saudi regime has one of the most appalling human rights records in the world, and has inflicted a terrible humanitarian catastrophe on Yemen. Fallon should be doing all he can to stop the bloodshed and end UK complicity in the suffering, not urging his colleagues to willingly ignore the abuses in order to sell even more weapons.
Arms sales to human rights abusing regimes like Saudi Arabia would not be possible without the support of Ministers like Fallon. If the government’s main concern is jobs then it should be shifting that support into more positive areas like renewable energy and low carbon technology, and other industries which are not dependent on war and conflict for profit.”
Ollie McAninch is an economist turned digital media pioneer; developing new systems to allow members of the public to supply their own stories, features, photos and videos to the national press. Ollie has become one of the UK’s leading digital content experts.
October 28th, 2017 by Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli
1. Introduction
This investigation aims to inquire into the staged-massacre routine and similar false flag operations implemented by Western powers to justify military and/or political interventions for regime change. The series comprises:
I) The Staged-Massacre Routine for Regime Change;
II) Role of Western media and NGOs in the anti-Syria campaign;
III) Epidemiological questioning of the ‘UN-Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’ Report on the Khan Shaykhun incident.
This first part gives a brief synopsis of such a false flag operations assayed in recent decades in a number of countries, and regarding to Syria, this first section focuses on allegations done by the “Third report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons / United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism”, a document delivered for the Security Council consideration on 24 August 2016.
Ensuing section II in the series assesses the psychosocial role of Western media and stream rights organizations such as “Human Rights Watch”, in the staging and dissemination of this deceitful war propaganda. Inevitably, the role of the “White Helmets” –a propaganda organization of locals established by Western powers in occupied territories of Syria, also associated with other jihadist combat organizations – is also commented. One main reason being that “White Helmets” has been instrumented as the main media source for ‘massacre’ allegations. Invariably, these claims have conveyed a role of pledging for military action against the Syrian government. I may summarize such a role partly with this statement read in the recent “handbook for U.S. Army formations”, “Russian New Generation Warfare Handbook”: [1]
“The new objective is not victory in a conflict, but regime change…Not all regime changes have to be resolved with a military option, but when a military lever is activated, it is done by, with, and through segments of the local population. The involvement of locals gives validity to military action on the world stage.”
The ending section, N° III in the series, focuses on a recently issued report about the Khan Shaykhun purported “sarin attack” of April 2017, published by the “UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic” (COI). [2]
Interestingly, while the new COI-report exhaustively list the claims of chemical attacks taken place in Syria since the conflict began –and where the COI found “reasonable grounds to believe” that it was the Syrian government who had perpetrated those attacks– there is no mention at all about the alleged “chemical attack” on Sarmine, Idlib, 16 March 2015. Those allegations, originally put forward by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and sourced in the White Helmets, were focus of an analysis-series undertaken by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR) in March-April 2017. [3] [4]. Our investigation demonstrated the falsehoods in the pseudo evidence claimed by a HRW-report [5] as well as serious pseudo-medical fabrications in the corresponding ‘life-saving’ videos showed by the White Helmets as ‘evidence’ for the claim. [See details on this staged-massacre routine further bellow, in section Syria].
Nevertheless, the fact that the UN-panel omitted the above-mentioned “Sarmine episode” from the list of alleged chemical attacks in Syria given in their report, a) It further indicates the accuracy of the SWEDHR analysis and our fact-based conclusions on that new murky episode enacted by the proxies White Helmets. b) It once more confirm that the mentioning of our investigations at the UN Security Council session of April 2017 done by the Syrian ambassador, [6] as well as the citations by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova of SWEDHR independent analyses, [7] [8], including her reference to the denounces in The Indicter Magazine [9], were relevant and legitimate. I thank these diplomats for the attention drawn to the work done by our independent organization Swedish Doctors for Human Rights. c) The omission of the “Sarmine attack” allegations in the COI-report it also invalidates the unjustified attacks against SWEDHR and its representatives done by some pro-NATO media in Europe – such as Swedish DN [10] or the French Le Figaro. [11] See also my statement published by the Journal of the Swedish Medical Association, “SWEDHR is absolutely independent”. [12]
I draw attention on the facts above as means of encouraging further analysis from the international research community on any spurious claims of that kind against the Syrian people, its secular government, its armed forces, and its friends and allies combating for the victory over religious fanaticism. Unsubstantiated allegations deprived of beyond-doubt evidence, or blunt attacks as hominem, self-expose a desperate strategy intended to find public support for a continuation of the Syrian conflict. Ultimately, for those Western powers and mercenary proxies it is about pursuing a political reversal at the eve of a military defeated campaign. And more victories to come for the human-rights-for-all struggle.
2. False flag operations for regime change
In the various endeavours for regime-change assayed to fit the geopolitical and economic interest of western powers, a foremost argument has consisted in allegations on infringements of human rights and accusations of insufferable oppression against the population. These claims have often culminated with the staging of ‘massacres’ against civilians. Subsequently, to these blames the strategists have added a corresponding pledge “by the locals” for external military interventions. Such false flag
The practice of false flags to justify political overthrown or military interventions steams from an old geopolitical tradition of deceptive strategy. However, during the last decades it has been surreptitiously established a geopolitical routine. It has a clear aim, which is regime change, and a clear design, which is war propaganda. And its effects are not solely in the sphere of ‘fake news’ for purely propaganda aims, but also used as the pretext for the initiation of bloody overthrows or cruel, long lasting wars.
A most classic episode, and which represent the reestablishment of the false-flag routine in the post world ward era, was the psy op known as “Gulf of Tonkin incident” enacted on August 4, 1965. Then, the false claim consisted in that Soviet-built North Vietnamese torpedo boats would have attacked the U.S. destroyers “Maddox” and “Turner”. To this false claim followed the same day an order by President Lyndon B Johnson’s for a deadly retaliatory air strike against Vietnam. [13 ]
Amidst the media dramaturgy around this ‘patriotic response’ to the made-up attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Johnson obtained the approval of Congress (the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution”) for the waging of a war which at its ends had killed over one million North Vietnamese –most part civilians– but also over 50,000 American military. [14] President Johnson later blamed the military for the fabricated events in the Gulf of Tonkin. [13]
President Trump and the retaliatory attack “due to” the Khan Shaykhun incident
In resemblance, President Trump’s order on a retaliatory missile strike against Syria this year would have also been based in manipulated information, namely, allegations of a “chemical attack” in Khan Shaykhun attributed to Syrian forces. It was, again, about a routine allegation sourced in testimonies originally provided by the White Helmets, and for which no conclusive evidence has ever been produced.
Military-wise, the tactical damage effected by that missile operation was neither significant (in relation to the weaponry chosen), nor deterrent for the Syrian army. In the general context of the warfare on Syria, the attack could be also considered as a relatively ‘mild’. This would indicate that there were other political factors that prompted Donald Trump to order the show of force on Syria. For instance, Trump’s order on the Tomahawk-missile strike should be also evaluated against the backdrop of his then deteriorated political status in the U.S. domestic sphere, and the missile-attack as contributing to change the public approval rate towards his government. [15]. According to the Gallup poll, the approval rate for Trump was 35% before the missile attack on Syria, increasing to 40% after that. [16]
Stressing this argument, it could be said that a similar impact in the approval rating [AR, for brevity] of U.S. presidents can be historically found associated to presidents’ belligerent executive-decisions argued on false flag operations. For example, George W. Bush obtained an increase from 58% to 71% following the invasion of Iraq – based on the false claim regarding ‘Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction’. The same phenomenon regarding his father, George H.W. Bush, after the U.S. initiations of hostilities in the Kuwait War, or Ronald Reagan and the Granada / Panama military operations. [15]
Further, there are in my opinion other consideration to include in that background, and that put in doubt the seriousness of the reasoning argued for the Tomahawk-missile attack (the alleged “Khan Shaykhun chemical attack”. I refer to the spectacular military dispay exercised by the Russian armed forces when 26 Russian Kalibr cruising missiles were fired from a submarine and a combat ship in the eastern Mediterranean, to eleven different targets nearly 1,000 miles away in Syria (near Akerbat, Hama province), successfully destroying ISIS weapons depots and ISIS command posts. The New York Times reported at the time, flabbergasted, [17]
“…A demonstration that Russia has the ability to strike from virtually all directions in a region where it has been reasserting its power — from Iran, from warships in the Caspian Sea, from its base in the Syrian coastal province of Latakia and now from the Mediterranean.”
I mean that the 59 Tomahawk-missile strike ordered by Trump may have been an operation also intended to balance a domestic public opinion impressed by the Russian military might, as shown not only by the objective effectiveness of the above mentioned Russian missile launch, but also by the wide reporting of it in the news.
Nevertheless, the Syrian government and the Russian Federation well calibrated their reaction to the U.S. “retaliation”, and thus a risk for World War III was averted. An escalation would possibly have taken the conflict to a scenario similar to a “No-Fly Zone”. Neither Trump pursued a further escalation, as for instance in the line advocated by the U.S. hawk-lobby pursuing a No-Fly Zone in Syria. In these regards, it is worth to mention the statement by the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chief of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, during a hearing at the U.S. Armed Services Committee: ‘For us, to control all of the airspace in Syria will require us to go to war against Syria and Russia’. [18]
An illogical allegation
As to the allegations that President Bashar al-Assad would have ordered a chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, I have already pointed out in The Indicter shortly after those claims were made, and thereafter in interviews with media [19] that such “self-destructive” move from Bashar al-Assad appears inconceivable, or plain illogical. His forces were then, as they are now, clearly wining the war. Namely, Assad was on top of an irreversible winning position – militarily and politically – particularly since the recapture of Aleppo last year, or even before, since the debut of the Russian military support (as well as from other allies forces, such as Iran and Hezbollah).
Secondly, at that time, the previous more hostile position of the U.S. government (and by a variety of EU countries) had shifted substantially in reference to the Syrian president. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley had declared just a few days prior the incident: [20]
“Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out”
So, why would President Bashar al-Assad indulge in that kind of ‘harakiri’ decision that it would instantaneously decimate all the positive odds his geopolitical position was enjoining by the beginning of April 2017?
Further, as I declared in the Radio Sputnik interview of the same month, [21] why the international community would be so eager to, and uncritically, to trust ‘denounces’ made by organization such as the White Helmets after it has been demonstrated on and on the spurious or even fabricated ‘evidence’ they have presented in the past regarding similar allegations?
Such attacks initiatives comprising chemical or other prohibited weaponry, are only in the losing parties’ options. Only the side in a war that is desperate to turn the odds, as its total defeat seems imminent, would need to essay the trespassing of that highly hazardous red line.
Another relevant issue is that President Trump had given signals all across his election campaign that he would cooperate with Russia, and eventually with Assad, to end the Syrian conflict. Furthermore, just days before the White Helmets false flag operation, Donald Trump had announced a drastic change in U.S. policy towards Syria. So the question is, why would have the Syrian government issued such a political catastrophic and self-destructive order?
3. From Timisoara to Khan Shaykhun.
Phony allegations on ‘massacres’ falsely attributed to the government targeted for a regime change, is a false flag routine that has been repeated in the last decades at increased tempo. While those initiatives most certainly steam from operation rooms of a variety of Western Intelligence services –included on the field– the role of the stream media has been pivotal. In episodes of recent years it can be also observed a more often participation of stream right organizations.
I here review some examples historical examples selected from recent decades, and which ends in this report referring the current situation on Syria.
Timisoara
In fact, the events of December 1989 in Romania were not a revolution, but a putsch. It was a bloody coup that intended a pro U.S. ‘regime change’.
Here we find a classical example of the role of western media, for instance in the dramatic narrative around the staged mass graves, intended to depict an allegedly gruesome massacre in Romania 1989. Namely, a toll of 4,500 bodies it was said been found on exposed mass graves, allegedly been massacred by security forces in a three-days repression orgy ordered by the government in December that year. It was the main argument used to speed by violent means the regime-change in Romania and to legitimate the prompt execution of President Ceausescu and his wife. Subsequently, western media had distributed deceitfully photographs, manipulated to depict the claimed Timisoara mass graves. The world opinion was horrified.
However, according to the testimony given the year after by Dr. Milan Dressler, a lawyer and also pathologist working at the Timis District Morgue, “the mass grave never existed”. In fact, the corpses piled in the infamous picture background have been transported there from a cemetery for indigent people. [22]
The ‘evidence’ turned out being a bunch of manipulated photographic work. One of the pictures [see below] was described by the stream media as a man crying over the massacred body of a mother and her child. It was showed later that the woman wasn’t that man’s wife nor was she the mother’s infant. It was also demonstrated that the bodies depicted in the photograph as massacred victims had instead a completely different causes of dead. The woman in the picture, for instance, has died of cirrhosis, and the infant of crib death. [23]
Meanwhile, the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported, “Immediately after the December revolution, the Bush administration welcomed the changes that had occurred in the country”. HRW also praised the U.S. government of Bush for its commitments in favour of the human rights there. [24]
The Kuwait war
The same type of manipulation for propaganda war and regime change took place when mainstream media all over the world showed in 1991 pictures of an agonizing cormorant (Socotra Cormorant), blackened, drenched in oil, left to die in the Persian Gulf waters. It was said that the “black cormorant” was a victim of a ruthless Saddam Hussein that had opened the oil pipelines. It was instead a manipulated imagery, filmed in another country. No cormorants are present in Kuwait before the spring season; Besides, CNN could not have ever filmed those cormorant scenes in Kuwait since it was a territory at that time occupied by Iraq. Some reporter admitted to have taken a cormorant from a Zoo and purposely soaked it with oil. [25]
Then we have the staged “weapons of mass destruction”, a chapter that would be better known as “weapons of mass distraction”. The same false flag routine was again implemented by the media, now to obtain the public support for a U.S. military intervention that would ultimately obtain the regime-change in Iraq, and the execution of President Saddam Hussein. This at the price of thousands killed in combat, added later fatalities resulted from combat-injury sequelae or related, [26] plus the infamous political consequences in the region. And all in exchange of a misappropriation of Iraqi oil resources.
Among the public protagonists in the false-flag operation “Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction” –which was a plain lie– were high rank officials in the U.S. administration. Colin Powell, the then U.S. Secretary of State, affirmed in the United Nations on the 5 of February 2003:
“My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence”. [27]
In fact, his sources were spurious and based in plagiarized excerpts from an older study. A variety of inspection commissions were set by the UN, the Security Council, and/or belligerent forces, such as the Iraq Survey Group, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), and also a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency. No weapons of mass destruction that could pose a threat were ever found.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald affirmed in an interview that,
“Most notoriously, The New York Times did more than everybody to convince Americans of the need to attack Iraq. But even since then the model of the US media is very much to show faith and loyalty to the US government” [28]
Thus, it is no coincidence that the same paper has been advocating for the need to attack Syria, and, in spite of its stance on the Trump presidency, the NYT has echoed staunchly support to the military actions ordered by Donald Trump on Syria. [29]
Libya
The staged massacre routine continued was then essayed in Libya, and again as instrument for regime change and the execution of the government leader.
Amidst reports that MuammarGaddafi would have ordered the aerial bombing of civilian crowds, the mainstream media reported at the end of February 2011 that over 10,000 have already been killed. It was a plain lie. The source was a Libyan member of the International Criminal Court, the same court that had previously declared an impossibility to estimate the commitment of war crimes in Libya in absence of reliable sources. [30]
While inventing massacres attributed to Gaddafi’s orders, the Western media invented achievements ascribed to the rebel forces, which in fact neither had occurred. For example, the BBC aired in August 2011 a news video intending to show the vast popular support to the rebels in a demonstration said been held in Tripoli’s Green Square. In fact BBC was using footage from a demonstration held in India. [See the Indian the flags in the screenshot from the BBC news program]. [31]
The regime change in Libya, according to Hillary Clinton:
“We came, we saw, he died”.
Click on the image for the video:
Syria – False flags and the staged-massacre routine in the Syrian conflict
There are countless examples of fabricated news about the Syrian conflict, and where the blame about alleged atrocities is regularly put on the Syrian government.
One method used on and on, has been the production of false or retouched photographic material representing ‘victims’ portraits, particularly children. This issue has been well documented elsewhere. For instance, The Independent’s report “Egyptian police arrest five people for using children to stage fake ‘Aleppo’ footage”. [32] The image above is a screenshot from the video embedded in the reportage published by The Independent. [32]
Another famous case is “the girl running to survive” (image below)
Or the case of the 8 babies demise reported by CNN sourcing on “a Syrian human rights group”:
The photo of the eight “Syrian babies” reported by CNN (above) was in fact taken in Egypt (below)
However those innumerable falsified photographic material distributed by Western media, a more severe form of disinformation on the Syrian war has been the staged-massacre routine, most often around allegations of “chemical attacks” on civilians.
The debunking around the modus operandis of those false flag operations is well documented, for instance by the work of Professor Tim Anderson, [33] [34] or by the independent researcher Adam Larson in The Indicter Magazine. [35] [36].
As mentioned in the Introduction section above, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR) had the opportunity to analyze “life-saving” videos published by the propaganda organization “White Helmets”. [3] [4] The White Helmets materials claimed documenting the alleged clinical/forensic sequelae of a ‘chemical attack’ in Sarmin, in the Syrian province of Idlib. In studying the background and sources used, SWEDHR did review all the published material claimed as the base for such allegations. With the help of these data, I will debunk here accusations done by “the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism”, [35] and referred to the “Sarmin attack”.
For the sake of clarity, I repeat that the last report of the “UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic” (COI) of September 2017 did excluded the “Sarmin attack” from the incident-listing of allegations of chemical attacks. [2]
The psy op ‘Sarmin’ and the White Helmets videos
The “Third report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism” is a document delivered for the Security Council consideration on 24 August 2016. [37] At the time it was included an alleged ‘chemical attack” on Sarmin [Note that “Sarmin” or “Sarmine” refers to a locality in the Idlib province. Not to be confused with “Sarin”, the chemical agent]. The attack would have occurred on the 16 of March, according to the OPCW report.
As it can be seen in the corresponding ”Sarmin” section (pages 13-14 of the document), the all allegation inculpating the Syrian government is based in one premise: the alleged presence of a Syrian helicopter.
The ‘conclusion’, “there is sufficient information for the Panel to conclude that the incident at impact location N°2 was caused by a Syrian Arab Armed Forces helicopter…” is based solely on that:
a) “Witnesses confirmed that at least one helicopter flew over Sarmin at the time of the incident”.
And,
b) “(The panel) found no evidence that armed opposition groups in Sarmin had been operating a helicopter at the time and location of the incident”.
However, the “Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism” chooses not to provide any information about who or how many those witnesses were, or if the ‘witnesses testimonies’ were independent of each other, and/or independently verified. The panel reports neither how that information was obtained. Why?
Because, as I will show below, the “confirming witnesses” were the same two subjects from the place ascribed to the jihadist forces in Idlib (one of them a White Helmet official) who also were the ones initially making the allegation. That was one main observation in our analysis of the the report published by Human Rights Watch, [38] that echoed the “denounce” done by the White Helmets on the alleged Sarmin incident. I quote here from the SWEDHR analysis in The Indicter Magazine: [3]
The “Sarmin attack” report published by HRW in April 2015 is, in itself, a remarkable feat of evidence engineering. HRW refers to two witnesses – anonymous “Sarmin residents” – stating they have “heard” helicopters “shortly before the attack”.
They heard them but did not see them. Both witnesses also reported hearing “no explosions”. [38] In the entire HRW report there is not one reported sighting of a helicopter, the existence of which should be an essential element of the White Helmet claims, uncritically reproduced by HRW and never questioned by the UN.
One of the key witnesses cited in the HRW, April 2015, report is a White Helmet operative by the name “Leith Fares”: [39]
“Leith Fares, a rescue worker with Syrian Civil Defence, told Human Rights Watch. “A helicopter always drops two barrels.” “You know, we were at first actually happy,” Fares said. “It is usually good news when there is no explosion.” [38]
A notably peculiar factor of the White Helmet footage of this alleged attack is that they do not film any external shots of the attack itself, despite their declared anticipation of being targeted, having “heard” helicopters.
Instead, the only footage is of an enclosed indoor space with no contextual filming to evidence where they are in Syria or that an attack has just taken place. The indoor environment certainly resembles a makeshift hospital emergency room. White Helmet “rescuers” parade in and out, manhandling and maneuvering the limp, lifeless bodies of three children. The naked bodies of these children have no external, visible injuries and do not respond when the various “medics” perform all manner of ostensibly “life-saving” procedures, in a haphazard effort to resuscitate these children.
The operation Sarmine videos to deceive UN Security Council
These ‘Sarmine-videos’ were simultaneously published the very same day in which the news of the Sarmin allegations reached the media (16 March 2015). The two separate uploads in YouTube were made by the White Helmets, [40] respectively by another associated jihadist organization (“Coordinated Sarmine”) which is baring in its video-logo the jihadist Shahada flag used by Al-Qaeda formations. [41]
In the main: The Sarmin videos uploaded by the White Helmets in conjunction with the “al-Nusra flag group” contained fabricated scenes of life-saving, including faked intra-cardial injection procedures on a presumably already deceased infant. This can be shown in sequences shown in the videos below [click on image below for the videos].
Representatives of the Syrian American Society (SAM) then managed to show those fabricated ‘Sarmine videos’ published by the White Helmets, at the UN headquarters in New York on 16 April 2015, [42] at a meeting sponsored by then U.S. ambassador Samantha Powers. She said after the meeting: ““If there was a dry eye in the room, I didn’t see it,” [See the news article, “UN officials in tears watching video from alleged chlorine attack in Syria”. [43]
CNN reproduced, uncritically, fake scenes of a video uploaded simultaneously by White Helmets and an organization presumably derived from the jihadist organization al-Nusra
Based on the deceitful SAM coup at the UN gathering, made possible by the fabricated White Hemelts “Sarmine videos, a series of news articles appeared in mainstream media, e.g. The New York Times, [42] BBC, [44], etc.
The video was subsequently reproduced by CNN. [45] [46] In none of those cases where the Sarmine videos put forward by the White Helmets, “Coordinated Sarmine”, and SAM, were referred or broadcasted, a fact-verification of the content of such a material was ever performed. Or simply the material was reproduced in full awareness of its deceptive content. To this, added the coverup by other mainstream European media. [47] Isn’t this scandalous?
Now have emerged “new” allegations on chemical attacks (the “Khan Shaykhun incident” ) issued to further blame the government of Syria. The sources of the allegations are basically the same: the White Helmets.
(In a brief dialogue I had in Twitter with Dr Zaher Sahloul, the President of SAM and a presenter of the unethical White Helmets video at the above-mentioned UN meeting, I challenged him to retract such a material. [48] He replied that he would. [49] It never happened.
Introducing the next section (“Part II, Role of Western media and NGOs in the anti-Syria campaign”) of the series “From Timisoara to Khan Shaykhun.
Apart of Intelligence outlets, a variety of other actors get together in the war propaganda against Syria, to produce the misinformation that reaches the public. Here we find
a) prominent Western corporate media,
b) mainstream human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, [50] and
c) some new established “NGOs” of ‘first responders” created and financed by Western powers –like the ‘White Helmets’ founded under the Obama administration in 2015, and
d) other façade ‘right-organizations’ set up by the Western powers such the “London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights”.
These last two mentioned have retained the assigned role of ‘sources’ regarding the alleged ‘attacks’ claims that we hear from time to time. [More details in the chapter “White Helmets”, in Part II of this series].
Most interesting, is that every such attack-claims are made by the White Helmets and its associated Al Qaeda formations, is accompanied by a pledge for military intervention from the part of the U.S. and it sallies, issue that regularly makes its way to the UN Security Council. For example, an identical pledge for a No-Fly Zone in Syria was done by the White Helmets during their claim on a “chemical attack” in Sarine 2015, as well as now in April 2017 about Khan Shaykhun.
The subject of Part II in this series: “Role of Western media and NGOs in the anti-Syria campaign”. And Part III: “Epidemiological questioning of the ‘UN-Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’ Report on the Khan Shaykhun incident”.
[6] “Report by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights referred in UN Security Council. White Helmets, Syria”. The Indicter Channel. Published in YouTube, 13 April 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6RqQlFXo2A
[18] “Swedish elites’ DN endorse H. Clinton No Fly Zone: It’d mean War with Russia & Syria”. Th Indicter Channel. Published in YouTube, 22 November 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4KTFN4VsM4
[22] “Coroner: Romanian Massacre Never Happened”, Chicago Tribune, 19 March 1990]http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-03-13/news/9001210292_1_grave-nicolae-ceausescu-bodies
[26] Marcello Ferrada-Noli M, John I. Apkan, Leif Svanström (2004), “Epidemiological bias in assessments of war-related injuries: the case of Iraq”. Safety 2004. P. 230. Institut Leben/Kuratorium fur Schutz und Sicherheit, Vienna, Austria.
[29] Nicholas Kristof, “Trump Was Right to Strike Syria”. The New York Times, 7 April 2017. https://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/trump-was-right-to-strike-syria/
[39] Quoted from the report listed in Reference [3]:
“Leith (or Laith) Fares is repeatedly found in both Arab and Western news giving statements –from a variety of locations in Syria– to visiting Western journalists. For instance, while in the Human Rights Watch report Fares gives the notion of being present at the alleged event in Sarmin, in Arab News is given that Leith Fares is “a rescue worker in Ariha”, and that “(Fares) told AFP his team had pulled at least 20 wounded people out of the rubble.” ‘Laith Fares’ keeps also an uploading account in You Tube with anti-Syria propaganda videos, and on behalf of White Helmets political positions. [5] The YouTube account reaches 204 upload videos.”
[46] Just four days after the exhibition of the fraudulent videos at the UN Security Council (in an ad-hoc session sponsored by the then U.S. ambassador), CNN broadcasted on April 20, 2015 a news-program reproducing segments taken from exactly the same videos and propagated for the No-Fly Zone on behalf of “the Syrian doctors” campaigning. The newscast was published by CNN in YouTube on April 20, 2015. [7] The CNN anchor presented the ‘Syrian doctor’ “who has campaigned around the world for a no-fly zone” [See the video through the link indicated in the above reference. For a clearer audio, you may listen to the MP3 file here below]:
[49] Dr Sahloul (@sahloul) replied: “All false videos should be retracted but you don’t throw the baby with the bathwater & protection of civilians should be your goal also”. @Professorsblogg (Ferrada de Noli) replied: “Good U retract the false videos & I agree protection of civilians is paramount. That’s why terrorists shouldn’t use them as shield”. Twitter, 21 March 2017. https://twitter.com/ProfessorsBlogg/status/844295626502410240
Inside Syria Media Center military correspondents in Iraq have recently reported that ISIS members are surrendering in dozens in their stronghold in Iraq’s Al-Hawija area. They estimate that the Iraqi Army has nearly completed the operation on recapturing the city.
It seems that hard times have come for ISIS jihadists on all fronts. 9-month-long standoff in Mosul came to a logical end. Tal-Afar was recaptured after that much faster, in just 11 days.
In Syria, the Islamists have also been demoralized. Thousands of bombs of the Syrian AF and its allies were dropped on their sinful heads in al-Mayadin. Fearing a complete encirclement, ISIS terrorists are trying to escape from the residential areas of Deir Ezzor towards Abu Kamal.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Jawad Kadhim Al-Abadi announced a large-scale offensive of the Iraqi regular army against the cities of Al-Qa’im and Rawa located on the banks of the Euphrates River (northwest of Anbar province) near the border with Syria on 26 October 2017.
In addition, daily movement of small columns of SUVs and unsuccessful attempts to force the Euphrates have been spotted. Up to 150 strikes are carried out per day on the hidden areas where the Islamists are located. And the situation for them now is, frankly speaking, dramatic. The moment is drawing near when the armies of the two states (Syria and Iraq) will not only meet at the border but unite their efforts for a joint large-scale operation to clean up the territories and to eliminate the trapped militants.
The question arises, why won’t field commanders and Wilayat Emirs unite their efforts to solve their problems, discuss the further strategy at any secret meeting and organize some kind of a united resistance front? Perhaps the truth is that they are a perfect target from the air at such a gathering, even on the territory controlled by the Islamists and the rivalry is becoming stronger among them.
The only force attempting to save its unique creation is the United States. Rapid liberation of the Euphrates valley clearly goes against their scheme. To achieve its goals, the US-led coalition sharply reduced the intensity of attacks on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Their At-Tanf base boosted its capacities for infiltration of terrorists to the rear of the advancing Syrian Arab Army (SAA) providing them with all the necessary reconnaissance data. The US SOF (special operations forces) successfully evacuate the unsuccessful IS commanders from the battlefield at the same time.
What choice does ordinary ISIS terrorist have in this situation? After all, the dreams of a glorious life in the caliphate collapse under the pressure of the true Muslims fighting against the ‘black evil’ for the freedom of their countries and their religion.
Such failed militants have only one way – to surrender at the mercy of the winner and hope for an amnesty as it is now happening as a result of the offensive of the Syrian and Iraqi government armies. They also have a chance to get lost in the crowd of refugees moving around the country seeking asylum and a better life so that to be legalized in this way. Another possible way to save their own skin can be the transfer of terrorists to the West to organize recruitment and subversive activities there. But in that case, most likely, they will also have to join the ranks of suicide bombers.
In addition, IS fighters can certainly concentrate on the Syrian-Iraqi border creating an in-depth defense against the armies advancing from both sides, but this is unlikely to save them from complete failure. Moreover, there will be simply no one to lead such a defense. There are still strong contradictions in the ranks of the high command of the Islamists. Someone from the field commanders is constantly attempting to eliminate competitors and leaks the coordinates of every meeting venue to the government troops.
What would you do in such a difficult situation if you were an ISIS fighter?
Whatever you come up with, definitely you’d better heed one advice. If you still sympathize with Jihadists, support their ways and methods of warfare, eager to earn money, to kill, rape, destroy with impunity, become a human trafficker under the guise of a mysterious jihad allegedly for the sake of supposedly oppressed Muslims and faith and if you then decided to leave your country seeking vague prospects, you must carefully think about the serious risk of dying ingloriously. If you are a terrorists’ supporter you should think about your unprofitable questionable investments and about a way how to transfer assets out of your business. But if you have already been an Islamist you’d better be prepared for the worst.
Shortly following the posting of this article initially published by Zero Hedge, we issued the following Note.
GR Editor’s Advisory to our Readers:
Some elements of this article initially published by Zero Hedge are not fully corroborated. The ARRL does not constitute a fully reliable source of information concerning an activity undertaken and organized by the DoD.
Moreover, Army MARS which is also quoted as a source “is a Department of Defense sponsored program which utilizes Amateur Radio operators to contribute to the mission of the Department of the Army.” The amateur radio operators quoted in this article do not constitute a source on behalf of the DoD.
***
Upon further review of the Zero Hedge article, we decided to remove it due to absence of corroborating evidence.
Around the world activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge to effectively tackle the multitude of violent conflicts, including the threat of human extinction, confronting human society in the early 21st century.
I wrote that ‘activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge’ because there is no point deluding ourselves that the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane’ – with its compliant international organizations (such as the UN) and national governments following orders as directed, is going to respond appropriately and powerfully to the multifaceted crisis that it has been progressively generating since long before the industrial revolution.
If you doubt what I have written above, then consider the history of any progressive political, social, economic and environmental change in the past few centuries and you will find a long record of activist planning, organizing and action preceding any worthwhile change which was invariably required to overcome enormous elite opposition. In short, if you can identify one progressive outcome that was initiated and supported by the global elite, I would be surprised to hear about it.
Moreover, we are not going to get out of this crisis – which must include ending violence, exploitation and war, halting the destruction of Earth’s biosphere and ongoing violent assaults on indigenous peoples, ending slavery, liberating occupied countries such as Palestine, Tibet and West Papua, removing dictatorships such as those in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, ending genocidal assaults such as those currently being directed against the people of Yemen and the Rohingya in Myanmar, and defending the rights of a people, such as those in Catalonia, to secede from one state and form another – without both understanding the deep drivers of conflict as well as the local drivers in each case, and then developing and implementing sound and comprehensive strategies, based on this dual-faceted analysis of each conflict.
In addition, if like Mohandas K. Gandhi, many others and me you accept the evidence that violence is inherently counterproductive and has no countervailing desirability in any context – expressed most simply by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. when he stated ‘the enemy is violence’ – then we must be intelligent, courageous and resourceful enough to commit ourselves to planning, developing and implementing strategies that are both exclusively nonviolent and powerfully effective against extraordinarily insane and ruthlessly violent opponents, such as the US government.
Equally importantly, however, it is not just the violence of the global elite that we must address if extinction is to be averted. We must also tackle the violence that each of us inflicts on ourselves, our children, each other and the Earth too. And, sadly, this violence takes an extraordinary variety of forms having originated no later than the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago. See ‘A Critique of Human Society since the Neolithic Revolution’.
Is all of this possible?
When I first became interested in nonviolent strategy in the early 1980s, I read widely. I particularly sought out the literature on nonviolence but, as my interest deepened and I tried to apply what I was reading in the nonviolence literature to the many nonviolent action campaigns in which I was involved, I kept noticing how inadequate these so-called ‘strategies’ in the literature actually were, largely because they did not explain precisely what to do, even though they superficially purported to do so by offering ‘principles’, ‘guidelines’, sets of tactics or even ‘stages of a campaign’.
I found this shortcoming in the literature most instructive and, because I am committed to succeeding when I engage as a nonviolent activist, I started to read the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi and even the literature on military strategy. By the mid-1980s I had decided to research and write a book on nonviolent strategy because, by then, I had become aware that the individual who understood strategy, whether nonviolent or military, was rare.
Moreover, there were many conceptions of military strategy, written over more than 2,000 years, and an increasing number of conceptions of what was presented as ‘nonviolent strategy’, in one form or another, were becoming available as the 1980s progressed. But the flaws in these were increasingly and readily apparent to me as I considered their inadequate theoretical foundations or tried to apply them in nonviolent action campaigns.
The more I struggled with this problem, the more I found myself reading ‘The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi’ in a library basement. After all, Gandhi had led a successful 30 year nonviolent liberation struggle to end the British occupation of India so it made sense that he had considerable insight regarding strategy. Unfortunately, he never wrote it down simply in one place.
A complicating but related problem was that among those military authors who professed to present some version of ‘strategic theory’, in fact, most simply presented an approach to strategic planning (such as using a set of principles or a particular operational pattern) or an incomplete theory of strategy (such as ‘maritime theory’, ‘air theory’ or ‘guerrilla theory’) and (often largely unwittingly) passed these off as ‘strategic theory’, which they are not. And it was only when I read Carl von Clausewitz’s infuriatingly convoluted and tortuously lengthy book On War that I started to fully understand strategic theory. This is because Clausewitz actually presented (not in a simple form, I hasten to admit) a strategic theory and then a military strategy that worked in accordance with his strategic theory. ‘Could this strategic theory work in guiding a nonviolent strategy?’ I wondered.
Remarkably, the more I read Gandhi (and compared him with other activists and scholars in the field), the more it became apparent to me that Gandhi was the only nonviolent strategist who (intuitively) understood strategic theory. Although, to be fair, it was an incredibly rare military strategist who understood strategic theory either with Mao Zedong a standout exception and other Marxist strategists like Vladimir Lenin and Võ Nguyên Giáp understanding far more than western military strategists which is why, for example, the US and its allies were defeated in their war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Some years later, after grappling at length with this problem of using strategic theory to guide nonviolent strategy and reading a great deal more of Gandhi, while studying many nonviolent struggles and participating in many nonviolent campaigns myself, I wrote The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. I wrote this book by synthesizing the work of Gandhi with some modified insights of Clausewitz and learning of my own drawn from the experience and study just mentioned. I have recently simplified and summarized the presentation of this book on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
Let me outline, very simply, nonviolent strategy, without touching on strategic theory, as I have developed and presented it in the book and on the websites.
Nonviolent Strategy
You will see on the diagram of the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel that there are four primary components of strategy in the center of the wheel and eight components of strategy that are planned in accordance with these four central components. I will briefly describe the four primary components.
Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that, by using this Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, it is a straightforward task to analyze why so many activist movements and (nonviolent) liberation struggles fail: they simply do not understand the need to plan and implement a comprehensive strategy, entailing all twelve components, if they are to succeed.
So, to choose some examples almost at random, despite substantial (and sometimes widespread) popular support, particularly in some countries, the antiwar movement, the climate justice movement and the Palestinian and Tibetan liberation struggles are each devoid of a comprehensive strategy to deploy their resources for strategic impact and so they languish instead of precipitating the outcomes to which they aspire, which are quite possible.
Having said that a sound and comprehensive strategy must pay attention to all twelve components of strategy it is very occasionally true that campaigns succeed without doing so. This simply demonstrates that nonviolence, in itself, is extraordinarily powerful. But it is unwise to rely on the power of nonviolence alone, without planning and implementing a comprehensive strategy, especially when you are taking on a powerful and entrenched opponent who has much to lose (even if their conception of what they believe they will ‘lose’ is delusional) and may be ruthlessly violent if challenged.
For the purpose of this article, the term strategy refers to a planned series of actions (including campaigns) that are designed to achieve the two strategic aims (see below).
The Political Purpose and the Political Demands
If you are going to conduct a nonviolent struggle, whether to achieve a peace, environmental or social justice outcome, or even a defense or liberation outcome, the best place to start is to define the political purpose of your struggle. The political purpose is a statement of ‘what you want’. For example, this might be one of the following (but there are many possibilities depending on the context):
To secure a treaty acknowledging indigenous sovereignty between [name of indigenous people] and the settler population in [name of land/country] over the area known as [name of land/country].
To stop violence against [children and/or women] in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To end discrimination and violence against the racial/religious minority of [name of group] in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To end forest destruction in [your specified area/country/region].
To end climate-destroying activities in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To halt military production by [name of weapons corporation]in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To prevent/halt [name of corporation] exploiting the [name of fossil fuel resource].
To defend [name of the country] against the political/military coup by [identity of coup perpetrators].
To defend [name of the country] against the foreign military invasion by [name of invading country].
To defend the [name of targeted group] against the genocidal assault by the [identity of genocidal entity].
To establish the independent entity/state of [name of proposed entity/state] by removing the foreign occupying state of [name of occupying state].
To establish a democratic state in [name of country] by removing the dictatorship.
This political purpose ‘anchors’ your campaign: it tells people what you are concerned about so that you can clearly identify allies, opponents and third parties. Your political purpose is a statement of what you will have achieved when you have successfully completed your strategy.
In practice, your political purpose may be publicized in the form of a political program or as a list of demands. You can read the five criteria that should guide the formulation of these political demands on one of the nonviolent strategy websites cited above.
The Political and Strategic Assessment
Strategic planning requires an accurate and thorough political and strategic assessment (although ongoing evaluation will enable refinement of this assessment if new information emerges during the implementation of the strategy).
In essence, this political and strategic assessment requires four things. Notably this includes knowledge of the vital details about the issue (e.g. why has it happened? who benefits from it? how, precisely, do they benefit? who is exploited?) and a structural analysis and understanding of the causes behind it, including an awareness of the deep emotional (especially the fear) and cultural imperatives that exist in the minds of those individuals (and their organizations) who engage in the destructive behavior.
So, for example, if you do not understand, precisely, what each of your various groups of opponents is scared of losing/suffering (whether or not this fear is rational), you cannot design your strategy taking this vital knowledge into account so that you can mitigate their fear effectively and free their mind to thoughtfully consider alternatives. It is poor strategy (and contrary to the essence of Gandhian nonviolence) to reinforce your opponents’ fear and lock them into a defensive reaction.
Strategic Aims and Strategic Goals
Having defined your political purpose, it is easy to identify the two strategic aims of your struggle. This is because every campaign or liberation struggle has two strategic aims and they are always the same:
To increase support for your campaign by developing a network of groups who can assist you.
To alter the will and undermine the power of those groups who support the problem.
Now you just need to define your strategic goals for both mobilizing support for your campaign and for undermining support for the problem. From your political and strategic assessment:
Identify the key social groups that can be mobilized to support and participate in your strategy (and then write these groups into the ‘bubbles’ on the left side of the campaign strategy diagram that can be downloaded from the strategy websites), and
identify the key social groups (corporation/s, police/military, government, workers, consumers etc.) whose support for the problem (e.g. the climate catastrophe, war, the discrimination/violence against a particular group, forest destruction, resource extraction, genocide, occupation) is vital (and then write these groups into the columns on the right side of the campaign strategy diagram).
These key social groups become the primary targets in your campaign. Hence, the derivative set of specific strategic goals, which are unique to your campaign, should then be devised and each written in accordance with the formula explained in the article ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’. That is: ‘To cause a [specified group of people] to act in the [specified way].’
As the title of this article suggests, it also explains the vital distinction between the political objective and the strategic goal of any nonviolent action. This distinction is rarely understood and applied and explains why most ‘direct actions’ have no strategic impact.
There are four primary conceptions of nonviolence which have been illustrated on the Matrix of Nonviolence. Because of this, your strategic plan should:
identify the particular conception of nonviolence that your campaign will utilize;
identify the specific ways in which your commitment to nonviolence will be conveyed to all parties so that the benefits of adopting a nonviolent strategy are maximized; and
identify how the level of discipline required to implement your nonviolent strategy will be developed. This includes defining the ‘action agreements’ (code of nonviolent discipline) that will guide activist behaviour.
