Global Research

Featured image: Puerto Rico’s electricity utility, PREPA, offered a $300 million contract to a small private firm to repair its power grid. Whitefish Energy is funded by a major Trump donor. (Photo: Whitefish Energy/Twitter)

Critics raised suspicions on Tuesday over a $300 million no-bid contract that was awarded to a small, two-year-old private energy company to restore Puerto Rico’s electrical grid. The company is financed by a major donor to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party, and also has connections to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Whitefish had TWO full-time employees the day Maria hit Puerto Rico. Can you say corruption? https://t.co/Ih2B1UuSEB

— Chris Barca (@CBarcaQC) October 24, 2017

Spoiler alert! The energy company is based in Whitefish, Montana, hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose son worked for its CEO. https://t.co/O7JSMiFIdr

— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) October 24, 2017

Whitefish Energy, based in Whitefish, Montana, had only two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico over a month ago, leaving about 75 percent of the island still without power.

State utilities on the U.S. mainland have helped power authorities like Puerto Rico’s recover quickly from disasters like Maria in the past through mutual aid agreements, leaving many to wonder why Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) would rely on a company that has no experience with extensive restoration projects.

“The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why PREPA would go to Whitefish,” said Susan F. Tierney, a former Energy Department official, in an interview with the Washington Post.

As the Daily Beast reported, Federal Election Commission filings show that the founder of the private equity firm that finances Whitefish Energy donated $20,000 to a pro-Trump PAC during the 2016 election as well as more than $30,000 to the Republican National Committee.

The company is also run by a contact of Zinke’s—Andy Techmanski—who once hired the Interior Secretary’s son for a summer job. Zinke is from Whitefish, but his office told the Post that he only knows Techmanski because “everybody knows everybody” in the small town.

Whitefish has hired nearly 300 workers from across the country so far to help repair the infrastructure. According to Aaron C. Davis, investigative reporter for the Post, the company is charging PREPA hundreds of dollars per hour for their subcontractors’ work, far more than average rates.

A House Committee with oversight of PR bankruptcy says it is concerned about deal. Lawmakers may be more concerned when they price tag: pic.twitter.com/IRga9jsGws

— Aaron C. Davis (@byaaroncdavis) October 24, 2017

Whitefish is charging $300+ per hour for lineman to do the work that utilities from states offered through mutual aid.

— Aaron C. Davis (@byaaroncdavis) October 24, 2017

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Snap election – harnessing hysteria, diverting attention

Japanese Prime Minister’s gamble in calling a snap election to harness anxiety and hysteria over the much-publicized ‘threat from North Korea’ has succeeded, as it was widely predicted. The political achievement is considerable. Only a couple of months back, things were not looking good for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party. The New York Times described the ‘Abe conundrum’:

Mr. Abe’s public approval ratings dipped below 30 percent over the summer as he was dogged by a series of scandals, and opinion polls taken during the campaign found that more voters disapproved of Mr. Abe’s hawkish strategy toward North Korea than approved of it.

“There is an Abe conundrum,” Professor Kingston [the director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo] said. “How does a guy who is basically unpopular with voters, whose policies are not particularly popular, who doesn’t get high marks for leadership, and yet he keeps winning in elections?”

He had a little bit of luck – a typhoon kept some voters away, and the opposition was fractured– but his winning card was the hysteria over North Korea after the recent tests of the Hwasong-12 missile that overflew Japan. Electors might not have approved of Abe’s North Korea policy or his plans for remilitarization, but it appears that he frightened a sufficient number.

The Japanese government and the media made a big fuss over the Hwasong-12 tests of 28 August and 15 September. They were portrayed as a deliberate threat to Japan, and the authorities heightened the hysteria by sending emergency alerts through cellphones and over loudspeakers.

Presumed flight path of Hwasong-12 on 28 August 2017

The reality was that the tests were actually about developing a deterrent against the US and the flight over Japan was primarily a matter of geography. If North Korea is to test a long-range missile on a standard (rather than lofted) trajectory that will end up in the unpopulated northern Pacific, then it has to go over Japan. David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained:

Yesterday’s launch was the first time North Korea flew a ballistic missile over Japanese territory, although in 1998 and 2009 it launched rockets that overflew Japan on failed attempts to put satellites into orbit. It has gone to some lengths to avoid flying over Japan, by launching its missile tests on highly lofted trajectories so they will land in the Sea of Japan. In addition, it has directed its more recent satellite launches to the south, even though it is preferable to launch to the east—over Japan—since it allows the rocket to gain speed from the rotation of the earth.

After its threats of firing Hwasong-12 missiles near Guam, it is interesting that North Korea fired this missile to the east rather than in the direction of Guam, which might have been interpreted as an attack despite the short range. The missile also appears to have flown in a direction that did not pass over highly populated parts of Japan.

As the picture shows, it appears that the missile was routed over the Straits of Tsugaru between Honshu and Hokkaido, and the second missile is thought to have done the same. Both were well above Japanese airspace, higher than many satellites, when they passed over Japanese territory. Basically, long range missiles are designed for distant targets, so neither IRBMs such as Hwasong-12 nor ICBMs, such as Hwasong-14, pose any particular danger to Japan.

But perceptions count more than reality, and Abe swept to victory and towards a renewed drive for constitutional revision and remilitarization:

Reuters: Abe to push reform of Japan’s pacifist constitution after election win

Washington Post: Abe retains supermajority in Japan’s election, may push to amend constitution

The Independent: Japan election results: Shinzo Abe scores major victory for ruling coalition and pledges to reform pacifist constitution

And that is bad news – for Japan and for the region.

Abe family tree — Kishi Nobusuke, ‘America’s favorite war criminal’

Political dexterity runs in Abe’s family. Politics at the top is his natural habitat: ‘Abe hails from one of Japan’s most famous political dynasties: his father and grandfather both held top jobs.’ Both grandfathers did, in fact, but it is the maternal one, Kishi Nobusuke, that is the one to note. Kishi was one of the architects of Japan’s war against China in the 1930s and 1940s, which led to the Pacific War against the US, various European countries and finally the Soviet Union. He was particularly notorious for his governing of the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuria or currently Northeastern provinces of China) where he was known as 昭和の妖怪 (‘the Shōwa era monster/devil’). One of his underlings in Manchukuo was none other than Park Chung-hee, who served in the puppet army hunting down resisters to Japanese rule, Chinese and Korean; one of the latter was Kim Il Sung though their paths did not cross.

He was arraigned as a Class A war criminal by the Americans after the war and held for three years. But times changed; friends became enemies, and enemies became friends. The US was in the process of ‘losing China,’ and Kishi’s killing of Chinese was transformed from an outrageous slaughter of gallant allies to a rather prescient act of defending America against the Red Chinese. Kishi became, in Michael Schaller’s words, America’s Favorite War Criminal. Given President Trump’s predilection for golf, it is interesting to note how Kishi used the sport in his political career. He had developed a friendship with pre-war US ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew. When Grew was held under detention after Pearl Harbor, Kishi arranged for him to be allowed out for a round of golf. The favor was reciprocated when Kishi visited the US in 1957 to arrange some funding from the CIA and played golf with President Eisenhower at an otherwise racially-segregated golf club. By that time, Kishi was Prime Minister, a position he owed to a lobby that included amongst its members, former Ambassador Grew. This lobby was instrumental in overturning America’s war aim of creating a deindustrialized, demilitarized Japan in favor of remilitarization and reindustrialization to counter the Soviet Union and China. That is Abe’s pedigree, and that is how he and remilitarization fit in with US strategy to preserve and expand hegemony.

However, history can leave unwelcome legacies behind, and one of those, from Abe’s perspective, is Japan’s ‘Peace Constitution,’ in particular its Article Nine:

1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.
2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Although details of its provenance are disputed, it is generally considered that it was basically drafted by Americans in the staff of General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers, or SCAP. Militarism had brought Japan to devastating defeat in 1945 – counting not merely the casualties of the atomic bombs and the fire bombings of Japanese cities but also the millions of soldiers and civilians evicted from liberated colonies (such as Korea)–that the ideals of peace and the renunciation of war had widespread popular support in Japan then as they do now. Not everyone saw it in this light of course–not the Kishi’s and the Abe’s nor the US strategists who wanted to harness Japan’s military potential against the Soviet Union and China. Fortunately for them, god created lawyers, who argued that Article Nine did not really mean what it seemed to mean to the untutored eye. To start with, the ‘land, sea and air forces’ that were ‘never to be maintained’ were renamed; the Japanese Imperial Army and its constituents became the Japanese Self Defense Forces. This process, called ‘reinterpretation,’ alternates with another–constitution revision. In other words, you either change the words or change the meaning of the words, and this has been the dominant trend, because it encounters less opposition. Thus, Abe has maintained for some years that the Constitution does not stop Japan from acquiring nuclear arms. Moreover, he argues, increased military expenditure and military operations overseas are nothing to do with ‘right of belligerency’ forbidden by Article Nine but rather an example of ‘proactive pacifism.’ And that is not a misprint.

The New York Times on Abe’s ‘Proactive Pacifism’

The ‘North Korean Threat’ as a facilitator of Japanese remilitarization

The much-publicized ‘North Korean threat’ and, in a slightly different way, the ‘Chinese threat’ offer an obvious and, at first sight, seemingly heaven-sent justification for Japanese remilitarization. Even proponents admit that ‘The Japanese public, which remains apprehensive of even minimal use of force, is another constraining factor [to remilitarization].’ These threats in fact are not heaven-sent but, in their different ways, largely constructed to serve the purpose.

Both are built on a bedrock of racism. Colonialism/imperialism and racism go hand in hand and feed on each other. We rule over a foreign people, because we believe they are inferior, perhaps even sub-human, and our rule over them proves that we are superior. The Korean peninsula and much of China were part of the Japanese empire, and because the past has not been exorcised in the way it was, to quite an extent, in Germany, these attitudes pollute the present. Japan is not alone in this, and we can see variants around the world, in the US, Britain, and wherever there is a present or past colonial relationship. One important aspect of racism is that it distorts and degrades people’s ability to think rationally and realistically about others. By ascribing irrationality – essentially non-human behavior – to others, it leads to a false, if comforting, perception of the situation. The racist becomes a victim of delusion. It gives rise, for instance, to Donald Trump’s assertion that ‘Rocket Man [Kim Jong Un] is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.’ You can only believe such nonsense by abandoning rationality and embracing fantasy, something to which it is alleged that Trump is prone.

On the elite level, these antagonisms towards North Korea and China are exacerbated by chagrin. A century ago, Japan lorded over both. Now Japan is still, as Gavan McCormack puts it, a client state of the US, but China is economically and militarily larger than Japan and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Even North Korea, while much smaller and poorer, is an independent state. No foreign generals, American or Chinese, there to give ‘guidance.’

Clearly, China is a competitor to Japan in many ways, and it does possess substantial and growing military power. China could, perhaps, pose a threat to Japan in the future. North Korea is clearly different. It has a population 1/5 of Japan’s and an economy much smaller. And despite Japan’s peace constitution, its military budget in 2016, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, was $47 billion. That is about 13 times that of North Korea if we use State Department figures, and 50 times if we use an estimate quoted in the South Korean National Assembly in 2013. North Korea has not the ability to attack Japan nor reason to do so, and does not appear to ever have threatened it. The danger for Japan is that if the US attacks North Korea, then as the country hosting the main forward US bases in Asia, it will become a target of Korean retaliation. Exactly what that would entail is unknown, but for what it is worth, a recent estimate put the possible numbers of dead in a nuclear attack on Seoul and Tokyo at up to 3.8 million.

Mr. Abe seems to think such dangers are worthwhile in his pursuit of remilitarization, but it should be remembered that none of this is inevitable. Japan could have turned to a neutralist path in the 1950s (which is why the CIA channeled funds to Kishi Nobusuke) and back in September 2002 when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went to Pyongyang. The resulting Japan – DPRK Pyongyang Declaration promised all sorts of good things, but little has come to pass. It appears that the George W. Bush administration was very concerned that a Tokyo-Pyongyang rapprochement would upend its strategy in East Asia and took steps to prevent peace from breaking out. The Agreed Framework signed by the Clinton administration was scuttled, and pressure was put on the Japanese. The very emotional but highly suspicious issue of abductees still continues to bedevil relations despite further negotiations between Pyongyang and Tokyo; perhaps the matter is too much of a crowd-pleaser for Japanese politicians to resolve it. American hostility to detente between Japan and North Korea–as part of its strategy to contain China and strengthen Japan’s client relationship (‘the US-Japan alliance’)–and the populist advantages to Japanese politicians of inciting anti-North Korean–or perhaps just anti-Korean–feelings together suggest that the pious hopes of Japanese liberals that relations will be normalized will be thwarted for the immediate future at least.