It is important to make a deliberate strategic choice regarding the conception of nonviolence that will underpin your strategy. If your intention is to utilize the strategic framework outlined here, it is vitally important to recognize that this framework is based on the Gandhian (principled/revolutionary) conception of nonviolence.
This is because Gandhi’s nonviolence is based on certain premises, including the importance of the truth, the sanctity and unity of all life, and the unity of means and end, so his strategy is always conducted within the framework of his desired political, social, economic and ecological vision for society as a whole and not limited to the purpose of any immediate campaign. It is for this reason that Gandhi’s approach to strategy is so important. He is always taking into account the ultimate end of all nonviolent struggle – a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society of self-realized human beings – not just the outcome of this campaign. He wants each campaign to contribute to the ultimate aim, not undermine vital elements of the long-term and overarching struggle to create a world without violence.
This does not mean, however, that each person participating in the strategy must share this commitment; they may participate simply because it is expedient for them to do so. This is not a problem as long as they are willing to commit to the ‘code of nonviolent discipline’ while participating in the campaign.
Hopefully, however, their participation on this basis will nurture their own personal journey to embrace the sanctity and unity of all life so that, subsequently, they can more fully participate in the co-creation of a nonviolent world.
Other Components of Strategy
Once you have identified the political purpose, strategic aims and conception of nonviolence that will guide your struggle, and undertaken a thorough political and strategic assessment, you are free to consider the other components of your strategy: organization, leadership, communication, preparations, constructive program, strategic timeframe, tactics and peacekeeping, and evaluation.
Needless to say, each of these components of strategy must also be carefully planned. They are explained in turn on the nonviolent strategy websites mentioned above.
In addition to these components, the websites also include articles, photos, videos, diagrams and case studies that discuss and illustrate many essential elements of sound nonviolent strategy. These include the value of police/military liaison, issues in relation to tactical selection, the importance of avoiding secrecy and sabotage, how to respond to arrest, how to undertake peacekeeping and the 20 points to consider when planning to minimize the risk of violent police/military repression when this is a possibility.
Conclusion
The global elite and many other people are too insane to ‘walk away’ from the enormous violence they inflict on life.
Consequently, we are not going to end violence in all of its forms – including violence against women, children, indigenous and working peoples, violence against people because of their race or religion, war, slavery, the climate catastrophe, rainforest destruction, military occupations, dictatorships and genocides – and create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability for all of us without sound and comprehensive nonviolent strategies that tackle each issue at its core while complementing and reinforcing gains made in parallel struggles.
Given the overwhelming violence that we must tackle, can we succeed? I do not know but I intend to fight, strategically, to the last breath. I hope that you will too.
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.
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on A Nonviolent Strategy to End Violence and Avert Human Extinction. The Teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King
Around the world activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge to effectively tackle the multitude of violent conflicts, including the threat of human extinction, confronting human society in the early 21st century.
I wrote that ‘activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge’ because there is no point deluding ourselves that the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane’ – with its compliant international organizations (such as the UN) and national governments following orders as directed, is going to respond appropriately and powerfully to the multifaceted crisis that it has been progressively generating since long before the industrial revolution.
If you doubt what I have written above, then consider the history of any progressive political, social, economic and environmental change in the past few centuries and you will find a long record of activist planning, organizing and action preceding any worthwhile change which was invariably required to overcome enormous elite opposition. In short, if you can identify one progressive outcome that was initiated and supported by the global elite, I would be surprised to hear about it.
Moreover, we are not going to get out of this crisis – which must include ending violence, exploitation and war, halting the destruction of Earth’s biosphere and ongoing violent assaults on indigenous peoples, ending slavery, liberating occupied countries such as Palestine, Tibet and West Papua, removing dictatorships such as those in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, ending genocidal assaults such as those currently being directed against the people of Yemen and the Rohingya in Myanmar, and defending the rights of a people, such as those in Catalonia, to secede from one state and form another – without both understanding the deep drivers of conflict as well as the local drivers in each case, and then developing and implementing sound and comprehensive strategies, based on this dual-faceted analysis of each conflict.
In addition, if like Mohandas K. Gandhi, many others and me you accept the evidence that violence is inherently counterproductive and has no countervailing desirability in any context – expressed most simply by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. when he stated ‘the enemy is violence’ – then we must be intelligent, courageous and resourceful enough to commit ourselves to planning, developing and implementing strategies that are both exclusively nonviolent and powerfully effective against extraordinarily insane and ruthlessly violent opponents, such as the US government.
Equally importantly, however, it is not just the violence of the global elite that we must address if extinction is to be averted. We must also tackle the violence that each of us inflicts on ourselves, our children, each other and the Earth too. And, sadly, this violence takes an extraordinary variety of forms having originated no later than the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago. See ‘A Critique of Human Society since the Neolithic Revolution’.
Is all of this possible?
When I first became interested in nonviolent strategy in the early 1980s, I read widely. I particularly sought out the literature on nonviolence but, as my interest deepened and I tried to apply what I was reading in the nonviolence literature to the many nonviolent action campaigns in which I was involved, I kept noticing how inadequate these so-called ‘strategies’ in the literature actually were, largely because they did not explain precisely what to do, even though they superficially purported to do so by offering ‘principles’, ‘guidelines’, sets of tactics or even ‘stages of a campaign’.
I found this shortcoming in the literature most instructive and, because I am committed to succeeding when I engage as a nonviolent activist, I started to read the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi and even the literature on military strategy. By the mid-1980s I had decided to research and write a book on nonviolent strategy because, by then, I had become aware that the individual who understood strategy, whether nonviolent or military, was rare.
Moreover, there were many conceptions of military strategy, written over more than 2,000 years, and an increasing number of conceptions of what was presented as ‘nonviolent strategy’, in one form or another, were becoming available as the 1980s progressed. But the flaws in these were increasingly and readily apparent to me as I considered their inadequate theoretical foundations or tried to apply them in nonviolent action campaigns.
The more I struggled with this problem, the more I found myself reading ‘The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi’ in a library basement. After all, Gandhi had led a successful 30 year nonviolent liberation struggle to end the British occupation of India so it made sense that he had considerable insight regarding strategy. Unfortunately, he never wrote it down simply in one place.
A complicating but related problem was that among those military authors who professed to present some version of ‘strategic theory’, in fact, most simply presented an approach to strategic planning (such as using a set of principles or a particular operational pattern) or an incomplete theory of strategy (such as ‘maritime theory’, ‘air theory’ or ‘guerrilla theory’) and (often largely unwittingly) passed these off as ‘strategic theory’, which they are not. And it was only when I read Carl von Clausewitz’s infuriatingly convoluted and tortuously lengthy book On War that I started to fully understand strategic theory. This is because Clausewitz actually presented (not in a simple form, I hasten to admit) a strategic theory and then a military strategy that worked in accordance with his strategic theory. ‘Could this strategic theory work in guiding a nonviolent strategy?’ I wondered.
Remarkably, the more I read Gandhi (and compared him with other activists and scholars in the field), the more it became apparent to me that Gandhi was the only nonviolent strategist who (intuitively) understood strategic theory. Although, to be fair, it was an incredibly rare military strategist who understood strategic theory either with Mao Zedong a standout exception and other Marxist strategists like Vladimir Lenin and Võ Nguyên Giáp understanding far more than western military strategists which is why, for example, the US and its allies were defeated in their war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Some years later, after grappling at length with this problem of using strategic theory to guide nonviolent strategy and reading a great deal more of Gandhi, while studying many nonviolent struggles and participating in many nonviolent campaigns myself, I wrote The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. I wrote this book by synthesizing the work of Gandhi with some modified insights of Clausewitz and learning of my own drawn from the experience and study just mentioned. I have recently simplified and summarized the presentation of this book on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
Let me outline, very simply, nonviolent strategy, without touching on strategic theory, as I have developed and presented it in the book and on the websites.
Nonviolent Strategy
You will see on the diagram of the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel that there are four primary components of strategy in the center of the wheel and eight components of strategy that are planned in accordance with these four central components. I will briefly describe the four primary components.
Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that, by using this Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, it is a straightforward task to analyze why so many activist movements and (nonviolent) liberation struggles fail: they simply do not understand the need to plan and implement a comprehensive strategy, entailing all twelve components, if they are to succeed.
So, to choose some examples almost at random, despite substantial (and sometimes widespread) popular support, particularly in some countries, the antiwar movement, the climate justice movement and the Palestinian and Tibetan liberation struggles are each devoid of a comprehensive strategy to deploy their resources for strategic impact and so they languish instead of precipitating the outcomes to which they aspire, which are quite possible.
Having said that a sound and comprehensive strategy must pay attention to all twelve components of strategy it is very occasionally true that campaigns succeed without doing so. This simply demonstrates that nonviolence, in itself, is extraordinarily powerful. But it is unwise to rely on the power of nonviolence alone, without planning and implementing a comprehensive strategy, especially when you are taking on a powerful and entrenched opponent who has much to lose (even if their conception of what they believe they will ‘lose’ is delusional) and may be ruthlessly violent if challenged.
For the purpose of this article, the term strategy refers to a planned series of actions (including campaigns) that are designed to achieve the two strategic aims (see below).
The Political Purpose and the Political Demands
If you are going to conduct a nonviolent struggle, whether to achieve a peace, environmental or social justice outcome, or even a defense or liberation outcome, the best place to start is to define the political purpose of your struggle. The political purpose is a statement of ‘what you want’. For example, this might be one of the following (but there are many possibilities depending on the context):
To secure a treaty acknowledging indigenous sovereignty between [name of indigenous people] and the settler population in [name of land/country] over the area known as [name of land/country].
To stop violence against [children and/or women] in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To end discrimination and violence against the racial/religious minority of [name of group] in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To end forest destruction in [your specified area/country/region].
To end climate-destroying activities in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To halt military production by [name of weapons corporation]in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To prevent/halt [name of corporation] exploiting the [name of fossil fuel resource].
To defend [name of the country] against the political/military coup by [identity of coup perpetrators].
To defend [name of the country] against the foreign military invasion by [name of invading country].
To defend the [name of targeted group] against the genocidal assault by the [identity of genocidal entity].
To establish the independent entity/state of [name of proposed entity/state] by removing the foreign occupying state of [name of occupying state].
To establish a democratic state in [name of country] by removing the dictatorship.
This political purpose ‘anchors’ your campaign: it tells people what you are concerned about so that you can clearly identify allies, opponents and third parties. Your political purpose is a statement of what you will have achieved when you have successfully completed your strategy.
In practice, your political purpose may be publicized in the form of a political program or as a list of demands. You can read the five criteria that should guide the formulation of these political demands on one of the nonviolent strategy websites cited above.
The Political and Strategic Assessment
Strategic planning requires an accurate and thorough political and strategic assessment (although ongoing evaluation will enable refinement of this assessment if new information emerges during the implementation of the strategy).
In essence, this political and strategic assessment requires four things. Notably this includes knowledge of the vital details about the issue (e.g. why has it happened? who benefits from it? how, precisely, do they benefit? who is exploited?) and a structural analysis and understanding of the causes behind it, including an awareness of the deep emotional (especially the fear) and cultural imperatives that exist in the minds of those individuals (and their organizations) who engage in the destructive behavior.
So, for example, if you do not understand, precisely, what each of your various groups of opponents is scared of losing/suffering (whether or not this fear is rational), you cannot design your strategy taking this vital knowledge into account so that you can mitigate their fear effectively and free their mind to thoughtfully consider alternatives. It is poor strategy (and contrary to the essence of Gandhian nonviolence) to reinforce your opponents’ fear and lock them into a defensive reaction.
Strategic Aims and Strategic Goals
Having defined your political purpose, it is easy to identify the two strategic aims of your struggle. This is because every campaign or liberation struggle has two strategic aims and they are always the same:
To increase support for your campaign by developing a network of groups who can assist you.
To alter the will and undermine the power of those groups who support the problem.
Now you just need to define your strategic goals for both mobilizing support for your campaign and for undermining support for the problem. From your political and strategic assessment:
Identify the key social groups that can be mobilized to support and participate in your strategy (and then write these groups into the ‘bubbles’ on the left side of the campaign strategy diagram that can be downloaded from the strategy websites), and
identify the key social groups (corporation/s, police/military, government, workers, consumers etc.) whose support for the problem (e.g. the climate catastrophe, war, the discrimination/violence against a particular group, forest destruction, resource extraction, genocide, occupation) is vital (and then write these groups into the columns on the right side of the campaign strategy diagram).
These key social groups become the primary targets in your campaign. Hence, the derivative set of specific strategic goals, which are unique to your campaign, should then be devised and each written in accordance with the formula explained in the article ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’. That is: ‘To cause a [specified group of people] to act in the [specified way].’
As the title of this article suggests, it also explains the vital distinction between the political objective and the strategic goal of any nonviolent action. This distinction is rarely understood and applied and explains why most ‘direct actions’ have no strategic impact.
There are four primary conceptions of nonviolence which have been illustrated on the Matrix of Nonviolence. Because of this, your strategic plan should:
identify the particular conception of nonviolence that your campaign will utilize;
identify the specific ways in which your commitment to nonviolence will be conveyed to all parties so that the benefits of adopting a nonviolent strategy are maximized; and
identify how the level of discipline required to implement your nonviolent strategy will be developed. This includes defining the ‘action agreements’ (code of nonviolent discipline) that will guide activist behaviour.
It is important to make a deliberate strategic choice regarding the conception of nonviolence that will underpin your strategy. If your intention is to utilize the strategic framework outlined here, it is vitally important to recognize that this framework is based on the Gandhian (principled/revolutionary) conception of nonviolence.
This is because Gandhi’s nonviolence is based on certain premises, including the importance of the truth, the sanctity and unity of all life, and the unity of means and end, so his strategy is always conducted within the framework of his desired political, social, economic and ecological vision for society as a whole and not limited to the purpose of any immediate campaign. It is for this reason that Gandhi’s approach to strategy is so important. He is always taking into account the ultimate end of all nonviolent struggle – a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society of self-realized human beings – not just the outcome of this campaign. He wants each campaign to contribute to the ultimate aim, not undermine vital elements of the long-term and overarching struggle to create a world without violence.
This does not mean, however, that each person participating in the strategy must share this commitment; they may participate simply because it is expedient for them to do so. This is not a problem as long as they are willing to commit to the ‘code of nonviolent discipline’ while participating in the campaign.
Hopefully, however, their participation on this basis will nurture their own personal journey to embrace the sanctity and unity of all life so that, subsequently, they can more fully participate in the co-creation of a nonviolent world.
Other Components of Strategy
Once you have identified the political purpose, strategic aims and conception of nonviolence that will guide your struggle, and undertaken a thorough political and strategic assessment, you are free to consider the other components of your strategy: organization, leadership, communication, preparations, constructive program, strategic timeframe, tactics and peacekeeping, and evaluation.
Needless to say, each of these components of strategy must also be carefully planned. They are explained in turn on the nonviolent strategy websites mentioned above.
In addition to these components, the websites also include articles, photos, videos, diagrams and case studies that discuss and illustrate many essential elements of sound nonviolent strategy. These include the value of police/military liaison, issues in relation to tactical selection, the importance of avoiding secrecy and sabotage, how to respond to arrest, how to undertake peacekeeping and the 20 points to consider when planning to minimize the risk of violent police/military repression when this is a possibility.
Conclusion
The global elite and many other people are too insane to ‘walk away’ from the enormous violence they inflict on life.
Consequently, we are not going to end violence in all of its forms – including violence against women, children, indigenous and working peoples, violence against people because of their race or religion, war, slavery, the climate catastrophe, rainforest destruction, military occupations, dictatorships and genocides – and create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability for all of us without sound and comprehensive nonviolent strategies that tackle each issue at its core while complementing and reinforcing gains made in parallel struggles.
Given the overwhelming violence that we must tackle, can we succeed? I do not know but I intend to fight, strategically, to the last breath. I hope that you will too.
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.
Apart from natural beauty with which India has been bestowed with, it also has manmade marvels. And these are attracting not only Indians but people from World over. One of such structures is the Taj Mahal built by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtazmahal. It has been voted among the seven wonders of the World and is a UNESCO heritage site. Poet Guru Rabindranath described it emotionally by calling it a ‘drop of tear on the cheek’. It has been attracting tourists all over the World and is undoubted tourist attraction number one in India.
But that is of no concern for the Yogi Government of UP. Just weeks ago, on completion of six months in power, it brought out a brochure related to the tourism development, ‘Uttar Pradesh Paryatan-Apaar Sambhavanaayein’ which when translated in English will mean ‘Uttar Pradesh Tourism – Unlimited Possibilities’. The booklet has focus on tourist sites of UP and includes places like Gorakhmath Peeth, headed by the Chief minister Yogi Adityanath himself, and has many other places from UP, religious tourism seems to be the focus of the booklet. What it bypasses is the most famous tourist attraction, Taj Mahal.
Earlier after becoming CM. Yogi had asserted that Taj Mahal is not part of Indian culture and that the practice of giving the replica of Taj to the visiting dignitaries should be changed and they should be given Gita or Ramayana, which are symbols of Indian culture, according to him. The communal bias of Yogi and UP administration in turn is very visible in the matter of Taj. When the matter came up for criticism in the media the concerned ministers started saying that Taj is a part of Indian heritage but the booklet was mentioning only sites which needed promotion. They also asserted that separate funds have been allocated for Taj and the plan for international airport at Agra is also being mooted.
Multiple voices are coming forward from BJP camp. It was a Hindu temple, it is a monument of no consequence, it is reflective of India’s slavery etc.! One of BJP leaders Sangeet Som reflected the current change in strategy of BJP about the monuments built by Muslim kings. Reacting to the Taj issue he said that
“Many people were sad the Taj Mahal was removed from the tourism booklet of the State government. What history are we talking about? The history that the builder of the Taj Mahal had imprisoned his father?… The history that the builder of the monument eliminated Hindus from U.P. and from India? It is quite sad and unfortunate that such tyrants are still part of our history,”
Incidentally the tourist traffic to Taj has been declining over last few years and there is an urgent need to promote the site as tourist destination. Question is why the mention of Taj has been left out in the first place? In the background of what Yogi has been saying about Taj earlier, it does smack a discomfort with a structure which was built by Mughal ruler, whom Hindutva-Yogi’s ideology regards as invader. The definition of Indian culture by Indian nationalists like Gandhi is in total variance from what ruling Yogi-Hindutva ideology asserts. For them only elite Hindu culture is Indian culture.
It is not surprising that RSS-Hindutva propaganda so far had been asserting that Taj is a Hindu temple, that of Shiva, Tejo Mahalay! This is contrary to the historical knowledge and the evidences.
Shahjahan’s Badshahnama makes it abundantly clear that the structure was built by Shahjahan. A European traveller Peter Mundy writes that the emperor Shahjahan is in deep grief due to the death of his favourite wife and is building an impressive mausoleum in her memory. A French jeweller Tavernier who visited India at that time corroborates this. The daily account books of Shahjahan do give the detailed record of the expenses incurred, like the money spent for marble and the wages for the workers etc. The only base of this misconception of it being Shiv Temple (Tejo Mahalay) is the mention that the land was bought from Raja Jaisingh for a compensation. It is also to be noted that Jaisingh to whom this Shaiva temple is attributed was a Vaishnav and it is not possible that a Viashnav king would build a Shaiv temple.
Undermining Taj is also a part of the broader Hindutva project to rewrite Indian history, where the communal interpretation of history is being promoted and events are also being given a twist to suit the communal mindset. The most horrific such twist is to say that in the battle of Haldi Ghati between Akbar and Rana Pratap, it was Rana Pratap who won the battle. As such the battle was for power not for religion. One knows both Akbar and Rana Pratap had associates who belonged to the ‘other’ religion. The affiliations were not along religious lines.
It seems Taj and other structures built during the rule of Muslim kings are a thorn in the communal thinking. So, the attempt so far has been to present it as a Hindu temple, now in the seats of power the communal forces want to undermine it, erase it from being a part of Indian culture and to undermine its place in Indian culture. The multipronged Hindutva strategy aims to further marginalize the Muslim community by giving it a miss the way it was done in case of UP brochure. Will it be the turn of Delhi’s Red fort, from where the Prime Ministers of the Country have been giving the speech on day of Independence!
In the light of criticism all around some UP ministers have tried to save their face that Taj is a part of Indian heritage, while the one’s like Sangeet Som are more blunt and forthright. As such all these places of historical and archeological importance need not only to be protected but also promoted as a part of Indian syncretic culture.
This article was originally published by People’s Voice.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday that the report of the Joint UN Security Council and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Inquiry Mechanism into the events, relating to the alleged use of sarin gas in the northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th, was flawed as regards its investigative methods and based on false statements coming from the highly questionable sources.
Ryabkov’s response came after Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, yesterday announced that Moscow is proposing a new report by UN experts and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on chemical attacks in Syria.
“We have begun to prepare a new document, which has a comprehensive technical character”, said Russian press secretary Fyodor Strzhizovski, adding that it is necessary to conduct such study using experts from different institutions.
“It surprises us once again that Western news agencies are shamelessly publish quotations directly from an internal document of the UN Security Council”, he added.
“The group of international experts is convinced that the Syrian authorities are responsible for the release of sarin gas in Khan Sheikhoun in Idleb province, AFP reported earlier.
The statement came after the Joint UN Security Council and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Inquiry Mechanism submitted a report to the Security Council on Thursday evening, which included the results of the investigation into the alleged use of sarin gas in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, and the use of mustard gas in the town Oum Al Hosh on 15th and 16th September 2016.
“Once again we see an independent inquiry confirming the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime”, said Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, while commenting on the report.
“The UN Security Council must send a strong message that it does not tolerate the use of chemical weapons by any party and must assure its full support to impartial investigations”, she added.
“The Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Gutteres expressed his full confidence in the professionalism, objectivity and impartiality of the Joint UN-OPCW Inquiry Mechanism”, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General Farhan Haq said.
The UN Security Council and OPCW unanimously established the Joint Investigative Mechanism in 2015 and renewed its mandate for another year in 2016. Its current mandate expires in mid-November.
Russia, however, rejected the extension of the mandate, stressing that while it was not opposed to the extension as such, it nonetheless had to take a hasty decision as regards the matter, namely after discovering “fundamental problems” in the work of the joint mechanism.
Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said earlier this week that Moscow would consider reviewing the extension of the mandate with amendments after discussing the report on Thursday.
It is noteworthy Syria agreed to destroy its entire stock of chemical weapons back in 2013 already, following a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.
The Syrian government has repeatedly denied the use of chemical weapons during the entire war, which has been going on for more than six years now.
Featured image: Sen. Joe McCarthy with lawyer Roy Cohn (right)
In the past, America has witnessed “McCarthyism” from the Right and even complaints from the Right about “McCarthyism of the Left.” But what we are witnessing now amid the Russia-gate frenzy is what might be called “Establishment McCarthyism,” traditional media/political powers demonizing and silencing dissent that questions mainstream narratives.
This extraordinary assault on civil liberties is cloaked in fright-filled stories about “Russian propaganda” and wildly exaggerated tales of the Kremlin’s “hordes of Twitter bots,” but its underlying goal is to enforce Washington’s “groupthinks” by creating a permanent system that shuts down or marginalizes dissident opinions and labels contrary information – no matter how reasonable and well-researched – as “disputed” or “rated false” by mainstream “fact-checking” organizations like PolitiFact.
It doesn’t seem to matter that the paragons of this new structure – such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and, indeed, PolitiFact – have a checkered record of getting facts straight.
For instance, PolitiFact still rates as “true”Hillary Clinton’s false claim that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” agreed that Russia was behind the release of Democratic emails last year. Even the Times and The Associated Press belatedly ran corrections after President Obama’s intelligence chiefs admitted that the assessment came from what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies: CIA, FBI and NSA.
And, the larger truth was that these “hand-picked” analysts were sequestered away from other analysts even from their own agencies and produced “stove-piped intelligence,” i.e., analysis that escapes the back-and-forth that should occur inside the intelligence community.
Yet, the Times and other leading newspaper routinely treat these findings as flat fact or the unassailable “consensus” of the “intelligence community.” Contrary information, including WikiLeaks’ denials of a Russian role in supplying the emails, and contrary judgments from former senior U.S. intelligence officials are ignored.
The Jan. 6 report also tacked on a seven-page addendum smearing the Russian television network, RT, for such offenses as sponsoring a 2012 debate among U.S. third-party presidential candidates who had been excluded from the Republican-Democratic debates. RT also was slammed for reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests and the environmental dangers from “fracking.”
How the idea of giving Americans access to divergent political opinions and information about valid issues such as income inequality and environmental dangers constitutes threats to American “democracy” is hard to comprehend.
However, rather than address the Jan. 6 report’s admitted uncertainties about Russian “hacking” and the troubling implications of its attacks on RT, the Times and other U.S. mainstream publications treat the report as some kind of holy scripture that can’t be questioned or challenged.
Silencing RT
For instance, on Tuesday, the Times published a front-page story entitled “YouTube Gave Russians Outlet Portal Into U.S.” that essentially cried out for the purging of RT from YouTube. The article began by holding YouTube’s vice president Robert Kynci up to ridicule and opprobrium for his praising “RT for bonding with viewers by providing ‘authentic’ content instead of ‘agendas or propaganda.’”
The article by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Nicholas Confessore swallowed whole the Jan. 6 report’s conclusion that RT is “the Kremlin’s ‘principal international propaganda outlet’ and a key player in Russia’s information warfare operations around the world.” In other words, the Times portrayed Kynci as essentially a “useful idiot.”
Yet, the article doesn’t actually dissect any RT article that could be labeled false or propagandistic. It simply alludes generally to news items that contained information critical of Hillary Clinton as if any negative reporting on the Democratic presidential contender – no matter how accurate or how similar to stories appearing in the U.S. press – was somehow proof of “information warfare.”
As Daniel Lazarewrote at Consortiumnews.com on Wednesday,
“The web version [of the Times article] links to an RT interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that ran shortly before the 2016 election. The topic is a September 2014 email obtained by Wikileaks in which Clinton acknowledges that ‘the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.’”
In other words, the Times cited a documented and newsworthy RT story as its evidence that RT was a propaganda shop threatening American democracy and deserving ostracism if not removal from YouTube.
A Dangerous Pattern
Not to say that I share every news judgment of RT – or for that matter The New York Times – but there is a grave issue of press freedom when the Times essentially calls for the shutting down of access to a news organization that may highlight or report on stories that the Times and other mainstream outlets downplay or ignore.
And this was not a stand-alone story. Previously, the Times has run favorable articles about plans to deploy aggressive algorithms to hunt down and then remove or marginalize information that the Times and other mainstream outlets deem false.
Nor is it just the Times. Last Thanksgiving, The Washington Post ran a fawning front-page article about an anonymous group PropOrNot that had created a blacklist of 200 Internet sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other independent news sources, that were deemed guilty of dispensing “Russian propaganda,” which basically amounted to our showing any skepticism toward the State Department’s narratives on the crises in Syria or Ukraine.
So, if any media outlet dares to question the U.S. government’s version of events – once that storyline has been embraced by the big media – the dissidents risk being awarded the media equivalent of a yellow star and having their readership dramatically reduced by getting downgraded on search engines and punished on social media.
Meanwhile, Congress has authorized $160 million to combat alleged Russian “propaganda and disinformation,” a gilded invitation for “scholars” and “experts” to gear up “studies” that will continue to prove what is supposed to be proved – “Russia bad” – with credulous mainstream reporters eagerly gobbling up the latest “evidence” of Russian perfidy.
There is also a more coercive element to what’s going on. RT is facing demands from the Justice Department that it register as a “foreign agent” or face prosecution. Clearly, the point is to chill the journalism done by RT’s American reporters, hosts and staff who now fear being stigmatized as something akin to traitors.
You might wonder: where are the defenders of press freedom and civil liberties? Doesn’t anyone in the mainstream media or national politics recognize the danger to a democracy coming from enforced groupthinks? Is American democracy so fragile that letting Americans hear “another side of the story” must be prevented?
A Dangerous ‘Cure’
I agree that there is a limited problem with jerks who knowingly make up fake stories or who disseminate crazy conspiracy theories – and no one finds such behavior more offensive than I do. But does no one recall the lies about Iraq’s WMD and other U.S. government falsehoods and deceptions over the years?
Often, it is the few dissenters who alert the American people to the truth, even as the Times, Post, CNN and other big outlets are serving as the real propaganda agents, accepting what the “important people” say and showing little or no professional skepticism.
And, given the risk of thermo-nuclear war with Russia, why aren’t liberals and progressives demanding at least a critical examination of what’s coming from the U.S. intelligence agencies and the mainstream press?
The answer seems to be that many liberals and progressives are so blinded by their fury over Donald Trump’s election that they don’t care what lines are crossed to destroy or neutralize him. Plus, for some liberal entities, there’s lots of money to be made.
For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union has made its “resistance” to the Trump administration an important part of its fundraising. So, the ACLU is doing nothing to defend the rights of news organizations and journalists under attack.
When I asked ACLU about the Justice Department’s move against RT and other encroachments on press freedom, I was told by ACLU spokesman Thomas Dresslar:
“Thanks for reaching out to us. Unfortunately, I’ve been informed that we do not have anyone able to speak to you about this.”
Meanwhile, the Times and other traditional “defenders of a free press” are now part of the attack machine against a free press. While much of this attitude comes from the big media’s high-profile leadership of the anti-Trump Resistance and anger at any resistors to the Resistance, mainstream news outlets have chafed for years over the Internet undermining their privileged role as the gatekeepers of what Americans get to see and hear.
For a long time, the big media has wanted an excuse to rein in the Internet and break the small news outlets that have challenged the power – and the profitability – of the Times, Post, CNN, etc. Russia-gate and Trump have become the cover for that restoration of mainstream authority.
So, as we have moved into this dangerous New Cold War, we are living in what could be called “Establishment McCarthyism,” a hysterical but methodical strategy for silencing dissent and making sure that future mainstream groupthinks don’t get challenged.
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).
Four people were reportedly killed by security forces during demonstrations organized by opposition forces on October 18-19.
An alliance of 14 political parties and coalition groups openly defied attempts by the government of President Faure Gnassingbe to ban protests by going into to the streets to demand that the current regime resign in lieu of holding democratic elections.
The Gnassingbe family has been in power in the West African state since 1967. The regime is closely aligned with the former colonial power France and other Western states.
Among the dead in the recent wave of unrest included an 11-year-old child who was shot down by security forces in the capital of Lome. Demonstrations have also been held in the second largest city of Sokode where police attacked protesters during the recent period.
ECOWAS Role Compromised by Conflict of Interests
Regional leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have largely remained silent since the outbreak of demonstrations on August 19. However, the severity of the repression and the issuing of statements by France and the United States have prompted ECOWAS to call for dialogue between Gnassingbe and the opposition groups, a position echoed by Paris.
Complicating the role of ECOWAS is the reality that Gnassingbe currently holds the rotating chairpersonship of the regional grouping. Any expectation that the 16-member body with its current composition will take a forceful stand is counterintuitive.
In response to the demonstrations and general strikes, the government did pass legislation ostensibly designed to open up the political process. However, opposition leaders rejected the legislation that purportedly places limits on how many terms a president can stay in office because the measure was not retroactive. Therefore, Gnassingbe could still remain in office until 2025.
A constitution approved during mass unrest in the early 1990s has never been put into full effect and was ignored in the aftermath of the death of Gnassingbe Eyadema in 2005. Eyadema, the father of the current leader, was a French-trained military officer who came to power through a military coup fifty years ago.
Alassane Ouattara, another western-backed leader in neighboring Ivory Coast, claimed that he along with other leaders from Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana held talks with Togo’s president on October 24.
“We believe negotiations are needed … and that these negotiations must lead to constitutional modifications already embarked upon.” (Global News Network, Oct. 26)
The Ivorian leader who himself was installed in power by France in 2011 after the overthrow and kidnapping of former President Laurent Gbagbo and First Simone Gbagbo, said that the ECOWAS leaders eschewed violence noting it was “important there is a climate of peace in Togo”.
“Demonstrations must be able to occur but peacefully,” Ouattara said. He went on to declare that ECOWAS would not tolerate repressive violence and would respond with unspecified “rigorous measures”.
A French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne on October 25 said that the government in Lome must “respect the right to protest. Protests should be expressed in a peaceful manner. We strongly condemn the recent violence that has left several people dead or injured (and) call for calm on both sides and dialogue. (Global News Network, Oct. 26)
In addition, the United States Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert, issued a statement on behalf of the administration of President Donald Trump expressing concern about the escalating violence in the country. Security alerts by the Embassy of the U.S. have cautioned Americans living and working inside the country.
The State Department press release read in part:
“We are particularly troubled by reports of excessive use of force by security forces and reports that Government-sponsored vigilantes are using force and the threat of force to disrupt protests and intimidate civilians. The United States is also concerned with the Government of Togo’s decision to restrict demonstrations during the workweek and to arrest a prominent imam in the city of Sokode. We call on the Government of Togo to uphold its citizens’ human rights, notably their freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and internet freedom and to ensure that all those arrested during demonstrations are afforded the right to due process.”
Opposition Forces Must Set the Course for Political Transformation
Despite these developments, it remains to be seen what actual measures the imperialist governments will take in regard to the current crisis. Obviously, the West and its allies in the region do not want a sweeping revolutionary transformation in Togo. Such a manifestation would have regional implications in light of the character of the current administrations holding power in neighboring Ghana and Ivory Coast.
With the ECOWAS leaders breaking their silence on the political crisis and the governments of France and the U.S. urging restraint may indicate pressure from regional and western powers for the opposition forces to compromise with the Gnassingbe administration. At present the Chair of the African Union (AU) heads-of-state summit is from West Africa in the personage of President Alpha Conde of Guinea.
Togo masses standoff with security forces (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
This provides a sense of urgency for the AU to politically intervene in the standoff between opposition parties and coalitions fighting to remove the incumbent regime. Conde revealed on October 27 that he had held talks with Ouattara over both the situation in Togo along with proposals under consideration for the establishment of a common currency among the ECOWAS member-states.
Conde has chimed in on the stalemate saying the Togolese government and opposition parties must discover a “peaceful” resolution to the struggle over a mechanism for a political transition considering the number of lives which have been lost over the last two months. However, what has compelled the mass demonstrations since August is the belief that the ruling party is incapable of reforming itself and therefore must be removed from power.
The AU Chair said of the discussions around economic issues and the Togo unrest:
“We have reviewed a series of questions, notably on the single currency. It’s a goal we have together. We also exchanged views on the situation in Togo. It is extremely important that things evolve peacefully in the country and there should be a solution that would allow the Togolese people to continue moving forward.”
Although Pan-African National Party (PNP) leader Tikpi Atchadam was quoted as saying:
“We believe that President Macron (of France) will intervene. We are waiting.”
Nevertheless, the character of the involvement by Paris is the central question. France’s foreign policy towards its former colonies has never been based upon the desire to empower the progressive forces.
Events in Ivory Coast since 2010 along with Gabon and the Central African Republic convey this axiom out in real terms. In Libya, where the conservative government of Nicolas Sarkozy joined in with the U.S., Britain, Italy and other imperialist nations in 2011 to destroy the sovereignty of the North African state of Libya, this most prosperous country has been rendered to abject poverty as well as a base for instability and human trafficking to Europe.
The PNP opposition party which has spearheaded the mass demonstrations and strikes over the previous months said of Conde that he “tried to meet us. He even sent his plane to get us and it was the day before our departure that the arrests (of opposition supporters) started.”
Meanwhile ECOWAS leaders, particularly in Ghana, are closely monitoring the influx of refugees fleeing the impact of the crackdown by Togolese security forces. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that approximately 500 Togolese nationals have arrived in neighboring Ghana.
A spokesperson for the refugee agency, Babar Baloch, pointed out that:
“Togolese seeking safety, including women and children, told UNHCR staff earlier this month that they had fled on foot, walking from their homes in Togo’s Mango region, bordering Ghana. They said they were fleeing human rights abuses after the recent political protests.” (VOA, Oct. 27)
Baloch continued saying:
“Togo’s neighboring countries are quite worried that if the situation is not resolved soon, maybe more people would flee. That is why they have approached the U.N. refugee agency to prepare themselves for any further refugee arrivals.”
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump proclaimed the opioid crisis, which killed some 64,000 people last year, a “public health emergency,” a move that, despite appeals from medical professionals and public health advocates, did not include one cent in additional funding.
More people died last year from drug overdoses than American soldiers were killed during the entire Vietnam War, with a staggering 175 people killed every day. Countless millions more have been affected, from friends and family members of addicts whose lives have been upended, to children born addicted to opioids.
Trump’s response to the opioid epidemic mirrors his administration’s response to every social crisis and disaster, such as the hurricanes that struck Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. The government has provided no meaningful federal aid to Puerto Rico, still suffering from widespread blackouts, while demanding it step up its payments to its Wall Street creditors.
But when it comes to funneling money to the US oligarchy, the White House and Congress are more than willing to oblige. Just hours before Trump’s announcement on the opioid crisis, the House of Representatives passed a budget bill that clears the way for Trump’s tax cut for corporations and the rich to be fast-tracked through Congress, for possible passage before Thanksgiving.
The plan, which would cost taxpayers some $5.8 trillion over the next ten years, would slash the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax for multimillion-dollar inheritances, and slash rates for “repatriating” corporate profits held offshore.
These two measures present the outlook of the financial elite that dominates American society and controls both political parties: unlimited cash for the enrichment of the financial oligarchy and nothing to address the pressing social needs of the working population.
This bipartisan policy, which has been carried out for decades under the presidencies of Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton and Barack Obama before its radical escalation under Trump, has created a social catastrophe.
Its most direct manifestation is the persistent rise in mortality rates for the working class, which resulted in a fall in US life expectancy last year. In March, Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton concluded that the run-up in mortality, particularly for working-class whites, is driven by what they define as “deaths of despair”—those due to drug overdoses, complications from alcohol and suicide.
In Capital, Marx’s study of the capitalist system, the founder of the modern socialist movement concluded that the “accumulation of wealth at one pole is…at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.”
This statement is not only true, but empirically quantifiable. One study by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett found a direct correlation between social inequality and a series of social ills, including homicides and violent crime, school achievement and dropout rates, teenage births, life expectancy and infant mortality, obesity, mental illness, and more.
Compared to other developed countries, the United States is off the charts on all measures. It is simultaneously the most unequal and the most socially distressed.
The inability and unwillingness of the political system to address any of the underlying causes of the social crisis gripping the United States is the direct product of the stranglehold over American society by the financial oligarchy, which ensures that the first and last priority is the protection and expansion of its wealth.
This reality was driven home in remarks by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said earlier this month that the White House’s tax cuts had to pass because Wall Street would crash the stock market if they did not.
“There is no question that the rally in the stock market has baked into it reasonably high expectations of us getting tax cuts and tax reform done,” he told Politico. “There’s no question in my mind that if we don’t get it done you’re going to see a reversal of a significant amount of these gains.”
The consequences of the Obama administration’s socially regressive policies were on display Thursday in a report by the Swiss bank UBS, which showed that the total wealth of the world’s billionaires shot up 17 percent in 2016, or $1 trillion, to a total of $6 trillion.
The US has more than a third of the world’s billionaires, and roughly half of all billionaire wealth, amounting to $2.8 trillion, according to the report.
One of those billionaires, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, became some $7 billion wealthier overnight on Thursday, becoming the world’s richest man, controlling $90 billion.
Bezos’ wealth is the outcome of the sweatshop-like conditions at the fulfillment centers operated by his company, which pays workers $10 per hour, subjects them to searches during the workday, and tracks their every move.
Despite the massive enrichment of the financial oligarchy documented by UBS’s report on the wealth of the world’s billionaires, the authors struck a worried note.
“We are now two years into the peak of the second Gilded Age,” Josef Stadler, UBS’s head of global ultra-high net worth, told the Guardian. “We’re at an inflection point” he said, “Wealth concentration is as high as in 1905… the question is to what extent is that sustainable and at what point will society intervene and strike back?”
Tellingly, the newspaper included in the article a painting depicting Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, addressing workers in Petrograd in 1917. The clear implication is that 100 years after the Russian Revolution, which led to a reduction of social inequality all over the world amid a wave of social struggles that it triggered and encouraged, similar revolutionary uprisings are again on history’s agenda.
In response to the drive to even further subject the entire population under the yoke of America’s oligarchy, the working class must fight for its social interests with equal ruthlessness and determination. It must adopt and fight for a socialist program, including the expropriation of the wealth piled up by the ruling elite, to meet immediate and pressing social needs: to provide urgently needed medical care to all those affected by the addiction epidemic, to make whole all those whose lives have been upended by Hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Irma, and to ensure that all people are provided with employment and free, high-quality health care, education and housing.
The Spanish Senate formally voted 214-47 on Friday to authorize the implementation of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, suspending parliamentary rule in Catalonia. It handed Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy full powers to suspend the Catalan regional government, proceed with punitive measures outlined in Rajoy’s October 21 speech, and impose an unelected Catalan government answerable only to Madrid.
As Article 155 was being debated in the Senate, where Rajoy’s right-wing Popular Party (PP) has an absolute majority, the Catalan parliament anticipated the outcome of the debate and voted to declare independence. Thousands of protesters surrounded Catalan government buildings in Barcelona Friday night amid calls to defend the newly-declared republic.
Yesterday’s events mark a historic collapse of democratic forms of rule in Western Europe and a return to authoritarianism with far-reaching implications. The Spanish political set-up created 39 years ago, in the so-called Transition from the 1939-1978 fascist regime established by General Francisco Franco, has burst asunder. With the full support of the European Union and Washington, Madrid aims to police 7 million Catalans through unilateral decrees, backed by the police and army, while holding in reserve the invocation of Article 116 to impose a nationwide state of emergency.
The defense of the basic interests of the working class requires determined political opposition to repression in Catalonia. The danger of a bloodbath is looming, as Madrid moves to enforce the diktat of the European financial aristocracy on the workers in Catalonia and across Spain.
EU Council President Donald Tusk reiterated the European powers’ support for the implementation of Article 155 yesterday, writing on Twitter:
“For [the] EU nothing changes. Spain remains our only interlocutor.”
Tusk cynically added that he hoped Madrid would use “force of argument, not argument of force.”
In a speech urging the Senate to adopt Article 155, Rajoy declared that now “there is no alternative.” He continued:
“The only thing that can and therefore must be done in such a situation is to use the law to enforce the law.” He said his government had four goals: to “return to legality” in Catalonia, “win back the people’s confidence,” “maintain the high levels of economic growth and job creation of recent times,” and “organize elections in a situation of institutional normality.”
“What we must protect the Catalans from is not Spanish imperialism, as they claim, but from a minority that in an intolerant fashion is acting as if it owned Catalonia,” Rajoy declared.
Rajoy’s brief for dictatorship in Catalonia is a pack of lies. His claim that there is no alternative to invoking Article 155, which only a few weeks ago was widely described as the “nuclear option” in the Spanish press, is absurd. Scotland held an independence referendum in Britain in 2014, and Quebec held an independence referendum in Canada in 1980 and 1995. But neither London nor Ottawa sent tens of thousands of paramilitary police to assault peaceful voters, as did Rajoy during the October 1 Catalan independence referendum. Nor did they forcibly preempt moves towards secession.
Responsibility for the crisis lies squarely with Madrid, which, after its brutal crackdown on the October 1 referendum, has consistently sought to inflame the conflict. On October 19, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont confirmed that he had suspended moves toward independence and appealed to Madrid for dialogue. With its unilateral rejection of this appeal, its arbitrary imprisonment of Catalan nationalist politicians Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, and its moves to invoke Article 155, Madrid forced the Catalan nationalists in Barcelona on the path to a declaration of independence.
Rajoy’s calls for “legality,” “elections” and “institutional normality” are a cynical ruse, presenting the drive to dictatorship as the defense of democracy and constitutional rule. Madrid is well aware that it can impose its agenda only by means of state terror and repression. According to Rajoy’s October 21 speech, he aims to seize control of the Catalan budget, government, education system, police force and public media.
These measures will provoke deep opposition among millions of people, and Madrid is preparing to forcibly repress it. The paramilitary Guardia Civil, the Arapiles motorized infantry regiment and other army units stationed in neighboring regions are all preparing to intervene in Catalonia.
As protests and calls for civil disobedience spread, Madrid is preparing “express” mass sackings of Catalan public sector workers. Yesterday, the Spanish Senate approved measures allowing Madrid to discipline workers “without recourse to previous mechanisms regarding disciplinary measures.”
At a press conference Friday night, after a meeting of his ministerial cabinet to discuss the Senate vote, Rajoy announced the suspension of the Catalan government and the holding of elections on December 21. Madrid also confirmed that it would bring charges of “rebellion,” a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison, against current Catalan government and parliament members.
These announcements expose Rajoy’s claim that Madrid will organize elections in Catalonia as an Orwellian fraud. If his plans go forward, most of the Catalan political opposition to the PP will be in prison as these elections are held. Moreover, whoever was elected on December 21 would be seated in a legislature stripped of all power to legislate or name a regional government. It could only impotently look on as Madrid imposed its will.
The key concern of Madrid and the new Catalan government will be to continue imposing harsh austerity measures against the workers. Yesterday, the EU sent Madrid a letter demanding further cuts to Spanish public spending to reach a public deficit target of 2.2 percent of gross domestic product. Economy Minister Luis de Guindos and Treasury Minister Cristobal Montoro replied with a statement that they would take “all necessary measures to guarantee the fulfillment of budgetary stability objectives.”
The turn to authoritarian rule in Spain is an urgent warning to the working class. Decades of deep austerity, imperialist war and the promotion of law-and-order measures across Europe since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and particularly since the 2008 Wall Street crash, have produced a mortal crisis of capitalist rule. With tens of millions of workers unemployed across Europe, the ruling class is aware of explosive social anger. Its response when it encounters opposition is a rapid resort to dictatorial measures.
The critical question today is the mobilization of workers in Catalonia, in Spain and across Europe in struggle against a return to authoritarian forms of rule. Workers must reject all attempts to justify a turn toward dictatorship and military repression of the population based on calls for the defense of Spanish territorial integrity. The only progressive way to establish the unity of the Iberian Peninsula and Europe as a whole is the mobilization of the working class in a revolutionary and internationalist struggle against dictatorship and war, and for socialism.
The struggle to mobilize the working class must be undertaken on the basis of complete independence from and opposition to the entire ruling establishment, including the trade union bureaucracies and the bourgeois parties claiming to be “left.” Forces such as the CCOO (Workers Commissions) trade union and Spain’s Podemos party are aligning themselves with Rajoy’s drive to dictatorship.
Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias responded to the Senate vote by tacitly backing Rajoy’s call for Catalan elections, saying only that these should be held “without repression.” Adopting a neutral position as Madrid prepares its repression, he said,
“I believe there is a silent majority of Spaniards that is neither for unilateralism [i.e., the Catalan declaration of independence] nor for violence and repression.”
CCOO official Fernando Lezcano insisted that his union would discourage all acts of defiance of Madrid by workers. He warned,
“We will not give a single instruction that could lead to civil disobedience or to public sector workers carrying out actions that could be punished.”
Kurdish Democratic Union Party co-chairman Shahoz Hasansaid that his organization’s objective is to impose its system of so-called “democratic autonomy” all over Syria, and despite denying that this amounts to a de-facto internal partition, it’s hard to argue that it’s anything but. Moreover, the Syrian Kurds also just announced that they’ll be annexing Daesh’s former so-called “capital” to their self-proclaimed “Democratic Federation of Northern Syria”, though they plan to “legitimize” this land grab through what’s essentially controlled elections that will ultimately lead to the installation of a puppet government in the Arab-cleansed city.
The Kurds know that they can’t control their majority-Arab conquered corner of northeastern Syria, let alone the entirety of the country, without employing a method which deceptively seems to provide for ethnic equality, but which is in reality controlled by them behind the scenes, hence the cover of “democratic autonomy” to obscure the fact that they envision the “New Syria” to be a Kurdish-led “federation”. Ironically, they’re employing the same tactics that they falsely accused the Alawite minority of doing in supposedly running the country in secret behind the scenes, except this time the Kurds actually plan to do this and it isn’t a fake news conspiracy.
They’re presently working on perfecting their military-political strategies before expanding their model to the rest of the country, whether through “sleeper cells” or sympathetic “opposition” members who opportunistically believe that they could become more powerful stakeholders in this new internally partitioned system than in Syria’s constitutionally unitary one. While it’s true that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem did indeed say in late September that “autonomy” for the Kurds could be discussed after the defeat of Daesh, this shouldn’t have been taken to imply that “federalization” is in the cards given how vehemently Damascus has opposed this in the past.
In addition, Syria’s Information Minister Mohammed Ramiz Tarjaman reiterated earlier this week that “We do not consider any city liberated until the Syrian Arab army enters it and lifts the Syrian flag over it. This applies to any point of the Syrian map”, which seems to suggest that Damascus won’t negotiate with the Kurds until the Syrian Arab Army restores constitutional sovereignty to their occupied territories in the country’s northeast. However, this might be much easier said than done considering the approximately 10 American bases in the region and the US’ new “train and equip” program for the Syrian Kurds, both of which are designed to deter Damascus.
Barring any decisive action by either side, the most likely outcome is that the post-Daesh battle lines between the Syrian Arab Army and the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” will be frozen in place and enforced by a Russian-American agreement pending a comprehensive political solution to the War on Syria, though the divergent strategic visions between these two Great Powers and their on-the-ground partners will probably lead to this becoming an unresolved frozen conflict for years to come.
The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Oct 27, 2017:
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
First published by Geopolitka and Global Research, March 22, 2016
This is the second half of the interview of Prof. John McMurtry specially conducted for the 15th Anniversary of “Geopolitika” a journal of geopolitical and cultural analysis in Belgrade which will be broadcast on Radio Belgrade by the weekly show “Silen” on March 24 from questions posed by Biljana Đorović.
You have explained ‘globalization’ as transnational money sequences multiplying through societies and environments and devouring life support systems. Given the current paralysis of unifying vision, what is the social alternative?
You are right about the ‘paralysis of unifying vision’. Even philosophers reject any ultimate common value, while no party has a policy framework of alternative. The tacitly ruling morality is that everyone must compete harder to survive while economic systems are stripped everywhere to enrich the corporate rich. Business statistics show that the poorer half of the world has lost over 40% of its wealth in the last five years, while less than one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population has multiplied its wealth and blames ‘overpopulation’ as the problem. But with even the opposition repeating masking slogans like “neo-liberal” and “austerity”, there are no coherent policy drivers to reclaim the life capital base of humanity.
For years before global capitalism went carcinogenic, I thought Marx provided the unifying vision. But close examination reveals that technological determinism is the ultimate driver of society for Marx with no grounding life-value base to control it – Stalinist growth an extreme example of the problem. My research has concluded that life capital is the underlying ground eluding us, the real base of human society and development, and the only concept which unifies across social, ecological and organic systems. It is the unseen foundation of alternative.
What exactly is life capital?
Life capital is an objective and quantifiable process whose criterion is intuitively self-evident, but not yet understood – life wealth/capacity that produces more life wealth/capacity without loss and cumulative gain through generational time. Yet it is crucial to emphasize that life capital does not presuppose a private possessor. It refers to the collective life capital of the planetary ecosystem and all the socially constructed conditions of humanity’s provision of life goods which are reproduced and, at best, gain through time. All life capital, however, can also be run down by a life-blind economic system such as financial capitalism today. The collapse of the Easter Island culture is a paradigm example of this.
Can you illustrate how this ‘unifying alternative’ applies to our daily lives
Life capital is all that we continuously depend on to live and live well – breathable air, potable water, everyday knowledge, energy infrastructures, and life-serving regulations. There is nothing that is reproduced and developed through time that is not life capital, and there is no good of our lives not dependent on it to stay alive and well. In short, life capital is the daily enabling ground of everyone, even though the current system increasingly privatizes, poisons and loots it.
On the individual level, each one of us is also a bearer of life capital which we manage better rather than worse by developing rather than wasting or depleting it. On the micro as well as the macro level, our life capital is far deeper in value than what can be sold in the market. Yet we lack the concept for what ultimately matters to us, that without which every life is reduced, malnourished and dies. This is especially true for social and ecological life capital on which we depend without knowing it – for example, effective societal norms and infrastructures ensuring clean air, water, civil safety, electricity infrastructures, education, healthcare, income security, you name it.
The concepts of’ natural capital’, ‘social capital’, ‘human capital’ and ‘knowledge capital’ have recently become familiar in name. Yet beneath recognition, they are all reversed in meaning when they are assumed as merely means of making private money in the market.
What has gone wrong at the most basic level?
Money becoming more money for private possessors has become the ultimate ruling value on Earth by corporate market indoctrination, treaty commands and armed force. The transnational money-sequence system selects only for more priced commodities without life standards, multiplies more money to the richest, and depredates life capital at all levels. The ruling value system here would be laughably absurd if not so eco-genocidal in effects.
Wall Street has now modelled control of all the water and land in the world for future profit to its ‘investors’, and anything else that can be bought and sold to spike private money sequences. These are called ‘sophisticated financial instruments’ of ‘development’ and invade everywhere with state protection by myriad-article treaties in corporate lawyer code contrived behind closed doors. Every plane of existence from which more money-value can be extracted is in the cross-hairs of this investment regime with no protection for the social and ecological life support systems of the world and a-priori impunity for destroying them. The crowning irony is ‘austerity programs’ for the rest of society, but never for the obese and tumorous money party showing all the hallmark characteristics of a metastasizing global cancer system.
“With captive customers, the cash flows are virtually guaranteed. The only major variables are the initial prices paid, the amount of debt used for financing, and the pace and magnitude of price hikes – easy things for Wall Street to model.” Thomas Berry long ago said more directly, “corporate profit is the deficit of the Earth”. The money-sequence cancer system is how it works with ever more ‘freedom’ to hollow out societies’ life capital bases. Seek exception. We have lost our ultimate value ground without knowing it, and this is the reason people feel ever more helpless and meaningless.
What are the implications for public policy and recovery?
The first is that the life-ground of value is not created by the global market, and even less by individuals in money exchanges – the ruling delusion within which state policies and economic understanding are imprisoned. Our ultimate economic ground begins with reproduction of the planetary atmosphere itself, the oceans, earth’s hydrological cycles, soil cover, forests, fellow species, and so on – all basic forms of universal life capital ignored by the moribund model. So-called ‘Economics’ is geared towards eco-genocide without knowing it.
Yet life capital includes much more than the planet’s physical resources. It denotes all real goods that are reproduced and cumulatively advance through time, including scientific knowledge and human energy sources. Securing our collective life capital base to live by entails policy and regulation to prevent every kind of life capital being run down, wasted or destroyed as it is now. The binding Ozone Layer Protocol was implemented with success in 1989, but nothing binding since has been allowed by the life-blind system. Instead, the publicly deregulated and subsidized private money-sequence disorder keeps invading across borders with no recognition it is objectively evil as measurable by its laying waste of the collective and individual life capital of society, nature and citizens.
This is where moral and policy deciders must reclaim human purpose and life by binding life standards regulating international trade and investment. We have already significantly achieved these standards in public health and higher education, but these too are now undermined by the corporate profit driver that is alone protected and invades everywhere.
What role do the mass media have in paralyzing us within this carcinogenic system?
The mass media never question the global corporate market. It is assumed as natural and good as enslavement of other peoples and women once were. Mass homicide by system starvation and ecocide are indeed still called ‘development’. Problems of systemic life depredation and ruin are never raised, even as knowledge and information themselves are corrupted into what corporations can sell for profit. Instead, endless images, gossip and tales of fear, appetite and projections rule the public airwaves.
The latest designated Enemy like Putin or other stigma object is the release valve for pent-up hatred and frustrations – with total indifference to hard evidence as long as the story sells and the game keeps going. It is almost comical – the lead New York Times lying at will about the latest whipping boy – if it were not equivalent to a collapsed social immune system in the face of a macro cancer system. Some in the academy seek truth and stand against the perpetual big lies, but this resilient core of evolving human understanding is embargoed in the corporate media.
At the most general level, the mass media are governed by three final goals – selling corporate ads, glorifying money power, and blocking out ruin of life capital bases by the ruling disorder. These are the unseen general laws of the mass media across the West and its allies.
Professional sports exemplify the global corporate system as the unseen but ultimate propaganda site. The more money you get as a star, the more the money-sequence system is glorified, the more ads are sold by the contest spectacles, the more public attention and wealth are diverted from real issues, and the more the ultimate struggle for better life on earth is displaced by sweater-logos fiercely competing for external money prizes.
Big-money sports are a media allegory of the system. Unending battle cries of “everything is at stake here” are the hysteria of the money-driven forces displacing all that really matters to our lives and the future of life on Earth. Even if a real public issue is allowed into the spectacle-sales agenda, like climate destabilization, it too is converted by corporate media into saleable profit opportunities and false images of collective action. The rising cataclysmic storm, sea-rise and weather extremes are themselves euphemized as ‘climate change’, and only market solutions are reported and promoted. No binding policy reduction is made, and ecocidal trends are not connected back to the system as common cause.
The media are also now controlled by monopolies which defund investigative journalism and increasingly strip newspapers for quick cash to their stockholders. Reduced to ad vehicles and infotainment, the media follow one underlying law of meaning. The truth is what sells. The only ‘free’ agency left is the money party behind myriad front names and business lobbies buying elections and minting laws beneath public accountability or glare of publicity on any step.
Yet it is not only the mass media that avert their attention from the objective destruction of life capital bases. There are state propaganda machines abroad like the US ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ and George Soros leveraging billions made from attacking sovereign currencies who together destabilize countries where the transnational media are not yet in control – as in Ukraine before the fascist coup, or the most progressive Latin American countries, or countless other victim societies like Serbia, now on the line for a new US-controlled media empire.
Meanwhile in the background once independent scholarly journals are all bought up by transnational corporations selecting and monopolizing academic knowledge for proprietary profit while bankrupting university libraries with multiplied book and subscription costs for the creations of faculty and scholarly referees paid nothing. Is there any limit to the invasion of even independent original research and dissemination?
Yet even the best known theorists blinker out the occupation. German social philosopher and scientist, Jurgen Habermas rules out any alternative economic order to the global market a-priori. The dominant American justice theories of Rawls and Nozick cannot get beyond self-maximizing agents in a social void with no life capital bases. Even socialist theory and doctrine provide little or no life-grounded analysis and policies for recovery.
What about post-modernism with thinkers like Foucault, Baudrillard and Lyotard who have exposed the inhuman in our institutions and language?
They express the problem by their abhorrence of any objective grounding structure or any universal life value. They proclaim the liberated, the particular and the insurgent in labyrinthine theories while ignoring the actual global command system and any alternative to it. Deleuze and Bourdieu may loathe capitalism, but they have no conception of humanity’s universal life necessities as a grounding step to agreement and resistance. Indeed, any grounding in bonding values across differences is denounced as prescriptive or “terrorist universals”.
Organising principles which bridge from the past through the present to the future by objective common life interests, like universal human life necessities, are effectively out of bounds. Never have integrating life coordinates been more stripped away in theory and practice at once. This is the ultimate crisis – the abandonment of life-coherent reason across domains. As a result, the locked paradigm of liquid mechanics goes on being mapped onto the living world. Not even ecologists connect life-destructive trends back to their common cause. They presuppose the global market system a-priori. Wall Street and NATO meanwhile keep advancing the private money-command system under mutating big lies – as Serbia knows well. After the ‘shock therapy’ of Wall-Street financial ruin and the 78-day bombing to enforce socialist Yugoslavia’s destruction perorated by the show trial of the prior president, most people became afraid and servile to survive. A global terror system is built in beneath consciousness of it.
Where is there hope for countervailing understanding and action?
No system of life-blind oppression works for long once people awake to their common life bases and the enemy system subjugating and destroying them. Yugoslavia led the world in effective struggle against Nazism and in society-rebuilding afterwards across the extremest ethnic and political divides. In the first stage, the enemy was clear by the Nazis’ armed invasion of another state, and the world’s then-greatest military machine was defeated by anti-fascist forces. But the second stage of building an ethnically unified socialist formation was even more impressive to outside observers – at least those caring about humanity’s future.
Yugoslavia’s democratically socialist example inspired me and countless others a generation ago. Worker forces fought back fascist invasion, won, and overcame past divisions in a social state against seemingly impossible odds. Nazism was the clearly evil system to defeat. Yet today’s financial fascism is becoming arguably more life-destructive overall. Here as always, life-grounded understanding of the situation leads effective response to it. Correct me if I am wrong. But it seems that every good step taken in this war against fascism and the non-Stalinist socialist state afterwards was for collective life capital defence and advance.
Can you give some examples of life capital meaning and application to steer by?
A paradigm example is herds of livestock. Their life capital continues so long as they reproduce or gain in collective life capacity of yield in meat, milk-production, pull-power, and hide material, all quantifiable through time. The same can be said in more advanced meaning without animals involved of socially constructed and regulated life capital formations today –public literacy and health systems, clean air and water, electric-light access, recycling garbage and sewage systems, life security in body and speech, book and film libraries, ecological integrity including noise bylaws, biodiverse pathways and surroundings. We find life capital meaning most incisively when we consider our lives without any of them.
Public spending now increasingly going to serve and subsidize the private money-sequence system at every level is, in contrast, the major financial prop of the disorder attacking our life capital bases. Every public investment should be bound by capital standards instead, not only in public health and education, but in ensuring every enterprise is steered to life-coherent technology and regulation by licensing and taxing commodities accordingly.
The life capital base of developed societies is already very evolved beneath market phenomena without connective understanding. Our problem is that no unifying comprehension connects across ecological systems to the means to live as human to applied technology through time. On the contrary, the global money-sequence system destroys life capital and support systems without stop, and never builds them. It has no real life coordinates at all. Life capital provides the long-missing link. It defines the life-coherent set-point of policy deciders at all levels.
Today we have no way out. Heidegger may seem to recover the lost life-ground by his famous notion of our “forgetfulness of Being”. But he has nothing to go on but the “home of language”, like Wittgenstein with his “language games” in the analytic tradition. Economics itself strips even natural language out. We have lost life reason and science at the level of understanding that without which human life capacities are destroyed over time. That is what life capital is in all its forms. “Being” merely mystifies and empties the meaning to pre-Socratic abstraction. We see this on the life-ground of Greece today – a burning example at every step of the transnational money-sequence program devouring the collective and individual life capital of an historical nation . Heidegger saw the Nazi version with no opposition. Today global financial fascism rules with the moribund abstractions of the academy still towing the line.
At the moving edge of the US-EU-led system of dispossession and ruin today, refugees now flee in the millions from the places that NATO and allies have bombed since Yugoslavia. EU authorities then demand that Serbia and Greece, already bled dry by the terror-backed financial system, manage the catastrophic effects landing on them. How do we recognise the moving lines of system depredation by objective measure? The life capital measure enables an objective and unifying meaning of life-value loss throughout – the losing of life security in need, of housing and nourishing food supply, of adequate clean water and sewage cycles, of accessible learning and knowledge, of public facilities and structures of production, art and environmental integrity – in short, the real goods of life without which human capacities shrink, suffer and die. If life capital is not at stake, then the issue of opposition may be diversionary, as in promotion of hate against poor out-groups. Life capital invariably provides the life compass of value ground and direction to guide understanding.
Do Russia and China have a role in stopping the US-EU financial and armed juggernaut expanding on all fronts?
With many others, I felt relief at Russia’s Putin drawing the line on the US-led transnational-corporate occupation of the Ukraine and reclaiming the traditional Russian territory of Crimea given away under the USSR by Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian. But such understanding is inconceivable within the US-led propaganda system. The inner logic and driver of the US propaganda empire across continents never stops: Blame the designated Enemy for what the US itself is doing as the reason to hate and attack it. Russia and China are no longer cowed by the propaganda line. A stop is being made to the money-sequence cancer system at its fronts of Eastern expansion – which is reverse-projected as always onto those stopping the march.
China’s “win-win” alternative of international development investment is also advancing without the US methods of war, destabilization and death squads. Public banking systems in place of a global financial cancer stem-celling from Wall Street are already established. New international development banks and initiatives are slowly advancing, China leads most successfully on the basis of having more US Treasury bonds and bills than the US can afford to have flooding the global market. Both Russia and China can defend themselves against military and internal attack unlike the always weaker victims helpless against aerial bombing and US-funded takeover from within. China and Russia’s power of veto in the United Nations Security Council as well as on the ground can stop the compulsive US-led aggression, bombing and civil war construction which is built into its “full spectrum dominance” doctrine backed by both US governing parties. The Libya genocide by NATO with Security Council approval has left a lasting impression. Russia and China are in some ways joining to stop the US-led world money-cancer system that invades, subjugates and devours life on Earth.
Yet Russia and China today show no alternative of life-grounded democracy and freedom from want and oppression. It is their armed force capacity and, with China, dollar power which stand in the way of totalized US-led empire and subjugation as it declines. China and Russia, however, have no evident life capital base they ground in to lead out of the global money-sequence end-game. China in fact has already run down and polluted its own life capital bases of breathable air, water sources and rivers, biodiversity, and minimal public life security for all, as with the old workers’ brigades now defunded. Both Russia and China lack developed constitutional rule of life-protective law.
Yet there are good signs – in Russia, investing in public pensions as a priority, repudiation of fracking and GMO degrading of ecological stabilities, and a bred-in-the-bone tradition of life collectivity. In China, a presidential war against corruption and massive green commitment and power production show statesmanship to lead. Most of all, public banking systems have allowed sovereign control over public investment, the secret to real economic development and non-bankruptcy for societies everywhere.
It is worth pointing out here that public banks were also the key to Yugoslavia’s success before US-led foreign loans and compounding interest rates over 20% prime financially broke the multi-ethnic country’s unifying social programs and life security baseline. At the same time, what Russia and China lack, Yugoslavia’s self-governing worker enterprises, democratic processes, and joining of divided peoples together by life serving public programs led the world as example. That is why Yugoslavia was marked for ruin by a still-secret 1981 Reagan directive. Nothing is so abominated and attacked in this ruinous private bank and corporate occupation of the world as collective life capital bases independent of corporate market money sequences accountable to nothing but their self-multiplication. The public option of life capital investment and advance can lead the way beyond the cataclysm.
John McMurtry is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and his work is published and translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author and editor of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his latest book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism/from Crisis to Cure.
Ilan Pappé is a historian, socialist activist, professor at the University of Exeter, and supporter of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). Of Israeli origin, he is a world-renowned scholar on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and has written numerous books on the subject, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge.
Pappé was interviewed by Alejandra Ríos for Left Voice, where this article first appeared.
Alejandra Ríos (AR): You’ve talked and written about the concept of homeland as justification for destroying the native population. What is the meaning of this concept and what are some examples of its use in other places? In what sense is it applied differently in Palestine than in other countries?
Ilan Pappé (IP): The context is the phenomenon of settler colonialism: the movement of Europeans, because they felt unsafe or endangered, into non-European areas in the Americas, Africa, Australia and Palestine. These people were not only seeking a new home, but also a new homeland. Namely, they had no wish or plan to come back to Europe.
The only problem was that the lands they coveted were already inhabited by other people. In most cases, their solution was the genocide of indigenous people. In two cases, the solution was different: apartheid in South Africa and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
AR: In your book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, you suggest that the objectives of Israel have remained the same since 1948. Can you elaborate?
IP: As any settler colonial movement, the Zionist movement is motivated by the logic of elimination of the native. In the period after the second World War, elimination is more complex and maybe less inhuman, but still drastic. The desire of the Zionist movement to create both a Jewish state and a democratic one means that there is always a wish to take over as much of Palestine as possible and leave in as few Palestinians as possible.
This is the background for the Israeli ethnic cleansing operation in 1948; an operation that ended with expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians and a Jewish takeover of 80 per cent of the land. However, the ethnic cleansing of 1948 was not a complete project. There was still 20 per cent of the land that Israel did not have and there was a Palestinian minority within Israel. The vision of a purely de-Arabized Palestine was still there, though the means differed.
The means included the imposition of military rule over the Palestinians in Israel and refusing to allow the refugees to return. The space was not enough and the opportunity to enlarge it came in 1967, but then the demographic problem emerged again. This time, the means were apartheid, military occupation and cutting the land into enclaves and Bantustans.
AR: You have described Israeli actions in Gaza as “incremental genocide.” What is the meaning of this term?
IP: “Incremental” means that there is no dramatic, massive killing of people of a certain race or nation. However, a strategy like the one Israel has been conducting since 2006 has led to what the UN called “the transformation of the Gaza Strip into an uninhabitable place” – so this is not just the constant killing of civilians that makes it genocidal, but also the destruction of the infrastructure.
AR: Do you think that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem on a similar scale as what took place in 1948?
IP: Well, the fact is, just in the Greater Jerusalem areas since 1967, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were transferred in various means – from massive expulsion or by moving their neighbourhood to the West Bank or by not allowing them to return if they left the country. After 1967, ethnic cleansing is more about moving Palestinians into enclaves rather than out of the country.
AR: You argue against a two-state solution on the grounds that it is not viable and instead are in favour of a bi-national state. What are your reasons for coming to this conclusion? How do you think a bi-national state could be achieved and how would it operate?
IP: The two-state solution is not viable for three major reasons. First, it only applies to 20 per cent of Palestine and to less than half of the Palestinian people. You cannot reduce the problem of Palestine in such a way either geographically or demographically.
Second, Israel created such a reality on the ground, in terms of settlement and colonization, that it would be impossible to create a normal Palestinian state, even if one were to accept this solution. The best you can hope for are two Bantustans: one in the West Bank and one in the Gaza Strip. This is not a solution.
Finally, there will be no solution to the conflict without respecting the right of the Palestinian refugees to return and the two-state solution does not respect this right.
AR: What has been the effect of the growing international criticism of Israeli actions against the Palestinian people? How has this affected the peace movement in Israel?
IP: In the last ten years, civil societies around the world had enough of their government’s passivity on Palestine. Therefore, they took independent action by supporting the Palestinian civil-right call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
The world governments are still not pressuring Israel to change its policy and therefore it is difficult to expect any change from within. There is no peace camp in Israel. There is now a small group of activists who are encouraged by the BDS movement and are trying to educate Israelis about the human and civil rights violations in the past and present. These groups from within will not survive; it is necessary to put more international pressure on Israel.
AR: What role do academics or intellectuals have in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine?
IP: A very important role. They can tell the story about Palestine that Israel wants to hide from the world. There is enough evidence, and today there are enough scholars using it, to tell the history as it really happened. We will need to deal bravely with this history if we would want to have a genuine process of reconciliation in Israel and Palestine.
AR: How important is the BDS campaign? What do you think it can achieve?
IP: Very important. It has two major roles: first, to send a painful but necessary message to Israel that there is a price tag attached to its continued policy of dispossession and colonization. And secondly, to galvanize world public opinion and activism around a campaign that would not let the Palestine issue be forgotten. •
The U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, stated on Thursday that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end, contrasting his previous comments in March declaring that the Syrian President’s removal was not a priority for the U.S. regime.
“The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson stated after his meeting with the head of the UN Envoy of Syria, Stephan de Mistura, in Geneva.
Tillerson stated he is unsure of how to bring about Assad’s end, but remained confident this would happen.
The Secretary of State would then take a shot at the Syrian Army, claiming they are only successful because of Russian airstrikes.
“The only reason Syrian forces have been successful has been because of the air support they have received from Russia,” Tillerson concluded.
The ambitious Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman unveiled a $500 billion project at an investment forum earlier this week in an effort to bring some serious substance to his Vision 2030 project of fundamentally diversifying his country’s oil-dependent economy in the coming decade. The proposal calls for a gigantic city called NEOM to be built at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba in the northeastern corner of the Red Sea, with the plan being for it to eventually extend into neighboring Egypt and Jordan as well. The Crown Prince promised that it would be a technologically advanced city with its own laws and administration, and it will also be free from anything “traditional”.
The latter remark hints that Mohammed Bin Salman won’t allow the Kingdom’s traditional Wahhabi socio-cultural “regulations” to be enforced there, which goes along with his other headline-grabbing statement during the event when he said that Saudi Arabia will “return…to moderate Islam” and “swiftly deal a blow to extremist ideologies”. Quite clearly, as analyzed in the author’s earlier piece this month about Saudi Arabia’s shifting grand strategy, a “deep state” conflict is indeed being fought in the country between its monarchic and clerical factions, with the former poised to carry out a “soft coup” against the latter as it seeks to “modernize” the country. This will surely result in some behind-the-scenes tumult in the coming future, if not overt destabilization, but the point of the present article isn’t to dwell too much on that tangent.
Instead, it’s relevant to have brought that up in order to make the case that Saudi Arabia is on the cusp of an unprecedented paradigm change that will likely see it recognizing Israel if the monarchy is successful in snuffing out the clerics’ political influence. Saudi Arabia’s Egyptian and Jordanian NEOM partners have already recognized and signed peace treaties with Israel, and Riyadh is known to be coordinating with Tel Aviv in crafting a comprehensive anti-Iranian regional policy, amongst other strategic commonalities that they share. Moreover, the secret meetings between Saudi Arabia and Israel over the years suggest that their relationship is much warmer in private than either side publicly presents it as for their own respective domestic political reasons.
Israel has always wanted relations with Saudi Arabia, though Riyadh has traditionally shirked away from this because it wanted to present itself as a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, made all the more symbolic by the Saudi monarchy’s custodianship over the Two Holy Mosques given the religious dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, if Mohammed Bin Salman comes out on top in his “deep state” “soft coup” against the Wahhabi clerics, then he can easily lay the “blame” on them for his country’s refusal to recognize Israel after all of these decades. Not only could he be interested in doing this as the ultimate expression of his country’s radically transformed identity under his stewardship, but he might be just as importantly driven by the geostrategic imperatives related to Vision 2030’s flagship NEOM project.
The Gulf of Aqaba was chosen not just because it would allow NEOM to spread into Egypt and Jordan, but also because of its proximity to Israel, which is promoting its “Red-Med” railway proposal as the perfect Mideast complementary component of the New Silk Road. Tel Aviv keenly knows that the Chinese are always looking for backup plans and transport route diversification in order to not be too dependent on any single connectivity corridor, and in this case, overland rail transit from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Eastern Mediterranean via Israel comes off as exceedingly attractive to Beijing’s strategists. Furthermore, China has fantastic relations with both Saudi Arabia and Israel, so from Beijing’s perspective, this is the perfect Mideast “win-win”, especially if the People’s Republic can find a way to insinuate that its possible financing of both the NEOM and “Red-Med” projects contributed to bringing peace to the Mideast.
In addition, there’s also the Russian factor to take into consideration, and it’s objectively known – though commonly denied in the Alt-Media Community – that Moscow and Tel Aviv are on excellent terms with one another and basically cooperate as allies in Syria. When accounting for the fast-moving Russian-Saudi rapprochement and Moscow’s envisioned 21st-century grand strategic role in becoming the supreme balancing force in Eurasia, it’s likely that Russia would be in favor of any Saudi recognition of Israel and Tel Aviv’s integration into the NEOM project because it would then allow the Russian business elite both in the Russian Federation and Israel to invest in this exciting city-state and the complementary “Red-Med” Silk Road corridor.
Seeing as how Mohammed Bin Salman is trying to purge the clerics’ political influence from the Kingdom, it’s very possible that Saudi Arabia will end up recognizing Israel in the near future and blaming its decades-long delay in doing so on the Wahhabis. The grand intent behind this isn’t just to formalize the Saudi-Israeli anti-Iranian partnership or to show the world just how serious the Crown Prince is in changing the course of his country, but to please Riyadh’s newfound Multipolar Great Power partners in Moscow and Beijing, both of which enjoy exceptional relations with Tel Aviv but would probably be reluctant to invest in the Kingdom’s NEOM city-state project so long as its connectivity access remained dependent on the Suez Canal chokepoint.
Russia and China would feel more strategically secure if Israel was incorporated into this megaproject so that its territory could be used for overland transshipment between the Red and Mediterranean Seas via the “Red-Med” railway proposal, which would then make NEOM infinitely more attractive from a logistics perspective for all sorts of investors. If Saudi Arabia doesn’t recognize Israel, then this non-Suez workaround is impossible and the NEOM city-state loses its grand strategic significance in the context of the Multipolar World Order, which could consequently lead to a lack of investment and therefore the potential failure of Vision 2030’s flagship project. As such, due to the economic-strategic imperatives associated with NEOM, as well as the geopolitical paradigm shift staking place in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh will probably recognize Israel in the coming future in order to guarantee that its city-state initiative succeeds and ultimately transitions the Kingdom away from its oil-exporting dependency.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
Featured image: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaking at the 2017 Moscow Nonproliferation Conference
Russia and the US have been adhering to the terms of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) since 2011, viewing it as an important practical agreement to control strategic nuclear weapons. By Feb. 5, 2018, both sides are expected to have met the treaty’s limits on strategic offensive nuclear weapons, which allows each side a maximum arsenal of 1,550 nuclear warheads and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers and bombers.
Not so long ago analysts in the US media were arguing for the treaty to be extended for an additional five years after it expires in 2021, i.e., to keep it functioning until 2026.
But a number of problems related to Russian-US arms-control issues remain unresolved, ranging from questions about missile defense to the prevention of underwater incidents involving submarines, and much more.
The proposal to extend New START for another five years and to draft a new START IV Treaty could gain traction if it were considered in isolation from other issues that powerfully impact regional and global stability. That proposal would be more worthy of attention if a genuine “strategic partnership” existed between Moscow and Washington – then, in the resulting atmosphere of complete trust, there would be no diametrically opposed approaches to resolving so many pressing international problems.
But unfortunately, nothing of the sort has been evident for many years. The relationship between Russia and the US is currently in a state of deep crisis. Washington has unleashed Cold War 2.0 against Russia, and unlike the initial phase of that conflict (1945-1991), this has taken on an entirely new and more dangerous dimension.
Naturally Moscow is ready to consider Washington’s official proposals to extend New START, but only if they come through official channels and not from the media or the ranks of scientists and researchers, because Article 14 of this treaty stipulates the correct procedure for entertaining such a motion.
What’s more, one could also say that from the perspective of ensuring global stability, it seems strategically dangerous to set limits that would be binding until 2026 on launchers, bombers, and warheads, and also to continue down the path of further reductions under some kind of new treaty (the Newest START), for the following nine reasons:
By 2020, i.e., six years before New START’s extended expiration date, the ratio between US ballistic-missile defense systems and Russian strategic offensive weapons will be 2:1, while the ratio between US missile-defense interceptor systems vs. Russian strategic warheads will even reach as high as 3:1 (and neither of these scenarios takes into account the Patriot missile system). The uncontrolled buildup of US missile-defense interceptor systems and the unimpeded expansion of their zone of deployment will seriously worsen this dangerous disparity. Relying on its advantage in ballistic-missile defense, the United States could easily launch a first nuclear strike not only on Iran or North Korea, but even on Russia or China, and then it would be sure to hide from any retaliatory strike under the cover of such an impermeable “missile shield.” The lower the ceiling on Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons and the greater the number of interceptors in the US missile-defense system that can deflect them, the more tempting it will be for Washington to launch a first, “preemptive” nuclear strike, on Russia in particular.
American tactical nuclear weapons are deployed in four European states and the Asian half of Turkey, and those could be used to launch a first nuclear strike or to amplify nuclear strikes launched with the assistance of strategic offensive weapons. It should also be kept in mind that American nuclear forces that are officially classified as “tactical” can simultaneously carry out both tactical as well as strategic nuclear tasks, depending on their mode of delivery – whether by tactical or strategic aircraft.
The United States uses heavy strategic bombers as part of its military exercises or as a “show of force” in Europe, Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Washington regularly violates the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Pentagon has already violated this treaty 92 times since 2001 while testing the effectiveness of the missile-defense systems of the US and its allies, by using as targets the types of short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles that are prohibited by that treaty. The US military budget for 2018 has allocated $65 million to create a new ground-launched nuclear cruise missile. In addition, there are voices in Washington that are arguing for a unilateral US withdrawal from this treaty.
The year-round, 24/7 Baltic Air Policing operations continue in the skies of three Baltic states, using “dual-capable” aircraft from the three Western nuclear powers that can carry either conventional or nuclear weapons.
The US adheres to a doctrine of “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence,” allowing for either a massive or a limited first nuclear strike against Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
Washington stubbornly refuses to come any agreement that would prevent the weaponization of space.
The United States and NATO are engaged in an unrestrained buildup of their general-purpose forces, which include heavy weapons, and conduct large-scale military exercises of an offensive nature in regions bordering the territory of Russia and its allies. Since 2014, NATO has expanded the military and aerial reconnaissance it conducts in immediate proximity to Russia by 400% and 900%, respectively.
US and NATO framework documents still include inappropriate statements about Russia’s actions on the international stage, and in terms of economics – illegal sanctions are supported that punish as many as 400 different Russian institutions and businesses, plus 200 individuals, which in no way helps to restore mutual trust.
Once the demands of New START have been met in February 2018, Russia will have effectively exhausted its options for continuing negotiations with the Americans to reduce strategic offensive arms on a bilateral basis.
In a similar vein, all nuclear states should be involved in a corresponding process of negotiations. First off, this should pertain to Britain and France – the primary nuclear allies of the United States, which have reciprocal commitments in the implementation of “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence.” When calculating how to balance the future nuclear capabilities of Russia vs. the three Western nuclear powers, the combined nuclear arsenal of the United Kingdom, the US, and France should be taken into account, in order to ensure that that does not outweigh the nuclear potential of the Russian Federation.
Western commentators are trying to spread rumors that the Russians have already made up their minds about extending New START. But that’s not so. No such decision has been made as yet. They are currently still thinking through their positions on this issue. That was the official Russian pronouncement on Oct. 20 at the plenary session of the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference.
The US military establishment will have to get used to the idea that it is futile to exert media pressure on Russia when it comes to disarmament issues and that any further efforts to make progress must begin with steps to restore the mutual trust that has been lost and to address the many arms-control problems in question that are impacting the strategic balance of power between Moscow and Washington.
Vladimir Kozin is a Ph.D., Expert Council member of the Russian Senate’ Foreign Relations Committee, Professor of the Academy of Military Science, former high-ranking diplomat, leading expert on disarmament and strategic stability issues.