The dead end road of Japanese remilitarization

Remilitarization is clearly a response to Japan’s client state relationship with the US. The Peace Constitution came about as a result of Japan’s defeat, primarily but not exclusively by the United States. One way to exorcise that defeat and its consequences would be to attempt to return to the status quo ante 1945 and become a ‘normal country’ with the same rights to belligerency as the victor nations (and even Germany). This is understandable, but it is taking the wrong direction.  Militarism wreaked terrible damage on Japan and its neighbors, and it is that which should be recognized and renounced. To be fair, this is difficult in a world suffused with hypocrisy and double standards; why should the defeated do things that the victors do not. When has the United States, to take the leading example, apologized for its history and renounced belligerency? Besides this difficult ethical issue, however, there are practical reasons why Japan should not remilitarize but rather forge a path as a pioneer of a primarily pacifist country where soft power replaces hard power.

Firstly, Japanese remilitarization is gestating within the womb of American strategy in East Asia, which focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on the containment and possible dismemberment of China. If the US goes to war against China, most probably through an attack on North Korea, Japan will almost certainly be drawn in. The consequences would be disastrous for Japan and less severe for the US unless there is an all-out nuclear exchange, and if there were victory over China, the benefits would accrue to the US and not Japan. If there were booty, it is unlikely that the US would share it.

Secondly, ethical considerations and long-term consequences for humanity aside, military power may make sense for some countries and not others. It makes sense for countries such as North Korea or China that are threatened by far more powerful adversaries, as a deterrent. It also makes sense for the US, which has a global empire to maintain. It does not make much sense for, say the Netherlands or New Zealand, which face no credible enemies, even less so for Britain where it encourages dangerous imperial nostalgia, and it does not make sense for Japan.  Even without a formal US-Japan alliance (the client relationship), the US would not tolerate an attack on Japan by North Korea or China for pragmatic balance of power reasons.

The question of ‘military power making sense’ takes place within history; sometimes it makes sense, and at other times it does not. Take Japan for the three quarters of a century after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. At that time, empires were all the rage, and if you didn’t have one you would almost certainly end up as part of somebody else’s. The British had one, as did the French, the Dutch, and the Russians. Germany was trying to get into the act, as was the United States, which introduced a new style of imperialism, partly based on compellence and threat (what is often misleadingly called ‘diplomacy’) but also by ruthless armed force, as in the Philippines. In these circumstances, it made sense for Japan, too, to carve itself out an empire.

The Japanese and American empires had two major intersections. The second was at Pearl Harbor in 1941, but that had been preceded by the Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905, which, in the words of Bruce Cumings, ‘ acknowledged a trade-off between the Philippines and Korea: Japan would not question American rights in its colony and the United States would not challenge Japan’s new protectorate.’ Neither Taft nor Katsura could know that 40 years later the US would own all of Japan and half of Korea.

Japan’s annexation of Korea, its puppet rule over Manchuria and its earlier seizure of Taiwan in 1895 all made economic sense. The colonies provided raw materials, closed markets, labor and a place for Japan’s surplus population and something probably unique to Japan whereby parts of the empire became a blueprint for the future: ‘The planners at the South Manchurian Railroad Research Department, for example, called for an ultra-modern economy in the colonies in order to transcend what they saw as the deeply flawed economy of the homeland.’ Those times are over and cannot be recaptured.

Contemporary Japan lies between two behemoths – rising China and declining America. There are no great technological impediments to Japan becoming a major military power with the full range of assets, including nuclear weapons and delivery systems. But what could be done with that military might? China is too big and strong; there can be no more seizures of Taiwan or Manchuria. The US encourages Japanese remilitarization, because it is confident that Japan is a tamed beast that can be used against China. But as Palmerston pointed out back in the 19th century, countries do not have permanent friends and enemies, only permanent interests. Japan and the US could fall out, and Japan might desire to exclude the US from Asia as it tried to do in 1941. But that would be a ridiculous dream.

In the short term, Japanese remilitarization exacerbates danger in Northeast Asia. It feeds on crisis on the Korean peninsula and the region to provide it with a proclaimed justification. It enhances US intransigence towards North Korea and makes a peaceful settlement less likely. It sees a war in Korea as an opportunity to intervene, thereby breaking free of the constraints against foreign military adventures.

But in the long term, remilitarization leads to a dead end, both for Japan and the region. It offers no prospects nor hope for prosperity or security.

Retired New Zealand-based academic Tim Beal has written two books and numerous articles on Korean issues and US global policy. He is an Asia-Pacific Journal contributing editor and writes for NK News and Zoom in Korea amongst others. He maintains the website Asian Geopolitics.

All images in this article are from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Make no mistake. There’s plenty about Trump to criticize. Doing it with fabricated accusations is unconscionable – against him or anyone else.

Politics is dirty business, notably in America, especially with one-sided media reporting, favoring one presidential candidate over the other.

During last year’s campaign, US major media operated as virtual press agents for Hillary, a shameful performance, suppressing her sordid record, the huge danger she’d pose as president, blasting Trump relentlessly, a daily onslaught, vicious and malicious by any standard.

Then it was uncalled for. Now it is for legitimate reasons, his deplorable policies, an issue I’ve covered in numerous articles, many more to come as long as he’s president, calling him out for unacceptable abuses of power.

The so-called Trump-Russia dossier was prepared by former UK MI6 intelligence operative Christopher Steele.

It contains spurious accusations without evidence, unverified rubbish alleging misconduct and collusion between Trump, his campaign and Russia during the presidential campaign – including phony accusations of Russian US election interference.

Trump correctly called the dossier “fake news” and “phony.” It was unjustifiable character assassination, along with fabricating claims of Russian interference in America’s electoral process. There was none!

In an earlier article, I asked who put Steele up to his dirty work? Who ordered it? Who hired him?

Outgoing DNI head James Clapper denied involvement by US intelligence agencies. He issued a statement saying:

“…I had the opportunity to speak with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss recent media reports about our briefing last Friday.”

“I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.”

“I emphasized that this (dossier) is not a US intelligence community product, and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC.”

Steele didn’t confirm or deny producing the dossier. He refused to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

On Tuesday, a surprising neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post report headlined “Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier,” saying:

Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias hired Washington-based Fusion GPS, a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm, to investigate Trump.

The company hired Steele to dig up dirt on him. WaPo’s sources are unidentified. Fusion GPS was retained in April. It continued its work through end of October, its material sent to Elias.

An unidentified GOP donor initially funded the company’s research into Trump’s background – while Republican primaries were ongoing.

WaPo:

“When the Republican donor stopped paying for the research, Elias, acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, agreed to pay for the work to continue. The Democrats paid for research, including by Fusion GPS…”

“The Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie (Elias’ firm) $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting’’ since November 2015…”

It’s unclear how much of this was for digging up dirt on Trump, likely a considerable amount.

It’s also unclear whether the Clinton campaign and DNC were involved in directing Steele’s work. They denied it.

WaPo said the FBI agreed to pay Steele for information on Trump and Russia, but “pulled out of the arrangement after (he) was publicly identified in news reports.”

Congressional Republicans unsuccessfully tried getting Fusion GPS to identify names of undemocratic Dems behind Steele’s dirty work. The firm claimed client confidentiality, its legal right.

Last week, its officials refused to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. Chairman Devin Nunes subpoenaed its bank records, the company contesting the order.

The dubious Trump dossier was a key part of the deplorable Russiagate scandal – a sinister plot to delegitimize Trump, including phony accusations of Russian US election interference.

The Clinton campaign and DNC used it for this purpose – fabricated rubbish to serve their interests, a way to assure Hillary’s election as president, a failed plot.

He won. She lost. Recriminations continue. There’s plenty about Trump to criticize without making stuff up.

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

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

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

Featured image: Jeff Flake and Bob Corker

GOP members were fuming. Republican Senator Bob Corker of the Foreign Relations Committee was incandescent; Senator Jeff Flake oozed regret and despondency. Both spoke with the freedom of those not seeking re-election, a chance, in other words, to ponder the direction of the US Republic. Ammunition for an unscripted show had been allocated, and there was no bigger target than the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Corker was feeling bruised in the wake of another Trump spray. The President had long been focusing on Corker’s role behind the Iran deal, calling his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “incompetent”. This, despite Corker’s initially enthusiastic backing.

Prior to the arrival of Trump on Capitol Hill, Corker got in a few sharp blows. The President, he explained to fellow members in the chamber, had tarnished the United States with “untruths”, “attempted-bullying”, and “name-calling”.

“For young people to be watching, not only here in our country, but around the world, someone of this mentality as president of the United States is something that is I think debasing our country.”[1]

Corker regarded Trump’s economic, even inventive approach to the truth, as “amazing.” It was a point that other premiers of the world had noted. “Unfortunately world leaders are very much aware that much of what he says is untrue.” (Surely that, in of itself, is fortunate.)

The wounded Senator expressed a near unshakeable faith in the US voter as capable of discerning truths from untruths. “Certainly people here are because these things are provably untrue. They’re just factually incorrect and people know the difference.”

Unfortunately, these criticisms rage at the nasty symptom, the cold rather than the corrupting dampness that caused it. Trump is less the virus than its outcome, a politically explosive culmination that took place in full view of a complicit US political establishment. That very establishment, to a large extent, is responsible for the tin foil quality of current political debate and mistrust. The reality show that is Trumpland came from the negligent production studio of GOP-Democratic governance.

Flake, also going into retirement, spoke in grave, near mournful tones about the demise of the Republic. He drew attention to a matter long preoccupying him: “that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than it is by our values and principles.”[2]

He feared the normalisation of that “regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals”, and the “daily sundering of our country”. There could be no meek acceptance of “the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons”.

Be careful, he claimed of “silence and inaction” and tolerating matters for fear that doing otherwise would “alienate the base”. There was the higher plane, the higher considerations of US institutions.

“Mr President, I rise today to say: Enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes normal.”

Principle demanded that he not continue his incumbency. He expressed all measures of regret, towards disunion, the “disrepair and destructiveness of our politics”, “the indecency of our discourse”, “the coarseness of our leadership”, “the compromise of our moral authority” and “by our – all of our – complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs.”

Like Corker, Flake’s address supplies a lament on the decline of a state well and truly taking place before Trump crowned it with confounding ferocity and enthusiastic pettiness. If only these figures of sudden, spontaneous frankness had, donning their social commentator hats, spoken before.

Within the GOP itself, approaches vary as to how to approach Flake’s notion of the anomalous. Speaker Paul Ryan is one for ignoring much of what comes out of the tweeting complex of the White House, using deft foot work in fending off the next crisis. Such a school of thought essentially sees Trump as titular, clownish, and containable. Let him rant, for no sensible person is listening.

“So all that stuff you see on a daily basis on Twitter this, and Twitter that – forget about it. Let’s focus on helping people, improving people’s lives, and doing the things that we said we would do that accomplishes that. That’s what we’re focused on.”[3]

The GOP has become the party of indignation, nationalist confusion and patriotic perversion. The Democrats have duly supplied an alternative that is sullen, bankrupt, and disingenuous. While hard to swallow, the near genetic dysfunction of both parties, the corrosion of consensus, created the perfect cyclonic conditions for the current president.

The outrage and dismay expressed by Flake and Corker is understandable on one basic level (the Republic in free fall, institutions sliding into the primeval swamp), but as with their Democratic colleagues, it ignores the why of Trump presidency, not to mention those who found him an acceptable alternative.

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

Notes

The US-Indian Strategic Partnership has rapidly evolved to such a point that the Indian government is now obliquely hinting that Russian twitter trolls are backing the country’s opposition leader, showing that New Delhi is willing to say and do anything in order to further ingratiate itself with Washington even if this means demolishing its decades-long relationship with Moscow.