First published by Global Research on August 17, 2017
Washington loves war. No matter who sits at the throne, the deep state actors including the military-Industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus, corporations, Wall Street banking cartel, the Republican and Democratic establishment politicians in Washington and of course, Israel who drive America’s war machine. For the voters who believed that President Donald J. Trump was to drain the swamp is in fact, in the pockets of the “Deep State.” Trump’s “Fire and Fury” statements against North Korea, the “military Option” on Venezuela and his stance against Iran’s nuclear program as a bad deal shows the world that the U.S. continues its war agenda even with a president who promised to drain the swamp.
To be fair, this did not start with Trump, but with his long line of predecessors who followed the same blueprint for world domination. The U.S. is the “moral authority” for peace and the spread of democratic values, but the truth is, America’s spreading “democracy and freedom” has been a global disaster. Trump is the latest President under the powers of the deep state. Since 1945, the U.S. empire has unnecessarily used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, killing more than 200,000 Japanese citizens according to various estimates. Washington attempted and succeeded in most cases to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments and even bombed more than 25 countries killing 10′s of millions of people in the process.
North Korea’s missile tests is a reaction to the U.S. and South Korea’s joint military exercises that has been conducted for decades in close proximity to its borders. In 1976, The Team Spirit exercises began with U.S. and South Korea forces until 1993 followed by other exercises including RSOI/Foal Eagle and Key Resolve/Foal Eagle series until 2014. KBS World Radio based in South Korea and other Western-based mainstream media outlets reported in March that the U.S. and South Korea conducted a training mission with South Korea’s F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets with U.S. Air Force B-1b bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons as a warning to North Korea:
The South Korean Air Force held a joint training mission with a U.S. strategic bomber, sending a warning message against North Korea. The Defense Ministry said Wednesday that South Korea’s F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets carried out combined operations with the U.S. Air Force’s B-1B strategic bomber in the Korea Air Defense Identification Zone
With a U.S. military presence in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with more than 28,000 U.S. military personnel, it’s amazing that people (especially in the U.S. due to the mainstream media) wonder why North Korea continues with its missile tests. North Korea remembers what happened in the Korean War of 1950 which the U.S. bombed and even napalmed numerous cities, towns and villages with the U.S. Air Force B-29s indiscriminately killing more than 20% of the North Korean population. If the U.S. where to launch a strike inside North Korea, 100s of thousands, perhaps more than 1 million South Koreans and the 28,000 U.S. military personnel would be killed in retaliation due to Washington’s reckless behavior towards North Korea.
Trump has even given the military full authority to the Secretary of Defense James Mattis and other military leaders to make crucial decisions concerning the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in recent months. On April 13th, The Military Times reported that Trump was fulfilling his promise to allow defense leaders make decisions on various war fronts:
President Trump on Thursday called the recent high-profile military actions overseas proof that he’s fulfilling his promise to let defense leaders act decisively without interference from politicians. “What I do is I authorize my military,” in response to a press question about the use of a massive bomb in an assault on Islamic State group positions in Afghanistan. “We have the greatest military in the world, and they’ve done the job, as usual. We have given them total authorization, and that’s what they’re doing. “Frankly, that’s why they’ve been so successful lately. If you look at what’s happened over the last eight weeks and compare that really to what has happened over the last eight years, you’ll see there is a tremendous difference”
Trump is not “draining the swamp”, in fact, he never intended to drain the swamp because Trump surely understands how the swamp operates. The world needs to realize that the U.S. war machine will continue its path until it can dominate the political, economic and social landscape in every region of the planet. Sovereign nations that resist the empire’s demands are subject to regime change, invasion or economic sanctions.
You don’t drain the swamp without any consequences. President John F. Kennedy once said
“I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds”
while Trump visited the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia shortly after his election victory and said
“But I want to say that there is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump. There’s nobody.”
Wars, invasions and sanctions will continue under the Trump administration and will continue with the next president, whether Democrat or Republican. There is no peace and real democracy as long as American presidents follow the same objective of the deep state. That’s a fact that the world needs to understand. Trump and any other presidents after him will commit themselves to the deep state agenda concerning both foreign or domestic issues.
JFK understood what was at stake with the deep state (although he did authorize the CIA to orchestrate the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during his presidency), but in all fairness, he did speak about the powers of the deep state two years before his assassination at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City before the American Newspaper Publishers Association on April 27th, 1961. Perhaps this was possibly one of the main reasons why he was assassinated?
The people of the world and sovereign nations who want to determine their own future can defeat the American Empire. Stop relying on the elected officials whose strings are being pulled by the deep state actors who have an agenda to dominate the world. Let’s face it, there is no change, no democracy, only a global dictatorship with the U.S. and its vassal states leading the world into a nuclear holocaust.
We can win the battle for the future of humanity by spreading the truth. JFK came to his senses and told the truth, but it eventually got him killed. However, truth is humanity’s best weapon against tyranny. As the American Empire continues to wage wars and destabilize governments, it should remember the lessons of past empires who collapsed under the same agenda of global domination. It won’t last. Truth, peace and justice will prevail in our lifetime, just don’t depend on a politician (in this case a businessman) who surrounds himself with people who want nothing more than war with nations who won’t submit to America’s demands. Sometimes the truth hurts, but that is the truth.
This is a rumination on lies — layer upon layer of lies — told by US intelligence agencies and other officials about what Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone pretending to be him, was allegedly doing in Mexico City just weeks before the Kennedy assassination. The original goal, it seems, was to associate Oswald, in advance of the events of Dealey Plaza, with the USSR and Cuba.
The essay focuses on tales told by Richard Helms, a top official of the CIA in 1963 who later became its director — and is based on a talk given by Prof. Peter Dale Scott.
Scott is the popularizer of the expression, “Deep Politics,” and a virtuoso when it comes to what sometimes seems like grabbing smoke — capturing proof, however elusive, of motives and objectives that could explain the machinations of US intelligence agencies — and then analyzing the residue.
Not all of the chicanery Scott describes is subtle. For example, in an apparent attempt to bring the Russians into the picture, someone delivered to the FBI’s Dallas office a purported audiotape of Oswald calling the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. That failed, though, when FBI agents decided that the voice did not seem to be Oswald’s.
Then, two days later, the FBI joined the subterfuge by falsely reporting that “no tapes were taken to Dallas.” Because of this lie, an investigation more than a decade later by the House Select Committee on Assassinations would erroneously declare that there was no “basis for concluding that there had been an Oswald imposter.” (The existence of an Oswald impersonator in the months before the president’s murder would in and of itself have been prima facie evidence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death.)
And then there was the attempt to set up a Soviet agent…
You will probably not be able to keep up with each tall tale, nor does it matter. They have a cumulative effect, one that explains why it is impossible to study these documents without coming away believing in conspiracy.
There is dark humor here — reminiscent of the television sit-com of the 1960’s, “Get Smart” — about a secret agent who was always telling one lie after another, blissfully unaware that each new lie not only undermined the last one, but any new one that came after:
Smart: I happen to know that at this very minute seven Coast Guard cutters are converging on this boat. Would you believe it? Seven.
Mr.Big: I find that pretty hard to believe.
Smart: Would you believe six?
Mr.Big: I don’t think so.
Smart: Would you believe two cops in a rowboat?
Would you believe that the US intelligence community has been telling us the truth all of these years?
Essay based on talk given by Peter Dale Scott at Third Annual JFK Assassination Conference in Dallas, 2015. (Produced by TrineDay Books, Conscious Community Events, and the JFK Historical Group.)
—WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent Cranor
(This is Part 3 of a three-part series. For Part 1, please go here, and for Part 2, go here.)
The CIA’s Obstruction of Justice in 2015
Now let us compare the CIA’s lying performance in 1964 with its lying performance in 2015. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, members of many U.S. agencies, including also the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the U.S. Air Force, and the Secret Service, withheld relevant information from those investigating the murder.[1] But to my knowledge there is in 2015 only one U.S. agency that is still actively maintaining the cover-up – and that is the CIA.
I am referring to the CIA’s declassification and release of a previously classified CIA study by CIA historian David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”[2] The essay is worth reading, and it contains interesting information on such matters as McCone’s relationship with Robert Kennedy. It is also significantly selective: it does not mention for example that McCone only learned late on the night of November 22 that “the CIA had known beforehand of [the alleged] Oswald’s trip to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City,” nor that as a result McCone “was enraged, ripping into his aides, furious at the way the agency was run.”[3]
Buried within Robarge’s discussion of John McCone and the Commission – a pertinent but hardly central topic – are a more important thesis statement and conclusion about the CIA itself. In the light of what I have just said about Helms, I would charge that both of these statements are false – so false indeed as arguably to constitute, once again, obstruction of justice.
The thesis statement on page 8 is that “Under McCone’s and Helms’s direction, CIA supported the Warren Commission in a way that may best be described as passive, reactive, and selective.” This claims that the CIA’s deception of the Warren Commission was a sin of omission. But no, the CIA was not just passive. Helms perjured himself, just as he lied again in the 1970s.
Worse, the article focuses on the failure of the CIA to tell the Warren Commission about its plots to assassinate Castro, which may very well have been relevant; but in so doing it deflects attention away from the CIA’s suppression of its own LCIMPROVE operation in October involving “Lee Oswald” (or “Lee Henry Oswald”), which unquestionably was of very great relevance.
Worst of all is the article’s conclusion:
Max Holland, one of the most fair-minded scholars of these events, has concluded that “if the word ‘conspiracy’ must be uttered in the same breath as ‘Kennedy assassination,’ the only one that existed was the conspiracy to kill Castro and then keep that effort secret after November 22nd.”
Fidel Castro Photo credit: Library of Congress / Wikimedia
Of the many things wrong with this sentence, the worst service to truth in my mind is the skillful effort to divert attention away from the Angleton operation involving Oswald, and to focus instead on plots to kill Castro. This is an old ploy dating back to 1965, following in the footsteps of old CIA veterans and friends like Brian Latell and Gus Russo. It allows a writer like Philip Shenon to quote from the Robarge study the old red herring question “Did Castro kill the president because the president had tried to kill Castro?”[4]
Public Attacks in 1963-64 on the CIA’s Operational Capacity
Some people have deduced, from the fact that CIA officials lied, that the CIA killed Kennedy. I myself believe only that some CIA individuals were involved, along with others in other agencies. As I indicated earlier, my working hypothesis is not that the killing was a CIA operation, but that the plot was piggy-backed on an authorized CIA covert operation that was not under secure control and may in part have been outsourced.[5] Some CIA actions before the assassination, notably the protection of Oswald by suppressing the reported allegation that he had been in contact with Kostikov, suggest to me that some members of the CIA CI staff, and in particular CI Chief James Angleton, may have participated to some degree in the piggy-backed plot.
At a minimum, we can say that the CIA, through its Oswald operation, was sufficiently involved in the facts of the assassination to have been embarrassed into a cover-up. We have to recall that in late 1963 the CIA’s covert operations were coming under increasing criticism and attack, initially because of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Operation against Cuba, a total fiasco, but now also because of the developing chaos in Vietnam, particularly after the assassination on November 1, 1963, of Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother.
We do not know just how aware the CIA was of Kennedy’s expressed vow to friends, first revealed a decade later, “to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”[6] But objections to the CIA’s covert operations were beginning, to an unprecedented degree, to be voiced in the U.S. media.
On November 20, 1963, the New York Times published a letter, dated November 7, that argued, as did some Congressmen of the period, that
“One of the very first steps … should be to strip the CIA immediately of all operational and policy-making powers and confine it to its original function – namely the gathering of information.”[7]
One month earlier, on October 2, Washington News correspondent Richard Starnes had published a blistering attack on the CIA from Saigon (possibly inspired by U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who was already preparing to be a Republican candidate for president in 1964):
SAIGON, Oct.2 – The story of the Central Intelligence Agency’s role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power….
Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA. “If the United States ever experiences a ‘Seven Days in May’ it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon,” one U.S. official commented caustically. [“Seven Days in May” is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.][8]
These complaints swelled to a crescendo after November 22. Exactly one month later, President Truman himself wrote in the Washington Post,
“I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency…. For some time, I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”[9]
As David Talbot notes in The Devil’s Chessboard,
“Truman’s explosive piece in The Washington Post, which instantly caught fire and inspired similar anti-CIA editorials in newspapers from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Sacramento, California. Syndicated columnist Richard Starnes, a bête noire of the spy agency, used the Truman op-ed to launch a broadside against the CIA, calling it ‘a cloudy organism of uncertain purpose and appalling power.’ Meanwhile, Senator Eugene McCarthy, another agency critic, weighed in with an essay for The Saturday Evening Post… bluntly titled, ‘The CIA Is Getting Out of Hand.’”[10]
And by the time of Helms’s testimony even McCone, the outside CIA Director appointed by Kennedy, “kept saying that he wanted to get out of the cloak-and-dagger business.”[11]
In other words, Helms’s motives for perjury in 1964, involved far more than the technicality that he had sworn an oath to protect the agency’s secrets. At risk in these crucial months was the preservation of the agency itself, or at a minimum the preservation of its operational capacity. The choice confronting him was not between two conflicting oaths. It was a choice between the survival of the CIA as he knew it, or the survival of America’s justice system and the rule of law as we then knew them.
Helms’s choice was unambiguous, as it was again in 1973, when he “falsely testified [to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee] that the CIA had not passed money to the opposition movement in Chile”.[12] He lied, at the expense of justice, to ensure that the CIA would survive. In this he would assuredly have had the support of Angleton. Angleton later testified to the Senate Church Committee that “it is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.”[13]
The 1960s and 1970s Conflict: Public State versus Deep State
In Dallas ’63 I argue that these two decades, the sixties and seventies, were a crucial period in American history, two decades in which the American constitutional state and its structural deep state (including the CIA) were opposing each other and struggling to see which power would prevail over the other.[14]
It is noteworthy that in 1973, when Helms perjured himself again, not only the agency’s but his own personal career were again at risk.[15] In December 1972, after the Watergate break-in, Nixon believed Helms “was out to get him;” and accordingly he banished Helms to be Ambassador in Iran. He then he gave orders to Helms’s replacement, James Schlesinger, “to turn the place inside out.”[16]
In The American Deep State, I argue that, by banishing Helms to Iran, Nixon had heightened a conflict between the two forms of power (the state and the deep state), a conflict in which he, and not Helms, would become the victim. I believe that Tehran became a new center for Helms’s machinations, in conjunction with the intelligence agencies of Iran, France, and Saudi Arabia.
In 1976, after it became evident the new president Carter would resume the efforts to trim the agency, Helms became part of an organized offshore network (the so-called “Safari Club”) of these foreign intelligence agencies, which resumed the covert operations (notably in Angola) that were being curtailed by the combined efforts of the president and Congress.[17] Then, in 1980 (in the so-called Republican October Surprise), CIA veterans combined with leaders of the Safari Club to defeat Carter’s bid for re-election, and elect instead Ronald Reagan,[18]
Given this evolution of events, I conclude that Helms’s perjuries significantly affected the history of this country. They were a vital part of an on-going process whereby, after the Reagan Revolution of 1980, the constitutional deep state was now subordinated to the needs and priorities of the structural deep state (including, but not limited to, the CIA). One of these needs, ever since 1963, has been to preserve the threadbare fiction that Lee Harvey Oswald by himself killed the president, and no one in the CIA was involved in any way.
How can we make the American people more aware that elements of the CIA lied about the assassination in 1964, and are still lying today? How are we to deal with the widespread climate of denial in our media and academies?
To pursue the truth about these matters is to position oneself outside the mainstream-supported structure of ideas. And we have learned from experience that there are severe limits to the amount of assistance we can expect in that pursuit from either Congress or the courts.
The truth, however, can be a powerful political weapon. So can justice. So I hope we will all continue to dedicate ourselves to this very slow, but undying and rewarding effort, to make truth and justice prevail.
Notes
[1] See Scott, Dallas ’63.
[2] David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol .57 No. 3 (September 2013), http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF.
[3] Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 224; cf. 239: “McCone kept saying that he wanted to get out of the cloak-and-dagger business.” The response of Thomas Karamessines, Helms’s Assistant Deputy Director of Plans, was to order that no more messages “to DCI [McCone]… too confusing” (Handwritten CIA record, “Document Concerning Name Trace Requests and Results,” NARA #104-10015-10013
[4] Philip Shenon, “Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up,” Politico, October 6, 2015, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197. I have described this suggestion that the assassination was a plot that “backfired” as a “Phase Three” story, following (but not in time) the Phase One Story that Castro (or the KGB) did it, and gthe Phase Two Story that “Oswald acted alone.” See Peter Dale Scott, “William Pawley, the Kennedy Assassination, and Watergate: TILT and the “Phase Three” Story of Clare Boothe Luce,” GlobalReseearch.ca, November 28, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/william-pawley-the-kennedy-assassination-and-watergate-tilt-and-the-phase-three-story-of-clare-boothe-luce/5313486.
[5] For my similar hypothesis that the 9/11 plot was piggy-backed on an authorized operation, see Scott, The American Deep State (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 133.
[6] Tom Wicker et al., “C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?” New York Times, April 25, 1966; quoted in James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014), 15; cf. Jack Anderson, San Francisco Chronicle, March 3, 1967.
[7] New York Times, November 20, 1963, letter from Harold W. Thatcher, of Forty Fort, Pa,; cf. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/04/rex-blows-collins-radio-cia-cover.html
[8] Richard Starnes, Washington News, October 2, 1963. As James Douglass points out, the Starnes story was discussed at a National Security Council meeting the same day: “The President then asked what we should say about the news story attacking CIA which appeared in today’s Washington Daily News. He read a draft paragraph for inclusion in the public statement but rejected it as being too fluffy. He felt no one would believe a statement saying that there were no differences of view among the various U.S. agencies represented in Saigon. He thought that we should say that now we had a positive policy endorsed by the National Security Council and that such policy would be carried out by all concerned.”
[9] Harry S. Truman, “Limit CIA Role To Intelligence,” Washington Post, December 22, 1963, http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman’s%20CIA%20article.html.
[10] David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard (New York: Harper, 2015), 569.
[11] Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 239.
[12] Melvin Allan Goodman, Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 286.
[13] Mangold, Cold Warrior, 351.
[14] Scott, Dallas ’63, 170-78. Cf. Scott, The American Deep State, 101-08.
[15] President Nixon had long mistrusted both Helms and the CIA, and was looking for ways to be less dependent on them. Meanwhile Helms was very close to former CIA officer Howard Hunt, now working for Nixon; and Hunt may well have been informed Helms of Hunt’s trip to Miami in April 1971, to recruit Cuban exiles for a new operational group, outside the CIA, that would be backed by the Nixon White House. See Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate (New York: Knopf, 1990), 113, 200-03 (“close to Hunt); E. Howard Hunt, Undercover: A Memoir of an American Secret Agent (New York: Berkley, 1974), 144; cited in Lamar Waldron, Watergate, the Hidden History (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012), 472 (“operational group”).
[16] Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: 374; Scott, Dallas ’63, 174.
October 27th, 2017 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauds Dr. David Kattenburg for his application for judicial review of the decision of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in a matter of wines mislabelled as “Product of Israel.” Kattenburg had originally filed a complaint in March to the CFIA demonstrating that the wines in question were actually being produced in the West Bank – a territory never attributed or recognized as being part of Israel proper. The CFIA ultimately decided that it would allow the wines to continue to be imported and labelled as “Product of Israel” concluding that the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) overrode Canadian consumer protection laws.
Although a wide variety of products produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank are available to Canadian consumers, the legality of their importation and sale — bearing the misleading label “Product of Israel” – has never been challenged in court. Israel invaded and has militarily occupied the West Bank since 1967, and has never withdrawn despite numerous UN resolutions calling them to do so. Following its 1967 invasion, Israel unlawfully established over 100 Jewish-only colonies, referring to them as “settlements.” Kattenburg appealed CFIA’s July decision, but his appeal was dismissed by CFIA’s Complaints & Appeals Office, so Kattenburg and his lawyer, Dimitri Lascaris have applied for a judicial review of CFIA’s decision.
Among other things, Kattenburg’s judicial review asks the Federal Court of Canada to declare the CFIA ruling on the wines to be unlawful. It also calls on the Court to declare that, insofar as “settlement” Wines are labelled as “Product of Israel,” such Wines violate section 5 (1) of Canada’s Food and Drugs Act, and section 7 of Canada’s Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act.
Given the press statements of B’Nai Brith and media reports in July, many Canadians concluded that the CFIA decision had been heavily influenced by Canada’s pro-Israel domestic lobby. The dismissal of Kattenburg’s complaint may also have been carried out under pressure from the lobby. CJPME President Thomas Woodley states,
“It is extremely disturbing that Canadian consumer protection laws are so flippantly dismissed in the face of domestic lobby forces. We support Dr. Kattenburg in his attempt to hold the Canadian government accountable on this matter.”
CJPME, for its part, recommends that Canada suspend the import of products produced by Israeli companies operating illegally out of the West Bank.
Royal Air Force drones and jets have dropped more than 3,400 bombs and missiles on Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria, an investigation by Middle East Eye has revealed, yet the British government maintains that there is “no evidence” they have killed a single civilian.
The vast quantities of ordnance dropped since the start of Operation Shader against IS in 2014 seriously undermines the claim by ministers that the RAF has not caused any civilian casualties in the three-year-long bombing campaign, and has prompted calls for an investigation.
The Ministry of Defence does not routinely release statistics on the numbers of weapons used over Iraq and Syria, but an MEE analysis has combined weekly updates of operations in the region and information collated by campaign group Drone Wars.
It shows that up to the end of September, UK forces had dropped at least 3,482 bombs and missiles in the battle against IS, including 2,089 Paveway IV bombs and 486 Brimstone missiles from Typhoon and Tornado jets.
RAF Reaper drones have also fired 724 Hellfire missiles at IS targets.
The figures are conservative as MoD updates sometimes do not specify the number of bombs or missiles used in a strike, and last night MoD officials admitted that a further 86 bombs and missiles had been dropped in recent weeks.
The weapon of choice for RAF jets is the Paveway IV precision-guided bomb, but they have also fired large numbers of the more accurate Brimstone missile, which was originally designed as an anti-tank weapon but has been used extensively by the RAF to target IS snipers and vehicles.
The government describes the Brimstone as the most accurate weapon available that can be fired by aircraft, and they are conservatively estimated to cost £100,000 each; heavier Paveway IV bombs are estimated to cost £30,000 each, and Hellfire, fired by the Reaper drone fleet, cost £71,300 each.
IS is in retreat in Iraq and Syria after a US-led bombing campaign that saw the RAF fly more than 8,000 sorties and kill more than 3,000 IS militants. A spike in weapons releases came earlier this summer, when RAF Typhoons and Tornadoes joined the coalition and Kurdish effort to liberate Mosul.
Islamic State regularly used “human shields” in built-up areas, but despite this and the scale of the ordnance dropped by the RAF, the MoD maintains it has “no evidence” that its strikes have caused any civilian casualties – a position now roundly rejected by defence analysts and opposition parties.
“Our armed forces are among the best in the world, so they will be among the most discerning and accurate when it comes to targeting,” Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, told MEE.
“However, it is, at the very best, implausible that our heavy involvement could not have caused civilian deaths. We must not knock our armed services, but, equally, the government has to be honest in its assessment of damage caused in conflict.”
The US Air Force, which leads the anti-Islamic State coalition, says it has caused 786 civilians deaths in the three-year air war, but despite saying the air war is the “most challenging fight in decades”, the RAF has made so such assessment.
Earlier this month, the minister of state for the British armed forces,Mark Lancaster, told parliament that the government “had been able to discount RAF involvement in any civilian casualties”.
The RAF says it takes all steps to minimise civilian casualties, but it has conducted more than 1,600 strikes in Iraq and Syria – more than any other coalition country except the US.
Reacting to the figures, military aviation experts and campaigners have said that it is no longer credible for the MoD to maintain that has not killed any civilians.
Samuel Oakford, a spokesperson for Airwars, a group that monitors civilian casualties from international air strikes in the region, told MEE:
“The UK’s claim that no British air strikes in Iraq or Syria have led to civilian deaths has always been difficult to believe.
“Based on the coalition’s own civilian casualty reporting, it is extremely unlikely that a coalition member as active as the UK would have not had a hand in a single civilian death.
“As the campaign continues into its fourth year and more data about British involvement such as this is compiled, the MoD’s claim is becoming increasingly absurd.”
Over the course of the last 12 months the focus of the air battle against IS, which the MoD calls Daesh, has shifted from the Iraqi city of Mosul, which fell in July, to Raqqa in Syria.
But MEE analysis shows that the overwhelming majority of RAF weapons released took place against IS fighters in Iraq with 3,000 strikes, while a total of 482 bombs and missiles were dropped over Syria, prompting fears of blowback in the UK.
“Turning a blind eye to the consequences of air strikes and pretending they are somehow now ‘risk free’ is naive in the extreme,” said Chris Cole, director of campaign Drone Wars UK.
“Unless we begin to understand and acknowledge the true cost of our ongoing wars in the Middle East, we are likely to pay a high price in the future.”
Zero casualties
Airwars, which works with the RAF and US Air Force to report suspected civilian casualties, says that at least 5,600 civilians have been killed by coalition strikes.
In July there were reports that Iraqi soldiers used bulldozers to hide the bodies of hundreds of civilians killed in the final days of the battle for Mosul.
MEE’s analysis shows that during the fight for the Iraqi city, RAF Typhoons and Tornadoes dropped dozens of Paveway IV bombs on IS fighters in the city.
However, the MoD does not have troops on the ground in the region carrying out battle damage assessment of sites struck by RAF munitions.
Instead it carries out the assessments from video evidence captured from the air, a technique that has been dismissed as ineffective by other coalition allies.
The RAF says it takes “all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties”, but Amnesty International has previously expressed serious concerns about the air war’s toll on civilians. In a report earlier this year, it found the battle for West Mosul had caused a “civilian catastrophe”.
Civilians were being ruthlessly exploited by IS, which had moved them into conflict zones, used them as human shields, and prevented escape. They were also being subjected to “relentless and unlawful attacks” by Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition.
A source in the RAF told Middle East Eye:
“Given the ruthless and inhuman behaviour of our adversary, including the deliberate use of human shields, we must accept that the risk of inadvertent civilian casualties is ever present, particularly in the complex and congested urban environment within which we operate.”
The source added that all missions were “meticulously planned” and there was no suggestion that UK forces have committed war crimes.
However, there are fears that by failing to fully address the issue of civilian casualties, the MoD is not presenting the full picture of Britain’s campaign against IS.
Iain Overton, the executive director of Action on Armed Violence, said:
“If the RAF can claim zero civilian casualties, then the argument for more air strikes stands.
“They can justify such by pointing at the issue of proportionality and IHL [international humanitarian law], they can claim that their kills are ‘clean’. Perhaps they are, but they don’t present the evidence to prove they are – not meaningfully.”
The MoD said in a statement on Wednesday:
“Only by defeating Daesh for good will we reduce the threat to us here at home. British forces have crippled Daesh since 2014 and the RAF will continue to strike the terrorists hard where they plan their campaign of hate in both Syria and Iraq.
“We have no evidence that RAF strikes have caused civilian casualties.
“We recognise the challenge faced by coalition pilots in close urban fighting against a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as human shields, but are clear that to do nothing would leave cities in the hands of Daesh brutality.
“We do everything we can to minimise the risk through the rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of our RAF crews.”
Last month, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (or the Ban Treaty) opened for signatures to all member states at the United Nations. The treaty is a product of sustained activism by civil society and key non-nuclear weapon states.
As researchers who study nuclear policy, we see this development as a landmark in the struggle to eliminate nuclear weapons.
The Ban Treaty would make it illegal for signatories to develop, produce, test, possess, use, threaten to use, or transfer nuclear weapons, among other restrictions.
Within days of being opened for signature, 53 countries have signed the treaty, and three have ratified. After signature and ratification by at least 50 countries, it comes into force.
The Ban Treaty was motivated by a clear recognition that the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons use and testing should be at the forefront of all discussions about these weapons. Dr. Tilman Ruff, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War testified at the United Nations in March:
“An understanding of what nuclear weapons do invalidates all arguments for continued possession of these weapons and requires that they urgently be prohibited and eliminated as the only course of action commensurate with the existential danger they pose.”
The Ban Treaty, therefore, represents a shift in nuclear arms control, away from talking about nuclear weapons in terms of security and deterrence to focusing on the horrendous consequences of nuclear warfare.
This shift is reflected in the language of the Preamble of the Treaty which highlights concerns that the “catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons” would “transcend national borders” and “pose grave implications for human survival.” The Treaty also posits that “complete” elimination “remains the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances.”
Canada abandons traditional arms control emphasis
An emphasis on the humanitarian consequences, however, is not unique within arms control. Other forms of warfare, such as land mines, biological and chemical weapons, have also been outlawed because of such concerns. And such humanitarian concerns have often guided Canada’s diplomacy in the past, as illustrated by its leading role in the appropriately named Ottawa Convention to ban landmines.
Not in this case. In seeking to justify not attending the negotiations at the United Nations, a spokesperson for Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, dismissed the Nuclear Ban Treaty as “certain to be ineffective” because of a lack of participation by nuclear weapon states.
Treaties can reshape behaviour
Even in the case of the Ottawa Treaty, many countries that deployed landmines, such as the United States, declined to sign onto it in 1997. Yet, the treaty did affect policies in countries beyond those that signed it.
Multilateral treaties can serve to unify the international community against those who use them. Chemical weapons use in Syria “triggered an unprecedented international response” and “led to the creation of an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons program and prevent future use or proliferation of these abhorrent weapons,” as the Global Affairs Canada website on chemical weapons policy explains.
Without a treaty in place, such a concerted global effort would be much harder to mount.
Step-by-step process at standstill
Rather than involve itself with the Ban Treaty, Canada has emphasized the so-called step-by-step process for nuclear disarmament. The Global Affairs Canada website on nuclear weapons policy offers “NPT universalization, entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT)” as “more practical and realistic options to pursue in the short and medium term.”
That did not lead to actual negotiations — which still have not begun. The step-by-step process isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Furthermore, arguments about what is more practical and realistic only distract from potential action. Nothing prevents Canada or any other country without nuclear weapons from pursuing both traditional arms control measures like the FMCT and engaging with the Ban Treaty. The latter is sure to open up several options to further nuclear disarmament.
Constructive participation in the evolving effort to prohibit nuclear weapons, regardless of whether Canada signs the Ban Treaty or not, is the only way to explore this space and identify fruitful next steps.
Looking ahead on nuclear disarmament
There has been widespread political support within Canada for being more active in furthering nuclear disarmament. In 2010, both the Senate and House of Commons unanimously adopted a resolution encouraging the Government of Canada “to engage in negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention” and “deploy a major worldwide Canadian diplomatic initiative in support of preventing nuclear proliferation and increasing the rate of nuclear disarmament.” The dynamic set off by the Ban Treaty offers a suitable opening for launching such an initiative.
In April of this year, Chrystia Freeland issued the following statement to mark the 20th anniversary of the entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention:
“Twenty years ago today, the international community was united in denouncing the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, under any circumstance.”
Isn’t it time for the same to be said about nuclear weapons?
From the outset, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has incorrectly presumed the stupidity of Africans and others who are concerned about the continent. To answer accusations that the U.S. uses its military to ensure continuing imperialist domination of Africa, AFRICOM has stubbornly insisted that its sole objectives are to advise and support the armies of African government “partners” and to provide humanitarian assistance. But we know the truth to be otherwise.
U.S. Army General Donald Bolduc shamelessly told NBC News:
“America is not at war in Africa. But its partner forces are.”
But even a soldier can recognize the farce. Former Green Beret Derek Gannon said:
“[U.S. military involvement in Africa] is called Low Intensity Irregular Warfare, yet technically it’s not considered war by the Pentagon. But warfare is warfare to me.”
The U.S. maintains two facilities in Africa that qualify as military bases. However, according to NBC the U.S. increased the number of embassy-based military missions called “Offices of Security Cooperation” from nine in 2008 to 36 in 2016. Researchers say the U.S. military now has a presence in at least 49 African countries, presumably to fight terrorism. Even if anti-terrorism were the actual ultimate objective, military.comhas pointed out:
“The U.S. has found some of its efforts to fight extremists hobbled by some African governments, whose own security forces are ill-equipped to launch an American-style hunt for the militants yet are reluctant to accept U.S. help because of fears the Americans will overstay their welcome and trample their sovereignty.”
“Researchers say the U.S. military now has a presence in at least 49 African countries, presumably to fight terrorism.”
In the face of Africa’s suspicion, the U.S. still sees strategic benefits to extending AFRICOM’s tentacles into every corner of the continent. In one case the Obama Administration sent 100 troops to Niger in 2013 to set up a drone base in a location where the U.S. was already providing aerial refueling assistance to the French. By June of this year, the number of U.S. military personnel in Niger had grown to at least 645, and by now there may be as many as 800 U.S. troops in that country. While the military establishment may believe that ever-deepening engagement of this kind is helpful to U.S. interests, there is a cost. Earlier this month four U.S. soldiers in Niger were killed in a firefight with alleged terrorist forces. According to at least one account:
“On October 5, about 30 Nigerien troops were patrolling in unarmored trucks alongside a dozen U.S. Army soldiers, among them Green Beret special forces. The patrol was coming from a meeting with tribal leaders and came within striking distance of the border between Niger and its war-torn neighbor Mali. The militants rode in on motorcycles and attacked the patrol with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, killing eight: four Nigeriens, three Green Berets, and another U.S. soldier whose body wasn’t discovered until two days after the attack.”
Implicit in AFRICOM messaging is that U.S. troops help African soldiers protect helpless Africans from an unwanted “terrorist” presence. However, a CNN report about the ambush in Niger states:
“Some of the soldiers who attended the meeting with local leaders said that they suspected that the villagers were delaying their departure, stalling and keeping them waiting, actions that caused some of them to suspect that the villagers may have been complicit in the ambush…”
“By June of this year, the number of U.S. military personnel in Niger had grown to at least 645, and by now there may be as many as 800 U.S. troops in that country.”
Military commanders who intervene in other countries should know that when non-combatant villagers have taken up the cause of any group — regardless of the group’s objectives — a military victory for the interveners is practically hopeless. Nevertheless, “[m]ultiple officials told CNN that the Trump administration is talking to the Nigerien government about a potential imminent U.S. military action to hit back at the militant group that killed the American soldiers.”
Under U.S. law, Congress has the opportunity to arrest any continuing reckless military engagement by Trump. The War Powers Resolution provides that under certain circumstances a President can deploy troops into combat situations, but there are periodic reporting requirements for a President as well as time limits on how long troops can remain engaged in conflicts without a formal declaration of war or specific Congressional authorization. Nevertheless, the Congress has a history of failing to curb U.S. military intervention in other countries, and we should not expect them to do it now. Notwithstanding the deaths in Niger, Africa is not regarded in the minds of Congress or the broader public as a place where the U.S. is at war.
AFRICOM has been confident of its ability to expand the U.S. military presence in Africa while flying below the radar because of its supposed advisory role. Its plan has been to use proxy African soldiers to engage in actual combat without worries of U.S. casualties and the attendant controversies and backlash. But the deaths in Niger represent an unexpected snafu.
“Congress has a history of failing to curb U.S. military intervention in other countries.”
While it may be true that on this occasion, the deaths in Niger faded quickly from media focus, and consequently from the attention of the U.S. public, there is good reason to believe there are more deaths to come. Africans are not stupid, but U.S. military officials are if they ignore the possibility that even the most humble African villagers passionately resent an ever-widening presence of U.S. military personnel in their communities. These humble people may lack the wherewithal to effectively demonstrate their hostility, but the recent killings in Niger with the suspected assistance of villagers evidence the possibility that there are forces eager to exploit African anger and confusion about the presence of U.S. troops.
If the death toll of U.S. troops continues to climb and AFRICOM loses its low profile, there should be no surprise in the Pentagon about its chickens coming home to roost.
Mark P. Fancher is an attorney who writes periodically for Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at mfancher(at)Comcast.net.
OK readers, you win. Yes, something is wrong with the Las Vegas shooting story. It is not only Tyler Durden on Zero Hedge today, but Tucker Carlson on Fox News yesterday. Carlson raises many pointed questions that do not have obvious answers. The investigation does not seem to have been handled in the normal way that such investigations are handled. I don’t know what it means. I don’t expect any official explanation. And I agree with you that it stinks.
I also agree with you that the combination of the presence of crisis actors and actual victims who were killed, although it is not clear whether from Paddock in the hotel or, as witnesses claim, from shooters on the ground among the crowd, is nonsensical. What is the point of acting out an attack when there are real victims, which there seem to be, at least a few.
And I agree with you that if there were 500+ wounded, some of them are bound to have died in hospitals from complications from their wounds, but we have had no such reports. Yes, I agree that the medical trauma personnel who gave their opinion that it is impossible that there were no deaths from wound complications are correct.
I agree also that the total number of claimed dead and wounded, a number approaching 600, is carnage far in excess of anything that the videos indicate.
Las Vegas is like all the other cases. We are given a story that is full of disbelief, but we are supposed to believe it. The print and TV media, except for Tucker Carlson, doesn’t depart from the scripted story. Remember the truck attack in Nice, France? Remember that there were security cameras every block of the street along which the truck traveled? Remember the orders from Paris to the Nice authorities not to show or release anything from the recordings on the cameras and to destroy the video evidence? Remember the Nice authorities accusing Paris of an obstruction of justice? The official story handed to us by the presstitutes never explained, or adjusted for, the extraordinary order from the French central government to the Nice local government to destroy the evidence. Why would such an order be given? Why did the order not raise a jillion red flags? What was being covered up by the order?
Remember, except for the case of alleged Boston Marathon bombing surviving brotherDzhokhar Tsarnaev, no alleged perpetrator of any of these terrorist attacks is alive to tell his tale, and Dzhokhar has been kept from the public and the media. Dzhokhar’s survival is itself a miracle as he was on two occasions in two different locations shot by police. Clearly, he wasn’t wanted alive to tell his tale.
Yes, readers, I know, there is no explanation why a rich multi-millionaire enjoying his life would gun down close to 600 country music fans. Yes, I know, there are not the requisite thousands of shell casings of expended brass on the floor in his room. Yes, I know it is not possible for someone to stay so long in a hotel room without room service noticing the accumulated arsenal or noticing days of non-entry by room service. Yes, I know, hotels have policies that day after day of “do not disturb” raises questions that require inquiries.
I agree with you on all of this, but they are not going to tell us. And by the way, has Tucker Carlson been fired yet, or had his run-away car crash at 100 mph into a telephone pole?
This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Presidents of the 52 Major Jewish American Organizations are leading President Trump, like a puppy on a leash, into a major war with Iran. The hysterical ’52 Presidents’ and ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu are busy manufacturing Holocaust-level predictions that a non-nuclear Iran is preparing to ‘vaporize’ Israel, , The buffoonish US President Trump has swallowed this fantasy wholesale and is pushing our nation toward war for the sake of Israel and its US-based supporters and agents. We will cite ten recent examples of Israeli-authored policies, implemented by Trump in his march to war (there are scores of others).
1. After many years, Israel and ‘the 52 President’ finally made the US withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because of its detailed documentation of Israeli crimes against Palestinian people. Trump complied with their demands.
2. Tel Aviv demanded a Zionist fanatic and backer of the illegal Jewish settler occupation of Palestinian lands, the bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, be appointed US Ambassador to Israel. Trump complied, despite the ambassador’s overt conflict of interest.
3. Israel launched waves of savage bombings against Syrian government troops and facilities engaged in a war against ISIS-mercenary terrorists. Israel, which had backed the terrorists in its ambition to break-up of the secular Syrian state, demanded US support. Trump complied, and sent more US arms to the anti-government terrorists.
4. Israel denounced the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal Framework and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed by 6 major states and UN Security Council Members, (US, France, UK, Germany, China and Russia). A furious Netanyahu demanded that President Trump follow Tel Aviv and abrogate the multiparty agreement signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump complied and the US is at risk of openly violating its international agreement.
Trump parrots Netanyahu’s falsehoods to the letter: He raves that Iran, while technically in compliance, has violated ‘the spirit of the agreement’ without citing a single instance of actual violation. The 5 other signers of the ‘Framework’, the US military and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency have repeatedly certified Iran’s strict compliance with the accord. Trump rejects the evidence of countless experts among US allies and ‘his own generals’ while embracing the hysterical lies from Israel and the ‘52’. Who would have thought the ‘hard-nosed’ businessman Trump would be so ‘spiritual’ when it came to honoring and breaking treaties and agreements!
5. Israel and the ‘52’ have demanded that Washington imprison and fine US citizens who have exercised their constitutional First Amendment Right of free speech by supporting the international boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which is designed to end the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and crimes against Palestinians. Trump complied. Americans may soon face over a decade in prison and complete economic ruin for supporting a peaceful economic boycott of Israeli settler products. This will represent an unprecedented violation of the US Constitution. At present, US public employees, like teachers in certain US states, are facing job loss for refusing to sign a ‘loyalty oath’ not to boycott products from Israel’s illegal settlements. Desperate American victims of the floods and natural disasters in Texas are being denied access to public US taxpayer relief funds unless they sign similar loyalty oaths in support of Israel.
6. Israel demanded that the US appoint Zionist fanatic real estate attorney, Jason Greenblatt and real estate speculator, Jared Kushner as Middle East peace negotiators. Trump appointed South Carolina businesswoman Nikki Haley as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Israel pushed for Ms. Haley, the first US governor to criminalize support for the peaceful BDS movement.
7. Trump went against the advice of ‘his Generals’ in his own cabinet regarding Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, and chose to comply with Netanyahu’s demands.
8. Trump supports the long-standing Israeli project to maneuver a Kurdish takeover of Northern Iraq, grabbing the oil-rich Kirkuk province and permanently divide the once secular, nationalist Iraqi nation. Trump has sent arms and military advisers to the Kurds in war-torn Syria as they attempt to grab territory for a separate ‘Kurdistan’. This is part of an Israeli plan to subdivide the Middle East into impotent tribal ‘statelets’.
9. Trump rejected the Turkish government’s demand to extradite CIA-Israeli-backed Fethullah Gulen, self-exiled in the US since 1999, for his leadership role in the failed 2016 military coup d’etat.
10. Like all his predecessors, Trump is completely submissive to Israeli-directed ‘lobbies’ (like AIPAC), which operate on behalf of a foreign power, in violation of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. Trump chose his Orthodox Zionist son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a callow real estate investor and prominent supporter for war against Iran, as his chief foreign policy adviser.
President Trump’s irresponsible pandering to Israel and its American-Jewish agents has caused deep unease among the Generals in his cabinet, as well as among active duty and retired US military officers, who are skeptical about Tel Aviv’s push for open-ended US wars in the Middle East.
Ten Reasons Why Military Officers support America’s Nuclear Accord with Iran
The Netanyahu-Israel First power configuration in Washington succeeded in convincing Trump to tear-up the nuclear accord with Iran. This went against the advice and wishes of the top US generals in the White House and active duty officers in the field who support the agreement and recognize Iran’s cooperation.
The Generals have ten solid reasons for rejecting the Netanyahu-Trump push to shred the accord:
1. The agreement is working. By all reliable, independent and official observers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the US intelligence community and the US Secretary of State – Iran is complying with its side of the agreement.
2. If Trump violates the agreement, co-signed by the 6 members of the UN Security Council, in order to truckle to the whims of Israel and its gang of ‘52’, the US government will lose all credibility among its allies. The US military will be equally tainted in its current and future dealings with NATO and other military ‘partners’.
3. Violation of the agreement will force the Iranians to restart their nuclear, as well as advanced defensive, weapons programs, increasing the risk of an Israeli-Trump instigated military confrontation. Any US war with Iran will be prolonged, costing the lives of tens of thousands of US troops, its land bases in the Gulf States, and warships in the Persian Gulf. Full-scale war with Iran, a large and well-armed country, would be a disaster for the entire region.
4. US generals know from their earlier experiences under the George W. Bush Administration that Zionist officials in Washington, in close collaboration with Israeli handlers, worked tirelessly to engineer the US invasion of Iraq and the prolonged war in Afghanistan. This led to the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of US military personnel as well as millions of civilian casualties in the invaded countries. The ensuing chaos created the huge refugee crises now threatening the stability of Europe. The Generals view the Israel-Firsters as irresponsible armchair warmongers and media propagandists, who have no ‘skin in the game’ through any service in the US Armed Forces. They are correctly seen as agents for a foreign entity.
5. US generals learned the lesson of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia – where disastrous interventions led to defeats and loss of potential important regional allies.
6. US generals, who are working with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to negotiate an agreement with North Korea, know that Trump’s breaking a negotiated agreement with Iran, only reinforces North Korea’s distrust of the US and will harden its opposition to a diplomatic settlement on the Korean Peninsula. It is clear that a full-scale war with nuclear-armed North Korea could wipe out tens of thousands of US troops and allies throughout the region and kill or displace hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians.
7. US generals are deeply disturbed by the notion that their Commander in Chief, the elected President of the United States, is taking his orders from Israel and its US proxies. They dislike committing American blood and treasure for a foreign power whose policies have only degraded US influence in the Middle East. The generals want to act for and in defense of US national interests – and not Tel Aviv’s.
8. US military officials resent the fact that Israel receives the most advanced US military weapons and technology, which have been subsidized by the US taxpayers. In some cases, Israelis receive advanced US weapons before US troops even have them. They also are aware that Israeli intelligence agents (and American citizens) have spied on the US and received confidential military information in order to preempt US policy. Israel operates within the United States with total impunity!
9. US generals are concerned about negotiating accords with China over strategic military issues of global importance. The constant catering and groveling to Israel, an insignificant global economic entity, has reduced US prestige and status, as well as China’s trust in the validity of any military agreements with the Americans.
10. Trump’s total reliance on his pro-Israel advisers, embedded in his regime, at the expense of US military intelligence, has led to the construction of a parallel government, pitting the President and his Zionist-advisers against his generals. This certainly exposes the total hypocrisy of Trump’s presidential campaign promise to ‘Make America Great Again’. His practice and policy of promoting war with Iran for the sake of Israel are placing US national interest and the advice of the US generals last and will never restore American prestige.
Trump’s decision not to certify Iran’s compliance with the accord and his handing the ultimate decision on an international agreement signed by the six members of the UN Security Council over to the US Congress is ominous: He has effectively given potential war making powers to a corrupt legislature, often derided as ‘Israeli occupied territory’, which has always sided with Israeli and US Zionist war mongers. Trump is snubbing ‘his’ State Department, the Pentagon and the various US Intelligence agencies while giving into the demands of such Zionist zealots as New York Senator Charles Schumer, Netanyahu’s alter ego in the US Senate and a huge booster for war with Iran.
Conclusion
Trump’s refusal to certify Iran’s compliance with nuclear accord reflects the overwhelming power of Israel within the US Presidency. Trump’s rebuke of his generals and Secretary of State Tillerson, the UN Security Council and the 5 major cosigners of the 2015 accord with Iran, exposes the advanced degradation of the US Presidency and the US role in global politics.
All previous US Presidents have been influenced by the billionaire and millionaire die-hard Israel-Firsters, who funded their electoral campaigns. But occasionally, some ‘Commanders in Chief’ have decided to pursue policies favoring US national interest over Israel’s bellicose ambitions. Avoiding a catastrophic war in the Middle East is such a case: Obama chose to negotiate and sign a nuclear accord with Iran. Tel Aviv’s useful fool, Donald Trump, intends to break the agreement and drag this nation further into the hell of regional war.
In this regard, international opinion has sided with America’s generals. Only Israel and its US acolytes on Wall Street and Hollywood applaud the blustering, bellicose Trump!
The Invictus Games, attended by Prince Harry and many celebrities in Toronto last month, overshadowed another big military story: a September 19 report in the Toronto Star that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has “cracked open the door to joining the U.S. ballistic missile defence program, [and] reversing Canada’s long-standing opposition in the face of North Korea’s new capabilities to strike North America.”
In view of past public opposition to missile defence, the “crack” in the door may just be a feeler to measure public reaction, as the Trudeau government, which has promised additional billions for the military, pursues a “hard power” foreign policy. But the idea of missile defence is deceptive.
Missile defence technology, which emerged after the Korean War, was initially envisioned to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) carrying nuclear weapons. ICBMs can travel at enormous speeds, so missile defence is most effective if it intercepts missiles just after launch or when they re-enter the atmosphere at lower speed.
In the past, the fear of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) through a retaliatory attack served as a deterrence. However, eliminating the means for nuclear retaliation through missile defence could actually provide an inducement to attack with nuclear weapons.
Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War?
Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and international security at MIT, says that missile defence increases the likelihood of nuclear war by contributing to the American military’s dangerous belief that a nuclear war is winnable, and that nuclear weapons can be used like conventional weapons.
Scarier still says Postol is that superior U.S. technology in the form of missile defence would force opposing nuclear weapon states to decide within minutes, with insufficient information, whether there are incoming missiles and whether to launch a counterattack.
Under these circumstances there is a high potential for accidental nuclear war, says author Eric Schlosser, who has written about the fragility and illusion of safety in his book Command And Control: Nuclear Weapons, The Damascus Accident, And The Illusion Of Safety.
The Star article states that there is “long-standing opposition” to missile defence in Canada, but Mel Hurtig’s 2004 book, Rushing To Armageddon: The Shocking Truth About Canada, Missile Defence, And Star Wars, extensively quotes former Prime Minister Paul Martin and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham supporting missile defence.
In the last months of his presidency, Barack Obama refused to take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. This means that within as little as six minutes, Donald Trump can launch a nuclear strike on North Korea, with weapons deployed from submarines surrounding the Korean peninsula.
The threat to use nuclear weapons, as Trump did in his speech at the United Nations recently, is a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, according to the advisory opinion of International Court of Justice. Intercepting missiles in space also violates the Outer Space Treaty, which was ratified 50 years ago to maintain space as a global commons for peaceful purposes.
It is a dangerous time. Canadians must challenge Canada’s willing participation in this madness.
Judith Deutsch is a columnist for Canadian Dimension magazine, former president of Science for Peace, and a psychoanalyst by profession. She can be reached at [email protected].
There has been no substantive discussion within the United States corporate and government controlled media as to why Washington is escalating its presence in the West African state of Niger.
News reports about the deaths of four Green Berets are exclusively centered on the notions of a “war on terrorism” which is now reaching the African continent. Subsequently the controversy moved into a series of allegations about what was said during a phone call by President Donald Trump to the family of the African American soldier killed, Sgt. La David Johnson, 25.
White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly defended Trump claiming the head-of-state acted appropriately in his statements to the widow of Johnson. Congresswoman Frederica Smith Wilson of Florida was later insulted by Trump after she accused the president of being insensitive and insincere in his dealings with the family of the slain African American soldier.
Yet the overarching question which was never raised was why should an African American be gunned down in his ancestral homeland conducting military operations for the U.S. government? Also why are African American politicians in Congress not challenging the imperialist militarism of successive administrations in Africa which have been disastrous for both the peoples of the continent and those in the U.S.
This incident occurred amid rising racial tensions within the country where Trump has spoken derogatorily about professional football players who kneel during the national anthem as a protest action against the arbitrary killings of African Americans at the hands of the police and vigilantes. The use of lethal force against oppressed peoples in the U.S. routinely goes unpunished providing incentives from the law-enforcement and judicial systems for a continuation of this same process of racially motivated state-sponsored and condoned violence.
Such a situation now prevailing in the U.S. serves as a moral basis for justifiable non-participation by African Americans and other people of conscience in Pentagon military operations in Africa as well as other geo-political regions. The escalation of military invasions and occupation have only worsened the social conditions facing nationally oppressed communities and working people in general since the beginning of the present century.
The role of Pentagon troops in Niger is part and parcel of the U.S. Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) strategy to dominate the continent on behalf of the financial interests of Wall Street. Formed in early 2008 under the administration of George W. Bush, Jr., AFRICOM was expanded during the two terms of President Barack Obama.
AFRICOM as its first full-blown operation coordinated the air and ground war against the people of Libya during 2011 where thousands of sorties were flown dropping bombs on infrastructural and residential sites resulting in the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of people, dislocating millions and creating the most unstable state in the region. The situation in Libya remains mired in humanitarian crises with thousands being trafficked through the country across the Mediterranean on a monthly basis.
In recent days in the aftermath of the deaths of the U.S. soldiers in Niger, the Pentagon has revealed some aspects of its military presence in the country. Although the Trump administration says its main pre-occupation is with curtailing so-called “Islamic terrorism”, these same “extremist” groups have been enhanced, armed, trained and coordinated in Libya, Syria and Yemen along with other countries experiencing similar imperialist-engineered military conflicts.
Framing the Position to the U.S. Public
As far as the official position of the Pentagon is concerned, an article published recently in Bloomberg provides a rationale for the AFRICOM operations in Niger and throughout the West Africa region. Under the guise of spreading “jihadist” violence by a host of organizations that are ostensibly influenced by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the people in the U.S. are being primed for yet another long term campaign on the African continent.
AFRICOM in the Sahel
The Bloomberg reports says:
“If there is anything to be gained from President Donald Trump’s disgraceful attack on the credibility of the widow of a U.S. Special Forces soldier killed in Niger, it’s that Americans are finally becoming aware of the expanding U.S. mission against extremist violence now spreading across the Sahel region of Africa. As Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford explained Monday (Oct. 23), the role of the U.S. military over the last decade has been critical: helping local nations defeat a variety of armed threats. These include affiliates of al-Qaeda and Islamic State, local extremist groups such as Boko Haram, traffickers in migrants and arms, criminal syndicates, and tribal rebels. These groups have different aims but often work together. Their impact extends beyond Africa, to the wars of the Middle East and the immigration politics of Europe. And with the Islamic State nearly wiped out in Iraq and Syria, it will likely shift much of its focus to Africa.” (Oct. 26)
These are the same tired arguments that have been repeatedly utilized since the beginning of the Afghanistan invasion and occupation in 2001. Nonetheless, U.S. and NATO forces remain in the Central Asian state while Trump recently announced that more troops would be deployed.
After 16 years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the “terrorism” which has been the reason for its existence, remains. Therefore, this purported “war on terrorism” can only be judged as an absolute failure.
This same Bloomberg post goes on to instruct the U.S. Congress on how it should approach this present danger in Africa:
“Congress can do its part by passing a new war authorization to avoid mission creep and give a strong legal basis for counterterrorism operations far away from the original battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq. Eventually the facts on the ill-fated Niger mission will come out, just as Trump will eventually lose interest in his feud with Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow. Ideally, both the Pentagon and the president will incorporate what they’ve learned into better strategies. But there’s no need to wait to address the danger of increasing extremism in Africa.”
What is most striking about these words is their lack of creativity. U.S. strategic thinking is apparently a “cut and paste” approach where older and discredited postulations related to military policy are periodically recycled.
The Questions of Uranium, French Imperialism and Permanent War
Niger is the world’s fourth largest producer of uranium, a key component in nuclear technology, particularly weaponry. Uranium resources are largely controlled by France which colonized the territory beginning in the late 19th century during the “scramble for Africa.”
Sarraounia Warrior Queen of the Azna People in Niger who fought French Imperialism in the 1890s
French military forces declared a war of conquest against the people of Niger in the late 1890s and were met with fierce resistance by the traditional non-Islamic Azna people of the Hausa who were led by their queen Sarraounia. After retreating into the forests amid heavy weapons bombardment by the French military in its Voulet-Chanoine Mission at the Battle of Lougou Sarraounia and her fighters continued a guerrilla warfare campaign against Paris for many years. The warrior-queen Sarraounia was never captured by the colonizers.
Areva, the French firm which coordinates uranium mining in the country, has a vested interest in maintaining its neo-colonial control over the country. Niger gained its independence in 1960. However, it remained within the political and economic sphere of Paris.
The current leader of Niger, President Mahamadou Issoufou, took power after a protracted political struggle in 2011. He inherited a country devastated by neo-colonial plunder resulting in enormous debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other western-based financial institutions.
Niger is heavily reliant upon the assistance of international finance capital. Consequently, the state is prone to economic, political and military interference by both Paris and Washington.
The U.S. is building drone stations in the country while cooperating with France in its military operations. The Economist magazine has described Issoufou as close friend of the West.
Therefore, as is the case in other African states, the continuing dependency on the West is at the source of the contemporary crisis. African states will never enjoy genuine independence and sovereignty until the people take control of the natural resources, land and military apparatus of the government.
Featured image is from WBUR while all other images are from the author.
Featured image: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev inside the holding cell of a federal courthouse. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
I have been asked many times why I have intervened in the federal prosecution of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man who was convicted and sentenced to death in the Boston Marathon bombing case where two brothers, on April 15, 2013, allegedly detonated pressure cooker bombs on Boylston Street in front of the Forum Restaurant that killed or maimed many people.
As I wrap up my career of fifty years as a member of the bar, including service as a public defender in state and federal courts, co-founder of an accredited law school, and chief public prosecutor in Minnesota state courts, I am apprehensive that my country might be entering into an era of judicial murder.
Judicial murder is the practice of designing a trial to get a guilty verdict, regardless of the facts, and a death sentence carried out. It has happened in many countries in all ages. It has been recognized as a threat of public justice by the United States Supreme Court in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45 at 72-72 (1932). Judicial murder is followed by corruption and destruction of society. The judicial murder of Socrates was followed by loss of the classical civilization of ancient Greece. The judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth, whether son of God or venerable philosopher, was followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple. The judicial murder of Joan of Arc was followed by loss of most English lands in France. The judicial murder of Charles the First was followed by loss of the free constitution of England. The judicial murder of Louis XVI was followed by 150 years of defeat, ruin, suffering, and chaos in France. Judicial murder in the Third Reich was followed by humiliating defeat of Germany. Judicial murder in the Soviet Union was followed by collapse of the Soviet empire. If the justice system cannot be trusted, evil consequences follow.
My active intervention in the case began when I assisted the Russian aunt, herself a lawyer, of Dzhokhar file pro se papers in the federal district court in Boston, asking that she be recognized as a friend of the court so she could present evidence conclusively showing, by FBI-gathered evidence, incorporated by reference into the indictment, that Dzhokhar could not have detonated the bomb he was supposed to have detonated. I proceeded in this way as instructed by the bar liaison officer of the federal district court and the clerk’s office. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote up this legal adventure in his column of August 17, 2015, in a way which draws from the judicial record, and portrays the scenario clearly enough. The link is this. Those unfamiliar with this case need to read that article.
The claim of the Russian aunt sounds fantastic only so long as one believes newspapers and does not pay attention to critical, undeniable facts gathered by the FBI, and the language of the indictment as returned on June 27, 2013, especially paragraphs 6, 7, and 24. A number of things have caused me to doubt Dzhokhar’s guilt.
The FBI crime lab determined from fragments at the scene of the explosions by no later than April 16, 2013, that the culprits were carrying heavy-laden black backpacks on Boyleston Street just before the explosions. This was not an evaporating investigation theory, but was incorporated into the indictment, was part of the government’s case-in-chief, and was never disavowed by anyone involved in the trial. On April 18, 2013, the FBI determined that the culprits were portrayed in a street video maintained by the Whiskey Steak House on Boyleston Street. Two still frames were used to identify the brothers Tamerlan, who was shot dead by police, and Dzhokhar, who survived, and was charged, convicted, and sentenced to death. A third still-frame from the same street video shows Dzhokhar, carrying not a heavy-laden black backpack, but a light-weight white backpack over his right shoulder. The very evidence used by the FBI, and described in the indictment to identify Dzhokhar eliminates him as certainly as white is distinguished from black. The FBI evidence of an exploded backpack is black and the FBI’s identification of Dzhokhar at the scene of the crime shows him with a white backpack. This exculpatory evidence was kept out of the trial.
What of the confessions attributed to Dzhokhar? The law has always known that, contrary to popular belief, confessions are highly unreliable, often contrived or staged by artifice, or otherwise false, which is why the law has long used safeguards to assure that alleged confessions are received only cautiously under proper circumstances. The alleged confession by Dzhokhar written in the dark on the side of a boat under which the boy injured from gunshot woulds was hiding is highly suspect. Moreover, if Dzhokhar was willing to confess, why was he hiding? The confession at sentencing was plainly enough scripted for him, and is not corroborated by what the law calls the “corpus delicti.”
But more troubling evidence exists. Dr. Lorraine Day was the chief of orthopedic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital for some twenty-five years. She treated many grave injuries, and is an impeccable medical expert. She prepared a decisive report, dated May 4, 2015, on the Boston bombing case, which she concluded was a hoax. She observed, for example, that photos of the scene after the explosions revealed no blood when it should have been visible everywhere, and that, when blood did appear, it was of a bright orange red Hollywood color, not maroon as real blood appears in real life. The Boston marathon case appears to be at least contaminated by crisis actors if not entirely a false flag event. The video of the man showing no trauma whose leg is purported to be blown away being wheeled down the street sitting upright in a wheelchair is a dead giveaway as to the presence of crisis actors. Any such casualty mishandled in such a way would have quickly bled to death.
The trial of Dzhokhar raises more serious questions. Mr. Tsarnaev was defended by court-appointed lawyers who did not do their job. His chief counsel had powerful exculpatory evidence available, yet she forcefully asserted that he was guilty in her opening statement, never used the exculpatory evidence at trial, and did not even ask for a verdict of not guilty in her final argument to the jury. Dzhokhar had no defense. As a lawyer with a half century of experience, it was painful for me to watch what looked like a show trial in which the verdict and sentence were assured in advance.
On verge of retirement, I have no interest in acquiring notoriety to build a practice. I have nothing to gain from coming to the defense of a person abandoned by law, the media, and everyone but his aunt. But my country has everything to lose from judicial murder in behalf of some government agenda. We must examine if that is the case and, if so, prevent it.
As a last hurrah as a lawyer, I recently filed a motion in behalf of three American citizens before the First Circuit in the appeal of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, asking that they be recognized as friends of the court, so they can show that, on the basis of facts actually of record before the federal district court in Boston, Dzhokhar did not detonate a pressure-cooker bomb on Boylston Street on April 15, 2013, as charged in the indictment. The government and major media of the United States have created such confusion and libelled the accused so foully that it is impossible for the average citizen relying on newspapers to imagine that Dzhokhar is innocent. Major media waged a lock-step propaganda campaign against Mr. Tsarnaev.
However, perhaps a turning point occurred on Monday of this week. Newsweek on October 23, 2017, reported, two years and two months after Dr. Roberts’ report on my filing in behalf of Dzhokhar’s aunt, Maret Tsarnaeva, that evidence might exist of Dzhokhar’s innocence. If other of the American media would join Newsweek in informing the public that there is doubt about the conviction, perhaps not only a possible case of wrongful conviction can be corrected, but also a case of possible judicial murder could be prevented.
John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X), [email protected]
The Trump administration’s proposals on the annual budget, the efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and restructuring of the tax system all point to a sad and even tragic conclusion. The poor will be poorer, dilapidated towns will continue to crumble, and crime will rise; but worst of all, our underprivileged children will be weaker, suffering from a lack of medical care and malnutrition with little or no prospect for better and brighter tomorrows.
The state of poverty in the United States, particularly among children, is abhorrent and scandalous, putting America, the richest and most powerful country in the world, in a shameful light. Successive American administrations are guilty of outrageous negligence toward poor children and have inflicted incalculable damage to millions who continue to suffer, causing a tremendous loss of human resources and productivity to the country.
The following heart-wrenching statistics demonstrate the magnitude of the problem. One in 11 children, approximately 6.5 million nationwide, live in extreme poverty (an average of $12,129 per annum for a family of four). One in five infants-to-preschool-aged children (4.2 million) live in conditions of foreboding poverty, compounded by the fact that this age is a time of rapid brain development. Black and Hispanic children are disproportionately suffering from poverty—one in three and one in four respectively—compared to one in eight for their white counterparts. If this is not the result of a colossal failure in the US economic system and its defunct policies, then it is difficult to think what that would be.
There is no part of the country that does not experience intense poverty from which children suffer the most. Here are some samplings: in Boston, MA, the child poverty rate is 26.9 percent. In Marion County, IN, 31 percent of children under 18 live in poverty. In Doña Ana County, NM, the child poverty rate is 39 percent; and in Cameron County, TX, the child poverty rate is a shameful 47 percent.
A more explicit case in point provides a most gloomy picture about the plight of poor children in this wealthy country. The state of Kentucky is such an example of the cyclic and greatly threatening effects of childhood economic deprivation to our general society. With 25% of their child population in poverty, it is common to hear that right down the road from an economically stable community is an area of deep impoverishment and scarcity. These Americans are unable to rely on the support of any community, as they are often assigned a stigma by those more privileged and must hide what little they do have from others who are equally desperate and hungry.
The children of these families suffer from developmental issues resulting not only from malnutrition but also from broken homes, lack of education, and the absence of any stable emotional base. The most saddening truth of the situation is that these children were born into a mentally, emotionally, and physically oppressive system. A report by a USA Today affiliate, The Courier Journal, found that these children of poverty could be aided by an Earned Income Tax Credit for their families—one of the very programs hit with funding cuts in Trump’s proposed budget.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer… Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities… students deprived of knowledge…their success will be our success.”
If this was his pledge, why is he cutting support from the very programs which sustain these ends?
By now of course we have become used to Trump’s hypocrisy and his disdainful policies which set the country backward while subjecting a substantial segment of another generation of youth to hopelessness and deprivation. Instead of giving these millions of destitute children every opportunity to flourish in an open society and contribute to the well-being of their communities, he is stifling their growth and making them permanently dependent on government aid as they continue to struggle in silent desperation.
Many of these children do not finish high school; they wander the streets, jobless and adrift, and end up turning to crime. Tens of thousands are incarcerated for petty theft or other minor misdemeanors. When they leave the prisons, many commit more serious crimes. Their prospect of becoming positive and productive citizens further dissipates. For them, the American dream is a living nightmare which is heightened by Trump’s ill-conceived budget that the Republican-dominated Senate brazenly passed a week ago.
Here is the glaring cruelty of Trump’s budget cuts. Over the next 10 years, $190 billion is being cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), and $616 billion cut from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). In addition, the cut from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare) is $21.6 billion. There is a proposed cut of $40.4 billion from earned-income tax credits and child tax credits.
The Brookings Institution’s analysis of the Graham-Cassidy Bill (which would effectively terminate the ACA) found that around 21 million people would lose health coverage through 2026. It is predicted that his plan to end subsidies for the Affordable Care Act – received by nearly 6 million people (over half of all people who buy insurance through exchanges) in 2017 – will cause premiums to rise for all customers, as well as foist unbearable out-of-pocket costs on low-income Americans.
Under the pretext of correcting fraudulence in such social welfare programs, Trump’s plan will eliminate significant funding from children whose lives depend on it.
Even further, his tax plan would greatly benefit the wealthiest Americans, only benefit the middle class modestly, and have no direct impact on the bottom third of the population, keeping the poor, poor, and creating even more poverty.
These notions do not only contradict his promises to lift the downtrodden from their daily misery, but only reaffirm his indifference to the plight of deprived children and his bigoted attitude toward the Hispanic and black among them, who constitute a majority. What most people are unaware of is that according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development rankings of child income poverty rates, the United States disgracefully falls in between Mexico and Lithuania.
Meanwhile, Trump insists on appropriating $1.5 billion to build a shameful wall along the Mexican border, defying the premise that the country’s greatness was made possible because generations of new immigrants contributed so much to the creative and moral fabric of our society.
Even though the final budget and healthcare bill may somewhat be modified by the House, the fact that Trump proposed such deep cuts speaks volumes about his disregard of the most critical segment of the population. Millions of poor children live in families that have little or no means to improve their lot, which has a significant impact on their growth and character. Here is where the billions of dollars should be invested, which could make a real difference in the lives of our precious children instead of being wasted on useless projects such as the Wall.
It is a choice that Trump and his Republican party which is in disarray must come to grips with. No American child should be left behind. That is something which bipartisan representatives of the American people fought for in 2011, and that is the humane principle that we must defend today.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com
In the last few weeks we can observe with anxiety how the developments dashingly have been going on along the Euphrates.
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) reported on September 15, 2017, on capturing one of the latest ISIS-stronghold in Syria, Al-Mayadin. The area of Al-Amar oil field was designated as a possible next direction of advance then. However, the Islamists damaged river crossing facilities in two points while retreating. This made it difficult to implement the scenario.
.
Current balance of power
With the support of the U.S. Kurdish military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) took advantage of SAA’s confusion and have established control over al-Amar on September 22, 2017, themselves. According to various Syrian media, the U.S. SOF in concert with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) even organized the transferring of ISIS-fighters from Raqqa towards al-Amar to achieve a 100% result.
It seems that the importance of the largest oil and gas field is beyond controversy. For example, the Jihadists were pumping out at least 25 thousand barrels of oil per day. The forthcoming outcome of the war in Syria and the negotiation position of the sides directly depend on the number of oilfields captured by the various sides. In this regard, a question arises on possible strategic initiatives of Kurds (the U.S. in fact) and of the Syrian Government in the struggle for oil and gas fields to the East of Euphrates.
To deliberately avoid giving publicity of the U.S. participation in this struggle, most of the top American media stubbornly report that the American leadership has no long-term strategic plan after Raqqa to be liberated from ISIS. However, it seems to be another fake.
Washington officially is going to continue providing full-scale support of Kurds in clearing the territories East of Euphrates from ISIS. Meanwhile, the main task here is not to stabilize the situation in the Deir-Ezzor Governorate as it may be understood from the official statements, but to capture as many oil and gas field as possible.
Talal Sello, an SDF official, confirmed they are proceeding carrying out the advance in Deir-Ezzor under the support of the U.S.-led coalition. Having said so, Sello gave us evasive answers on the real aims pinpointing main of them among which are providing aid to liberated people, civil protection, and reconciliation between Syrian Kurds and Turkey. He didn’t comment on how the Kurdish advance towards Syrian-Iraqi border might intercede conflicting parties.
The former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey James F. Jeffrey supposes once Raqqa has been liberated, the United States should continue the deployment of the U.S. Special Forces including military training and liaison detachments to support SDF. The option of arming the FSA must stay on the table and the White House should facilitate reconciliation between Turkey and the YPG (and potentially the PKK).
In its turn, Center for Strategic for International Studies went even further, stating that the U.S. authorities should, first, back Kurdish march towards the Euphrates River Valley and second, U.S. forces should partner with local Sunni tribes located in that area.
An interesting opinion of Washington’s plans was unwittingly expressed by Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster. The representative of the president emphasized one of Administration’s chief objectives is to block Iran and Hezbollah from consolidating their gains in the eastern regions of Syria. He declined to comment the way the task to weaken Iranian influence to be implemented.
Naturally, the support of the Kurds by the U.S. could not help but arouse resentment among various regional leaders. Thus, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the United States would provide all possible resistance to Iran and prevent Assad’s troops from regaining control over the Syrian-Iraqi border. Turkish President Erdogan has also repeatedly spoken out against the strengthening of the Kurds.
Confrontation in the East of Euphrates is most likely entering the active phase. The situation will continue to escalate. While the Government of Syria is seeking to recover its land, the U.S. Administration is striving to play a Kurdish card in hopes for medium-to-long-term perspectives on energy policies. The desire to capture Al-Amar only indicates that a major battle in the political arena is yet to come. The energy companies will be playing a far-reaching presence.
Sophie Mangal is special investigative correspondent at Inside Syria Media Center where this article and all its images were originally published.
The composition of the labour movement has fundamentally changed over the last twenty years. This article reviews the dramatic changes in public and private sector unionization and some surprising differences that have emerged between Ontario and the rest of Canada. Potential for growth is possible, even in the public sector.
Ontario has 1.3 million public sector workers and currently 943,000 of them are covered by a union. That means that 72.2% of public sector employees have union coverage.
Since 1997, public sector union density has modestly increased from about 70% to 72% of total public sector employees. With a significant increase in public sector employment also occurring over that period, there has been an increase in public sector union coverage from 652,000 to 943,000 employees – about a 47% increase in 19 years.
That still leaves another 363,000 unorganized public sector employees. Assuming that 10% of public sector employees are management (130,000) then there would be roughly 233,000 public sector workers still to organize in the province. In other words, maximum public sector union growth is about 25% (assuming no further increases in public sector employment).
In contrast, there are still about 4 million private sector workers who do not have union coverage – almost seven times the current level of private sector union coverage. Consequently, there are currently about 50% more public sector workers with union coverage in the province than private sector workers in Ontario (943,000 versus 631,000).
Union coverage in Ontario as a whole is 26.7% – down from 29.9% in 1997. The current level of 26.7% is significantly below the Canada-wide average of 30.4%. If Ontario was extracted from the Canada-wide average, the gap would be even larger, with the rest of Canada at 32.6% union coverage. So there is almost a six per cent gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada.
How to Increase Union Density
As far as the public sector is concerned there are two basic ways to increase unionization.
1. Increase Public Sector Employment: Part of the low level of union coverage in Ontario is the low level of public sector employment in the province.
If Ontario had a similar level of public sector employment as the rest of Canada (10.56% of population instead of 9.41%) we would have another 160,800 public sector workers and this would add (at the current 72.2% union density in Ontario) 116,100 more unionized public sector jobs.
2. Increase the relatively low level of unionization of public sector workers in Ontario: Another factor depressing unionization in Ontario is that public sector union coverage is higher in the rest of Canada than in Ontario: public sector union density is just 72.2% in Ontario but it is 78.67% in the rest of the country excluding Ontario (and 76.3% across Canada if Ontario is included).
It’s not clear why public sector union density has been consistently lower than the rest of Canada, but if Ontario did achieve 78.67% public sector union coverage, that would mean another 84,300 union employees in Ontario. Raising public sector union density to the same level as in the rest of Canada is not quite so important as improving public sector employment to levels found in the rest of the country, but it is still very significant for improving unionization levels.
Private Sector Unionization
Surprisingly, private sector unionization is also lower in Ontario than the rest of Canada: 13.7% in Ontario compared with 17.6% in the rest of Canada (excluding Ontario).
While total private sector employee coverage in Ontario in terms of the number of employees covered is about the same in 2016 as in 1997, the rate of private sector unionization in Ontario has declined from 19.2% in 1997 to 13.7% in 2016. If the private sector as a whole had maintained the rate of unionization it had in 1997, there would be another 250,000 unionized workers in Ontario – roughly a 20% increase in total (public and private sector) union coverage.
For Ontario, a key issue is unionization in manufacturing. There has been a very large decline in manufacturing unionization since 2006, much larger than in any other part of the private sector. This is driven in part by a very steep decline in manufacturing employment, but, even more, it is driven by a declining percentage of manufacturing workers who are unionized: from 35% in 1997 to 20% in 2016.
If the manufacturing sector had maintained the 34.5% unionization level that it had in 1997, there would be another 100,000 unionized workers in Ontario. As manufacture has been the core of the labour movement in Ontario, this decline is, of course, a very serious change negatively affecting the bargaining power of all workers – public and private, union and non-union alike. More positively, there is clearly room to grow the labour movement in manufacturing.
More success has been achieved in the construction sector. Unionized construction workers are now almost as numerous as unionized manufacturing workers, having almost doubled their numbers since 1997. Employment in construction has increased significantly and the unions have kept up with the growth by keeping the rate of unionization steady (unlike most other private sector industries which saw a decline in the rate of unionization since 1997). Employment in “business, building and other services” has also grown quickly and the density of unionization in that sector has also increased – but it still remains at only 13.6%.
The labour movement has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years. There are still significant opportunities to grow public sector unionization, but a vital task for everyone is to increase private sector unionization. While the last twenty years have been difficult, some successes have been achieved and other opportunities exist.
Charts outlining the unionization trends in various Ontario industries are below. The numbers (drawn from Statistics Canada CANSIM 282-0078) can be accessed by clicking here.
Global Research’s work is critical in the face of mainstream media disinformation and we have managed to remain independent, acting as a vital information portal. Our financial situation is nonetheless precarious.
We have been able to develop our activities thanks to the contribution of Global Research readers.
For those who are willing and able, we ask you tosupport our projects by forwarding, crossposting, etc our articles, starting with this selection to get critical, unreported stories and information out as a means to challenge the tide of misinformation being used as a smokescreen for imperialism and war.
Although there are many factors that fuel the opioid crisis in the United States — including social injustice and economic inequality issues — Keefe’s thoroughly researched article is a telling reminder that the biggest drug pushers in the United States are legal ones: our pharmaceutical companies.
Our food system is in big trouble. It’s in big trouble because the global agritech/agribusiness sector is poisoning it, us and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. The Rockefeller clan exported the petrochemical intensive ‘green revolution’ around the world with the aim of ripping up indigenous agriculture to cement its hegemony over global agriculture and to help the US create food deficit regions and thus use agriculture as a tool of foreign policy.
The insurance exchange launch is a milestone in a process that, in the guise of “reform,” has been aimed at funneling billions of dollars into the coffers of the private health insurers and slashing costs for the government and corporations. In the end, it will leave tens of millions uninsured and others with vastly deteriorated medical services.
New research conducted in Germany supports the contention that we are heading for an “ecological Armageddon” – similar to the situation described by Mason. The study shows the abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years. The research data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany and has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture as it seems likely that the widespread use of pesticides is an important factor.
People getting MassHealth assume they are getting health insurance. In fact, if they are over 55, they are only getting a loan for health coverage which they must pay back from their estate (their home, their savings, their personal property) after they die. The process by which the state recovers the cost of your health care coverage is is called “estate recovery.” The low income people whom MassHealth is supposed to serve may thus be unable to leave the one thing they might have — their family home — to their children.
Featured image: Prince Salman bin Sultan, who is currently the Saudi Deputy Defense Minister. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
The Intercept has just released a new top-secret NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals in stunning clarity that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives.
The US intelligence memo – marked “Top Secret” – is arguably the most damning piece of evidence to date which gives internal US government confirmation of the direct role that both the Saudi and US governmentsplayed in fueling an armed insurgency which launched massive and well-coordinated attacks on civilians, civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of regime change. The NSA report is sourced to the intelligence agency’s controversial PRISM program – which gives the NSA the ability to sweep up all communications and data exchanged through major US internet service providers like Google. The memo focuses on events that unfolded outside Damascus in March of 2013.
One of the videos that Saudi-backed FSA fighters uploaded to YouTube identified by The Intercept as showing rockets launched on civilian areas of Damascus on March 18, 2013. US intelligence knew of the secret operation three days in advance yet did not stop it.
According to the document, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) wasordered to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the Syrian capital’s international airport by Prince Salman bin Sultan – a prominent member of the Saudi royal family tasked with overseeing operations in Syria as a top Saudi intelligence officer. The document further reveals that the “Saudis sent 120 tons of explosives/weapons to opposition forces” – presumably in the lead up to the operation.
The report not only confirms that the assault happened, but that the Saudi government was “very pleased” with the outcome: “Attacks against airport, Presidential palace and other locations occurred on 18 March,” the memo reads. Also significant is that the memo confirms US intelligence foreknowledge of the attack on a major civilian airport: “Reports gave U.S. three days warning about 18 March 2013 attacks (2 year anniversary of revolution).”
According to The Intercept, various news reports from the time confirmed significant attacks and damage from FSA-fired rockets upon civilian areas. Not only is Damascus International Airport Syria’s main civilian transport hub – which was used by millions each year before the war – but it remained in daily operation for commercial flights in March 2013, when Saudi intelligence ordered the attacks with knowledge of US intelligence.
A number of videos posted by Syrian opposition media on the day of the attacks purport to show rebel fighters firing rockets at the same sites mentioned in the U.S. document. The March 2013 attacks in Damascus provide a concrete example of the role that foreign powers played in the day-to-day reality of the conflict. A number of videos posted by Syrian opposition media on the day of the attacks purport to show rebel fighters firing rockets at the same sites mentioned in the U.S. document. Local media reports from that day described an attack in which rockets struck within the areas of the presidential palace, a local government security branch, and the airport. A representative of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted in a story the next day reporting the attacks, stating that they were unable to confirm whether they resulted in casualties.
“The Free Syrian Army targeted Kafr Sousa [an area of Damascus near Mezzeh] and they fired 24 missiles on Damascus airport… 60 people died in yesterday’s attacks, according to the Syrian Observatory.” [as translated by Zero Hedge]
And intense attacks continued through April and into the summer of 2013 according to international media reports from the time, also confirmed by a photo circulated through the AFP showing civilian passengers waiting in airport lounges the month following the initial March 2013 rocket attacks.
While the Saudi-US role in fueling the jihadist insurgency from the earliest days of the war in Syria has long been thoroughly documented, this latest leaked NSA bombshell report provides astoundingly clear proof that the relationship between the anti-Assad insurgents and foreign intelligence was even more direct, and existed earlier in time than most analyst and mainstream pundits led the public to believe.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was released one year ago from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, after 14 years without charge or trial. This week, the best-selling memoir he wrote from prison was rereleased — with the U.S. government’s redactions restored.
If I wanted to, I could put my pen down right now, close my office door behind me, and go for a long walk outside.
Today in Nouakchott, Mauritania, it is terribly hot and dry, so that would not be the wisest choice, but freedom is having that option. And freedom is choosing to write instead, not because my life depends on it, but because these days, thank God, it finally doesn’t.
A year ago this week, a U.S. military cargo plane touched down on this city’s arid runway and I was escorted, unshackled, down the airplane’s ramp and toward a group of government officials. With each step I pulled farther ahead of my American guards, farther away from the territory of bondage, and toward the territory of freedom.
Hours later, a car turned onto the street of the house where I grew up and I was swarmed by family members and supporters. And then I was standing inside the house, just a few feet away from where I sat one day when I was 11, listening to the radio as they announced names of children from around the country who had made it into high school.
Getting into high school was a big deal back then: There were few slots, and many who passed all their classes still did not make the cut. Those who managed had their names printed in the military dictatorship’s official newspaper and read over the air for the whole country to hear. My family did not even know I had taken the admissions test, because most students took it when they were 13, but I couldn’t wait. Standing in that room for the first time in 15 years, I flashed back to that moment, hearing the radio announcer mispronounce my last name and seeing the shocked look on my sister’s face.
But I don’t think my family was all that surprised. As a child, I always wanted to teach and write, and after school I would gather the neighborhood kids whose parents could not send them to school and re-create the lessons I’d received that day, using walls as my blackboard. I also had a minor compulsion for writing: I wrote things down anywhere and everywhere, and more than once I was embarrassed when friends found my intimate ideas scribbled in the margins of my schoolbooks.