Rahul Gandhi (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani sent shockwaves through the diplomatic community over the weekend when she indirectly accused Russian “Twitter trolls” of supporting opposition leader Rahul Gandhi. The government official tweeted an article from ANI Digital which purports that Gandhi’s Twitter popularity is partly due to automated bots located in Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, snidely remarking in her post that “Perhaps @OfficeOfRG planning to sweep polls in Russia, Indonesia & Kazakhstan ??” The report in question is nothing more than unfounded speculation, but the strong symbolism behind it in trying to capitalize on the US’ anti-Russian hysteria shouldn’t be overlooked. Furthermore, the very fact that a high-ranking member of the Indian government, a woman who plays an indispensable role in the projection of the country’s soft power within its borders and beyond, would publicly retweet such a ridiculous claim and even add her own snarky commentary to it is very scandalous, to say the least.

What it isn’t, however, is surprising, since India already launched a failed infowar against Russia a little over a year ago when it spread the fake news that the first-ever joint military drills between Russia and Pakistan were cancelled by Moscow due to Indian pressure. The author wrote about this in depth at the time in an article titled “India’s First-Ever Infowar Against Russia Was A Failure”, which concluded that New Delhi decided to crudely backstab its partners in Moscow due to American pressure and the vindictive sentiment prevalent in the Indian capital nowadays to “pay Russia back” for its game-changing rapprochement with Pakistan. What the ruling BJP party apparently fails to understand is that India’s much-trumpeted policy of “multi-alignment” isn’t exclusive to their country, and that other states could also seek to rebalance and diversify their foreign partnerships as the Multipolar World Order progressively becomes a reality. Leading the way on the Russian front are the foreign policy “progressives,” like Moscow’s top Afghan envoy Zamir Kabulov, who strongly believe that Russia must pioneer non-traditional geopolitical partnerships in order to fulfill its 21^st-century grand strategic vision in functioning as the supreme balancing force in Eurasia.

On the Indian side, though, there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for practicing “multi-alignment” in the manner that it was publicly presented as, since New Delhi has lately been pivoting away from multipolar Eurasia and towards the unipolar Atlantic in decisively furthering the an unprecedented military-strategic partnership with the US. The author chronicled all of India’s moves in this direction in a series of articles listed under his 2017 Forecast for South Asia, and the reader is encouraged to skim through them if they’re unfamiliar with the pace and magnitude of what happened in this regards all across last year. The highlight event of this year was the artificially manufactured Donglang Drama that India and the US both exploited in order to “justify” New Delhi’s de-facto membership in the Washington-led “China Containment Coalition”. The US hasn’t made a secret out of this either, despite some Indian voices trying to downplay it in an unsuccessful attempt to “save face” before the eyes of the anti-imperialist “Global South”, as the American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proudly boasted right before departing for his first South Asia trip that India is his country’s preferred partner for the 21^st century.

This pivotal announcement only formalized what was already known for some time, but it seems to have encouraged the Indian government to do away with its erstwhile halfhearted attempt to hide its newfound pro-American policies behind the slogan of “multi-alignment”. After all, it was right after Tillerson’s declaration of the 21^st-century US-Indian military-strategic partnership that Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani felt confident enough to publicly imply that Russian trolls are supporting an opposition candidate in order to swing the 2019 elections. This, of course, is a categorically false suggestion which was only made in order to smear Russia and demonstrate India’s fealty to its new American overlord. It also deliberately fails to acknowledge the billions of dollars in military and nuclear energy deals that the Modi government has signed with Moscow, and it also doesn’t recognize the reasons why Russia has more warmly embraced India in recent years in spite of its fast-moving and comprehensive strategic partnership with China. Such deceptive information warfare is typically the domain of the “ModiMob”, or government-backed ultra-jingoist trolls, and usually directed against non-state targets, but this is the first time that an Indian state actor employed such tactics against a seemingly friendly state.

Bearing in mind the pro-American backdrop in which this anti-Russian Twitter troll accusation was made, it shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence that reports also started streaming in over the weekend around the same time stating that India was thinking about abandoning its planned $10 billion fifth-generation fighter jet deal with Russia. There’s been talk about this for a while, but the revival of these reports in the current context of Tillerson’s proclamation of a century-long military-strategic partnership, the Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister’s false suggestions that Moscow is coordinating a social media bot operation to unseat the BJP in 2019, and now the talk that India might pull out of what was supposed to have been the cornerstone deal of its partnership with Russia altogether indicate that New Delhi no longer views Moscow as the “brother” (“bhai”) that it claimed it was during the Old Cold War. Instead, India sees Russia as being no different than any other partner aside from the US, which has now replaced Moscow as New Delhi’s preferred patron given the paradigm-changing geopolitics of the New Cold War.

The New Delhi-initiated “normalization” of what was hitherto regarded as the “special relationship” between India and Russia is further proof that India has agreed to become the US’ main proxy force for “containing China”, breaking BRICS, and dismantling multipolarity. Furthermore, this negative trend in bilateral relations and the unfriendly moves against Russia over the weekend also point to India’s desire to “play hardball” against its former ally, in that it no longer has any reservations about resorting to crude measures in order to squeeze as beneficial of a deal as possible from Moscow.

India is infuriated that Russia won’t transfer high-end and ultra-classified military-technical information to it as part of any forthcoming weapons deals, something which is mandated by its “Make In India” policy, so it’s apparently decided to employ dirty tricks against its negotiating partner in the hopes that it can intimidate Moscow into complying. To the contrary, however, no matter if the jet deal ultimately goes through or not, Russia isn’t likely to forget what has happened, and this unpleasant experience will surely be used as an instructive example which will powerfully influence the course of the country’s future South Asian policy, most likely to Pakistan’s comparative benefit.

The recent appointment of master strategist Nikolai Kudashev as the new Russian Ambassador to India will be very useful in helping Moscow navigate this uncertain period of relations with New Delhi, and the envoy’s prior history of working with China should help Russia become the consummate geopolitical balancer that it desires to be in Eurasia. It will probably be impossible to repair the damage that India’s ultra-jingoist BJP government has wreaked to the bilateral relationship over the past year, but that doesn’t mean the two Great Powers can’t pragmatically find some common ground between them even in the context of the US’ domineering influence over Indian policy nowadays.

At the end of the day, the maintenance of cordial ties with Russia is important to India because it needs access to Russian resources and overland trade routes to Europe (the North-South Transport Corridor), and New Delhi also wants to establish a “soft” presence in the Russian Far East in order to give off the perception that it’s “strategically flanking” China. That said, the fact that an Indian minister would publicly mimic the US’ slanderous accusations against Russia by implying that Moscow is using Twitter bots to support the opposition is worrisome and suggests that pro-American sentiment in New Delhi is even stronger than the most vocal critics imagine it to be.

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 global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

Featured image is from the author.

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.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has urged the UN Security Council to put an end to the crimes against civilians committed by the US-led coalition.

“We once again ask the Security Council to take responsibility for preserving international peace and security and take immediate action to stop the brutal crimes committed by the illegitimate international coalition against the Syrian people,” the Damascus statement read, as quoted by the Syrian state news agency SANA.

In two letters addressed to the UN secretary general and the chairman of the Security Council, the ministry mentioned Monday’s deadly airstrikes conducted by an unidentified aircraft in the neighborhood of Deir ez-Zor, which Damascus has blamed the US-led coalition for.

According to Damascus, the coalition’s plans to reconstruct the destroyed city of Raqqa would not help to cover up its “heinous” crimes in the city.

On Monday, several media outlets reported citing the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of deadly airstrikes conducted by an unidentified aircraft on the Syrian government-held neighborhood of Deir ez-Zor, killing at least 14 civilians and leaving 30 others injured. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, the spokesman for US-led anti-Daesh coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), has denied that the coalition carried out an airstrike in the area.

Nevertheless, the Syrian Arab Crescent has reported that one of its volunteers had been killed and another one injured in Syria’s eastern city of Deir ez-Zor.

“Syrian Arab Red Crescent mourns the loss of red crescent volunteer, Mohamed Zakaria Al-Ahmad, who sacrificed his life in the line of duty in Deir Ezzour on Monday, 23/10/2017 due to the current circumstances in the city. at the same time, another volunteer, Rashed Al-Dandal, is wounded there.”

The organization has urged all parties to the conflict in Syria to respect and protect humanitarian aid workers, and to facilitate their mission.

The alliance, which includes over 70 members, has been conducting military actions in Syria without Damascus’ consent or a UN mandate. Damascus has recently rebuked the US-led coalition’s activities in the country, describing it as an “aggression” and a violation of Syria’s sovereignty and UN resolutions.

None of the reforms, increased training, diversity programs, community outreach and gimmicks such as body cameras have blunted America’s deadly police assault, especially against poor people of color. Police forces in the United States—which, according to The Washington Post, have fatally shot 782 people this year—are unaccountable, militarized monstrosities that spread fear and terror in poor communities. By comparison, police in England and Wales killed 62 people in the 27 years between the start of 1990 and the end of 2016.

Police officers have become rogue predators in impoverished communities. Under U.S. forfeiture laws, police indiscriminately seize money, real estate, automobiles and other assets. In many cities, traffic, parking and other fines are little more than legalized extortion that funds local government and turns jails into debtor prisons.

Because of a failed court system, millions of young men and women are railroaded into prison, many for nonviolent offenses. SWAT teams with military weapons burst into homes often under warrants for nonviolent offenses, sometimes shooting those inside. Trigger-happy cops pump multiple rounds into the backs of unarmed men and women and are rarely charged with murder. And for poor Americans, basic constitutional rights, including due process, were effectively abolished decades ago.

Jonathan Simon’s “Governing Through Crime” and Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” point out that what is defined and targeted as criminal activity by the police and the courts is largely determined by racial inequality and class, and most importantly by the potential of targeted groups to cause social and political unrest. Criminal policy, as sociologist Alex S. Vitale writes in his new book, “The End of Policing,” “is structured around the use of punishment to manage the ‘dangerous classes,’ masquerading as a system of justice.”

The criminal justice system, at the same time, refuses to hold Wall Street banks, corporations and oligarchs accountable for crimes that have caused incalculable damage to the global economy and the ecosystem. None of the bankers who committed massive acts of fraud and were responsible for the financial collapse in 2008 have gone to prison even though their crimes resulted in widespread unemployment, millions of evictions and foreclosures, homelessness, bankruptcies and the looting of the U.S. Treasury to bail out financial speculators at taxpayer expense. We live in a two-tiered legal system, one in which poor people are harassed, arrested and jailed for absurd infractions, such as selling loose cigarettes—which led to Eric Garner being choked to death by a New York City policeman in 2014—while crimes of appalling magnitude that wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth are dealt with through tepid administrative controls, symbolic fines and civil enforcement.

The grotesque distortions of the judicial system and the aggressive war on the poor by the police will get worse under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. There has been a rollback of President Barack Obama’s 2015 restrictions on the 1033 Program, a 1989 congressional action that allows the transfer of military weaponry, including grenade launchers, armored personnel carriers and .50-caliber machine guns, from the federal government to local police forces. Since 1997, the Department of Defense has turned over a staggering $5.1 billion in military hardware to police departments.

The Trump administration also is resurrecting private prisons in the federal prison system, accelerating the so-called war on drugs, stacking the courts with right-wing “law and order” judges and preaching the divisive politics of punishment and retribution. Police unions enthusiastically embrace these actions, seeing in them a return to the Wild West mentality that characterized the brutality of police departments in the 1960s and 1970s, when radicals, especially black radicals, were murdered with impunity at the hands of law enforcement. The Praetorian Guard of the elites, as in all totalitarian systems, will soon be beyond the reach of the law. As Vitale writes in his book, “Our entire criminal justice system has become a gigantic revenge factory.”

The arguments—including the racist one about “superpredators“—used to justify the expansion of police power have no credibility, as the gun violence in south Chicago, abject failure of the war on drugs and vast expansion of the prison system over the last 40 years illustrate. The problem is not ultimately in policing techniques and procedures; it is in the increasing reliance on the police as a form of social control to buttress a system of corporate capitalism that has turned the working poor into modern-day serfs and abandoned whole segments of the society. Government no longer makes any attempt to ameliorate racial and economic inequality. Instead, it criminalizes poverty. It has turned the poor into one more cash crop for the rich.