Mohamedou Slahi at the desk where he used to sit in high school.
That afternoon, back in my home, I held a copy of “Guantánamo Diary” for the first time. My lawyers had shown me photographs of the book on the shelves of bookstores in several cities and languages, and they were able to bring me a photocopy of my text, with all of the government’s redactions. But while I was in Guantánamo, I could not see the book itself.
Censorship is a familiar thing in Mauritania. I remember my mother telling my older brothers not to discuss politics, for fear the walls would hear. In my country, we’re used to having things kept hidden in the name of national security. What still shocks my family and friends was that the censorship in Guantánamo Diary wasn’t just in the Arabic edition. It came directly from the American original, which meant the information was being kept from the American people.
When I wrote the manuscript that became Guantánamo Diary in 2005, I had all but disappeared. I was in an isolation hut, the same one I had been dragged into two years before during my months-long torture. For four years, the U.S. government had shut me up and done the talking for both of us. It told the public false stories connecting me to terrorist plots, and it kept the public from hearing anything from me about my life and how I had been treated.
Writing became a way of fighting the U.S. government’s narrative. I wanted to bring my case directly to the people. I wasn’t sure if the pages I was writing and giving to my lawyers would ever become a book. But I believed in books, and in the people who read them; I always had, since I held my first book as a child. I thought of what it would mean if someone outside that prison was holding a book I had written.
Now, incredibly, I was holding that book myself — though in a censored, broken form. And I was meeting many people who had read it. The first thing many of them asked me was when they would be able to read the book in an uncensored version. So in the months after my release, I worked with my editor Larry Siems on what we came to call a “restored edition” of “Guantánamo Diary,” because it often felt like we were trying to restore an old building.
I worked in a copy of the book, making notes above the redactions and in the margins, and then I would take a break, go home, eat lunch, and remember even more. I found myself writing and remembering, and writing some more, and then Larry and I did what we were denied the opportunity to do the first time “Guantánamo Diary” was published: We worked together to edit these censored sections. The result was published in the U.S. last week. As with the original, uncensored, and handwritten manuscript, this is as close as I can come to the truth as I experienced it and understand it, in the best form I can express it.
Here, for example, is a passage from the new book that the U.S. government for some reason thought necessary to redact in the original. It describes a scene from a polygraph test I was forced to take while at Guantánamo:
“I noticed an ant walking up the wall, and then many more leading and following her. I learned to follow ants in the Mauritanian secret prison, watching them until they left the cell and me behind. I watched this one climb, going about her daily business and not realizing the drama that was unfolding before her very eyes.”
Here is a page with redactions and restored text in gray:
Restoring this broken text has been about seeing things that someone wanted hidden. Sometimes that someone was me. When I received the photocopy of my book in Guantánamo I stayed up all night reading it, afraid I had written something I would regret. And yes, there were things that embarrassed me. I was especially ashamed of my habit, when I was young, of making up sarcastic nicknames for people I met. The Jordanian intelligence agent who oversaw my rendition operation was not “Satan,” as I named him in the original manuscript; he is a human being, with a full life and a family. That kind of name-calling is someone I was, not someone I am now.
In that sense, reading what I wrote 12 years ago really is like reading an old diary. Sometimes I’d laugh, and sometimes I got very upset. But mostly I just smiled at my own silliness and learned more about who I was, and who I am.
Who am I now, thanks to my lawyers, my family and friends, my publishers, and my readers, is a free man: a free man who can make the choice to stay inside on a hot, hot day and write about the enormous, beautiful world outside my door.
The United States and its Japanese and South Korean junior partners have begun holding massive military drills off the Asian nations’ coasts in a show of force meant to convey to North Korea the allies’ military capabilities while also practicing the neutralization of alleged “threats” from Pyongyang.
The practices, which involve over 40 warships, three nuclear submarines, and a nuclear-powered carrier strike group deployed in a line stretching from the Yellow Sea west of the peninsula into the Sea of Japan, have drawn a swift rebuke from Russia.
“We decisively condemn North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests. At the same time, we oppose the excessive military activity of several countries of the region that provoke such tests,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers’ Meeting, noting that the moves simply inflame tensions with Pyongyang.
According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the drills are intended to practice the interoperability of the three countries’ fleets and their ability to detect and track any alleged missile threats from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as North Korea is officially called.
The USS Ronald Reagan – a 100,000-ton, 333-meter nuclear-powered supercarrier – is among the strategic vessels taking part in the drills. The U.S. Navy’s biggest warship in Asia, with a crew of 5,000 sailors, sailed around 160.93 km (100 miles), launching almost 90 F-18 Super Hornet sorties from its deck, in sight of South Korean islands.
The provocative drills also involved American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Stethem, Japanese Kongo-class guided missile destroyer JDS Kirishima and a South Korean Sejong Great-class destroyer – all of which are equipped with the Aegis combat systems capable of long-range ballistic missile defense.
The exercises come ahead of President Donald Trump‘s first official visit to Asia, set to start in Japan on Nov. 5, with South Korea to follow.
North Korea has slammed the warship gathering as a “rehearsal for war.” On Monday, North Korea´s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Kim In Ryong warned a U.N. General Assembly committee that the Korean peninsula is in the midst of an acutely tense situation especially in light of Trump’s threats to annihilate the North.
In his comments to the ASEAN defense gathering, Shoigu once again raised the proposal that the U.S. and its junior partners suspend military drills in the region in exchange for North Korea ending its nuclear and missile programs. Throughout the year, both Russia and China have raised the so-called “double freeze” as a solution to spiraling tensions.
“We are confident that a roadmap based on the Russian and Chinese initiatives should become the foundation for the use of political and diplomatic mechanisms aimed at resolving the North Korea issue,” Shoigu added.
While Washington has not ruled out the eventual possibility of direct talks with the North to resolve the stand-off, Pyongyang says it won’t hold talks until the White House drops its hostile stance and threats of potential nuclear attack.
“Our nuclear weapons will never be a subject matter of negotiations as long as the United States’ policy of pressure on the DPRK has not been uprooted once and for all,” North Korea´s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho told TASS in an interview earlier this month.
“ISIS” is a product of the US Military-Intelligence complex. The word itself connotes “ISlam”, and so from the very beginning the construct serves to create Islamophobia, which is a necessary pre-condition for the US Empire’s holocaust-creating footprint overseas[1]. War requires hatred and ISIS fits the bill. The fact that ISIS’ deeds are entirely anti-Islamic is of no importance.
Rita Katz[2] et al. beheading videos and domestic false flag terrorism all serve the necessary function of engineering consent for a War On Terror which features as its main star the West’s very own terror proxies – ISIS. ISIS itself is a false flag in the sense that whereas ISIS is the designated enemy, the psychological operation conceals the fact that ISIS is also us – they are the Empire’s foot soldiers.
In terms of military strategy, ISIS is used as a “place-setter”. Empire directs ISIS to areas that it wants to destroy – under the false pretext of going after its own assets (ISIS et al.) so that it can destroy the target area even as it relocates the “target”.
Consider, for the example, Mosul, Iraq. Prof Chossudovsky explains in “The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq”[3] that the US co-opted the Iraqi military to “allow” ISIS into Mosul in the first place — so that the city could then be destroyed, and civilians massacred, in the name of going after ISIS. Subsequently, ISIS was relocated from Mosul to Syria.
ISIS is also being used as a “place-setter” in Syria. Similar military strategies have been deployed in the occupation and destruction of Raqqa, Syria.
ISIS convoy leaves Raqqa, Syria
Similarly, the U.S coalition is using ISIS as a “place-setter” for a proposed “Kurdistan” region.[4]
Even as Syria and its allies defeat NATO terrorism, ISIS will continue to make its presence felt in areas of the world that dare to resist the U.S Empire’s dictatorship.
***
All of the post-9/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that disseminate propaganda to both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda levelled at Syria and contaminating humanity at this moment is likely unprecedented. I had studied and written about Syria for years, so I was not entirely surprised by what I saw.
(Excerpt from Preface, Mark Taliano’s book “Voices from Syria“, Global Research Montreal, 2017)
On October 26, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued their successful operation on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and entered the oil fields of al-Tanak and Galban, according to pro-Kurdish sources. Earlier, the US-backed force reportedly established control over the oil fields of Azraq and Jarnof, Saban, Northern Omar, Maleh and Mqaat.
Thus, the SDF de-facto won the race for the oil and gas infrastructure located in the area with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
Pro-opposition sources reported that ISIS just handed over the al-Tanak oil field to the SDF within the framework of the previously reached agreement. No more details were provided. Most likely these reports are linked to the alleged SDF-ISIS deal reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on October 22. According to this report, ISIS was set to surrender the entire area including Hajin village to the US-backed force.
Pro-SDF sources explain the situation with the top-class US air support and combat characteristics of SDF troops.
On October 25, the SAA liberated the Industrial Area and a large part of Khassarat district from ISIS in the city of Deir Ezzor. Now, government forces are aiming to separate further Saqr Island from the rest of the ISIS-held area in Deir Ezzor. When this is done, the SAA and the NDF will be able to isolate the remaining ISIS units in Saqr Island and to clear it from the terrorists.
The separatist Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is facing hard times in Iraq. On October 24, the Department of Foreign Relations of the KRG released a statement asking for a ceasefire with forces of the Federal Government. In return, it promised to “freeze the results of [independence] referendum”, and asked for “an open dialogue between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraqi Federal Government on the basis of the Constitution.”
However, on October 25 and October 26, Iraqi forces advanced further in areas seized by KRG forces beyond the borders of the Kurdish autonomous region. Experts believe that the army and its allies will continue operation in the contested areas until KRG military forces fully withdraw from it.
As the Syrian Army’s advance towards the province of Deir Ezzor, some new details of the upcoming operation on the total elimination of ISIS terrorists in the eastern region of Syria continue to appear in the mass media.
According to Inside Syria Media Center, the General Command of the Syrian Army intends to actively cooperate with fighters of the Fifth Assault Corps, the elite volunteer-based military force that was created by the Syrian government together with Iran and Russia in 2016.
According to expert estimates, warriors from ISIS Hunters, Tribal Forces, Assad Shield, and the Ba’ath Brigades military groups, which are in service of the Fifth Assault Corps, could be at the forefront of the upcoming offensive operation in Deir Ezzor. Such a decision is conditioned by many reasons.
Firstly, the units of the Corps are well-trained and show high efficiency in fighting terrorists. These qualities are the result a full course of combat training organized by military instructors from Iran and Russia.
The Lebanese As-Safir reported that most of the members of the Fifth Assault Corps already had combat experience in the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzor. Their concerted actions played a major role in the liberation of the ancient Palmyra from ISIS terrorists, and in the preservation of its cultural heritage.
Besides, after the liberation of the eastern part of Homs, the volunteers of the formation pushed ISIS terrorists back their positions along the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor Highway.
Secondly, according to military correspondents, the Syrian High Command, supported by Russia, managed to organize cooperation between Kurdish Self-Defense Forces and the Fifth Assault Corps. This step will directly lead to the strengthening of the government forces’ positions in the province of Deir Ezzor.
Obviously, the coordination between the Kurdish formations with the Fifth Assault Corps is an evidence of the Syrian government’s interest in the early settlement of the conflict and the destruction of ISIS terrorists.
In turn, Washington’s actions in Syria are extremely controversial. Despite all the loud statements made by representatives of the White House, the United States prefers to stay away and doesn’t take any concrete measures to eliminate terrorists.
The U.S. Special Forces were caught up in the evacuation of the ISIS field commanders from Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, and al-Mayadin, who were under the pressure of the government forces. Moreover, it is even known that the U.S. and its forces directly offer terrorists to leave the besieged cities in exchange for opposition to the Syrian Army.
It becomes obvious that the fight against ISIS is beneficial only to the Syrian government and its allies. The United States and the international coalition only dispense with empty statements, trying to delay the solution of the Syrian crisis and prevent the success of government forces.
Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center where this article was first published.
Comments Off on Syria’s Fifth Assault Corps Offensive against ISIS Terrorists in Deir Ezzor. U.S. Special Forces Facilitate Evacuation of ISIS Commanders
I’ve written numerous articles on US collusion with NATO, the Saudis, Turkey, Israel and other regional rogue states to replace Syria’s Assad with pro-Western puppet rule.
Naked aggression using heavily armed terrorist foot soldiers, supported by US-led terror-bombing was and continues to be the strategy used – a failed one after Russia intervened in September 2015, responding to Assad’s request for help.
Snowden revealed what he had access to – a top secret NSA document with damning evidence of an Obama administration scheme.
It covered events outside Damascus in March 2013. Government and allied forces were taking a beating at the time.
Large parts of the country were lost to ISIS, al-Nusra and other US-supported terrorists, the nation’s sovereignty at risk of being lost – before Russia’s intervention changed the dynamic on the ground, one of history’s great chapters, turning the tide of battle in Syria’s favor.
The top secret NSA document said the following:
“TOP SECRET//S1//NOFORN
(TS//S1//NF) S2E332 issued three single source reports in
March 2013 on Syrian opposition attacks against Damascus:
– Reports gave US three days warning about 18 March 2013
attacks (2 year anniversary of revolution)
– Saudi Prince Salman bin Sultan directed opposition to ‘light
up Damascus’ and ‘flatten’ airport
– Saudis sent 120 tons of explosives/weapons to opposition
forces
– Attacks against airport, Presidential palace and other locations occurred on 18 March
– Saudis ‘very pleased’ with outcome
– PRISM providing almost all collection on opposition plans
and operations
TOP SECRET//S1//NOFORN.”
PRISM refers to NSA’s secret program for collecting Internet communications from at least nine complicit firms, including Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Skype, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and Apple – collecting and storing the information.
Internet users have no idea the NSA is invading their privacy, the biggest of America’s Big Brother spy agencies, monitoring online communications of countless millions of unsuspecting people domestically and abroad.
Material collected is shared with the FBI, CIA and other US intelligence agencies – America turned into a total surveillance society, a police state infringing on the rights of its citizens, spying on allied foreign leaders and officials, operating extrajudicially.
US-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA) terrorists were responsible for the March 18, 2013 attacks. Conditions today are far different from then – government forces liberating cities, towns and villages, US-supported terrorists on the back foot.
Russian airpower was the defining difference. It remains key to eventually liberating Syria entirely from the scourge of US-supported terrorists, along with America’s destructive presence in the country.
Featured image: US President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. (Photo: Reuters/Carlos Barria)
First published by UNZ Review in July 2017
The highly anticipated encounter of the two presidents went better, much better than anybody predicted. There was a lot of anxiety, and expectations were low as heavy rain clouds, especially after Trump’s visit to Warsaw where he obediently repeated the Cold War platitudes dictated by his minders. Trump had been sent off to Hamburg by Washington establishment with warnings a convent novice gets before an unfortunate but unavoidable meeting with a Don Juan. They didn’t trust the inexperienced youngster, and insisted he should speak with Vlad only in presence of grown ups, like Auntie Fiona (Hill) or Uncle HR (McMaster), well known for their aversion to Russians.
They warned him that, short of a nuclear strike, every other reaction will be considered betrayal of the Shining City upon a Hill. Every neocon and Cold Warrior in the West gave his advice to the President, how should he humiliate Putin and put him on his place, below the salt. They actually didn’t allow Trump to have a proper meeting with Putin, with full agenda, advisers and ministers, preferably a few days long, in a Camp David format or similar. But they failed profoundly.
The meeting on the margins of G-20 had become the central event, while G-20 became a meeting on the margins of Putin-Trump summit. When Donald and Vlad had met, there was no stopping: a great sympathy they had felt for each other manifested itself in every smile. At the beginning, Putin had been quite reserved; he steeled himself to a possible rejection, to a possible affront, even to insult. But Trump skillfully put him at ease.
Instead of planned thirty minutes, they spoke for over two hours; even an attempt by Trump’s wife to restrain her husband wasn’t crowned with success. They just could not tear themselves apart. After a few hard months of enforced separation by the self-appointed duennas, the pals were together, at last.
The Western media, trying its damnedest to cause ill feeling between the two men, spoke of Putin’s victory, of the Russian becoming the boss, the top dog. A typical reaction was that of the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, which declared that Trump had “just unilaterally surrendered to Russia”. They hoped that vain Trump would be upset at being bettered by Vlad. We shall not join their legion by ceding victory to Putin. Both won, and we won with them.
At such an event, one can hardly expect real tangible results. The results need more time. Creating conditions for future work together would suffice. And still there were some achievements.
I’d suggest you watch the long but rewarding film “Putin Interviews” by Oliver Stone as prolegomena to the meeting reports. In the film, Stone asks Putin about accusations of cyber-meddling in the US elections, and Putin gives a full explicit answer. He said that he had offered President Obama a treaty on cyber security, properly describing what the states can, and can’t do in cyberspace to each other.
Obama did not take the offered ball, for the US felt it had vast superiority in the field, and didn’t want to give the advantage away.
“According to an unnamed senior intelligence official with the US government, the Obama administration has penetrated Russia’s electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin’s command systems. The purported hack means that critical parts of Russia’s infrastructure are now vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons”, reported Australian news agency.
Indeed complaints of “Russian hackers” sound false, bearing in mind that NSA spies against everybody in the world, including Russia. Millions of Russian calls are intercepted by the American secret services annually, as Snowden told us. The idea of drafting and concluding a treaty forbidding offensive hacking is a good and timely one. At the meeting in Hamburg, President Trump agreed with that, and the presidents decided to appoint a bilateral commission to sort it out and to prepare the treaty. It will be good for all the nations, not only for Americans and Russians, as NSA spied even on American allies like Mme Merkel.
The treaty should also deal with really dangerous viruses, like Stuxnet that was unleashed against Iran, and its newer versions like WannaCry. Julian Assange provided us with the provenance of the viruses: they are from the NSA collection of tools, and they already caused mayhem from Russian banks to British hospitals. The NSA factory of viruses should be brought under control by the treaty.
Interference in elections is also a valid point addressed by the two presidents. Not the silly story of Russian interference in the last American elections, but the very real one of American interference in the elections in Russia, France and elsewhere. President Trump apparently agreed that it should be covered by the treaty and stopped. Professional Cold Warriors were alarmed: how can you compare Russian meddling with our Western pro-democracy drive! That reminds me of an old Jewish joke, preceding World War One: – Let us go and kill some Turks! – And what if they will kill us? – Why would they? We didn’t wrong them!
“How can you compare” is a favourite Jewish cliché, frequently used if you compare a killed Jew and a killed Palestinian. I never could understand it. If it is ok for the US to meddle in Russian elections, why can’t Russians meddle in the US elections? Perhaps the two presidents will agree to cease meddling, but I won’t bet my socks on it.
They made a move forward in Syria, too, by approving the agreement prepared by their teams in Amman, Jordan. For a first time, this agreement contains a declaration in favour of the territorial integrity of one, undivided Syria; this is an important Russian achievement. If carried out, the agreement will bring a ceasefire to South-Western Syria, in the area adjacent to Jordanian border and to the Israeli armistice line on the Golan Heights.
In a surprising move, President Trump agreed that the area would be patrolled by Russian military police. This suggestion had been hotly argued against by the Israelis. Despite their frequent visits to Moscow, they really trust only the US. There should be American troops on the ground in Syria, and no Russian troops close to our lines are acceptable, said Israeli politicians. If indeed Russian military police will patrol the area, the Israelis will eat a big fat frog.
There is an additional nuance: the Russian military police in Syria have been staffed with Chechens, who are good fighters, Muslim by faith, and devoted to President Putin – though he fought them, defeated them, and brought them back under Kremlin rule. There was a time when the enemies of Russia would profess their love of Chechens, but not anymore. Now their own leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of their previous rebel president and a former rebel himself is a strong supporter of Putin, and a subject of a hate campaign by Western liberals – and by Russian nationalists. Placement of Chechens in the military police in Syria is a success of Putin’s national policies, especially relevant in the light of a new development.
This week, the Russian authorities blocked public access to the Russian far right nationalist site Sputnik and Pogrom, as you can read in the column of my worthy colleague Anatoly Karlin. It’s got its name from (allegedly) the only two Russian words that have entered English dictionaries. They are Nazi sympathisers, like the Ukrainian nationalists, and that is not a popular view in Russia, which bore the brunt of fight with Nazis. Their chief editor published a column on June 22, saying that every good Russian was happy when the Germans invaded their country.
They are also extreme anti-Communists, and this is also not too popular a view in Russia. This site had been established with help of Western secret services to sow discord between Russian citizens of different ethnic origin, just like the US-sponsored Radio Liberty did in the Soviet days, and the Germans during the war it, too. They do instigate hostility between Russians and Ukrainians, between Russians and the people of the Caucasus.
Typically for such political organisations, despite the site’s name (pogrom was, after all, an anti-Jewish riot), they are quite pro-Jewish and fervently pro-Zionist. Otherwise, the CIA wouldn’t dare support them. However, they always have something bad to say about Putin (they hate him) and the Chechens and their leader.
Now we see that Putin was right in encouraging the Chechens to fight for Russia. It is indeed a good idea to use Sunni Muslims as a police force in this heavily Sunni Muslim area being liberated from ISIS, and Chechens are known as fierce fighters that nobody wants to mess with. It is better to have them on the side of Moscow than on the side of its enemies, and it is definitely worth while to block the Sputnik and Pogrom, leaving moral considerations aside.
The two presidents spoke about North Korea. Some years ago, Russians had supported sanctions against DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea), and the Americans had no problem in passing a sanctions-enforcing resolution in the Security Council. Not anymore. Last month, the Russians made a radical shift on Korea.
Now they are strongly against sanctions likely to economically strangle the country and definitely against military action there. So, the Russian position has become quite close to the North Korean one, surprisingly more so than that of the Chinese, although Chinese trade with Korea dwarfs the Russian trade. If the Americans want the North Koreans to stop their nuclear tests, Putin said to Trump, they should refrain from carrying out large-scale military exercises. The Russians also want to encourage North-South dialogue. Such dialogue had been very successful and popular in its time, but then the US interfered in South Korean elections and blocked pro-dialogue politicians. The Northern rulers, however, would like the dialogue to resume with unification of Korea in mind. The Russians and their Chinese allies object greatly to the American THAAD missile defence system being installed in South Korea.
On Ukraine, the presidents agreed to establish a special bilateral channel of communications between the US special envoy and his Russian counterpart. They also confirmed their faith in the Minsk agreements, and this is an important diplomatic achievement for the Russians. However, these agreements did not prevent Kiev troops shelling the cities of Donbass.
To sum it up, Putin and Trump managed to save the day, despite all odds. Their immediate achievements are indeed modest, but they established the ground for progress. Future steps will depend mainly on Trump’s ability to withstand the pressure, to set himself free from his minders. He is the first American president experiencing such a continuous media onslaught, and he still stands. It seems that his advisers urge him to surrender to his enemies in the media and in the congress, but he is a stubborn man. He also discovered that in Vladimir Putin, he can have a real friend and partner.
The world has changed: in 1980s, the Russians were happy that their leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had met with Ronald Reagan and that he was admired and lionised by Western media. They thought it natural that Gorbachev admires Reagan. Then, the Western support was a real asset for a Russian politician. Gorbachev came to power in aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s blessing.
Now, the Russians are happy that they have a leader who can withstand any pressure, a leader who is admired for his strength. If he is hated in the West, they feel he is doing something right. Probably the Western media, if they want to undermine Putin, should begin to sing him dithyrambs.
The Pirate Party are buccaneering their way into European politics, having found a foothold in the testy soil of Central Europe after colonising, in small measure, various hamlets in Sweden, Germany and Iceland. The Czech Pirates (PPCZ), a term certainly exotic by current political pedigrees, managed to obtain over 10 percent of the vote, a result that gave them a rich harvest of 22 members in the parliamentary elections.
It took nine efforts, but the Czech Pirates had been edging their way onto conspicuous terrain in various local elections, including netting 5.3 percent of the total vote in Prague in 2015. The city of Mariánské Lázně also found itself having a Pirate Mayor after garnering 21 percent of the vote.
Retaining their oppositional colours, the Czech Pirates are insisting on avoiding the muddying nature of coalition talks with the overall winners. (The dangers of compromising collaboration!) Their agenda is one that has become fairly known across its other incarnations: the abolition of internet censorship, the favouring of institutional transparency, and the revision of, amongst other things, punitive copyright laws. But other agenda items form their twenty point program, including improving the lot of teacher salaries and tax reform.[1]
The latter point is particularly appropriate, given the party’s experimentation with testing EU laws on the subject of pirate sites through its “Linking is not a Crime” stance. This was sparked, in large part, by attempts by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union to target a 16-year-old for that great terror of the regulator: linking to content designated as infringing of copyright law.
Launching several of their own contrarian sites, including Tipnafilm.cz and Piratskefilmy.cz, the latter carrying some 20,000 links to 5,800 movies, the Czech Pirate Party was overjoyed by the prospect of prosecution.
“Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends.”[2]
As Czech Pirate Party chairman Lukáš Černohorský said at the time, belligerent and defiant,
“Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists are now dealing with a political party which didn’t run the website for money but because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime.”
The gains of the party showed a certain mood at work and, as has been the case in much of Europe, proved boisterously, and at stages angrily, anti-establishment. Across the political spectrum, the Czechs were again showing that they can add fuel to any political fire, setting matters to rights on the continent while tearing down assumptions. As with any fire, however, the consequences can be searing.
While the Pirates did well, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), a strident right wing outfit, nabbed similar numbers from the other side of the spectrum, sporting its own anti-EU, anti-immigrant brand. As its leader, Tomio Okamura, insists,
“We want to leave just like Britain and we want a referendum on EU membership.”[3]
Billionaire fertilizer tycoon Andrej Babiš, the sort of oligarchic figure who should always trouble democratic sensibilities, weighed in the elections with some 30 percent of the vote with his ANO party. His version of politics, another confection of anti-politics dressed for disgruntled consumption, reprises that of the businessman turned party leader. The claim made here is common: that the machinery of governance is somehow analogous to running a business.
Traditional parties, foremost amongst them the long performing Social Democrats, with whom Babiš had been in coalition with after gains made in 2013, found themselves pegged back to sixth position in the tally.
The swill stick of politics did not tar Babiš all that much, a figure who has managed to develop a certain Teflon coating in a manner similar to other billionaire leaders (think Silvio Berlusconi and a certain Donald Trump in the White House). He had become the focus of suspected tax crimes, and lost his job as finance minister. European subsidies, it was claimed, had found their mysterious way into his pocket.
Such suggestions merely touched the tip of a considerable iceberg, one which also consists of allegations of previous employment with the Czechoslovak secret state security service Stb. According to Slovakia’s Institute of National Memory, his code name for collaboration during his espionage stint was Bureš.[4]
The billionaire seemed distinctly unperturbed, and his party’s showing suggested that some water will slide off a duck’s back.
“I am happy that Czech citizens did not believe the disinformation campaign against us and expressed their trust in us.”
He roundly insisted that his was “a democratic movement” positively pro-European and pro-NATO “and I do not understand why somebody labels us as a threat to democracy.”[5]
These elections, however, will be savoured by a party that promises a fresh airing of a stale political scene, and one not nursing those prejudices that provide all too attractive gristle. Legislation, should it be implemented, may well remove the cobwebbed fears long associated with the Internet. But facing these newly elected figures will be ANO and an invigorated, indignant right-wing of politics, a far from easy proposition.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
Bilateral Russia/US relations are dismal – so far confined to a war of words, risking things turning hot. Hostile US actions include:
deploying US-led NATO forces close to Russia’s border – breaching the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE -1991), limiting conventional military equipment in Europe;
staging provocative military exercises in bordering countries, rehearsing belligerence against the Russian Federation;
notably using Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland as training grounds for US-led NATO wars;
preparing for hybrid and conventional war on Russia;
inventing and hyping a nonexistent “Russian threat;”
abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty;
breaching the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) by creating “weapons systems” violating its treaty obligations, according to Sergey Lavrov;
falsely accusing Moscow of “aggression” in Ukraine;
seizing Russian properties in America;
closing one of its consulates;
expelling its diplomats;
falsely blaming the Kremlin for interference in last year’s US presidential election;
accusing it of supporting governments Washington wants toppled;
imposing illegal sanctions on Russia;
meddling in its internal affairs; and
constant daily media and congressional bashing, including unconscionable vilification of Vladimir Putin.
All of the above and more should scare everyone, especially with administration and congressional hawkish neocons dictating geopolitical policymaking.
America is a warrior state, waging endless wars of aggression in multiple theaters, wanting all sovereign independent governments replaced by pro-Western puppet regimes – Russia, China and Iran its top targets.
According to the Wall Street Journal, US-dominated NATO is set to approve two new commands – to strengthen its ability to confront Russia belligerently.
One command would manage alliance logistics, focusing on moving troops and equipment more swiftly. A second command would focus on protecting Atlantic and Arctic Ocean sea lanes, important supply lines for Europe.
Pentagon commanders want NATO members able to act fast and effectively against Russian forces.
US Army Europe commander General Ben Hodges said
“(t)he alliance has to move as quick or quicker than Russian Federation forces for our deterrent to be effective.”
“Speed is what will give our civilian leaders options other than a liberation campaign.”
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said review of NATO’s command structure is about “deploy(ing) forces quickly across the alliance.”
Member states are “adapting national legislation to allow military equipment to transit faster across borders and are working on improving national infrastructure.”
Headquarters for the new commands will be in Brunssom, Netherlands and Naples, Italy. They’ll be at the same level as NATO’s Joint Forces Commands.
“(o)ur deployments are a direct response to Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, (its) military buildup close our borders, and its lack of transparency when it comes to military exercises such as Zapad 2017.”
All of the above accusations are false. Stoltenberg represents US interests, supporting its aggressive wars and unacceptable hostility toward Russia – things likely heading for an eventual showdown, the unthinkable possibility of nuclear war, an armageddon scenario if launched.
US-dominated NATO is a serial aggressor, at war in multiple theaters. Russia’s actions are entirely defensive, essential given Western belligerence.
Moscow fosters world peace and stability – notions Washington rejects.
While many Americans are aware that the United States is at war in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan because of the media attention given to those conflicts, the news that four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger came as a surprise that left some asking the question, “Since when is the U.S. at War with Africa?”
Sgt. La David Johnson, Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright were killed on Oct. 4, after their team was reportedly ambushed by “ISIS-affiliated militants traveling by vehicle, carrying small arms and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.”
Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul weighed in on the situation, and noted that this appears to be one more war the U.S. is fighting without approval from Congress—and it is a war that includes the presence of U.S. troops in 53 out of the 54 nations in Africa.
“Now, when the Pentagon and the administration have had some pressure on them, you know, instead of having 100 people there, they’re admitting we have 6,000 people in Africa, and they even put a number on it. They say ‘we have some military in 53 of the 54 countries in Africa.’ That’s pretty expansive,” Paul said.
for those who are just finding out about the US's silent war in Africa, here's a shocking little list. pic.twitter.com/L2kFoNkyt9
While South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a devoted war hawk and member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, initially admitted that he was not aware the U.S. had troops in Niger before news of the attack surfaced, he immediately pledged his support to yet another military conflict created by the United States.
“The war is morphing,” Graham said. “You’re going to see more actions in Africa, not less; you’re going to see more aggression by the United States toward our enemies, not less; you’re going to have decisions being made not in the White House but out in the field.”
You know you are in too many wars in too many places when even warmonger Lindsay Graham can’t keep track anymore
In response to the attack and to the public relations scandal that has followed as Americans learn they are funding military operations in Africa, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunfordclaimed that the U.S. has had troops stationed in Niger “on and off” for more than 20 years with the purpose to “defeat violent extremism in West Africa.”
“This area is inherently dangerous,” Dunford said. “We’re there because ISIS and Al Qaeda are operating in that area.”
As Ron Paul noted, the U.S. is still using the Authorization for Use of Military Force that was passed after 9/11 and intended to be used to go after the suspected terrorists responsible for the attacks.
“That’s not unusual for governments to distort and use laws differently than even what Congress says. Congress writes a law and then the executive branch writes regulations, and that same principle applies to foreign policy. They say, ‘Well you can go and do this,’ but there’s no limit. That just initiates it. Nobody even talks about the War Powers Resolution—not that that was the solution, but it was this idea that there was supposed to be a little more oversight after the Vietnam War. But that doesn’t even come up for discussion.”
The AUMF that was passed in 2001 has been used and abused over the last 16 years to fit each and every military conflict the U.S. decides to pursue. Instead of focusing on one group, the U.S. has applied the authorization to any situation in which the trigger phrases Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or Islamic terrorism are included, and U.S. officials are now scrambling to find a way to make that definition fit, in order to justify military presence in Africa.
Watch Ron Paul’s comments in full:
Rachel Blevins is a Texas-based journalist who aspires to break the left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.
Late on October 24, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) accused the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) of attacking its units on the eastern ban of the Euphrates, near Deir Ezzor city.
The incident allegedly took place at Jubaylah.
According to the SDF Press Office, ISIS forces attacked the SDF at the Jafra train station at the same time, but lost 9 fighters and were forced to retreat.
The US-backed force allegedly “repelled” both the attacks and lost no ground in the area. No photos or videos confirming the clashes were provided.
Meanwhile, pro-government sources reported no clashes with the SDF.
Some firefights may take place on the SAA-SDF contact line north of Deir Ezzor because of the growing tensions between the sides. However, it’s wrong to expect that the SAA would launch any kind of military operation against the SDF any time soon.
Meanwhile, pro-Kurdish sources claimed that the SDF entered the oil fields of Azraq and Jarnof on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.
SAA troops advanced further along the road to al-Busariyah and entered Jadid Uqaydat.
The T2 pumping station near the Syrian-Iraqi border remained in the hands of ISIS despite the recent attempts of the SAA to capture it. The situation in the area remains tense.
The SDF has established the Idlib Military Council, an operation room to conduct military operations in the province of Idlib. According to reports, the council aims to fight the Turkish Army and the Syrian Army as well as seeking to establish own control over the province.
The first reports about the SDF plan to create the Idlib Military Council appeared last weekend when Abu Amar al-Idlibi, commander of the Free Syrian Army’s Northern Democratic Brigade (the group is a part of the SDF), said that the SDF is willing to operate in Idlib province. The SDF commander also accused the United States of failing to oppose Turkish actions in Syria.
The SDF may see the Idlib Military Council as a tool to counter the growing Turkish influence in Idlib province before the expected confrontation with Turkish forces south of Afrin.
This article published five years ago in September 2012 documents the repression of the anti-war movement by a pseudo “Left” with fascist leanings.
A similar process is currently underway in the US. The Antifa movement in the US and the EU is generously funded by Wall Street foundations. It has the support of a self-proclaimed Left movement, which endorses US-NATO proxy war in Syria.
***
Every year the French Communist Party ( PCF) organizes the Fête de l’Humanité in Paris, a left-wing festival where concerts are held and communist parties from all over the world erect stands to exchange books, pamphlets and ideas. Many authors, journalists and intellectuals are invited every year to participate in debates on philosophy, culture, politics and current affairs.
But this year will probably be remembered for the important debates the attendees of the festival were not allowed to have. Two authors, Belgian theoretical physicist Jean Bricmont and French author Caroline Fourest, were forced to cancel their talks due to intimidation and threats from organisations calling themselves “Antifa” and “Indigènes de la République”, respectively.
Caroline Fourest is a pro-Israeli reactionary who masquerades as a “left-wing” feminist. Her invitation to the festival to discuss the rise of Islamic extremism and the French far right upset many on the left. .
Reactionary and islamophobic Fourest most certainly is, but preventing her from speaking not only gives credence to her erroneous theories but violates her constitutional right to freedom of speech.
When Fourest was about to speak of the dangers of Islamic extremism and the rise of the Front National, France’s far right party, a group calling themselves “les Indigènes de la République” entered the tent where Fourest was speaking and began to throw objects on the stage. Some protestors even attempted to assault her.
Soon the tent was occupied by the protestors who shouted slogans against racism and islamophobia. The protestors proceeded to occupy the stage whereupon the audience shouted back “liberté d’expression!” (freedom of expression). The confrontation between the conference attendees and protestors continued for about 20 minutes with each side calling the other “fascist”.
The “Indigènes de la République” protestors won out, however, when the debate was cancelled and Caroline Fourest was escorted by bodyguards to a nearby vehicle.
The following day Belgian physicist, author and intellectual Jean Bricmont was due to give a far more important talk on the crisis in Syria and the specious discourse of “humanitarian intervention” propagated by the mainstream media to justify wars of aggression.
For many years, Bricmont has been a critic of the politics of military interventions undertaken under the pretext of protecting “human rights”. Bricmont’s heresy on this issue and his anti-Zionism has made him a pariah in the fashionable salons of France’s “respectable” intelligentsia.
The Belgian physicist’s unequivocal anti-imperialist stance has also made him the target of a vile defamation campaign on the internet and in the mainstream French media where he has been called a “rouge-brun” , a brown-shirt red, a “confusioniste” etc.
Furthermore, the more extremist fringes of the internet’s thought-police have singled out Bricmont for special attention. A few days prior to the fête de l’Humanité, an “anti-fascist” anarchist organization called Antifa launched a campaign on Indymedia against Bricmont’s attendance at the festival, where they threatened to assault him if he spoke about humanitarian intervention. In the insane world of Antifa activism, Bricmont’s opposition to NATO-fomented terrorism in Libya and Syria makes him a “fascist”.
Antifa is just one of the international anarchist groups currently being used by the intelligence agencies of imperialist states to sow confusion and chaos among the ranks of disaffected youth, inciting them to mindless, violent acts that serve the agenda of an ever- encroaching police state. This organization, in particular, targets intellectuals who denounce Zionism as well as alternative media outlets which expose the mechanisms and institutions that promote US imperialism throughout the world. It does all this under the guise of “anti-fascism”.
Due to the simple-mindedness of their beliefs and stupidity of their actions, Antifa tend to attract naïve and angry youths who turn up at demonstrations in black hoodies in order to provoke police crackdowns and sabotage any meaningful resistance to the current political order. In other words, Antifa are a group of useful idiots, whose real agenda is to promote fascism under the guise of “anti-fascism”.
Bricmont was informed of their campaign and asked the management of the festival to provide him with appropriate security. The festival managers assured the Belgian scientist that he would have protection. However, one hour before Bricmont was about to speak, he received notification that the talk was cancelled. The violent threats of the Antifa agents provocateurs provided Pierre Laurent, general secretary of the PCF with the perfect pretext to cancel Bricmont’s heretical lecture. Allowing Bricmont to speak would have shown up the PCF for the right-wing, imperialist sham that they are in the eyes of their ever dwindling supporters.
The festival management had decided they could not provide security for Belgian physicist in the event of an attack by the “Antifa” protestors. However, the pro-war, pro-Israeli pundit Caroline Fourest was provided with full protection by the festival management, in spite of similar threats having been made against her.
This was hardly surprising, considering that the l’Humanité newspaper was the organizer of the festival. L’Humanité has given full support to NATO’s destabilization of Syria since violence broke out there last year, publishing the same war propaganda as its “right-wing” competitors.
According to the PCF’s international affairs spokesman Jacques Fath, the only solution for peace is Syria is the fall of Assad. Fath, of course, made no mention of NATO’s death squads, who have been killing both innocent civilians and security forces since March 2011, facts that have even been verified by many independent journalists and admitted by the Arab league’s observer mission.
Neither of Syria’s communist parties was invited to the festival. Both the Communist Party of Syria(Bakdash) and the Communist Party of Syria (Faisal Aka Unified) won 11 seats in the parliamentary elections that followed the implementation of Syria’s new democratic constitution in May this year.
Both parties have consistently denounced NATO and Gulf-state fomented terrorism against their country since the outbreak of violence in Daraa in 2011. Neither party was allowed to erect a stand at the French communist festival. Instead representatives of the pro-war Syrian opposition were represented.
Those who believe that Jean Luc Melanchon’s Front de Gauche (the French “far left” party which one 11 percent of the vote in last year’s parliamentary elections) represents some form of alternative to the status quo, would do well to remember that Melanchon and the Front de Gauche SUPPORTED NATO’s intervention in Libya last year. This is an organization which claims to oppose NATO. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The supporters of Melanchon- a demagogue who likes to prop up his left-wing credentials by pretending to support president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and other centre-left governments in Latin America- do not seem to realize that the ALBA countries all supported Libya’s colonel Gaddafi last year and now openly declare their support for President Bachar al-Assad in his struggle against NATO, and Gulf-state funded terrorism.
While President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela sought to mediate in the Libyan crisis in 2011 in order to prevent military aggression against the country, a mediation welcomed by the Libyan government- and which could have prevented war- they received absolutely no help from Jean Luc Melanchon, who now vaunts himself as an anti-imperialist. Melanchon is a dastardly liar and a political fraud of the highest order.
One would not have to be a physicist like Jean Bricmont to see and understand the horrible reality of NATO’s proxy war in Syria, but what an inconvenient interruption it would have been if the would-be communists of this year’s festival were to be confronted with the naked, mephitic truth about NATO’s humanitarian wars, and the left-wing dupes who support them. Bricmont had to be silenced..
France’s “extrême gauche” are nothing more than a contemptible, motley crew of cowards, liars and fools, whose inflated egos and vacuous slogans adequately reflect the all-pervasive cynicism of the corrupted petty-bourgeois class they represent.