“By conceptualizing the problem of policing as one of inadequate training and professionalization, reformers fail to directly address how the very nature of policing and the legal system served to maintain and exacerbate racial inequality,” Vitale writes. “By calling for colorblind ‘law and order’ they strengthen a system that puts people of color at a structural disadvantage. At the root, they fail to appreciate that the basic nature of the police, since its earliest origins, is to be a tool for managing inequality and maintaining the status quo. Police reforms that fail to directly address this reality are doomed to reproduce it. …Well-trained police following proper procedures are still going to be arresting people for mostly low-level offenses, and the burden of that will continue to fall primarily on communities of color because that is how the system is designed to operate—not because of the biases or misunderstandings of officers.”

In a recent interview, Vitale told me,

“We’ve been waging a war on drugs for 40 years by putting people in prison for ever longer sentences. Yet drugs are cheaper, easier to get, and at a higher quality than they’ve ever been. Any high school student in America can get any kind of drugs they want. Yet we persist in this idea that the way to respond to the problem of drugs, and many other social problems, is through arrest, courts, punishments, prisons. This is what Trump is playing to. This idea that the only appropriate role for the state is one of coercion and threats—whether it’s in the foreign policy sphere or in the domestic sphere.”

Police forces, as Vitale writes in his book, were not formed to ensure public safety or prevent crime. They were created by the property classes to maintain economic and political dominance and exert control over slaves, the poor, dissidents and labor unions that challenged the wealthy’s hold on power and ability to amass personal fortunes. Many of America’s policing techniques, including widespread surveillance, were pioneered and perfected in colonies of the U.S. and then brought back to police departments in the homeland. Blacks in the South had to be controlled, and labor unions and radical socialists in the industrial Northeast and Midwest had to be broken.

The fundamental role of the police has never changed. Paul Butler in his book “Chokehold: Policing Black Men” and James Forman Jr. in his book “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” echo Vitale’s point that the war on drugs “has never been about public health or public safety. It’s been about providing a cover for aggressive and invasive policing that targets almost exclusively people of color.”

“People often point to the London Metropolitan Police, who were formed in the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel,” Vitale said. “They are held up as this liberal ideal of a dispassionate, politically neutral police with the support of the citizenry. But this really misreads the history. Peel is sent to manage the British occupation of Ireland. He’s confronted with a dilemma. Historically, peasant uprisings, rural outrages were dealt with by either the local militia or the British military. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, in the need for soldiers in other parts of the British Empire, he is having more and more difficulty managing these disorders. In addition, when he does call out the militia, they often open fire on the crowd and kill lots of people, creating martyrs and inflaming further unrest. He said, ‘I need a force that can manage these outrages without inflaming passions further.’ He developed the Peace Preservation Force, which was the first attempt to create a hybrid military-civilian force that can try to win over the population by embedding itself in the local communities, taking on some crime control functions, but its primary purpose was always to manage the occupation. He then exports that model to London as the industrial working classes are flooding the city, dealing with poverty, cycles of boom and bust in the economy, and that becomes their primary mission.”

“The creation of the very first state police force in the United States was the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905,” Vitale said. “For the same reasons. It was modeled similarly on U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines. There was a back and forth with personnel and ideas. What happened was local police were unable to manage the coal strikes and iron strikes. … They needed a force that was more adherent to the interest of capital. … Interestingly, for these small-town police forces in a coal mining town there was sometimes sympathy. They wouldn’t open fire on the strikers. So, the state police force was created to be that strong arm for the law. Again, the direct connection between colonialism and the domestic management of workers. … It’s a two-way exchange. As we’re developing ideas throughout our own colonial undertakings, bringing those ideas home, and then refining them and shipping them back to our partners around the world who are often despotic regimes with close economic relationships to the United States. There’s a very sad history here of the U.S. exporting basically models of policing that morphs into death squads and horrible human rights abuses.”

The almost exclusive alliance on militarized police to deal with profound inequality and social problems is turning poor neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago into miniature failed states, ones where destitute young men and women join a gang for security and income and engage in battles with other gangs and the police. The “broken windows” policy shifts the burden for poverty onto the poor. It criminalizes minor infractions, arguing that disorder produces crime and upending decades of research about the causes of crime.

“As poverty deepens and housing prices rise, government support for affordable housing has evaporated, leaving in its wake a combination of homeless shelters and aggressive broken-windows-oriented policing,” Vitale writes. “As mental health facilities close, police become the first responders to calls for assistance with mental health crises. As youth are left without adequate schools, jobs, or recreational facilities, they form gangs for mutual protection or participate in the black markets of stolen goods, drugs, and sex to survive and are ruthlessly criminalized. Modern policing is largely a war on the poor that does little to make people safer or communities stronger, and even when it does, this is accomplished through the most coercive forms of state power that destroy the lives of millions.”

The accelerated assault on the poor and the growing omnipotence of the police signal our transformation into an authoritarian state in which the rich and the powerful are not subject to the rule of law. The Trump administration will promote none of the conditions that could ameliorate this crisis—affordable housing; well-paying jobs; safe and nurturing schools that do not charge tuition; better mental health facilities; efficient public transportation; the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure; demilitarized police forces in which most officers do not carry weapons; universal, government-funded health care; an end to the predatory loans and unethical practices of big banks; and reparations to African-Americans and an end to racial segregation. Trump and most of those he has appointed to positions of power disdain the poor as a dead weight on society. They blame stricken populations for their own misery. They seek to subjugate the poor, especially those of color, through police violence, ever harsher forms of punishment and an expansion of the prison system.

“We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that is not what the current system is,” Alexander writes in “The New Jim Crow.” “The system is better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminal. … Saying mass incarceration is an abysmal failure makes sense, though only if one assumes that the criminal justice system is designed to prevent and control crime. But if mass incarceration is understood as a system of social control—specifically, racial control—then the system is a fantastic success.”

Click here to see Chris Hedges interview writer Alex Vitale.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister. 

Featured image is from Mr. Fish.

Last night, an airstrike hit the government-held neighborhood of al-Qusour in Deir Ezzor city killing at least 14 people and wounding 32 others. Pro-opposition sources say that the incident is a result of mistake by the Syrian or Russian air power. According to pro-government sources, the airstrike was conducted by the US-led coalition as a warning to the Syrian government amid the ongoing tensions east of Deir Ezzor.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) have secured the village of Tabiyah on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and advanced on al-Ashrah on the river’s western bank. An intense fighting is now ongoing in the village.

Some pro-government sources have already claimed that al-Ashrah is under control of the SAA. But this is not confirmed yet.

An intense fighting erupted in the T2 Pumping Station area near the border with Iraq. The SAA and Hezbollah advanced on ISIS positions in another attempt to recapture this strategic site from the terrorist group.

Government troops killed up to 10 ISIS members and destroyed 2 vehicles in the clashes. ISIS claimed that it destroyed a battle tank and two vehicles of the SAA.

The pumping station area remains contested.

The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have still not been able to provide any photos or videos from the Omar oil fields area and nearby points that were seized by the US-backed force on October 22.

Meanwhile, according to pro-Kurdish sources, the SDF is preparing to push further towards the border with Iraq, capturing the remaining oil and gas infrastructure along the Euphrates.

On October 23, the second Turkish military convoy entered Syria’s Idlib province. According to local sources, the convoy was consisting of up 50 vehicles. Turkish pro-government media say that Ankara is going to establish at least 8 garrisons in the area.

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On January 16, 2016, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) entered into force following four years of negotiations between Iran, the European Union, Russia, China, and the United States. Shortly after implementing the agreement, the US Congress put into place a quarterly mechanism to address any failure by the Islamic Republic of Iran to comply with the negotiations, signed through a resolution of the United Nations Security Council. The intent was to leave a margin of manoeuvre for the US administration, especially to be employed for domestic propaganda, but which ultimately would allow for the United States’ unilateral annulment of the agreement. It is in the end a mechanism with little political weight, given that the US reserves its exclusive right to scuttle it at any time. For the rest of the world, on the other hand, the visits of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are a sufficient guarantee of Iran’s compliance with the agreements.

Trump’s decision to annul the deal paves the way for Congress (within sixty days) to create new conditions that were not negotiated on for the JCPOA among the six parties. In particular, the goal of the White House is to force Congress to include two points in the new agreement, which concern: the banning of the production and testing ballistic missiles; and the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, thereby labelling Tehran as a financer of “terrorism” in the region.

Trump’s intentions are obviously to achieve a consensus amongst American neoconservatives, Israeli friends, and the Saudi lobby, as well as to reverse Obama’s foreign-policy legacy.

The danger of Trump’s actions are countless, as evident in the reaction of America’s European allies. Macron, Merkel and May have confirmed that they intend to stick with the agreement. The White House plans to work with Congress to work out a number of new points, with the European allies to be forced to sign a new deal for the JCPOA. Legally this new agreement has no effect on the original JCPOA, as it has not been acceded to by Iran, China and Russia. Nevertheless, the White House’s tactics are clear, namely, to oblige the Europeans, under the threat the US unilaterally withdrawing from the JCPOA, to agree to the new deal. Washington wants the Europeans standing alongside it, to provide Iran, China, and Russia with a fait accompli and forcing the latter to appear to be the ones responsible for collapsing the deal if they fail to comply.

Unhelpful strategy

Trump is putting pressure on Congress to draft a legislative strategy while ignoring the needs of the Europeans to work with Iran in order to diversify their energy sources and enter what is potentially a rich market.

Trump’s move is undoubtedly welcomed by two of America’s allies long unhappy with Washington’s signing of the JCPOA. Tel Aviv and Riyadh have commented on the decision to put the Iranian nuclear agreement under scrutiny with a sense of jubilation. Netanyahu and King Salman have been lobbying Washington for years not to sign such a deal, and since the signing of the JCPOA, have been urging Washington to rescind it. Their efforts seem to have finally paid off. (It seems that the Saudi purchase of $110 billion worth of weapons helped, as well as Trump’s support for AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, during his election campaign).

Trump also seems to want to test Congress, which is always ready to sabotage his domestic plans. Likewise, the scuttling of the Iran deal lays the groundwork for a war that his generals have been speaking about for years. Without having to search too much for complex explanations, Trump seems to want to immediately please his friends while also testing his biggest critics, all important components of the deep state. Trump strives to please his financial backers while at the same time attempting to score points with Congress in order to enable him to implement his domestic policy, which involve such things as tax and health reform, two critical issues for his re-election run in 2020.

One of the most immediate negative effects for the United States reneging on the Iran deal is the perception that Washington does not abide by the agreements of previous administrations. The message sent to the rest of the world is that the United States is unreliable, compounded by the marked ideological divisions between Democrats and Republicans. The need for Trump to dismiss Obama’s every success has culminated in the reversal of the Iran nuclear deal. One of the few US diplomatic actions of great significance has collapsed under the lobbying pressure of the Saudi, Israeli and neoconservative lobbies.

This decision sends a clear message to many countries. North Korea will hardly feel confident entering into negotiations with the United States given that Washington does not appear to keep its word from one administration to the next. The consequences of this decision in Asia is to side-line Washington and exclude it from playing a role in finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis on the Korean peninsula, leaving it to actors like Beijing, Seoul, Moscow, Tokyo and Pyongyang.

Likewise, the hopes of involving Washington in a post-conflict agreement on Syria, based on the Geneva peace talks on Syria, have diminished. Astana’s agreements between Ankara, Tehran and Moscow seem to offer the example for resolving conflicts. Once again, the United States remains on the margins of the decision making process in two important regions, the Middle East and Asia.

Trump is probably convinced that he has brought about a miracle, reassuring his two main allies in the region, while dampening internal criticism and providing for himself an opening to implement domestic reforms, which are crucial for his re-election.

Squeezing the Allies

Since Trump’s electoral victory, it has become clear that the US administration considers the role played by its European allies to be marginal if not irrelevant. The first evidence of this was seen in the pressure on European capitals to pay the full NATO military budget; then the expressed intention to sell American LNG (priced out of market) to European partners; and now a new escalation of tensions with Iran. The enormous pressure that Congress, together with the Saudi and Israeli lobbies, will bring to bear on France, Britain and Germany to cooperate with the new regulations concerning the JCPOA, could strain the relationship between the old continent and the United States as never before.