But there is another reason for Bricmont’s ostracism from respectable French society; he is a scientist who is capable of applying critical thought to everyday issues that affect the common citizen. In other words, unlike his elitist and conformist colleagues in academia, for whom, peer –reviewed papers, tenure and social respectability count more than scientific truth, Bricmont represents the type of scientist capable of applying his microscope to the laws that govern civil society; laws whose flagrant violation by Western governments the neo-scholastic monks of postmodern academia conveniently ignore.
In the days following the festival Caroline Fourest’s expulsion was widely bruited in the French mainstream media, who vociferously denounced the violation of her “freedom of expression”
Fourest is one of the most prominent propagandists for the New World Order, and such is her ubiquity across the French media complex, that she has become a household name. The war-mongering Fourest has been presented as a martyr of human rights, feminism and free speech, thanks to the useful idiots of Antifa. Needless to say, the war-mongering harpies of France’s mainstream media made no mention of the violation of Jean Bricmont’s freedom of speech.
If Fourest, Antifa, the PCF, Front de Gauche and the entire pseudo-leftist French establishment had their way, Bricmont and his ilk would never again be allowed to speak in a public platform. For what he has to say would expose them for the fakers, imperialist collaborators and loud-mouthed nincompoops that they are.
Those activists who admire and those who detest Caroline Fourest can scream “fascist” to one another to their heart’s content in their zany, infantile theatre of the absurd. But it is they who are opening the path for a seizure of power by the extreme right in this country, as the real fascists in Marine Le Pen’s Front National will easily capitalize on their buffoonery. For, who can blame a simple working class voter for being seduced by the mendacious arguments of Marine Le Pen when there are none but prattling fools to oppose her?
This is not the first time genuine anti-war activists were prevented from speaking in France. Michel Collon, a Belgian journalist, author and editor of a news and analysis website InvestigAction was prevented from speaking at the Bourse du Travail in Paris on November 9th 2011 by the Antifa agents provocateurs. These groups serve the imperialist state by preventing the public from engaging in serious debate about France’s foreign wars.
Other political organizations which have been attacked by the “Antifa” agents provocateurs are the URCF, l’Union de Révolutionaires -Communistes de France and the PRCF, Pôle de renaissance communiste en France .
These organizations have some former heroes of the French Resistance among their members, real fighters against fascism. The president of the PRCF is Léon Landini, a combatant in the French resistance during the Second World War, who was responsible for the killing of over 40 Nazi soldiers, the destruction of 300 Nazi vehicles and dozens of attacks against Nazi railway carriages. The URCF and PRCF are now the main political organizations in France militating for the construction of a real communist party.
Unlike the fakers in the Front de Gauche, PCF, NPA and other organizations, the URCF and PRCF have given their full support to the Syrian communist parties of Syria in their fight against fascist aggression by NATO and the Petro-monarchies of the Gulf states and have unequivocally denounced the lies and disinformation against Syria of the reactionary French press.
It is one of the most egregious propaganda achievements in recent history that those who expose the lies that trick the public into perceiving wars of aggression as humanitarian operations are denounced as “fascists”, while those who bang the drums of war are considered to be “left-wing” and “progressive”. This is the general pattern set by the French media complex and genuine anti-imperialist intellectuals have paid the price by being subjected to a veritable witch hunt for their theoretical heresies.
The censorship of Jean Bricmont by the left liberal establishment is deeply indicative of the perilous direction French society is currently taking. It is the road to a new form of totalitarianism, where critical thought is murdered by platitudes,empty, effete slogans, and the meaningless newspeak of the ruling group mind.
The unconscionable, dishonest and dastardly behavior of the petty bourgeois leftists, if unchecked, will inevitably lead to a grim dénouement in this tragic-comic farce that is contemporary France.
O que se anda considerando mídia alternativa no Brasil acompanha a baixíssima estatura intelectual e a politicagem mais descarada que marcam este país. Aproveitando-se dessa atmosfera insuportável – aí está a trágica realidade para, mais que nunca, não nos deixar mentir -, os barões de saitecos, jornalecos e revistecas travestidos de alternativos, vendem implicitamente em sua prática do antijornalismo a paupérrima ideia de que o são por noticiar, sistematicamente, apenas um lado da questão e por serem tendenciosos , pendendo para um lado diverso da tão combatida grande mídia podre. Apesar do verniz livre e independente, contudo, em nada se diferenciam dos que com tanta fúria combatem – e cerceiam a liberdade de expressão de jornalistas decentes tanto quanto a grande mídia, apenas por contrariar os interesses político-partidários que os sustentam. E creia-se: nas editorias de grande parte da midia “alternativa” o que há de indivíduos recebendo o famoso jabá do Partido dos Trabalhadores, em outras palavras esfregando na cara de seus colegas menos favorecidos o socialismo enquanto gozam do capitalismo mais podre, é uma enormidade nojenta!
O que caracteriza mídia alternativa NÃO é o fato de noticiar as últimas tendências, por exemplo, do PT, PSTU, PSoL e por aí vai, nem defender causa a ou b nem necessariamente acionar constantemente o trombone contra a grande mídia, mas sim a prática jornalística baseada nas palavras de Michel Foucault, “não é através da ideologia que se molda o social, mas através da verdade”: simples assim! Tais palavras resumem perfeitamente os quatro princípios básicos da prática jornalística: objetividade, transparencia, ética e imparcialidade.
Para ficar ainda mais fácil para que os leitores identifiquem o que é e o que nao é mídia alternativa: os que babam ovo para declarações e promessas de políticos, no mínimo comece a desconfiar, considerando seriamente a possibilidade de se tratar de panfletagem polítca travestida de jornalismo “alternativo. isso porque o jornalismo de verdade policia, fiscaliza, investiga, critica, causa medo ainda mais no Brasil, antro de politiqueiros demagogos e adeptos, em todos os espectros, do típico e gritante vira-latismotupiniquim baseado no profundamente irritante, indignante “todo mundo faz”, ou ainda “é asim mesmo”, pois, afinal de contas, “não tem outro jeito”.
Como disse Thomas Jefferson: “Se me fosse deixado decidir se devemos ter um governo sem jornais ou jornais sem governo, eu não hesitaria, por algum momento, em preferir o último”. E aqui vai outra dica: existe mais semelhança da mídia “alternativa” brasileira com essas observações de Jefferson, feitas no início do século XIX, ou ela está mais para a cara de “algum” grande partido de “esquerda”, hein?! Pois é. E isso não é, em si, nada alternativo! Ser tendencioso alternativamente não é nem pode se tornar sinônimo de jornalismo alternativo, Brasil! Basta de cinsimo neste país!!
Exemplo de tendencionismo alternativo: noticiar campanhas presidencias de Luiz Inácio’ 2018 Brasil afora, inclusive portando alegremente chapéuzinho de nordestino, porém “pular” quando este divide, na mesma região brasileira, palanque com figuras tétricas como o senador Renan Calheiros, valendo ao pai do golpe contra Dilma Rousseff o título lulista de ser admirável e corajoso.
Tomemos como exemplo a mídia alternativa norte-americana, em geral não tão alternativa quanto se proclama, especialmente Truth Out que além de se recusar a abordar as contradições e mentiras do 11/9, os crimes dos Estados Unidos no Oriente Médio mais a fundo e possuir um forte aspecto de Hillary Clinton, por outro lado tem uma cara bem menor partidária que a brasileira, esta enormemente escancarada, o que é sofrível. Em geral, a prática da mídia alternativa global é bem diferente daquela praticada no Brasil, voltando-se muito mais a ideias, projetos e à verdade dos fatos, que a “determinado” partido político.
Portanto, noticiar sistematicamente promessas de campanha de um candidato que se identifica mais com as causas sociais, por exemplo, não caratcteriza uma mídia alternativa, mas o quanto se dá voz a todos os outros, discutindo-se a questão em seu contexto mais amplo, e de maneira crítica como manda o jornalismo. Qualquer otra coisa que fuja disso é panfletagem disfarçada de paladinos da verdade e da justiça jornalística ou, no português mais claro, sem vergonhice, a outra face de uma mesma meda politiqueiro-midiática. E repita-se: há jornalistas “socialistas” desta estirpe empesteando aos montes as Redações da tal mídia “alternativa” tupiniquim de péssimo gosto, e pouqíssimo eficaz: aí está a realidade….
“Quando a liberdade é retirada à força, pode ser restaurada à força; se renunciada voluntariamente, pela omissão, jamais será recuperada”, Dorothy Thompson.
Samedi, trois semaines après la répression contre le référendum du 1ᵉʳ octobre sur l’indépendance catalane, le Premier ministre espagnol Mariano Rajoy a invoqué l’article 155 de la Constitution espagnole pour suspendre l’autonomie catalane.
L’action a fait se précipiter 450 000 personnes dans les rues de Barcelone pour s’y opposer plus tard dans la journée, signe que les mesures antidémocratiques qui vont être appliquées en vertu de l’article 155 provoqueront un conflit violent avec la population catalane.
Ces mesures sans précédent permettent au gouvernement du Parti populaire espagnol (PP) de démettre le Premier ministre catalan Carles Puigdemont et ses ministres de leurs fonctions, de s’arroger le droit d’organiser des élections régionales, et de prendre le contrôle des institutions économiques de la Catalogne, la force de police régionale Mossos d’Esquadra et les médias publics catalans. Des plans ont été finalisés pour envoyer des gardes civils et des soldats afin d’établir de fait une occupation policière et militaire.
Ce vendredi, les mesures de Rajoy seront présentées au Sénat espagnol, où le PP a une majorité absolue, pour approbation. Elles ont le soutien du Parti socialiste espagnol (PSOE) et du Parti des Citoyens, ainsi que de l’Union européenne et du gouvernement Trump.
Face à l’assaut du PP, la bourgeoisie régionale catalane est dans la tourmente. Dans une tentative d’empêcher que la réaction contre Rajoy sorte des canaux officiels, elle a poursuivi une politique d’appel au PP et au PSOE pour le dialogue, ainsi qu’à la justice espagnole et à l’intervention de l’UE. Lundi, la Commission européenne a à nouveau indiqué que son attitude à l’égard de la Catalogne n’avait pas changé. « La position est bien connue », a déclaré un porte-parole de la Commission. « Nous avons toujours dit que nous respectons l’arrangement constitutionnel et juridique de l’Espagne. »
Lundi également, le Parlement catalan a indiqué qu’il organiserait une session plénière jeudi matin pour donne sa réponse à Madrid. Sergi Sabrià, porte-parole de la gauche républicaine catalane (ERC), a accusé le PP, le PSOE et Citoyens de « gaspiller » l’« opportunité de dialogue » offerte par la suspension de la déclaration d’indépendance de Puigdemont la semaine dernière. Il a dit que la meilleure réponse « à l’article 155 et au coup d’État » est de déclarer l’indépendance.
Le Parti des Candidatures pour l’Unité Populaire (CUP), parti sécessionniste petit-bourgeois, exige que l’indépendance soit déclarée immédiatement, menaçant autrement de « désobéissance civile massive ».
Le ministre des Affaires étrangères de Catalogne, Raul Romeva, a déclaré à la BBC que les institutions catalanes réagiraient avec défiance. Il a dit, en se référant à la population de la région : « Ce n’est pas une décision personnelle […] C’est une décision de 7 millions de personnes ».
Il a poursuivi : « Je n’ai aucun doute que tous les fonctionnaires en Catalogne continueront à suivre les instructions fournies par les institutions élues et légitimes que nous avons actuellement en place. »
Albert Donaire, un porte-parole d’une section de la force de police régionale appelée « Mossos pour l’indépendance », a exhorté le gouvernement régional à déclarer une république catalane avant que l’article 155 ne prenne effet et que le ministère espagnol de l’Intérieur ne prenne le contrôle des Mossos. Les Mossos resteront « fidèles au parlement [catalan] et au gouvernement », a déclaré Donaire.
Une grève des étudiants a été annoncée pour le 26 octobre par le groupe « Universités pour la République » pour réclamer la libération « immédiate » des militants catalans emprisonnés, Jordi Sànchez et Jordi Cuixart.
L’invocation de l’article 155 a provoqué une crise dans la section catalane du PSOE, le Parti socialiste de Catalogne (PSC). À son apogée dans les années 1990, le PSC détenait 52 des 135 sièges du parlement catalan et obtenait environ 38 % des voix. Lors des dernières élections en 2015, cependant, le nombre de députés du PSC a chuté à 16 ayant obtenus 13 pour cent des voix, en grande partie à cause de la colère contre les mesures d’austérité qu’il a imposées dans le cadre d’un gouvernement de coalition régionale.
Le PSC est divisé par rapport au soutien du PSOE pour l’article 155. Le leader du PSC, Miguel Iceta, a rejeté les appels au sein du parti à s’opposer « frontalement » à l’article 155. Au lieu de cela, il a rencontré Puigdemont, le pressant de convoquer de nouvelles élections affirmant que cela arrêterait la dissolution du gouvernement et la tenue d’élections forcées. « Nous nous tournons vers le président Puigdemont avec une double option : organiser des élections basées sur la légalité actuelle ou utiliser le processus d’une audience au Sénat pour proposer un dialogue. C’est notre position », a expliqué Iceta.
Cependant, la Gauche républicaine catalane (ERC) demande à davantage de municipalités de rompre leurs accords de coalition avec le PSC. Le député ERC Gabriel Rufian a déclaré : « Vous ne pouvez pas gouverner avec ceux qui participent à la brutalité de l’État. Nous devons mettre fin aux pactes municipaux avec le PSC / PSOE. »
Dimanche, un communiqué signé par sept dirigeants actuels et anciens du PSC a rejeté l’application « abusive et absolue » de l’article 155, affirmant qu’avec le soutien du PSOE espagnol à la politique intransigeante du PP, le PSC « peut déjà faire ses adieux à la construction d’un gouvernement majoritaire alternatif pendant de nombreuses années ».
Joan Majó, cofondateur du PSC et ex-ministre de l’Industrie du Premier ministre Felipe González (1982-1986), a démissionné, déclarant que, sans s’aligner sur le mouvement indépendantiste catalan, il était « de plus en plus en désaccord » avec de nombreuses politiques du PSC « concernant la relation entre la Catalogne et l’État ».
Le soutien du PSC à l’article 155 a également causé des problèmes à la maire de Barcelone, Ada Colau, qui compte sur le PSC pour maintenir sa coalition en Comú au pouvoir. Cherchant à détourner la critique sur ses relations étroites avec le PSC, Colau a dit qu’elle était « inquiète » par la « dérive » du leader du PSOE, Pedro Sánchez. Le maire adjoint, Jaume Asens, a promis que BComú entreprendra d’analyser « les implications de l’application de l’article 155 ».
L’application de l’article 155 a également été une menace agitée au Pays basque. L’ancien ministre de la Santé et président du parti régional du PP, Alfonso Alonso, a prévenu que la région avait « tous les ingrédients » pour se retrouver dans « la même situation » que la Catalogne. Il a déclaré que c’était la responsabilité de son parti « d’empêcher » que ces « ingrédients » ne se mélangent.
Alonso a pris la parole aux célébrations pour marquer les 40 ans de « démocratie » en Espagne et le sixième anniversaire du moment où l’organisation terroriste basque ETA « a reconnu sa défaite » et abandonné ses armes.
Au cours de son discours, Alonso a déclaré que, comme en Catalogne, le « nationalisme est au pouvoir » au Pays basque, en référence au Parti nationaliste basque (PNV). Il y a des « forces radicales qui justifient toujours des positions violentes », a-t-il poursuivi, faisant allusion à EH Bildu (une réincarnation de l’aile politique de l’ETA Batasuna). Il ajoute que « les populistes de Podemos sont la troisième force » et que Gure Esku Dago est une Assemblée nationale basque « naissante ».
Le coordinateur général de EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, a déclaré que « la dérive autoritaire de l’État » par rapport à la Catalogne « atteindra certainement » le Pays Basque. Il a appelé à un « exercice urgent de responsabilité politique » pour défendre « l’unité nationale et démocratique » entre les partis opposés à l’application de l’article 155.
Paul Mitchell
Article paru en anglais, WSWS, le 24 octobre 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on Le gouvernement catalan dans la tourmente après la suppression de l’autonomie par l’Espagne
First published by Global Research on August 26, 2017.
What is now unfolding in America is a process of engineered dissent which is controlled by the corporate elites. This process precludes the formation of a real mass movement against racism, social injustice and US led wars.
This article by Larry Chin analyzes how the elite opponents of Donald Trump are manipulating public opinion with the support of the mainstream corporate media. Through staged protest events funded by corporate foundations, the unspoken objective is to create profound divisions within American society. These divisions preclude the formation of a meaningful and united protest movement.
The objective of these staged protest movements against Trump is not to support democracy. Quite the opposite. It is to ensure complete control over the US State apparatus by a competing faction of the corporate establishment. Where is the civil rights movement? Where is the US antiwar movement? Rarely are these engineered protests against US led wars.
A grassroots and united movement against the Trump presidency and the Neocons, against war and social injustice is what has to be achieved.
But this will not occur when several of the organizations which are leading the protest against Trump are supported and funded by Wall Street.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 2017
***
A race war and a civil war are being incited by the US political establishment and Deep State opponents of Donald Trump, in order to foment violence towards Trump’s removal from the White House. The events in Charlottesville, together with “Russia-Gate” are being used as a “defining moment of crisis” and a pretext to justify Trump’s overthrow.
Turning American streets into war zones
America has never faced chaos of this nature in modern times: manufactured domestic political terrorism disguised as civil unrest, masking a coup. The stated goal of the agitators is “mass insurrection”and “all forms of violence” to make the country “ungovernable”
Just as the global “war on terrorism” is a criminality and treason disguised as “freedom fighting” and “the defense of liberty”, this war against Trump, labelled as the “new Hitler”, is part of an unfolding domestic terror operation, which ironically utilizes the propaganda techniques of Hitler and the Third Reich (Goebbels), not to mention the anarchist playbook of Saul Alinsky (and, by extension, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom are Alinsky disciples). (See also Ben Carson quoted in the Washington Post, “Hillary Clinton, Saul Alinsky and Lucifer, explained”, July 20, 2015)
From the violence and propaganda brainwashing to the manipulation and destruction of culture and history (statues and monuments, etc.). what is unfolding is a repeat of familiar institutional terror.
Goals are achieved through the weaponization and mobilization of indoctrinated and deceived masses as well as grassroots activists, coupled with mind-controlled authoritarian thugs.
The larger “resistance” features a toxic combination of professional paid anarchists, brainwashed “social justice warriors”, and deluded protestors who are misinformed and invariably ignorant as to who is supporting and funding the “protest movements”. There is no rational conversation to be had, no reasoning, in such an atmosphere of ginned-up hysteria.
This large-scale extortion aims to devastate the United States from within, forcing Trump out of office. An already deeply divided and confused nation with an already shredded social fabric will be torn apart.
The mainstream corporate media, the engineers of delusion and mob-manipulating propaganda, is ginning it up, creating mass hysteria and mental affliction.
What is taking place is not simple protests from supporters of a losing political faction, but a domestic terrorism operation planned and executed by the establishment majority—supported by neoliberals as well as neoconservative Republicans—in defense of their system against perceived existential threat from anti-establishment movements. Mob violence has always been a weapon of the oligarchy. It was inaccurate and tactically stupid for Trump to call this insurrection “Alt-Left”. It is in fact a mainstream establishment operation, which uses “left”, “progressive” and antifa symbols to pursue its political objectives.
The ultimate objective is to create social divisions which prevent the development of a real and independent mass protest movement against the seats of corporate power.
This “chaos agenda”is a “color revolution”. The elites and Deep State figures behind today’s American anarchy are the same ones that funded and orchestrated “color revolutions” around the world, the toppling of Ukraine and the installation of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Svoboda regime, unrest in Turkey, the destabilization of Syria, the European refugee crisis, and the Arab Spring. What worked overseas is now being applied within US borders.
The increasingly failing Trump/Russian hack narrative is being replaced by a variation on an old theme: Nazis. “Trump is a Nazi”. Nazis must die.
Trump’s repeated denials and long history of standing against Nazis, the KKK and white supremacists, and having nothing to do with them, are to no avail.
Antifa
The mainstream media predictably fails to report the fact that Antifa anarchist groups are responsible for the majority of the continuing political violence, including Charlottesville, Boston, and the Battle of Berkeley, enabled by police stand-downs and incompetence. Local police forces, university police, and local mainstream media in heavily liberal cities (such as Berkeley) openly back the Democratic Party’s anti-Trump agenda and act in support of the anarchists.
Masked, armed authoritarian anarchists, provocateurs and terrorists are referred to blandly in mainstream media accounts as “counter-protestors”,when in fact they are the instigators and shock troops of the larger national coup, and vastly outnumber Trump supporters (not all of whom are “right-wing). These violent groups, operating under the banners of “peace and justice” in fact embody the opposite.
These supposedly leaderless domestic front groups, including Antifa, Black Bloc, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, Disrupt J20, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)and others can all be traced to the Democracy Alliance, elite “civil society” foundations, establishment politicians, Democrats and Republicans, and assets of the Deep State. The connections between the Washington establishment and the myriad anarchist groups are well known. Moreover, these domestic front organizations –many of which include within their ranks grassroots progressive activists– are invariably funded (directly or indirectly) by corporate establishment foundations.
These various groups whose instigators mobilize “a progressive grassroots” have been combined and mobilized into one coordinated anti-Trump agitation apparatus. Like the terrorist networks that they are, they function like any other CIA covert operation, each cell inculcated from the others, with plausible denial in place for the organizers and leadership.
The Justice Department has done virtually nothing about these groups, while CIA-connected media such as CNN devote puff pieces to puff pieces in support of Antifa’s “peace through violence” agenda, and then scrubbing the (accurate) title post-facto for more favorable publicity.
Charlottesville
Charlottesville was not a spontaneous eruption of violence but the new stage of civil war.
The white nationalist events were long planned. The removal of Confederate statues led to the incitement. While this was the largest gathering of various white nationalist groups in recent history, these relatively small, fringe, politically insignificant groups are routinely monitored and/or infiltrated by the FBI. The idea that US domestic intelligence and law enforcement, and Virginia and Charlottesville authorities were not fully aware of, and ready for, any possibility of violence is preposterous. Permits were granted.
There is compelling evidence that the police stood down. (Also see here) The venue was turned into trap, a kill zone, with alt-right nationalist participants crammed inside barricades, surrounded at chokepoints by Antifa.
It is no coincidence that Charlottesville was set up in virtually the same fashion as the spring 2017 Battle of Berkeley, where outnumbered Trump supporters gathering for an event were also trapped behind barricades and surrounded by Antifa, and forced to fight off attacking mobs. In Charlottesville as well as Berkeley, hours of open street warfare were allowed to take place unabated by the police.
The man who drove a car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer, committed an act of terrorism and murder by any definition. But this act of murder occurred after hours of street warfare that was stopped, and allowed to escalate.
It is also not clear who the driver actually was. Was it James Fields, the man who was arrested, or was it someone else? Whoever it was had the skills of a stunt driver. Adding to the confusion are questions about the identity and behavior of those who were attacking the vehicle with baseball bats.
Was Charlottesville a staged false flag operation? Why was this melee allowed to explode? Who gave the orders, and who financed the fighters on both sides?
What is crystal clear is that the entire Washington political establishment, Deep State and mainstream media are benefitting. Trump’s opponents have their pretext and potent new propaganda weapons. They have Heather Heyer as a martyr and symbol of “resistance”.
James Fields, the alleged driver, connected to Ukraine is spotted on videotape chanting “Blood and Soil” and torch-marching, the slogan of Nazi Ukraine Svoboda Party. The Charlottesville torch march was identical to the torch marches in Ukraine. In fact, Ukrainian flags were flown in Charlottesville.
Is it merely a coincidence that elements of the CIA/Obama/Clinton Ukraine coup show up here? The Washington politicians now spewing outrage about racism and Nazis at Trump today, including John McCain are active collaborators with the Ukrainian Nazis.
Former US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland together with leader of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Party Svoboda Oleh Tyahnybok (left)
Is it also coincidental that these Ukrainian Nazis, working in conjunction with US establishment DNC and Republicans alike, also happen to be the central figures behind the completely false Trump/Russia hack narrative that never seems to die?
Intimidation of thought and ideas
Staged mob violence and authoritarian threats are not limited to the streets. Thought itself is under attack.
Not only Trump supporters, but all opponents and critics of the political establishment cannot express themselves without threat of reprisal, censorship, and violence.
A full-scale assault is being carried out against alternative media.
The campaign against “hate speech” and “hate content” labels any anti-establishment media as “hate”. The attack is so broad-brush that entire networks are branded right-wing or “alt-right”, when in fact, many are not right-wing, and many are non-partisan. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, among others, are engaged in campaigns of censorship and control, including the policing of content, the demonetization and suspension of sites, control of political content, and outright censorship through deletion.
Hypocrisy
While Trump is no “Role Model” of political and moral behavior, he has been branded a Nazi and white racist, despite his disavowal and criticism of white supremacists, Nazis, David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. According to Israel Shamir:
President Trump condemned both sides participating in the brawl‚ both white nationalists and Antifa. It is exactly what his opponents were waiting for. His attempt to stay above the brawl was doomed to defeat: liberal hegemonists immediately branded him a racist and neo-Nazi. Trump reminded them that not all defenders of the monument were white racists, but this argument didn’t work. (Global Research, August 26, 2017
Despite the fact that he spoke out forcefully, many times. (Trump spent much of a recent rally in Phoenix detailing his many responses. See here.) The mainstream media offers no quarter.
Screenshot: Trump quoted in Vox, August 15, 2017
Similarly, the majority of Trump supporters have no association with extremist groups of any kind, and have long opposed white nationalists and the “Alt-Right”. Violence has been aggressively disavowed by most of Trump’s base, including Mike Cernovich, who has forcefully denounced violence, and Jack Posobiec, who organized anti-violence rallies weeks prior to Charlottesville. The mainstream media refused to report on these events, while continuing to label him a right-wing extremist and Nazi.
Meanwhile, the establishment “Left” has persistently engaged in violence, without disavowing violence. Project Veritas has exposed and proven the fact that violence is a routine method utilized by Democratic Party operatives. Former president Barack Obamaopenly encouraged the mobs, pushing them to continue “expressing themselves”. Former Attorney G Loretta Lynchcalled for blood in the streets. Democratic members of Congress openly call for Trump’s assassination.The Alexandria mass shooting was the work of a Bernie Sanders supporter. The mainstream media ignores or refuses to accurately report these stories.
Staged anarchist agitation and violence—“protest culture”—is not only being normalized, but popularized. The masses are being successfully indoctrinated. Witness the pervasiveness and viciousness of Hollywood and sports celebrities, who have not refrained from calling for violence against Trump.
Orwellian madness on steroids
Even as establishment-guided mobs intimidate and commit violence, their victims are blamed for violence and hate crimes.
Trump is vilified as a world-ending Nazi/fascist/racist/misogynist, the symbol of tyranny, while the true tyrants and criminals continue to walk free.
In addition to being assaulted from outside (Purple Revolution, Russia/hack, Robert Mueller, impeachment threats, etc.), he is being sabotaged and subverted from inside the White House, and from inside his innermost circle, by the likes of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Dina Habib Powelland the West Wing globalists including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, and Steve Mnuchin.
McMaster has purged the administration of Trump loyalists and populists, and replaced with Bush/Obama/Clinton/Deep State operatives, and runs foreign policy with vice president Mike Pence. Pence routinely issues statements contradictory to Trump’s own ideas. He has not been the focus of any mainstream media criticism. This Bush loyalist is in perfect position to become president in the event of Trump’s removal (by whatever means that occurs).
The neocon generals—Mattis, McMaster, Kelly—“oversee” and control Trump on all matters, treating him like a child. Kelly controls all information to and from Trump.
Trump often seems not to understand what is happening. On the day Charlottesville occurred, Trump applauded the Virginia authorities and Terry McAuliffe, who were more likely involved in causing the disaster. Trump also congratulated the anarchists in Boston—on Ivanka Trump’s urging. Was he oblivious to the fact that the 4,000 Boston protestors were protesting him?
The swamp is not being drained. It is being filled to overflowing. With all of this damage, some of it self-inflicted (why has Trump allowed it?), how will this president hope to deal with a manufactured civil war?
No end in sight
The Summer of Rage is in full swing, but the rage is far from over.
There continue to be anti-Trump events in all major cities in the country, seemingly every weekend. Ginned-up Antifa mobs are being mobilized in response to small pro-Trump “Freedom of Speech” events scheduled to take place in San Francisco and Berkeley on the weekend of August 26. The upcoming clash is already being called the Battle of Berkeley 3.
With the fervent and unanimous support of the San Francisco Bay Area political establishment—all of whom are Democratic Party faithful who (including Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Nancy Pelosi, etc.) are openly calling for Trump’s ouster—it is expected that yet another comparatively small gathering for “prayer, patriotism and free speech”—Trump supporters—will be swarmed and viciously shut down by mobs of Trump-hating Antifa and “social justice warriors”.
The media ignores the fact that the organizers of the pro-Trump rally condemn Nazis and white supremacists, and prohibit them from attending. Headlines continue to brand the event “far right” and“Nazi”, in order to incite.
In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as “fascists”.
Despite its imported European name, Antifa is basically just another example of America’s steady descent into violence.
Historical Pretensions
Antifa first came to prominence from its role in reversing Berkeley’s proud “free speech” tradition by preventing right wing personalities from speaking there. But its moment of glory was its clash with rightwingers in Charlottesville on August 12, largely because Trump commented that there were “good people on both sides”. With exuberant Schadenfreude, commentators grabbed the opportunity to condemn the despised President for his “moral equivalence”, thereby bestowing a moral blessing on Antifa.
Charlottesville served as a successful book launching for Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook, whose author, young academic Mark Bray, is an Antifa in both theory and practice. The book is “really taking off very fast”, rejoiced the publisher, Melville House. It instantly won acclaim from leading mainstream media such as the New York Times, The Guardian and NBC, not hitherto known for rushing to review leftwing books, least of all those by revolutionary anarchists.
The Washington Post welcomed Bray as spokesman for “insurgent activist movements” and observed that:
“The book’s most enlightening contribution is on the history of anti-fascist efforts over the past century, but its most relevant for today is its justification for stifling speech and clobbering white supremacists.”
Bray’s “enlightening contribution” is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today’s Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label “Antifa” by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism.
The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association. Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic.
The original Antifascist movement was an effort by the Communist International to cease hostilities with Europe’s Socialist Parties in order to build a common front against the triumphant movements led by Mussolini and Hitler.
Since Fascism thrived, and Antifa was never a serious adversary, its apologists thrive on the “nipped in the bud” claim: “if only” Antifascists had beat up the fascist movements early enough, the latter would have been nipped in the bud. Since reason and debate failed to stop the rise of fascism, they argue, we must use street violence – which, by the way, failed even more decisively.
This is totally ahistorical. Fascism exalted violence, and violence was its preferred testing ground. Both Communists and Fascists were fighting in the streets and the atmosphere of violence helped fascism thrive as a bulwark against Bolshevism, gaining the crucial support of leading capitalists and militarists in their countries, which brought them to power.
Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray’s Antifa have broadened their notion of “fascism” to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from “patriarchy” (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to “transphobia” (decidedly a post-fascist problem).
The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin.
Storm Troopers of the Neoliberal War Party
Since Mark Bray offers European credentials for current U.S. Antifa, it is appropriate to observe what Antifa amounts to in Europe today.
In Europe, the tendency takes two forms. Black Bloc activists regularly invade various leftist demonstrations in order to smash windows and fight the police. These testosterone exhibits are of minor political significance, other than provoking public calls to strengthen police forces. They are widely suspected of being influenced by police infiltration.
As an example, last September 23, several dozen black-clad masked ruffians, tearing down posters and throwing stones, attempted to storm the platform where the flamboyant Jean-Luc Mélenchon was to address the mass meeting of La France Insoumise, today the leading leftist party in France. Their unspoken message seemed to be that nobody is revolutionary enough for them. Occasionally, they do actually spot a random skinhead to beat up. This establishes their credentials as “anti-fascist”.
They use these credentials to arrogate to themselves the right to slander others in a sort of informal self-appointed inquisition.
As prime example, in late 2010, a young woman named Ornella Guyet appeared in Paris seeking work as a journalist in various leftist periodicals and blogs. She “tried to infiltrate everywhere”, according to the former director of Le Monde diplomatique, Maurice Lemoine, who “always intuitively distrusted her” when he hired her as an intern.
Viktor Dedaj, who manages one of the main leftist sites in France, Le Grand Soir, was among those who tried to help her, only to experience an unpleasant surprise a few months later. Ornella had become a self-appointed inquisitor dedicated to denouncing “conspirationism, confusionism, anti-Semitism and red-brown” on Internet. This took the form of personal attacks on individuals whom she judged to be guilty of those sins. What is significant is that all her targets were opposed to U.S. and NATO aggressive wars in the Middle East.
Indeed, the timing of her crusade coincided with the “regime change” wars that destroyed Libya and tore apart Syria. The attacks singled out leading critics of those wars.
Viktor Dedaj was on her hit list. So was Michel Collon, close to the Belgian Workers Party, author, activist and manager of the bilingual site Investig’action. So was François Ruffin, film-maker, editor of the leftist journal Fakir elected recently to the National Assembly on the list of Mélenchon’s party La France Insoumise. And so on. The list is long.
The targeted personalities are diverse, but all have one thing in common: opposition to aggressive wars. What’s more, so far as I can tell, just about everyone opposed to those wars is on her list.
The main technique is guilt by association. High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with “nationalism” which is associated with “fascism” which is associated with “anti-Semitism”, hinting at a penchant for genocide. This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language.
In mid-June 2011, the anti-EU party Union Populaire Républicaine led by François Asselineau was the object of slanderous insinuations on Antifa internet sites signed by “Marie-Anne Boutoleau” (a pseudonym for Ornella Guyet). Fearing violence, owners cancelled scheduled UPR meeting places in Lyon. UPR did a little investigation, discovering that Ornella Guyet was on the speakers list at a March 2009 Seminar on International Media organized in Paris by the Center for the Study of International Communications and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. A surprising association for such a zealous crusader against “red-brown”.
In case anyone has doubts, “red-brown” is a term used to smear anyone with generally leftist views – that is, “red” – with the fascist color “brown”. This smear can be based on having the same opinion as someone on the right, speaking on the same platform with someone on the right, being published alongside someone on the right, being seen at an anti-war demonstration also attended by someone on the right, and so on. This is particularly useful for the War Party, since these days, many conservatives are more opposed to war than leftists who have bought into the “humanitarian war” mantra.
The government doesn’t need to repress anti-war gatherings. Antifa does the job.
The Franco-African comedien Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, stigmatized for anti-Semitism since 2002 for his tv sketch lampooning an Israeli settler as part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Good”, is not only a target, but serves as a guilty association for anyone who defends his right to free speech – such as Belgian professor Jean Bricmont, virtually blacklisted in France for trying to get in a word in favor of free speech during a TV talk show. Dieudonné has been banned from the media, sued and fined countless times, even sentenced to jail in Belgium, but continues to enjoy a full house of enthusiastic supporters at his one-man shows, where the main political message is opposition to war.
Still, accusations of being soft on Dieudonné can have serious effects on individuals in more precarious positions, since the mere hint of “anti-Semitism” can be a career killer in France. Invitations are cancelled, publications refused, messages go unanswered.
In April 2016, Ornella Guyet dropped out of sight, amid strong suspicions about her own peculiar associations.
The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party.
I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are self-anointed and usually more or less disguised.
Silencing Necessary Debate
One who is certainly sincere is Mark Bray, author of The Intifa Handbook. It is clear where Mark Bray is coming from when he writes (p.36-7):
“… Hitler’s ‘final solution’ murdered six million Jews in gas chambers, with firing squads, through hunger an lack of medical treatment in squalid camps and ghettoes, with beatings, by working them to death, and through suicidal despair. Approximately two out of every three Jews on the continent were killed, including some of my relatives.”
This personal history explains why Mark Bray feels passionately about “fascism”. This is perfectly understandable in one who is haunted by fear that “it can happen again”.
However, even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily contribute to wise counsel. Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual.
We are in a period of great political confusion. Labeling every manifestation of “political incorrectness” as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues that very much need to be defined and clarified.
The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism. This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves.
The issue of immigration has different aspects in different places. It is not the same in European countries as in the United States. There is a basic distinction between immigrants and immigration. Immigrants are people who deserve consideration. Immigration is a policy that needs to be evaluated. It should be possible to discuss the policy without being accused of persecuting the people. After all, trade union leaders have traditionally opposed mass immigration, not out of racism, but because it can be a deliberate capitalist strategy to bring down wages.
In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise. But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion. Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against. And who will win such a confrontation?
A recent survey* shows that mass immigration is increasingly unpopular in all European countries. The complexity of the issue is shown by the fact that in the vast majority of European countries, most people believe they have a duty to welcome refugees, but disapprove of continued mass immigration. The official argument that immigration is a good thing is accepted by only 40%, compared to 60% of all Europeans who believe that “immigration is bad for our country”. A left whose principal cause is open borders will become increasingly unpopular.
Childish Violence
The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles. Banding together with others “like us” to fight against gangs of “them” for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances. The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist. For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines.
Source: TheFreeThoughtProject.com
American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare. Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with “the most powerful kid in the block” and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang.
That is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, which habitually declares of its chosen enemies: “All they understand is force.” Although Antifa claim to be radical revolutionaries, their mindset is perfectly typical the atmosphere of violence which prevails in militarized America.
In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia. Words are considered so dangerous that “safe spaces” must be established to protect people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely linked to tolerance of real physical violence.
Wild Goose Chase
In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary “fascists” instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction. The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward “anti-fascists” simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves.
Antifa USA, by defining “resistance to fascism” as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular “resistance to Trump” to make him even worse than he already was.
The facile use of the term “fascist” gets in the way of thoughtful identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism. This amounts to a multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity and the megalomania of leaders of lesser “Western” powers, notably Israel. It could be called simply “imperialism”, except that it is much vaster and more destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries. It is also much more disguised. And since it bears no clear label such as “fascism”, it is difficult to denounce in simple terms.
The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago, under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat.
Donald Trump is an outsider who will not be let inside. The election of Donald Trump is above all a grave symptom of the decadence of the American political system, totally ruled by money, lobbies, the military-industrial complex and corporate media. Their lies are undermining the very basis of democracy. Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of the people: the right to free speech and assembly.
First published in August, this article sheds light on the contradictions of “Leftists” and “Progressives” in the US who endorse Antifa.
Behind the rhetoric of the “alt-right” about white nativism and protecting American traditions, history and Christian values is the lust for violence. Behind the rhetoric of antifa, the Black Bloc and the so-called “alt-left” about capitalism, racism, state repression and corporate power is the same lust for violence.
The two opposing groups, largely made up of people who have been cast aside by the cruelty of corporate capitalism, have embraced holy war. Their lives, battered by economic misery and social marginalization, have suddenly been filled with meaning. They hold themselves up as the vanguard of the oppressed. They arrogate to themselves the right to use force to silence those they define as the enemy. They sanctify anger. They are infected with the dark, adrenaline-driven urge for confrontation that arises among the disenfranchised when a democracy ceases to function. They are separated, as Sigmund Freud wrote of those who engage in fratricide, by the “narcissism of minor differences.” They mirror each other, not only ideologically but also physically—armed and dressed in black, the color of fascism and the color of death.
It was inevitable that we would reach this point. The corporate state has seized and corrupted all democratic institutions, including the two main political parties, to serve the interests of corporate power and maximize global corporate profits. There is no justice in the courts. There is no possibility for reform in the legislative bodies. The executive branch is a dysfunctional mess headed by a narcissistic kleptocrat, con artist and pathological liar. Money has replaced the vote. The consent of the governed is a joke. Our most basic constitutional rights, including the rights to privacy and due process, have been taken from us by judicial fiat. The economically marginalized, now a majority of the country, have been rendered invisible by a corporate media dominated by highly paid courtiers spewing out meaningless political and celebrity gossip and trivia as if it were news. The corporate state, unimpeded, is pillaging and looting the carcass of the country and government, along with the natural world, for the personal gain of the 1 percent. It daily locks away in cages the poor, especially poor people of color, discarding the vulnerable as human refuse.
A government that is paralyzed and unable and unwilling to address the rudimentary needs of its citizens, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia and as history has shown with the Weimar Republic and czarist Russia, eventually empowers violent extremists. Economic and social marginalization is the lifeblood of extremist groups. Without it they wither and die. Extremism, as the social critic Christopher Lasch wrote, is “a refuge from the terrors of inner life.”
Germany’s Nazi stormtroopers had their counterparts in that nation’s communist Alliance of Red Front Fighters. The far-right anti-communist death squad Alliance of Argentina had its counterpart in the guerrilla group the People’s Revolutionary Army during the “Dirty War.” The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels during the war I covered in El Salvador had their counterparts in the right-wing death squads, whose eventual demise seriously impeded the FMLN’s ability to recruit. The Serbian nationalists, or Chetniks, in Yugoslavia had their counterparts in the Croatian nationalists, or Ustaše. The killing by one side justifies the killing by the other. And the killing is always sanctified in the name of each side’s martyrs.