It is likely that for reasons of economic interest as well as common sense, the vast majority of European companies will decide not to work with the Islamic Republic of Iran, either because of US sanctions or because of a failure of the JCPOA. In the long run, Trump is forcing America’s historic allies to find a way out of such harmful sanctions as those placed on Russia or, in the future, Iran.

The alternative global economic/financial system, which entails de-dollarization, does not yet have strong European participation. However, with situations that are less and less favourable to the old continent, Europeans will need to recognize the necessity of diversifying their foreign policy, ensuring that it does not always automatically line itself up behind Washington. Trump’s decision to abandon the JCPOA may spur the Europeans to fashion an Iran deal that is to the benefit of all stakeholders and helps guarantee lasting peace in the region.

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

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation where the featured image was sourced.

As violence continues to unfold in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state against the nation’s Rohingya ethnic minority, the agenda driving the conflict is likewise unfolding in a more transparent and direct manner.

As was predicted – the US is shifting blame away from the US-backed client regime headed by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy (NLD) party the US installed into power in 2015 – and toward Myanmar’s independent institutions, including the nation’s still powerful military.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a recent talk before the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. (PDF) laid the blame squarely on Myanmar’s military, claiming:

…we’re extraordinarily concerned by what’s happening with the Rohingya in Burma. I’ve been in contact with Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the civilian side of the government. As you know, this is a power-sharing government that has – that has emerged in Burma. We really hold the military leadership accountable for what’s happening with the Rakhine area.

Reuters in an article titled, “Lawmakers urge U.S. to craft targeted sanctions on Myanmar military,” would report:

More than 40 lawmakers urged the Trump administration on Wednesday to reimpose U.S. travel bans on Myanmar’s military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for a crackdown on the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

And Freedom House – a subsidiary of the US government and corporate-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – would also publish a piece titled, “Does Democracy’s Toehold in Myanmar Outweigh the Lives of the Rohingya?,” shifting the blame away from the very regime it worked for decades to put in power, and target Myanmar’s military.

It claimed:

In less than two months, more than half a million Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the destruction of entire settlements, systematic rape, and the mass slaughter of men, women, and children. This horrendous violence is perpetrated by the military, with assistance from elements of the local Rakhine Buddhist population.

It is clear that the confined nature of Myanmar’s ongoing Rohingya crisis will not lead to the same type of nationwide militancy observed in Syria. It is also clear that the United States is likewise confining its condemnation for the violence not to the ultra-violent elements that it cultivated under Suu Kyi’s political movement for decades, but on the military who often stood between Rohingya communities and violent onslaughts.

The pressuring and weakening first, then either co-opting or overthrowing of Myanmar’s current military leadership under the pretext of the current crisis will invite a larger and expanding US and European role in Myanmar’s internal affairs. Secretary Tillerson alluded to precisely that in his recent remarks, claiming:

And so we have been asking for access to the region. We’ve been able to get a couple of our people from our embassy into the region so we can begin to get our own firsthand account of what is occurring. We’re encouraging access for the aid agencies – the Red Cross, the Red Crescent – U.N. agencies to – so we can at least address some of the most pressing humanitarian needs, but more importantly so we can get a full understanding of what is going on. 

Someone – if these reports are true, someone is going to be held to account for that. And it’s up to the military leadership of Burma to decide what direction do they want to play in the future of Burma, because we see Burma as an important emerging democracy, but this is a real test.

With US ally Saudi Arabia fueling a militancy under the guise of a Rohingya “resistance,” the US will also be able to justify military aid, joint-operations, and even permanent US military facilities – however meager – that will present a serious obstacle to Chinese influence in the nation and in the region. It will also be an obstacle that once erected, will be difficult to dismantle as America’s enduring and unwanted military presence in the Philippines is proving to be.

What’s Really Happening in Myanmar 

It is also a political network that has systematically abused, brutalized, and driven Myanmar’s Rohingya population first from their homes and businesses into camps, then from camps to abroad in neighboring nations including Bangladesh and Thailand.

While attempts to compare Myanmar’s crisis to ongoing conflict driven by US-backed regime change in Syria – it is clear that Myanmar’s crisis is more comparable to the US occupation of Afghanistan minus the presence (for now) of US troops.

While the United States and its European partners control Myanmar’s civilian government, the US is attempting to divide and weaken the Myanmar state to corrode independent institutions still beyond Wall Street and Washington’s control, hinder the central government from achieving any sort of independence itself, as well as create a pretext  for an initial and then expanded presence of US missions – economically, diplomatically, and militarily – in Myanmar.

The goal – as it is in Afghanistan – is to disrupt, undermine, and ultimately overturn progress China and other alternative centers of global power have made in the two nations. In particular, the highly confined violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state is precisely where China sought to establish and use one of its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) logistical hubs.

America’s Plans for its Myanmar Client State   

Through a large US State Department and European-funded network of faux-nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),Western-backed opposition parties, and likewise Western-backed street fronts, Myanmar’s current client regime was successfully installed into power after general elections in 2015.

Prominent opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) assumed power of the government but maintained little control over the nation’s independent military.

The NLD’s party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, literally created a new political office for herself to occupy as defacto “head of state.” Under Myanmar’s constitution Suu Kyi was barred from holding high offices in the nation’s political system due to her marriage to a foreign spouse – a British man – and because her children hold dual UK-Myanmar citizenship. Suu Kyi herself received a foreign education and worked within Western institutions including the United Nations in the US before returning to Myanmar to engage in domestic politics.

Her entry into politics and her ascension into power has been openly funded and backed by the United States, former colonial ruler the United Kingdom, and a long list of European collaborators, for decades.

Many senior positions within Myanmar’s ruling regime are held by likewise products of extensive US funding, training, indoctrination, and support, including the current Minister of Information Pe Myint.

Just as the US controls the government in Kabul, Afghanistan, it controls the civilian leadership in Naypyidaw, Myanmar. And just as the US perpetuates the threat of terrorism in Afghanistan as a pretext for the permanent US military occupation of the Central Asian state, the US and its Saudi allies are attempting to use the current Rohingya crisis as a vector to introduce a foreign-funded militancy as a pretext first for joint “counter-terrorism” cooperation with the government of Myanmar, and then the permanent positioning of US military assets in a Southeast Asian state that directly borders China – a long-term goal of US policymakers stretching back decades.

It is expected that the military of Myanmar will come under increasing pressure, targeted sanctions, and outright threats until it capitulates, collapses, or manages to overcome foreign influence and the client regime serving as a vector and facilitator for them.

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s regime will continue being granted relative impunity across the West despite the fact that it is her own support base carrying out anti-Rohingya violence. The crisis will be leveraged to thwart China’s economic inroads and prop up a burgeoning US-European diplomatic and military presence in the country.

Voices across the media exposing US plans will make it increasingly difficult for the US and its partners to maneuver in Myanmar and give counterbalancing forces further leverage in frustrating and rolling them back.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  

Featured image is from the author.

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.

The White House and the Pentagon has provided only a trickle of information about the abortive October 4 operation. The incident came to the public eye largely because of President Donald Trump’s initial failure to say anything about the largest loss of US military personnel since he took office, along with his subsequent lies about contacting families of slain troops and his shameful public confrontation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four Green Berets killed in Niger, over a callous condolence call.

A map with Niger indicated by red border

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday that the Green Berets had been engaged in a “simple reconnaissance mission,” and described the overall purpose of deploying some 1,000 US special operations troops in Niger as a “train, advise and assist mission” to support the Nigerien security forces.

It appears that Dunford’s comments were deliberately misleading on both counts.

NBC News Tuesday cited “multiple US officials” as recounting that the US detachment of 12 US special forces troops and 30 Nigerien soldiers had been on what was effectively an assassination mission, aimed at killing a senior leader of a local Islamist militia.

NBC reported:

“One theory, said an official with direct knowledge of the military’s investigation, is that the soldiers were gathering information about the target, and, after learning his whereabouts, decided to pursue him. A big question would then be whether the unit got authorization, and whether the risks were assessed.”

It added that the ill-fated Niger mission was conducted under the mantle of Operation Juniper Shield, a program begun under the Obama administration and continued under Trump, which is directed at using US military force to “disrupt or neutralize” organizations deemed connected to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State across the Sahel region of central west Africa.

This military intervention is being conducted in coordination with the French military, which is waging an even more intense neocolonial operation in neighboring Mali. Both countries have mounted a campaign against an insurgent group known as Al-Mourabitoun, which has been active throughout the region. Last January, Al-Mourabitoun took responsibility for a suicide bombing against a military base in the city of Gao in Mali, killing 77. Previous attacks have targeted foreigners in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, while in 2013 the group seized a gas facility in Algeria, leading to a confrontation in which all 39 of its hostages were killed.

According to the sources cited by NBC, the Green Beret team involved in the October 4 firefight, officially known as Operational Detachment Alpha or ODA, was involved in an “intelligence-directed operation,” which included a meeting with an individual purported to have information on the whereabouts of an Islamist militant known as Abnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, who is believed to be the leader of at least one section of Al-Mourabitoun.

While the precise way in which the ambush that led to the deaths of the four US special forces troops remains shrouded in mystery, military sources have suggested that the unit was set up by hostile elements of the local population, who either led them into a trap or gave away their location to the Islamist insurgents.

Leading members of the US Senate and House—including Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senators John McCain (chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) and Lindsey Graham—have claimed to have been kept in the dark by the Pentagon on the escalating US intervention in the region and expressed surprise that up to 1,000 US special forces troops are deployed in Niger and on its borders.

A closed-door hearing has been scheduled for Thursday in which two senior Pentagon officials will deliver a classified briefing to the Senate Armed Services panel. The session was scheduled after McCain threatened to subpoena the administration for more information on the Niger operation.

In reality, the steadily escalating US military intervention in Africa has been a fairly open secret, provoking disquiet only after the October 4 debacle.

In February 2013, the Obama White House announced that the first 100 US troops were being sent into Niger, with hundreds more to follow. At the time, it was revealed that Washington had signed an agreement with the Niger government allowing the US military to set up a drone base on the country’s territory, creating the conditions for spreading the Obama administration’s remote-control assassination spree throughout the region.

That base is now under construction in the city of Agadez, where the US is preparing major facilities to house and launch MQ-9 hunter-killer drones.

Last Friday, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is instituting a “status-based targeting” system in Niger allowing its troops to hunt down and employ lethal force against suspected members of Islamist insurgent groups “even if that person does not pose an immediate threat.” This appears to be what was involved in the abortive mission that claimed four US soldiers’ lives on October 4.

The employment of such assassination squads, along with drone killings and similar methods, will serve only to intensify civil war conditions throughout the region, providing the pretext for even greater US intervention.

Indeed, the principal source of the present conflict lies in the 2011 US-NATO war to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, which shattered the tenuous equilibrium that Gaddafi had maintained among the Tuareg and other tribal groups in Niger and elsewhere in the Sahel. The rise of Islamist groups was directly tied to the utilization of Al Qaeda elements by Washington and its allies as proxy ground forces in the war for regime change that ended with Gaddafi’s lynching and the decimation of Libyan society. In the aftermath of the Libyan government’s fall, its arms stockpiles found their way into the hands of Islamist groups throughout the region.

In the midst of the roiling controversy over the troop deaths in Niger and Trump’s response, there has been a steadily escalating drumbeat from Democratic politicians and the media for Congress to debate the ongoing US military interventions and pass a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

This found fresh expression Tuesday in a piece in the Washington Post by the ostensibly liberal columnist Eugene Robinson, who wrote:

“Congress needs to do more than investigate the deaths. It needs to authorize this conflict—or shut it down.”

Robinson went on to describe the cabal of generals—Kelly, Mattis and McMaster—that largely controls the White House and the Trump administration’s foreign policy as “the last line of defense between our great nation and the abyss.”

At the same time, however, he suggested that this military domination of the administration made it all the more important for Congress to “reclaim its war-making powers” by passing a new AUMF.

Such columns reflect the increasing nervousness within ruling circles that the ugly controversy over Niger has lifted the lid on both the ever-expanding global military operations of the Pentagon and the increasingly open turn toward military control of the government at home. Any new AUMF passed by Congress, which long ago gave up even the pretense of defending its constitutional powers, will only provide a legislative fig leaf to facilitate this process.

Now that President Xi Jinping has been duly elevated to the Chinese Communist Party pantheon in the rarified company of Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, the world will have plenty of time to digest the meaning of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

Xi himself, in his 3½-hour speech at the start of the 19th Party Congress, pointed to a rather simplified “socialist democracy” – extolling its virtues as the only counter-model to Western liberal democracy. Economically, the debate remains open on whether this walks and talks more like “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics”.

All the milestones for China in the immediate future have been set.

• “Moderately prosperous society” by 2020.
• Basically modernized nation by 2035.
• Rich and powerful socialist nation by 2050.

Xi himself, since 2013, has encapsulated the process in one mantra; the “Chinese dream”. The dream must become reality in a little over three decades. The inexorable modernization drive unleashed by Deng’s reforms has lasted a little less than four decades. Recent history tell us there’s no reason to believe phase 2 of this seismic Sino-Renaissance won’t be fulfilled.

Xi emphasized,

“the dreams of the Chinese people and those of other peoples around the world are closely linked. The realization of the Chinese dream will not be possible without a peaceful international environment and a stable international order.”

He mentioned only briefly the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as having “created a favorable environment for the country’s overall development”. He didn’t dwell on BRI’s ambition and extraordinary scope, as he does in every major international summit as well as in Davos earlier this year.

But still it was implicit that to arrive at what Xi defines as a “community of common destiny for mankind”, BRI is China’s ultimate tool. BRI, a geopolitical/geoeconomic game-changer, is in fact Xi’s – and China’s – organizing foreign policy concept and driver up to 2050.

Xi has clearly understood that global leadership implies being a top provider, mostly to the global South, of connectivity, infrastructure financing, comprehensive technical assistance, construction hardware and myriad other trappings of “modernization”.

It does not hurt that this trade/commerce/investment onslaught helps to internationalize the yuan.

It’s easy to forget that BRI, an unparalleled multinational connectivity drive set to economically link all points Asia to Europe and Africa, was announced only three years ago, in Astana (Central Asia) and Jakarta (Southeast Asia).

What was originally known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road were endorsed by the Third Plenum of the 18th CCP Central Committee in November 2013. Only after the release of an official document, “Visions and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Roads”, in March 2015, the whole project was finally named BRI.

According to the official Chinese timeline, we’re only at the start of phase 2. Phase 1, from 2013 to 2016, was “mobilization”. “Planning”, from 2016 to 2021, is barely on (and that explains why few major projects are online). “Implementation” is supposed to start in 2021, one year before Xi’s new term expires, and go all the way to 2049.

The horizon thus is 2050, coinciding with Xi’s “rich and powerful socialist nation” dream. There’s simply no other comprehensive, inclusive, far-reaching, financially solid development program on the global market. Certainly not India’s Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC).

Have BRI, will travel

It starts with Hong Kong. When Xi said,

“We will continue to support Hong Kong and Macau in integrating their own development into the overall development of the country”, he meant Hong Kong configured as a major BRI financing hub – its new role after a recent past of business facilitator between China and the West.

Hong Kong’s got what it takes; convertible currency; total capital mobility; rule of law; no tax on interest, dividends and capital gains; total access to China’s capital market/savings; and last but not least, Beijing’s support.

Enter the dream of myriad financing packages (public-private; equity-debt; short-long term bonds). Hong Kong’s BRI role will be of the Total Package international financial center (venture capital; private equity; flotation of stocks and bonds; investment banking; mergers and acquisitions; reinsurance) interlinked with the Greater Bay Area – the 11 cities (including Guangzhou and Shenzhen) of the Pearl River Delta (light/heavy manufacturing; hi-tech venture capitalists, start-ups, investors; top research universities).

That ties up with Xi’s emphasis on innovation;

“We will strengthen basic research in applied sciences, launch major national science and technology projects, and prioritize innovation in key generic technologies, cutting-edge frontier technologies, modern engineering technologies, and disruptive technologies.”

The integration of the Greater Bay Area is bound to inspire, fuel, and in some cases even mould some of BRI’s key projects. The Eurasian Land Bridge from Xinjiang to Western Russia (China and Kazakhstan are actively turbo-charging their joint free trade zone at Khorgos). The China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor. The connection of the Central Asian “stans” to West Asia – Iran and Turkey. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from Xinjiang all the way to Gwadar in the Arabian Sea – capable of sparking an “economic revolution” according to Islamabad. The China-Indochina corridor from Kunming to Singapore. The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) corridor (assuming India does not boycott it). The Maritime Silk Road from coastal southeast China all the way to the Mediterranean, from Piraeus to Venice.

Yiwu-London freight trains, Shanghai-Tehran freight trains, the Turkmenistan to Xinjiang gas pipeline – these are all facts on the ground. Along the way, the technologies and tools of infrastructure connectivity – applied to high-speed rail networks, power plants, solar farms, motorways, bridges, ports, pipelines – will be closely linked with financing by the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the security-economic cooperation imperatives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to build the new Eurasia from Shanghai to Rotterdam. Or, to evoke Vladimir Putin’s original vision, even before BRI was launched, “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”.

Xi did not spell it out, but Beijing will do everything to stay as independent as possible from the Western Central Bank system, with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) to be avoided in as many trade deals as possible to the benefit of yuan-based transactions or outright barter. The petrodollar will be increasingly bypassed (it’s already happening between China and Iran, and Beijing sooner rather than later will demand it from Saudi Arabia.)

The end result, by 2050, will be, barring inevitable, complex glitches, an integrated market of 4.5 billion people mostly using local currencies for bilateral and multilateral trade, or a basket of currencies (yuan-ruble-rial-yen-rupee).

Xi has laid China’s cards – as well as the road map – on the table. As far as the Chinese Dream is concerned, it’s now clear; Have BRI, Will Travel.

Last week the new head of the CIA Mike Pompeo publicly 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:

The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country …
…
The C.I.A.’s expanded role will augment missions carried out by military units, meaning more of the United States’ combat role in Afghanistan will be hidden from public view.

This is not going to be a counter-insurgency campaign, even when some will assert that. A counter-insurgency campaign requires political, security, economic, and informational components. It can only be successful in support of a legitimate authority.

The current Afghan government has little legitimacy. It was bribed together by the U.S. embassy after wide and open election fraud threatened to devolve into total chaos. In August CIA director Pompeo met the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and likely discussed the new plan. But the now announced campaign has neither a political nor an economic component. A campaign solely centered on “security” will end up as a random torture and killing expedition without the necessary context and with no positive results.

The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban. While it will likely kill a some Taliban aligned insurgents here and there, it will also alienate many more Afghan people. Most of the Taliban fighters are locals. Killing them creates new local recruits for the insurgency. It will also give it better population cover for future operations.

A similar campaign during the Vietnam war was known as Operation Phoenix. Then some 50,000 South-Vietnamese, all of course ‘suspected communists’, were killed by the CIA’s roving gangs:

[Phoenix] was designed to identify and “neutralize” (via infiltration, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as “a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong”. The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were allegedly tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.

Original unissued patch for the Phoenix Program (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Phoenix program was embedded into a larger civil political and economic development program known as CORDS. The accepted historical judgement is that Phoenix failed to achieve its purpose despite its wider conceptualization. The passive support for the Viet Cong increased due to the campaign. In recent years there have been revisionists efforts by the Pentagon’s RAND Corporation to change that view.

The now announced campaign looks similar to Phoenix but lacks any political component. It is not designed to pacify insurgents but to eliminate any and all resistance:

The new effort will be led by small units known as counterterrorism pursuit teams. They are managed by C.I.A. paramilitary officers from the agency’s Special Activities Division and operatives from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence arm, and include elite American troops from the Joint Special Operations Command. The majority of the forces, however, are Afghan militia members.

There are only a few dozen officers in the CIA Special Activities Division that can support such a campaign. The lede to the article suggests that ‘contractors’ will have a significant role. In August the former head of the mercenary outlet Blackwater, Eric Prince, lobbied the Trump administration for a contractor led war in Afghanistan. We can safely assume that Prince and some Blackwater offspring will be involved in the new CIA campaign. The major intelligence groundwork though will have to be done by the NDS.

The Afghan National Directorate of Security was build by the CIA from elements of the former Northern Alliance, the opponents of the original Taliban. In the late 1990s the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud was financed by the CIA. Shah Massoud’s intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, a dual citizen, received CIA training. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan Saleh headed the new intelligence service, the NDS. Then President Hamid Karzai fired Saleh in 2010 when he resisted Karzai’s efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. In March 2017 the current President Ashraf Ghani appointed Saleh as State Minister for Security Reforms. Saleh resigned(?) in June after Ghani reached a peace agreement with the anti-government warlord and former Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Saleh is an ethnic Tajik and an unforgiving hardliner. He is wary of Pashtun who are the most populous ethnic group in Afghanistan and the base population for the Taliban. Saleh recently founded his own political party. He obviously has further ambitions. He always had excellent relations with the CIA and especially its hardline counter-terrorism center. I find it highly likely that he was involved in the planning of this new campaign.

In the ethnically mixed north of Afghanistan the involvement of NDS led local militia will probably cause large scale ethnic cleansing. In the Pashtun south and east it will lack all local support as such militia have terrorized the country for quite some time:

For years, the primary job of the C.I.A.’s paramilitary officers in the country has been training the Afghan militias. The C.I.A. has also used members of these indigenous militias to develop informant networks and collect intelligence.
…
The American commandos — part of the Pentagon’s Omega program, which lends Special Operations forces to the C.I.A. — allow the Afghan militias to work together with conventional troops by calling in airstrikes and medical evacuations.
…
The units have long had a wide run of the battlefield and have been accused of indiscriminately killing Afghan civilians in raids and with airstrikes.

It is utterly predictable how this campaign will end up. The CIA itself has few, if any, independent sources in the country. It will depend on the NDS, stuffed with Saleh’s Tajik kinsmen, as well as on ethnic and tribal militia. Each of these will have their own agenda. A ‘security’ campaign as the planned one depends on reliable intelligence. Who, in this or that hamlet, is a member of the Taliban? For lack of trusted local sources the militia, under CIA or contractor command, will resort to extremely brutal torture. They will squeeze ‘informants’ and ‘suspects’ until these come up with names of a new rounds of ‘suspects’. Rinse-repeat – in the end all of the ‘suspects’ will be killed.

The new plan was intentionally ‘leaked’ to the New York Times by “two senior American officials”. It is set into a positive light:

[T]he mission is a tacit acknowledgment that to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table — a key component of Mr. Trump’s strategy for the country — the United States will need to aggressively fight the insurgents.

That claim is of course utter nonsense. The U.S. already has for years “aggressively fought the insurgents”. The Taliban were always willing to negotiate. Their main condition for a peace agreement is that U.S. forces end their occupation and leave the country. The U.S. is simply not willing to do so. Killing more ‘suspect’ Taliban sympathizers will not change the Taliban’s demand nor will it make serious negations more likely.

Five years from now, when the utter brutality and uselessness of the campaign will come into full light, the NYT will be shocked, SHOCKED, that such a campaign could ever have happened.

Featured image: Signs read: “We oppose THAAD”; Photo – Tongil News

“World without precarious labor, world without war!”

On October 15, ten thousand people gathered in Seoul Plaza in front of Seoul City Hall to celebrate the launch of a new progressive party. The Minjung (People) Party is the amalgamation of two left-leaning parties, the New Progressive Party and the United People’s Party (Minjung Yonhap Party), and is a party of workers, farmers, urban poor, women and youth resolved to complete the “candlelight revolution” that ousted Park Geun-hye earlier this year.

The formation of the Minjung Party is the first regathering of progressive forces since the forced dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party by the former Park Geun-hye administration in 2014. The party’s two stated priorities are establishing lasting peace on the Korean peninsula and the eradication of precarious labor.

In a statement read by the two standing representatives of the party — Kim Jong-hun and Kim Chang-han — the Minjung Party criticized the current administration for following the lead of the United States in reinforcing a hostile policy on North Korea and vowed to challenge domestic policies that prioritize the wealthy over the majority. It added:

The people are at the base of the politics that we strive for. Without the support, strength, and wisdom of the people, progressive politics has no chance of moving forward. The greatest political task in front of us is politics for the people and arousing people to come together in a political convergence.