The violence by antifa—short for anti-fascist or anti-fascist action—in Charlottesville, Va., saw a surge in interest and support for the movement, especially after the murder of Heather Heyer. The Black Bloc was applauded by some of the counterprotesters in Boston during an alt-right rally there Aug. 19. In Charlottesville, antifa activists filled the vacuum left by a passive police force, holding off neo-Nazi thugs who threatened Cornel West and clergy who were protesting against the white nationalist event. This was a propaganda coup for antifa, which seeks to portray its use of violence as legitimate self-defense. Protecting West and the clergy members from physical assault was admirable. But this single act no more legitimizes antifa violence than the turkeys, Christmas gifts and Fourth of July fireworks that John Gotti gave to his neighbors legitimized the violence of the Gambino crime family. Antifa, like the alt-right, is the product of a diseased society.
The white racists and neo-Nazis may be unsavory, but they too are victims. They too lost jobs and often live in poverty in deindustrialized wastelands. They too often are plagued by debt, foreclosures, bank repossessions and inability to repay student loans. They too often suffer from evictions, opioid addictions, domestic violence and despair. They too sometimes face bankruptcy because of medical bills. They too have seen social services gutted, public education degraded and privatized and the infrastructure around them decay. They too often suffer from police abuse and mass incarceration. They too are often in despair and suffer from hopelessness. And they too have the right to free speech, however repugnant their views.
Street clashes do not distress the ruling elites. These clashes divide the underclass. They divert activists from threatening the actual structures of power. They give the corporate state the ammunition to impose harsher forms of control and expand the powers of internal security. When antifa assumes the right to curtail free speech it becomes a weapon in the hands of its enemies to take that freedom away from everyone, especially the anti-capitalists.
The focus on street violence diverts activists from the far less glamorous building of relationships and alternative institutions and community organizing that alone will make effective resistance possible. We will defeat the corporate state only when we take back and empower our communities, as is happening with Cooperation Jackson, a grass-roots cooperative movement in Jackson, Miss. As long as acts of resistance are forms of personal catharsis, the corporate state is secure. Indeed, the corporate state welcomes this violence because violence is a language it can speak with a proficiency and ruthlessness that none of these groups can match.
“Politics isn’t made of individuals,” Sophia Burns writes in “Catharsis Is Counter-Revolutionary.” “It’s made of classes. Political change doesn’t come from feeling individually validated. It comes from collective action and organization within the working class. That means creating new institutions that meet our needs and defend against oppression.”
The protests by the radical left now sweeping America, as Aviva Chomsky points out, are too often little more than self-advertisements for moral purity. They are products of a social media culture in which each of us is the star of his or her own life movie. They are infected with the American belief in regeneration through violence and the cult of the gun. They represent a clash between the bankruptcy of identity politics, which produced, as Dr. West has said, a president who was “a black mascot for Wall Street,” and the bankruptcy of a white, Christianized fascism that produced Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
“Rather than organizing for change, individuals seek to enact a statement about their own righteousness,” Chomsky writes in “How (Not) to Challenge Racist Violence.” “They may boycott certain products, refuse to eat certain foods, or they may show up to marches or rallies whose only purpose is to demonstrate the moral superiority of the participants. White people may loudly claim that they recognize their privilege or declare themselves allies of people of color or other marginalized groups. People may declare their communities ‘no place for hate.’ Or they may show up at counter-marches to ‘stand up’ to white nationalists or neo-Nazis. All of these types of ‘activism’ emphasize self-improvement or self-expression rather than seeking concrete change in society or policy. They are deeply, and deliberately, apolitical in the sense that they do not seek to address issues of power, resources, decision making, or how to bring about change.”
The corporate state seeks to discredit and shut down the anti-capitalist left. Its natural allies are the neo-Nazis and the Christian fascists. The alt-right is bankrolled, after all, by the most retrograde forces in American capitalism. It has huge media platforms. It has placed its ideologues and sympathizers in positions of power, including in law enforcement and the military. And it has carried out acts of domestic terrorism that dwarf anything carried out by the left. White supremacists were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks in the United States from 2006 to 2016, far more than those committed by members of any other extremist group, according to a report issued in May by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. There is no moral equivalency between antifa and the alt-right. But by brawling in the streets antifa allows the corporate state, which is terrified of a popular anti-capitalist uprising, to use the false argument of moral equivalency to criminalize the work of all anti-capitalists.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center states categorically in its pamphlet “Ten Ways to Fight Hate,” “Do not attend a hate rally.”
“Find another outlet for anger and frustration and for people’s desire to do something,” it recommends. “Hold a unity rally or parade to draw media attention away from hate. Hate has a First Amendment right. Courts have routinely upheld the constitutional right of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups to hold rallies and say whatever they want. Communities can restrict group movements to avoid conflicts with other citizens, but hate rallies will continue. Your efforts should focus on channeling people away from hate rallies.”
The Nazis were as unsavory to the German political and economic elites as Donald Trump is to most Americans who hold power or influence. But the German elites chose to work with the fascists, whom they naively thought they could control, rather than risk a destruction of capitalism. Street brawls, actively sought out by the Nazis, always furthered the interests of the fascists, who promised to restore law and order and protect traditional values. The violence contributed to their mystique and the yearning among the public for a strongman who would impose stability.
Violent confrontations with antifascists gave the Nazis a chance to paint themselves as the victims of a pugnacious, lawless left. They seized it.
It worked. We know now that many Germans supported the fascists because they were terrified of leftist violence in the streets. Germans opened their morning newspapers and saw reports of clashes like the one in Wedding [a Berlin neighborhood]. It looked like a bloody tide of civil war was rising in their cities. Voters and opposition politicians alike came to believe the government needed special police powers to stop violent leftists. Dictatorship grew attractive. The fact that the Nazis themselves were fomenting the violence didn’t seem to matter.
One of Hitler’s biggest steps to dictatorial power was to gain emergency police powers, which he claimed he needed to suppress leftist violence.
What took place in Charlottesville, like what took place in February when antifa and Black Bloc protesters thwarted UC Berkeley’s attempt to host the crypto-fascist Milo Yiannopoulos, was political theater. It was about giving self-styled radicals a stage. It was about elevating their self-image. It was about appearing heroic. It was about replacing personal alienation with comradeship and solidarity. Most important, it was about the ability to project fear. This newfound power is exciting and intoxicating. It is also very dangerous. Many of those in Charlottesville on the left and the right were carrying weapons. A neo-Nazi fired a round from a pistol in the direction of a counterprotester. The neo-Nazis often carried AR-15 rifles and wore quasi-military uniforms and helmets that made them blend in with police and state security. There could easily have been a bloodbath. A march held in Sacramento, Calif., in June 2016 by the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party to protest attacks at Trump rallies ended with a number of people stabbed. Police accused counterprotesters of initiating the violence. It is a short series of steps from bats and ax handles to knives to guns.
The conflict will not end until the followers of the alt-right and the anti-capitalist left are given a living wage and a voice in how we are governed. Take away a person’s dignity, agency and self-esteem and this is what you get. As political power devolves into a more naked form of corporate totalitarianism, as unemployment and underemployment expand, so will extremist groups. They will attract more sympathy and support as the wider population realizes, correctly, that Americans have been stripped of all ability to influence the decisions that affect their lives, lives that are getting steadily worse.
The ecocide by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries alone makes revolt a moral imperative. The question is how to make it succeed. Taking to the street to fight fascists ensures our defeat. Antifa violence, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, is a “major gift to the right, including the militant right.” It fuels the right wing’s paranoid rants about the white race being persecuted and under attack. And it strips anti-capitalists of their moral capital.
Many in the feckless and bankrupt liberal class, deeply complicit in the corporate assault on the country and embracing the dead end of identity politics, will seek to regain credibility by defending the violence by groups such as antifa. Natasha Lennard, for example, in The Nation calls the “video of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched in the face” an act of “kinetic beauty.” She writes
“if we recognize fascism in Trump’s ascendance, our response must be anti-fascist in nature. The history of anti-fascist action is not one of polite protest, nor failed appeals to reasoned debate with racists, but direct, aggressive confrontation.”
This violence-as-beauty rhetoric is at the core of these movements. It saturates the vocabulary of the right-wing corporate oligarchs, including Donald Trump. Talk like this poisons national discourse. It dehumanizes whole segments of the population. It shuts out those who speak with nuance and compassion, especially when they attempt to explain the motives and conditions of opponents. It thrusts the society into a binary and demented universe of them and us. It elevates violence to the highest aesthetic. It eschews self-criticism and self-reflection. It is the prelude to widespread suffering and death. And that, I fear, is where we are headed.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister.
Hold the cheers! We’ve been down this road before. Nothing came of it, nor will anything now.
Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands. Agreements with other nations and groups are meaningless, usually breached, sometimes straightaway like the Iran nuclear deal, violated by Washington under Obama and Trump.
Last August, Tillerson claimed Washington’s “new strategy breaks from previous approaches that set artificial, calendar-based deadlines,” adding:
“We are making clear to the Taliban that they will not win on the battlefield.”
“The Taliban has a path to peace and political legitimacy through a negotiated political settlement to end the war. We stand ready to support peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban without preconditions.”
After 16 years of US naked aggression, the Taliban aren’t fooled by its phony outreach.
It would likely decline talks with Washington unless it ceased combat operations and agreed unconditionally to pull all its forces out of the country – a nonstarter for all US administrations.
At the time, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid dismissed comments from Washington, calling on its regime to withdraw all its troops.
“The main driver of war in Afghanistan is foreign occupation,” he stressed.
On Monday, Tillerson showed up unannounced in the country, arriving in a military transport plane at the Pentagon’s illegal Bagram airbase.
He’ll meet with US-installed Afghan officials in a windowless bunker for protection. Hated Americans risk being attacked. Coming to Kabul is dangerous.
Tillerson didn’t risk a visit to America’s heavily fortified embassy in the city. Taliban fighters wanting US troops out of the country can show up anywhere.
Tillerson downplayed the deplorable state of things. US aggression and occupation bear full responsibility.
He disgracefully lied, claiming
“Afghanistan has come quite a distance already in terms of creating a much more vibrant population, a much more vibrant government, education system, a larger economy.”
“So there are opportunities to strengthen the foundations of a prosperous Afghanistan society” – never under illegal US occupation.
Tillerson unambiguously said America intends to stay, what I called permanent occupation in earlier articles, using the country for oil and gas pipelines, part of encircling Russia and China with US military bases, and plundering vast Afghan mineral riches – likely worth trillions of dollars.
Afghanistan is also the world’s largest opium producer. Heroin and other illicit drugs produce hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenues – a US government-supported bonanza for corrupt regime officials, the CIA, organized crime and Western financial institutions, heavily involved in money laundering.
Pre-9/11, Afghanistan under Taliban rule eradicated 94% of opium production, according to UN estimates. America’s presence in the country revived it.
Tillerson claimed “there are…moderate voices among the Taliban…“There’s a place for them in the government if they are ready to come, renouncing terrorism, renouncing violence, and being committed to a stable prosperous Afghanistan.”
US state terrorism is the scourge all Afghans face, devastated by years of naked aggression. Taliban forces are fighting to rid their country of America’s presence.
They’ll likely continue for as long as it takes. Throughout its history, Afghanistan was a graveyard of empires, defeating would-be conquerors, foiling their ambitions, America’s lost war the latest example, perhaps continuing for another 16 years – a lost cause no matter how long it goes on.
Tillerson said the Taliban will never win militarily against America. Their strategy likely aims to outlast their enemy, wearing it down, hoping one day they’ll give up a lost cause and leave, a goal worth fighting for.
“A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.” ― Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae, 1990, and Sex, Art, and American Culture, 1992
I’ve waited two weeks since news about Harvey Weinstein’s malignant power exploded in the New York press. How long do I hesitate before joining the debate, a debate that must expand, drawing in more people, searching all levels of our culture which this occasion demands?
I suppose every woman, young or old, ambitious or docile, abused or not by a man– by anyone, perhaps herself an accomplice in abuse— has something to contribute here.
But what happens after the ten millionth testimony is proffered? After the trauma is identified? Does it help to say I too am a member in the same shamed and traumatized club along with Olympic champions, film stars and directors, fashion designers, and celebrity journalists as well as secretaries and research assistants, clients and patients? Does it help to confess, to listen, to empathize, to embrace a confessor, or to expose a predator? In the short term, perhaps. In the long-term, unlikely.
Does it help to disguise my feminine lines, veil my breasts, lower my gaze, and extinguish my body odor with mint flavored salve? Is it liberating to confide to my mother or sister, teacher or psychologist exactly what that rat did to my body, to recall my first experience of being violated, the unarticulated shock of what powerlessness really means? I doubt it. In the end, at the cultural-institutional level, none of these are remedial.
Where do we go after all the confessions are in, after the tweets have gone viral, after all the molestations are quantified, even after a court conviction?
I see no solution on the horizon. Because we are inextricably bound into a culture which celebrates the body, male and female. Our civilization encourages full explorations of sex, rewards ambition, and, most of all, it glorifies power, especially if that power is attached to wealth. These ideals are unassailable and no one is suggesting they be expunged.
This condition is evidenced by the abysmal record, near failure, of the very campaign that claimed to solve women’s problems—the Western feminist movement. A movement moreover, which, sanctioned by the UN, proudly and energetically exported itself to every corner of the world. Instead of weakening the patriarchal, misogynist culture that grips America at home, feminists of the 1980s adopted the paternalistic mantle they claim they had shed. Thus misguided, they set out to teach the world about true (women’s) democracy. I recall in the late 1980s, after the “opening” of China, a US press notice announcing progress in China:–a beauty pageant was planned in the communist state; multiple shades of lip paint were available to China’s women. China was advancing!
I do not recollect newly liberated American feminists applauding advances in civilization when women in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines or Argentina won presidential office.
After the Middle East and Islam became topical in the 1990s, western women ignored their own unfulfilled goals to become global protectors, setting their sights on naughty men who mistreat Kurd, Afghan, Arab, Dalit, or Yazidi women. Feminism gladly brandished its new cudgel to strike at anything in the vicinity of Islam.
What might help reform the entrenched misogyny that’s been exposed in the Weinstein scandal is this: explore how and why we– young men as well as women– are attracted to power; why our self esteem depends so much on our beauty, being gazed at. Why do we dash after anything that ‘goes viral’? Why do we want far more money than we need to live? Why can we not say “No” to a cleric’s advances, to a sport star’s invitation, to a boss’ wink, to promises of greater success?
A feature of youth is short attention span; this could apply to youthful America, with its tendency to believe that when its wrongs are revealed, it expresses remorse and then moves forward. Having admitted its misdeeds, it matures. Alas, this is not America’s way. It coats itself in cosmetic confessions. For an example of our enduring immaturity, look at the hugely popular TV series, Mad Men. I completely missed Mad Men from 2007 to 2015 when millions of Americans followed its weekly episodes. Being a media critic, however belatedly, I set out to examine the source of its acclaim. So I began viewing Mad Men. That was last month, before the Weinstein exposé ignited the debate about sexual predators. Discussing the Mad Men phenomenon with others, we recalled how poignantly the series portrayed verbal and physical debasing of women by husbands, lovers and office colleagues. “Yes, that was how men behaved in the sixties; that’s what women accepted. It was the culture then (before the feminist movement). Men couldn’t get away with that now.” Can’t they? “No. Well it’s more subtle, more circumspect, today.” Is it?
“If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn’t repel them.” ― social critic, Camille Paglia
We have to recognize that the foundation of our culture, dominated as it is by male energy and sexuality, remains intact. This, despite some cosmetic and legal adjustments. How much are women willing to risk in their search for esteem and other rewards.
Sexual abuse and harassment of women must be viewed within a wider portrait of this unwholesome nation. Progress has faltered on many fronts: we’ve returned to Jim Crow incarceration and racism we believed was far behind us, a condition documented by civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander. Human trafficking, approaching slavery, is rife. Child abuse and kidnapping continue; pornography has surged with the application of digital tools. Rape of women by the military is carried out against captives but also fellow soldiers. And we all know something about torture in the 21st century.
Back to the ‘Weinstein problem’: the press continues to engage us with yet more stories of celebrities’ encounters with this pervert. Yes, just like fellow media moguls Bill Cosby and Roger Ailes. But surely this is part of a ‘cultural condition’ we’ve known about and debated for some time, e.g. campus rape, the violation of women by fellow college students. Like Hollywood insiders, university authorities ignored or minimized the violence. They treat the scourge by referring cases not to police but to college grievance committees. A 2015 film treatment of the issue does not indicate the problem is solved. University cover-ups, we learn, serve to maintain a reputation attractive to philanthropists.
The ongoing problem of sexual abuse of women (on campus or in the film and TV industries) was a subject of acerbic exchanges among feminists 30 years ago. On one side, almost single-handed—the “anti-feminist feminist” culture and art critic– Camille Paglia boldly took on mainstream feminists. In a sustained series of exchanges, many of which appear in her 1992 collection Sex, Art and American Cultureshe declares,
“Feminists keeps saying the sexes are the same…telling women they can do anything, go anywhere, say anything or wear anything.”
“No they can’t.” Paglia exclaims. She attacks what she sees as mostly white, educated feminists for their “pie-in-the-sky fantasies about the perfect world (that) keep young women from seeing life as it is.” As a result, she argues,
“Women want all the freedoms won, but they don’t want to acknowledge the risk. That’s the problem”.
I’d like to hear Paglia’s take on today’s debate around the Hollywood scandal (it’s bigger than one disgraced pervert). She might help us more fully explore issues of risk and responsibility, not men’s– women’s. How can that be taught? Children are supervised ever more closely via their cell phones. Can this prepare them to handle risks as adults, faced with predators like Weinstein?
October 25th, 2017 by Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB)
More than three years after the Ukraine-related Euro-Russian catastrophe, there is no hope of an end to this crisis. On the contrary, the tension inexorably keeps climbing: Donbass still at war, annexation of Crimea by Russia not recognised by the international community,… the eyes are now turning to the Baltic Sea where demonstrations of military testosterone is progressing well on both sides of the new iron curtain[1].
Not far from Gdansk, the former Danzig, whose corridor contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War, another corridor is now the object of all desire and may become a trigger of nothing less than a Third World War: the corridor, or the triangle, of Suwalki.
Figure 1 – The triangle of Suwalki. Source: Strafor 2015
Kaliningrad and territorial integrities
Since 2004 and the EU integration of the Baltic countries, a Russian territory, the Kaliningrad Oblast, has found itself isolated in the heart of the EU. In the current atmosphere of Atlantic-Russian tension, Russia may be tempted to secure an access corridor between its Belarusian ally and its strategic exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. The 60-kilometer-long corridor runs along the Lithuanian-Polish border into an area which has been the subject of lively differences between Lithuania and Poland for almost 100 years.
The region of Suwalki is located in Poland; nevertheless it was originally part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania before moving to Prussia in 1795, then to the Grand Duchy of Poland, and finally to Tsarist Russia. In 1919-1920, following the Russian Revolution, Lithuanian and Polish troops clashed during the Sejny revolt and the battle of the Niemen River, until the signing of the Suwalki Treaty, which attributed the cities and regions of Punsk, Sejny and Suwalki to Poland.
Needless to say there is not much to be done to revive tensions in this Polish region, where there is a large Lithuanian minority (the town of Punsk, for instance, is still populated by 80% of Lithuanians), and encourage dreams of independence in an EU where these kinds of claims become common[2]. The Atlantic-Russian crisis in this region could therefore quickly lead to a new front of disintegration of the European Union and, perhaps, to an ethnic conflict between two EU/NATO member states.
Whatever method is used, if Russia ever succeeded in establishing such a corridor, the Baltic countries would be cut off from the EU.
For now, since 2003, an agreement between the EU and Russia has allowed the latter to pass under strict surveillance in Lithuania to gain access to its exclave. But what is this agreement relying on? Certainly not much.
Lack of anticipation, strategic errors, political weakness: the great escalation
Weapons and men are gathering around this region: Americans, Canadians, British, French, Danish, Germans on one side; Belarusians, Russians, Moldavians, Kazakh, and even Chinese on the other. And since the Russian exercise, Zapad 2017, and the Russian-Chinese exercise in the Baltic Sea, Maritime Cooperation-2017[3], the EU has reasons to worry about an escalation that would become uncontrollable, posing the risk that the smallest incident triggers a war with all the characteristics of a world war, given the protagonists involved[4].
Therefore, it is absolutely imperative that something is done to end the sequence of events currently leading to this strategic trap. The integration of the Baltic countries was an error; they should have been given special statutes giving rise to a Euro-Russian dialogue instead. The integration of the Baltic countries into NATO was even worse, inevitably shaking Russia. In 2008, the US plan to install an anti-missile shield in this region began to erode the cordial relations that the EU and Russia were attempting to establish, despite the two previous errors (in particular, it is following this decision that Vladimir Putin decided to end the story of the special statute for the Kaliningrad Oblast which was to become a sort of Russian Hong Kong). The European refusal to negotiate its economic partnership with Ukraine in a tripartite format (EU, Ukraine, Russia) is a major historical fault, inevitably leading to the division of Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimea by Russia.
The Russian bear is now fully awake and the EU can now cry in front of its strategic weakness, the hardening of the NATO-American claw in its neck, the disintegration of its entire Eastern flank (as anticipated in 2014 in these pages) … being at the mercy of a US plane flying too close to a Russian territory, or a missile penetrating too deep into the European ground to see the great military-diplomatic machine dragging the continent and the world into catastrophe[5].
Traps on all sides
But what needs to be done? As we always say “in a complex world, anticipation is crucial, because when the problems arrive on the table, there are only bad solutions left to solve them“. Regardless of Russia’s responsibilities in this escalation, the EU has serious responsibilities itself, notably by lack of anticipation thus falling into every trap. Today the Americans no longer let go of the Europeans, to whom they forbid any exchange with Russia. A particularly frightening example:
“On June 15, 2017, the US Senate passed a bill threatening with fines, banking restrictions and exclusion to American tenders, all European companies that would participate in the construction of Russian pipelines. This text has yet to be approved by the House of Representatives and promulgated by Mr Trump. The five European gas groups involved in the Nord Stream 2 project, to which they each contribute 10% of the financing, are directly threatened by this amendment: the French Engie, the Anglo-Dutch Shell, the German Uniper and Wintershall companies, but also the ‘Austrian OMW [6]”.
Alstom and others know how much it costs to ignore the extra-territorial exception of the American law. If such a bill were to be passed, it would be a further brake on any prospect of resolving the Euro-Russian crisis.
The Russians can not give in to Kaliningrad either. Our team was tempted to think that there could be a bargaining barrier to exchange the Crimea against Kaliningrad (to have the Russian annexation of the Crimea recognised in place of a returning Kaliningrad to the EU or as a special status region). But Russia will not give up its “ice-free” access to the Baltic Sea, especially in the current context of defiance.
However, the Czech president has thrown a rock into the water this summer by suggesting that accepting Russia’s annexation of the Crimea would allow negotiations between Ukraine and Russia[7] on a compensatory policy that would be welcomed in a bloodless country. Poroshenko’s desperate screams might not completely cover the reflections this suggestion inevitably created among the Ukrainians… and beyond. Moreover, the failure of the current government in the fight against corruption, modernisation and the Europeanisation of the country has caused Poroshenko to plunge into the polls and to greatly irritate the EU and Germany. Yulia Tymoshenko, a pro-European politician, but who has been accused in the past of Russian sympathies and has a lot to do with the gas trade with Russia[8], would be the winner of an election if it took place today. Georgia’s very troubled Mikheil Saakashvili, who had woken up one day at the head of the Odessa region, has just been withdrawn from the Ukrainian nationality he had been awarded three years before[9]. Would the wind be shifting direction in Kiev? Heading to where? Would the imperative of returning to Russia have to do with these few reversal indicators?
Hypothesis of Reversal?
In any case, on the EU side, the ranks are tightening around the idea of re-establishing the dialogue with Russia. Whilst France, Germany and Italy have traditionally been aligned with this position, statements in this direction abound, including in the countries on the Eastern flank: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia are now of this opinion, and their participation alongside Poland in the Visegrad Group is also a way to neutralise the latter, which is now the most anti-Russian of the whole EU. Even the Baltic countries are not united regarding the policy to be adopted vis-à-vis Russia. For example, the Estonian Prime Minister Jüri Ratas has just declared that he sees no reason to question the protocol of cooperation that binds his country to Russia[10]. The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, also dares to appeal solemnly and in an argumentative way to renewing relations with Russia[11].
Is Europe far from asserting a common position vis-à-vis Russia? The military rantings in the Baltic Sea suggest Europe cannot afford to lose any more time. Russia’s demonstrations of strength certainly aim to put pressure on the Europeans so that they move away from the American influence and regain their strategic independence. But the strengthening of NATO’s capabilities in Europe is now a reality that is also turning the clock on Russia: for the moment, in the event of a conflagration, Russia would have the strategic advantage (as a report of RAND clearly states[12]); but the quadrupling of the US military budget for the protection of Europe[13], the strengthening of human and technological capacities, etc., do not allow Russia to wait indefinitely for NATO to be capable to impose its law again. It is a real race against time that is played now, bringing in, at the end of this year, some very significant conflict risks.
Moreover, there is a risk that the re-establishment of the dialogue with Russia would not be enough to find solutions when so many tensions have accumulated over the last 15 years, which are perhaps irreversible since 2014. History does not serve the same dish up again…
What 21st century for Europe?
An EU-Eurasia summit to launch a security partnership between the two areas, an official referendum allowing the annexation of the Crimea to Russia to be recognised with a compensatory policy for Ukraine, a special status for Kaliningrad, a tripartite negotiation on the future of the Balkans, an energy partnership negotiated on equal bases… All the current points of tension can become good themes of the dialogue which should make it possible to build a lasting and mutually beneficial Euro-Russian relationship in the 21st century. A beautiful dream, for now …
Figure 2 – Gas routes between Russia and Europe. Source: Le Blog Finance, 02/07/2017
Notes
[1] You can read details about the degradation of the situation in the Baltic Sea in these two excellent articles. Sources: Telos, 22/09/2017; Le Grand Continent, 16/09/2017
[4] NATO is not left behind in the region: missions like Baltops or even Saber Strike were set up in those Baltic regions.
[5] For example, the interception of the Russian Defence Minister’s plane over the Baltic Sea and the way Russian air force reacted. Source: Le Temps, 23/06/2017
[12] The Rand Corporation is a neo-conservative think-tank very close to the White House, specialised in cold war and military strategy. Its 2016 report justified a reinforcement of all the US troops in the Baltic Sea. Source: Rand Corporation, 2016
Featured image: HMS Ambush sails into HM Clyde in September 2012 to begin sea trials. (c) Defence Images
It’s easy to see why Rolls Royce and other companies in the nuclear engineering business are pushing the UK government finance the development a new generation of ‘small modular reactors’ or SMRs. Whether the project succeeds or fails, there are juicy profits to be had for them at taxpayers expense.
Rather harder to understand is why the government should see the slightest merit in the idea.
According to a recent report by Rolls-Royce and its partners in the ‘SMR Consortium’ (SMRC), a UK SMR program could create 40,000 skilled jobs, contribute £100 billion ($132 billion) to the economy and open up a potential £400 billion global export market.
Nuclear Industries Association chairman Lord (John) Hutton claims in the foreword that a UK SMR programme could “help the UK become a vibrant, world-leading nuclear nation.” He asserts his belief that “it is fundamental for the UK to meet its 2050 decarbonisation targets and will deliver secure, reliable and affordable electricity for generations to come.”
The SMRC report envisages an approximate doubling of the UK’s 9.5 GW existing nuclear capacity by 2030, then another doubling by 2050 to around 40GW. That implies that come 2050, SMRs would be delivering some 30GW – the output of 100 300MW units scattered around the UK.
There are just two problems with the rosy scenario. First, the techno-optimism that oozes from every page is a fantasy. Nuclear power stations have got bigger to achieve economies of scale: it’s much cheaper to build a single 1.2GW unit than four 300MW units, or a dozen 100MW units.
As an illustration of the principle, take a look at the wind power industry. One of the main reasons why offshore wind has come down so much in cost is the move to ever-larger wind turbines. A single new 8MW turbine may now be bigger than an entire wind farm of 20 years ago.
This story goes all the way back to the 1950s …
But first we must realise – there is nothing new about SMRs! They have been powering submarines and aircraft carriers ever since the since USS Nautilus was launched in 1955, over 60 years ago. And the world’s first purely civilian nuclear plant, at Shippingport in the USA, a 60MW SMR, went live in 1957. While civilian reactors got bigger, many hundreds of SMRs have been built and deployed for naval use.
Now if there really are huge cost savings to be achieved from the mass production of SMRs, how come they have not already been achieved? What is that that generations of super-smart nuclear engineers have missed? Industry claims of less complex financing and ‘process engineering’ may ring a little hollow, but – for the sake of argument – let’s accept that all the claimed cost reductions can be achieved. On the SMRC’s projections,
“The levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) generated by a FOAK [first of a kind] UK SMR power station is forecast under £75 per MWh and this reduces to a forecast £65 per MWh by station number five. In the medium term the target is even lower at £60 per MWh.”
This is a good bit cheaper than the inflation-proof £92.50 / MWh (in 2013 money) the government has promised to pay for Hinkley C’s power for 35 years following the plant’s opening. But it’s a lot higher than current wholesale power prices of around £42 / MWh.
The ever shrinking cost of renewable energy
Last month the price of offshore wind power reached a new low of £57.50 per MWh in an auction for contracts, guaranteed for just 15 years. Onshore wind is even cheaper: contracts awarded in Germany in May reached another new low of €42.80 / MWh (£38.24) – less than current UK wholesale power prices. And Germany’s latest solar auction, a few days ago, delivered bids as low as €42.90 per MWh. Both these technologies appear viable with no subsidy at all.
The cost of solar PV panels continues its precipitous decline. Recent figures show the cost of panels in the Netherlands declining at 11% per year, or 50% every five years. The trend may continue for a long time to come.
Extrapolate these declining renewable cost trends to 2030, and we can expect solar power to cost around £10 per MWh, with wind at £20-30 per MWh. By 2050, wind power costs will surely have halved again, with solar around £1 per MWh. So what will be the use of nuclear power at £60-75 per MWh?
Of course there will be costs in integrating large volumes of variable, non-despatchable power supply into the grid. It will mean using ‘dynamic demand’ or ‘smart grid’ technologies, energy storage in giant batteries and hydropower stations, large scale power-to-gas and power-to-liquid-fuel conversion (in turn displacing fossil fuels from transport) … and the base cost of power will be astonishingly low by current standards, not just in the UK but all over the world.
So Lord Hutton’s hyperbolic claims are wholly erroneous. Nuclear power will be utterly irrelevant in meeting decarbonisation targets. There is no £400 billion export market. Who would want SMRs in 2050, when their power will be 50-100 times more expensive than solar?
The ‘nuclear deterrent’
We now know (thanks to Andy Stirling and Philip Johnstone of Sussex University) that the government wants to use civilian nuclear programme to generate expertise, technology, for military use, especially reactors for Trident nuclear submarines. What better way than to pour billions of pounds into SMRs under the pretence that the technology is for civilian use?
Actually Lord Hutton himself gave the game away when he wrote: “A UK SMR programme would support all 10 ‘pillars’ of the Government’s Industrial Strategy and assist in sustaining the skills required for the Royal Navy’s submarine programme.”
More recently, on 10th October, defence procurement minister Harriet Baldwin MP replied to a question by Caroline Lucas MP that,
“[i]n all discussions it is fully understood that civil and defence sectors must work together to make sure resource is prioritised appropriately for the protection and prosperity of the United Kingdom.”
But there are signs that BEIS Secretary Greg Clarke may be getting tired of subsidising the UK’s nuclear missiles. In 2015 former Chancellor George Osborne announced a £250 million SMR competition for the most promising ideas. The outcomewas to be published last autumn. it wasn’t. By May 2017, the nuclear industry and its backers in the House of Lords were panicking. Then the SMRCs report ‘UK SMR: A National Endeavour‘ was issued this 20th September in a desperate attempt to ginger up the process. It has failed – so far.
Could a sudden fit of common sense, logical thinking and sound economics have come across senior UK ministers? Probably not. The Telegraphreports today that BEIS is to publish the competitions ‘results’ in a study this week, announcing Rolls Royce and its SMRC partners as the winners. “We are currently considering next steps for the SMR programme and we will communicate these in due course”, a BEIS spokesman said.
Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at Resurgence & Ecologist magazine and a former editor of The Ecologist.
In my October 23 column, “The American Left: RIP,” I pointed out that political correctness now bans the use of the words “pregnant woman.”
One might think it difficult to exceed such absurdity, but a University of Illinois professor has managed to carry political correctness to new heights of absurdity by declaring mathematics to be the language of “white privilege.”
Why stop there? What about physics and chemistry? What about the English language itself which has established its hegemony as the world language? The US dollar which is world money?
What else have white people created in order to gain privilege? Democracy perhaps? The rule of law? Civil liberties?
Political correctness is just beginning its career. What will survive it?
Global Research does not seek financial support from private and public foundations. This is why we value every single donation and contribution. Independent media is threatened. More than ever, we are in the need of the financial support of our readers.
We encourage you to re-post this selection of articles pertaining to the history of US war crimes. Share through social media and debate with your colleagues and friends regarding mainstream media disinformation.
The US-led coalition, whose operation in Syria had not been authorized by the UN or Damascus, has denied that its airstrike resulted in civilian casualties in Deir ez-Zor.
Three weeks after four US special forces soldiers were killed in a firefight in the landlocked West African nation of Niger, information has surfaced indicating that the American troops and their Nigerien counterparts were involved in a “capture-kill” mission aimed at the leader of a local Islamist militia operating on the Niger-Mali border.
Last week the new head of the CIA Mike Pompeopublicly threatened to make the CIA a “much more vicious agency”. His first step towards that is to unleash CIA sponsored killer gangs onto the people of Afghanistan.
US military operations in the country are kept under wraps. Four US special forces killed in Niger is a convenient pretext for expanding America’s military presence in the nation and on continent – claiming it’s to combat terrorism Washington supports.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s capability is well-equipped to quell the violence of protesters, assist ICE in their deportation corralling, and track all those who belong to minority groups – Muslims, Black Lives Matter…
Every major newspaper, television channel and US government official has spent the past two years claiming that the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), founded by the late Hugo Chavez, had become a marginalized political party, supported only by ‘hard core Chavistas’ and public employees. The US government, under Presidents Obama and Trump, backed gangs of violent demonstrators, who rampaged through the streets, as ‘the true democratic representatives’ of the will of the voters.
Secretary General of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro, a veteran running dog for Washington, railed against the President Nicholas Maduro, denouncing him as a ‘dictator’ and openly demanded that the Venezuelan people and neighboring Latin American regimes unite to oust him – even through violence. President Trump imposed brutal economic sanctions designed to strangle the economy and guaranteed Washington’s support for the rightwing opposition, the self-styled Democratic Unity Roundtable, (‘Mesa de la Unidad Democratica’ – or MUD).
MUD took advantage of the economic crisis facing Venezuela with the sharp decline of the price of its main export oil. MUD has spent the past three years attacking the government and mobilizing its supporters through street violence and parliamentary maneuvers to paralyze the government’s socio-economic agenda. Vital public services, like power stations, were frequent targets of MUD-orchestrated sabotage, even leading to the assassination of public employees, like police and firefighters.
MUD rejected the government’s proposal for peaceful negotiations with the opposition. President Maduro asked for a dialogue with the US, which was sponsoring MUD, but President Trump replied with his usual bombast and threats of violent intervention.
The economic blockade and drop in oil prices had devastating consequences: Inflation hit triple digits in Venezuela. There were increasing food shortages, long lines and valid consumer complaints. As a result, the opposition coalition won the Congressional elections of 2015 and immediately tried to impeach President Maduro. Rather than using their electoral mandate to govern and address the country’s problems, they focused exclusively on forcing ‘regime change’. This monomania led to voter dissatisfaction with MUD and, contrary to Washington’s hopes, predictions, threats and sanctions, the PSUV won the gubernatorial elections by a wide margin in October 2017.
The opposition was decisively defeated. Over a thousand independent outside observers, who had monitored the Venezuelan elections and voting procedures, declared the elections to be the free and valid expression of the citizens will. The opposition immediately rejected the result. The entire US-EU press predictably converged on Caracas, screaming ‘fraud’, and echoing the rabid right-wing politicos in the US, the OAS and Europe. They saw no need to back their claims with ‘evidence’.
In truth, the Opposition-MUD was roundly defeated: They had secured only 39% of the vote and only 5 of the 23 governorships. The PSUV, for its part, increased its voter support from 44% in the 2015 to 54% in October 2017.
The real question, which is being ignored, is how the PSUV won and the Opposition lost, given the enormous outside support for MUD and the economic crisis in Venezuela? Why did the opposition lose 2.7 million votes in two years following their much-ballyhooed parliamentary victory? How could the US, the OAS and the EU miss this trend and waste their money and credibility?
Ten Reasons for the Socialist Victory and the Rightist Defeat
Understanding the reasons for the Socialist victory requires that we first analyze the strengths and weakness of the MUD.
1. The PSUV retained its committed and loyalist core, despite hardships endured by the masses of Venezuelans, because of the socialists long-term, large-scale socio-economic programs advancing the citizens’ welfare over the previous decade and a half.
2. Many low-income voters feared that, once in power, the rightwing extremists in MUD would reverse these social advances and return them to the pre-Chavista era of elite domination, repression and their own marginalization.
3. Many right-of center-voters were appalled by MUD’s support for violence and sabotage, leading to the destruction of public buildings and private businesses and paralyzing public transportation. They decided to abstain and/or vote for the PSUV, as the party of law and order.
4. Many independent voters supported the PSUV as the greater defender of Venezuelan sovereignty. They were appalled by the opposition coalition – MUD’s endorsement of Washington’s economic sanctions and blockade and President Trump’s brutal threats to intervene to force ‘regime change’.
5. Probably most decisive for the shift to the left by many former MUD voters was the right-wing opposition’s failure to offer any positive alternative. Apart from promoting violence and dismantling the Chavista social programs, MUD lacked any concrete program or policies to address the ongoing economic crisis. It was clear to voters that MUD’s constant harping on the ‘failures’ of the PSUV offered no viable way out of the crisis.
6. The MUD was not able to use its electoral majority in Congress to obtain overseas economic aid to provide social services, or to arrange trade deals or loans. Washington was only willing to subsidize MUD’s campaign for violent regime change but not to support any opposition congressional proposals for Venezuela’s schools or its health system. MUD was stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle, telling people what they already knew, with no serious proposals to address the people’s everyday problems.
7. MUD constantly denigrated the memory of President Hugo Chavez, whose legacy represented the ‘best of times’ for millions of Venezuelans. Many voters recalled the decade of Chavez’s Presidency – his generous welfare policies, his own humble origins, his courage, his folksy sense of humor and his links to the grassroots. This was in stark contrast to the MUD leaders’ ‘Miami mentality’, their fawning over US consumerism and Washington’s militarism, their servility to the upper class’s cultural elitism and contempt for the dark-skinned mestizo population.
8. The MUD congressmen and women focused their time in Congress with sectarian political name-calling when they weren’t busy plotting regime change in the posh upper class salons of the Caracas’ elite. They failed to articulate any realistic grassroots solution to everyday problems. Their complaints over ‘dictatorship’ carried little weight since they held the majority in Congress and did nothing for the electorate.
9. The MUD’s unsuccessful attempts to incite a military coup among Venezuela’s patriotic military officers alienated moderate liberal-democrats, some of whom either ‘jumped ship’ to support the Left or, more likely, abstained in October’s election.
10. President Maduro’s moves toward negotiating favorable trade and investment deals with Russia, China and Iran encouraged voters to imagine that viable alternatives to the crisis were on the government’s agenda.
Many voters may have placed more trust in Maduro’s promise of serious new programs and policies to revive the economy. But more significantly, the PSUV’s established programs and future prospects were more appealing than MUD’s predictable denunciations of election fraud; and almost two-thirds of the electorate chose to participate in October’s elections. These ‘fraud’charges only worked with MUD’s true believers who had either abstained, virtually ensuring a victory for the Left, or had voted and therefore made themselves ‘accessory to electoral fraud’, which they had denounced.
Conclusion
The MUD lost the state governor elections of October 2017, less than 2 years after they had won the congressional elections, by demonstrating their incompetence, their propensity for violence against serious democratic adversaries and their incapacity to fulfill any programmatic promises.
The PSUV won because of the Chavez legacy, the decision by middle-of-the-road voters to support a pragmatic ‘lesser evil’ over a violent opposition ‘greater evil’ promising chaos. Many voters are desperate for new and better policies to address Venezuela’s current economic challenges. Finally, many Venezuelans rejected US President Trump and OAS President Almagros’ blatant, arrogant assumption that they knew what was best for the people of Venezuela – even if it meant blood in the streets..
In the end, the Chavez legacy of successful class and national struggles carried more weight with the voters than the negative, chaotic impotence of a subservient opposition. The US/Venezuelan mass media’s efforts to undermine the government were defeated because the people responded to the socialist message that US-led economic warfare, and not government mismanagement, was the key cause of their social and economic decline. They had experienced more than a decade of independent foreign policy and Bolivarian socialist programs to compare with the chaos of ‘regime change’ promised by Washington and the opposition.
The Left won the battle for now but the war continues.