The statement concluded,

“People! Let us create a new Korea, a peaceful unified homeland, in which those who toil and sweat receive respect.”

Overseas Koreans and notable figures around the world sent messages of congratulations to the newly formed Minjung Party. Noam Chomsky wrote,

“The launch of the new Minjung Party is encouraging to the struggles for justice, and it is meaningful progress towards democratization grounded in the participation of the people.”

He also expressed hope for the new party to forge a peaceful path out of the grave war threats currently endangering the Korean Peninsula and the world.

Following the ceremony, the new members and supporters of the Minjung Party marched through Seoul.

Banner reads: “World without precarious labor, world without war. Together with the Minjung Party.” Photo – Tongil News

Sign reads: “Sign the Peace Treaty”; Photo – Tongil News

Super market workers marching with carts demanding “Completely abolish precarious labor”; Photo – Tongil News

On October 19, members of the Minjung Party held a press conference in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul to speak out against the most recent military exercises held by the U.S. and South Korean naval forces. They demand a stop to the joint naval exercises and a start to dialogue for peace.

The joint naval drills began on Monday October 16. The exercises included the deployment of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan along with other nuclear strategic assets including a dozen destroyers with missile capabilities as well as F-22 and B1B bombers. The USS Ronald Reagan will likely remain off the coast of the Korean peninsula through Donald Trump’s visit to South Korea on November 7.

Representatives of the Minjung Party noted that the so-called “exercises” are akin to threatening a preemptive strike against North Korea. They warned U.S. President Donald Trump —

“We will not tolerate any action that threatens peace.”

The party representatives also called on South Korean President Moon Jae-in to stand up to the U.S. government and assert South Korea’s right to self-determination and peace.

President Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey last May spurred much of the media to rally around America’s most powerful domestic federal agency. But the FBI has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This has practically been the Bureau’s motif since its creation in 1908.

The bureau was small potatoes until Woodrow Wilson dragged the United States into World War I. In one fell swoop, the number of dangerous Americans increased by perhaps twenty-fold. The Espionage Act of 1917 made it easy to jail anyone who criticized the war or the government. In September 1918, the bureau, working with local police and private vigilantes, seized more than 50,000 suspected draft dodgers off the streets and out of the restaurants of New York, Newark, and Jersey City. The Justice Department was disgraced when the vast majority of young men who had been arrested turned out to be innocent.

In January 1920, J. Edgar Hoover — the 25-year-old chief of the bureau’s Radical Division — was the point man for the “Palmer Raids.” Nearly 10,000 suspected Reds and radicals were seized. The bureau carefully avoided keeping an accurate count of detainees (a similar pattern of negligence occurred with the roundups after the 9/11 attacks). Attorney General Mitchell Palmer sought to use the massive roundups to propel his presidential candidacy. The operation took a drubbing, however, after an insolent judge demanded that the Justice Department provide evidence for why people had been arrested. Federal judge George Anderson complained that the government had created a “spy system” that “destroys trust and confidence and propagates hate. A mob is a mob whether made up of government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals, loafers, and the vicious classes.”

After the debacle of the Palmer raids, the bureau devoted its attention to the nation’s real enemies: the U.S. Congress. The bureau targeted “senators whom the Attorney General saw as threats to America. The Bureau was breaking into their offices and homes, intercepting their mail, and tapping their telephones,” as Tim Weiner recounted in his 2012 book Enemies: The History of the FBI. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was illegally targeted because the bureau feared he might support diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia.

Hoover, who ran the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972, built a revered agency that utterly intimidated official Washington. The FBI tapped the home telephone of a Supreme Court clerk, and at least one Supreme Court Justice feared the FBI had bugged the conference room where justices privately discussed cases. In 1945, President Harry Truman wrote in his diary,

“We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction…. This must stop.”

But Truman did not have the gumption to pull in the reins.

The bureau’s power soared after Congress passed the Internal Security Act of 1950, authorizing massive crackdowns on suspected subversives. Hoover compiled a list of more than 20,000 “potentially or actually dangerous” Americans who could be seized and locked away at the president’s command. Hoover specified that “the hearing procedure [for detentions] will not be bound by the rules of evidence.”

“Congress secretly financed the creation of six of these [detention] camps in the 1950s,” noted Weiner.

(When rumors began circulating in the 1990s that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was building detention camps, government officials and much of the media scoffed that such a thing could never occur in this nation.)

From 1956 through 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist, and anti-war organizations. FBI agents also busied themselves forging “poison pen” letters to wreck activists’ marriages. The FBI set up a Ghetto Informant Program that continued after COINTELPRO and that had 7,402 informants, including proprietors of candy stores and barbershops, as of September 1972. The informants served as “listening posts” “to identify extremists passing through or locating in the ghetto area, to identify purveyors of extremist literature,” and to keep an eye on “Afro-American type bookstores” (including obtaining the names of the bookstores’ “clientele”).

The FBI let no corner of American life escape its vigilance; it even worked to expose and discredit “communists who are secretly operating in legitimate organizations and employments, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association and Boy Scouts,” as a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI took a shotgun approach to target and harass protesters partly because of its “belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of an act which might be criminal,” the Senate report observed. That report characterized COINTELPRO as “a secret war against those citizens [the FBI] considers threats to the established order.” COINTELPRO was exposed only after a handful of activists burglarized an FBI office in a Philadelphia suburb, seized FBI files, and leaked the damning documents to the media. The revelations were briefly shocking but faded into the Washington Memory Hole.

FBI haughtiness was showcased on national television on April 19, 1993, when its agents used 54-ton tanks to smash into the Branch Davidians’ sprawling, ramshackle home near Waco, Texas. The tanks intentionally collapsed 25 percent of the building on top of the huddled residents. After the FBI pumped the building full of CS gas (banned for use on enemy soldiers by a chemical-weapons treaty), a fire ignited that left 80 children, women, and men dead. The FBI swore it was not to blame for the conflagration. However, FBI agents had stopped firetrucks from a local fire department far from the burning building, claiming it was not safe to allow them any closer because the Davidians might shoot people dousing a fire that was killing them. Six years after the assault, news leaked that the FBI had fired incendiary tear-gas cartridges into the Davidians’ home prior to the fire’s erupting.

Attorney General Janet Reno, furious over the FBI’s deceit on this key issue, sent U.S. marshals to raid FBI headquarters to search for more Waco evidence. From start to finish, the FBI brazenly lied about what it did at Waco — with one exception. On the day after the Waco fire, FBI on-scene commander Larry Potts explained the rationale for the FBI’s final assault:

“These people  had thumbed their nose at law enforcement.”

Terrorism

FBI counterterrorism spending soared in the mid to late 1990s. But the FBI dismally failed to connect the dots on suspicious foreigners engaged in domestic aviation training prior to the 9/11 attacks. Though Congress had deluged the FBI with almost $2 billion to upgrade its computers, many FBI agents had ancient machines incapable of searching the web. One FBI agent observed that the bureau ethos is that “real men don’t type…. The computer revolution just passed us by.” The FBI’s pre–9/11 blunders “contributed to the United States becoming, in effect, a sanctuary for radical terrorists,” according to a 2002 congressional investigation. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft groused that

“the safest place in the world for a terrorist to be is inside the United States; as long as they don’t do something that trips them up against our laws, they can do pretty much all they want.”

Sen. Richard Shelby in 2002 derided “the FBI’s dismal recent history of disorganization and institutional incompetence in its national security work.” (The FBI also lost track of a key informant at the heart of the cabal that detonated a truck bomb beneath the World Trade Center in 1993.)

The FBI has long relied on entrapment to boost its arrest statistics and publicity bombardments. The FBI Academy taught agents that subjects of FBI investigations “have forfeited their right to the truth.” After 9/11, this doctrine helped the agency to entrap legions of patsies who made the FBI appear to be protecting the nation. Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, estimated that only about 1 percent of the 500 people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were bona fide threats. Thirty times as many were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest.

In the Liberty City 7 case in Florida, FBI informants planted the notion of blowing up government buildings. In one case, a federal judge concluded that the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles” in order to make a “terrorist” out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.”

The FBI’s informant program extended far beyond Muslims. The FBI bankrolled a right-wing New Jersey blogger and radio host for five years prior to his 2009 arrest for threatening federal judges. We have no idea how many bloggers, talk-show hosts, or activists the FBI is currently financing.

The FBI’s power has rarely been effectively curbed by either Congress or federal courts. In 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs declared that the FBI’s power terrified Capitol Hill:

“Our very fear of speaking out [against the FBI] … has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny…. Our society cannot survive a planned and programmed fear of its own government bureaus and agencies.”

Boggs vindicated a 1924 American Civil Liberties Union report warning that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character” — a charge that supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would have cheered last year.

Is the FBI’s halo irrevocable? The FBI has always used its “good guy” image to keep a lid on its crimes. It is long past time for the American people, media, and Congress to take the FBI off its pedestal and place it where it belongs — under the law. It is time to cease venerating a federal agency whose abuses have perennially menaced Americans’ constitutional rights. Otherwise, the FBI’s vast power and pervasive secrecy guarantee that more FBI scandals are just around the bend.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books. Bovard is on the USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at www.jimbovard.com  This essay was originally published by Future of Freedom Foundation.

Featured image is from Dave Newman | CC by 2.0.

This article was first published by Global Research in July 2017

The Afghan war is sparked for an array of interests and it needs to flare up to secure a dozens of regional objectives. It can be claimed that the Taliban is a pretext to drain the undergrounds of rare earth elements and siphon off the black money out of drug trafficking or Russia is an alleged reason to ramp up the multi-billion dollar arms sales or the “war on terrorism” is a pretext to establish further military bases.

To ride the Afghan war, there has to be a litany of motives. Regional rivalries are not so sharp and deep nor potential to wreck Afghanistan as much. Admittedly, India and Pakistan are immersed in a feud that has stretched to the Afghan soil thanks to Washington’s authorization of Pakistan in times of Jihad to intervene in Afghanistan on its behalf. If we sum up the entire bombings that represent the two archenemies’ [India and Pakistan] proxy war in Afghanistan, it may constitute a tiny fraction.

By the same token, Saudi-Iran or US-Iran proxy war in Afghanistan is not in full-swing and leaves little to the imagination or doubt. It also account for not more than a fragment of violence.

Then what really drives the war machine? And importantly what is claiming so many Afghan lives a day?

The allegations over India and Pakistan’s confrontation in Afghanistan are unfounded. Actually, it is overblown to cast shadow over the main causes of the war, yet a struggle for mounting clout on Kabul regime is undeniable. Pakistan’s condition, among others, for a halt to terrorism and bringing Taliban to negotiation table is that Afghanistan should break off multidimensional ties to India. The proponents of this idea are false or turning a blind eye to the genuine concerns. This can also be refuted out of a stark reality that this hostility has not gone as far as to destabilize Afghanistan so largely because of the Afghan government’s warming to India. Is the multimillion dollars project of rising ISIS in Afghanistan an outcome of this potato-small issue?

India is of the opinion that Washington needs Pakistan for its Afghanistan conspiracy theory even though this country has obviously named Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism in international forums and platforms. But Washington has still showered concessions upon Pakistan for not paying lip service. To appease the regional allies countering Pakistan and respond to international calls for solid counterterrorism measures, Washington has at most revealed its determination to stop approving budgets in military or civilian aid to Pakistan, which has later been cleared from suspension.

Former President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf (Source: Wikipedia)

Former president of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf in an interview with AFP said:

“India’s domination in Afghanistan is a threat to Pakistan; Indians want to turn Afghanistan against Pakistan”.

This commentary or fewer others just like it may have shaped up the minds and viewpoints of a comfort majority who seek the root causes of the Afghan war, though it is dimming the other side of the war played by the US-led coalition.

The key to a miraculous remedy to Afghanistan’s violence is within the reach of the Afghan government and its international military partners. The centralization of security on the Afghan borders with Pakistan to block unlawful crossings could give an immediate fix to the current US fiasco in Afghanistan. If the free flow of arms and mercenaries across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan freezes, the peace may descend on the earth in Afghanistan.

The myth of a proxy war between the nemesis neighbors is a treacherous media hype, consciously or unconsciously. This media trend helps Pakistan to promote terrorism in the shadows of the exaggerated proxy war with India. According to Amar Sinha, Indian ambassador in Kabul, the flurry of media stories of a proxy war is meant to justify Pakistan’s support of terrorism. But now is there someone to pose who is behind Pakistan’s support to extremism.

Yes, the US is juggling all the sides of the war very meticulously that barely allows minds to turn at it. Some, but not all, American authors depict the Afghan war as a  product of deep-seated India-Pak row, which is making room for the US to carry on its multitasking process.

If the US was an arbitrator and only an observer of the war, it would have far earlier went into talks with India for a peaceful solution. We can deduce that, in the first place, India – with almost zero engagement in war- and then Pakistan are the targets of media’s war on terrorism. The latter country is no doubt an accomplice in the Afghan slaughter, but it is now entangled in the war agenda of Washington and despite going through ups and downs along the history, it understands that it may get severely hurt if it backs down from the support to Washington and most likely face the fate of Saudi Arabia in 2003.

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh (Source: Wikipedia)

Although, the world and domestic media pin the Afghan war on Pakistan and India’s hostility, India asserts it is in no battle with Pakistan and it is all media falsehood to disguise the real scenario. Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh told media in March 2015 that:

“Pakistan is exploiting terrorism as a weapon in its proxy war against India”

What Indian high ranks actually mean to suggest here is that Pakistan take advantage of the ongoing US bogus counterterrorism battle and the US-facilitated outreach to the supreme Afghan authorities against India. Pakistan, not India, has set eyes on India’s deals with Afghan government and has not spared counterattacks on all of them.

The US is wishful of implicating India in Afghan conflict and deliberating over deployment of Indian forces alongside NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. This way, further fuel is added to the animosity which may possibly be used by the US to divert focus from its war agenda into minuscule encounters as such. The two states shares lengthy borders and there is no striking sign of clash in sight.

Pakistan is the lackey state of Washington taking infamy and risk of seclusion in the world. Its affinity with Washington and harboring of terrorists for a symbolic Afghan war is robbing it of large-scale economic opportunities. China’s economic corridor extending across the Baluchistan province and other restive regions is now grappling with major setbacks and is on the brink of cancellation.

The other element on top of Pakistan is China that nudges India into a solidified relationship with Afghan government. In 1960s, China went to war with India over territorial dispute and therefore edging towards Pakistan as well as making every effort to thaw tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

States like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Ukraine have remained battlegrounds for proxy wars. Israel fired no single bullet in Syrian war which is the most concerned for it, and has had ample cash and arms pouring into the war zone from Arab region kingdoms and others. The proxies and puppet states in today’s global war have no second option in addition to agreeing. The superpowers initiate a proxy war in a fashion that most of the blames and war crimes become the sole liabilities of the lackey states.

This article first appeared on GR on July 14, 2016.

This week another toxic revelation dripped out of the Chilcot Report.

According to top British SAS officers, US commander Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency “black-ops” featured a program of relentless violence designed to ‘speed up’ the process of political cleansing and the so-called “reconstruction” of Iraq.

What also interesting here, is the Chilcot’s choice of language, including the term “Latin American-style death squads”, which by default implies the United States government was party to war crimes in Central America during the 1980’s – a claim which it has always been strenuously denied in public, even though the general public and academia recognizes this to be a self-evident fact of America’s long-running ugly history of intervention in that region.

The Independent report reveals the level of sheer depravity by US command:

“The mission was an extraordinary set-up: inside the command centre – “The Machine” – was the “Death Star”, on the walls of which were banks of television screens, “Kill TV”, running live pictures of action taking place and surveillance footage in real time from which suspects could be picked out for future arrest or elimination.”

The Independent also detailed how reckless and violent practices by the US military caused noticeable divisions and splits between joint US-UK command structures and operations, including political tension between British military command.

Through the newly created ‘Office of Special Plans’, neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith rolled out their own sub-layer to the US controlled shadow government in Iraq, including the establishment of the “Iraqi De–Baathification Council” which, under the supervision of then US Viceroy Paul Bremer, began dismantling the Iraqi military, security and intelligence agency infrastructures of President Saddam Hussein.

And so began the process of the Pentagon’s ‘de-Baathification’ process in Iraq, immediately followed by a hive of violent ‘Gangs and Counter-gangs’ created by the US and UK covert military and intelligence apparatuses. Front and center in this effort were US operatives John Negroponte and his understudy at the time, Robert Ford, who was later dispatched as US Ambassador to Syria in the run-up to the Syrian Conflict which began in 2011.

The legacy of this destructive policy still lingering in Iraq and now in Syria. This unquestionably spawned ISIS and many other terrorist factions in both Iraq and Syria. Only last week, Iraq saw its most deadly car bomb ever, a questionable ‘sectarian attack’ (a narrative not challenged by the western and international press) which killed 200 innocent civilians, and injured many more.

GLADIO REDUX: A map of every car bomb in Baghdad since the US-UK invasion in 2003 (Source: Twitter)

Prof Michel Chossudovsky explains this same highly disturbing pattern that generally follows every US intervention overseas, be it overt or covert:

“The recruitment of death squads is part of a well established US military-intelligence agenda. There is a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of  terror brigades and targeted assassinations going back to the Vietnam war.”

“As government forces continue to confront the self-proclaimed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA),  the historical roots of  the West’s covert war on Syria –which has resulted in countless atrocities– must be fully revealed.”

Once again, we can see the revelation of the US-UK method of not simply instigating wars, but facilitating dirty wars not only overseas, but also at home, as in the case of Operation GLADIO and numerous other false flag events admittedly staged in North America.

As 21WIRE will demonstrate in subsequent reports, this latest Chilcot revelation is only the tip of a much larger, covert iceberg…

Fifty years after the Six-Day War, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip shows no end in sight. Acclaimed historian Ilan Pappé provides a comprehensive and damning account of the occupation in his new book, The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories, based on groundbreaking archival research and eyewitness accounts. 

Ilan Pappé contends that Israel was preparing for a massive assault on Gaza since at least 2004. The following excerpt describes the militarization of Israeli policy towards Gaza leading up to the massacre of 2008-2009 known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead.

2004: The Dummy City 

In 2004 the Israeli army began building a dummy Arab city in the Negev Desert. It was the size of a real city, with streets (all of them given names), mosques, public buildings and cars. Built at a cost of $45 million, this phantom city became a fake Gaza in the winter of 2006, after Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill in the north, so that the Israeli army could prepare to fight a ‘better war’ against Hamas in the south.

When the Israeli Chief of General Staff, Dan Halutz, visited the site after the Lebanon war, he told the press that soldiers ‘were preparing for the scenario that will unfold in the dense neighbourhood of Gaza City.’ A week into the bombardment of Gaza, Ehud Barak attended a rehearsal for the ground war. Foreign television crews filmed him as he watched ground troops conquer the mock city, storming the empty houses and no doubt killing the ‘terrorists’ hiding in them.

In 2009 the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence published a report of its members’, reserve soldiers’ and other soldiers’ preparation for Operation Cast Lead, when the attack on the dummy city was replaced by an assault on the real Gaza. The gist of the testimonies was that the soldiers had orders to attack Gaza as if they were attacking a massive enemy stronghold: this became clear from the firepower employed, the absence of any orders or procedures about acting properly within a civilian environment, and the synchronized effort from land, sea and air. Among the worst practices they rehearsed were the senseless demolition of houses, the spraying of civilians with phosphorus shells, the killing of innocent civilians by light weaponry and obeying orders from their commanders generally to act with no moral compass.

“You feel like an infantile child with a magnifying glass that torments ants, you burn them,” one soldier testified.

In short, they practised the total destruction of the real city as they trained in the mock city.

This was the new version of the maximum security prison that awaited the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli government and its security policymakers realized that the open-prison model, which was meant to enclose the people of the Strip under a collaborative rule of the PA, had been foiled by the people themselves. The retaliation that came in the form of besieging and blockading the Strip into surrendering to the preferred Israeli model had not worked either. The Palestinian political groups in the Strip, led by Hamas, decided to retaliate by launching occasional barrages of primitive missiles so that the world, and Israel, would not forget them and their life within a hermetically closed prison.

This is how the Israeli fiasco unfolded in 2005, which turned into what I have referred to elsewhere as the incremental genocide of Palestine. The Israelis referred to their first operation against Gaza as ‘First Rain’; it was more a rain of fire from the sky than of blessed water from above.

2005: The First Rain

The militarization of the Israeli policy towards the Gaza strip began in 2005. That year Gaza became an official military target from the Israeli point of view, as if it were a huge enemy base rather than a place of civilian habitation. Gaza is a city like any other in the world, and yet for the Israelis it became a dummy city for soldiers to experiment with the most recent and advanced weapons.

This policy was enabled by the Israeli government’s decision to evict the Jewish settlers who had colonized the Gaza Strip since 1967. The settlers were allegedly moved as part of what the government described as a unilateral policy of disengagement, the argument being that since there was no progress in the peace talks with the Palestinians, it was up to Israel to determine how its borders with the Palestinian areas would ultimately look. In essence, Prime Minister Sharon was willing to turn the Strip into a West Bank Area A and in turn strengthen Israel’s grip on the West Bank (and in evicting the Gazan settlers against their will, it would create an alleged trauma that would absolve Israel from ever repeating it again).

But things did not turn out as expected. The eviction of the settlers was followed by a Hamas takeover, first in democratic elections, then in a pre-emptive coup staged to avert an American-backed seizure by Fatah. The immediate Israeli response was to impose an economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, to which Hamas retaliated by firing missiles at the nearest town to the Strip, Sderot. This gave Israel the pretext to use its air force, artillery and gunships. Israel claimed it was firing at the launching areas of the missiles, but in practice this meant anywhere and everywhere in the Strip.

Creating the prison and throwing the key into the sea, as UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard has put it, was an action against which the Palestinians in Gaza reacted with force in September 2005. They were determined to show that at the very least they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine. That same month they launched the first significant barrage (in number only, not quality) of missiles into the western Negev — as so often, these resulted in damage to some properties but very rarely in human casualties. The events of that month deserve to be mentioned in detail, because the early Hamas response before September had been the sporadic trickle of missiles. The launching in September 2005 was in response to an Israeli campaign of mass arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the Tul Karem area; one could not escape the impression at the time that the army was looking to trigger a Hamas response. Indeed, when it came, it was a harsh policy of massive killings, the first of its kind, code-named ‘First Rain.’

It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. The discourse that accompanied it was one of punishment and it resembled the punitive measures inflicted in the more distant past by colonial powers, and more recently by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities. A frightening show of aggression by the oppressor ended with large numbers of dead and wounded among the victims. In Operation First Rain, supersonic flights took place over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, followed by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to create pressure in order to weaken the Gaza community’s support for the rocket launchers. As everyone expected, the Israelis included, the operation only increased support for the rocket launchers and gave impetus to their next attempts.

In hindsight, and especially given the Israeli military commanders’ explanation that the army had long been preparing the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, it is possible that the real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. And if the Israeli generals wanted to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the wider world, it seems that the quick answer was ‘very well’; namely, no governments showed any interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians left behind after First Rain subsided.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli-born historian, author and advocate of human rights for Palestinians. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

Copyright (2017) by Ilan Pappé. Not to be reproduced without permission of the publisher, Oneworld Publications.

Title: The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories

Author: Ilan Pappe

ISBN: 9781851685875

Publisher: Oneworld Publications

Click here to order.

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On October 4 in Niger in central Africa four American special forces soldiers were killed in an ambush by “fifty fighters, thought to be associated with ISIS [Islamic State], a US official said.” In the course of the attack, one US soldier was left behind when the others withdrew, and was subsequently found dead. Nigerien soldiers were also killed, and it is interesting to examine how US media outlets recorded this aspect of what was obviously a disaster for US Africa Command, AFRICOM, the organisation headquartered, bizarrely, in Germany, that has 46 military bases (that we know of) in that continent. (Niger, incidentally, is twice the size of Texas.)

ABC News reported that “a soldier from Niger also died from the attack” while CBS thought that “four Nigerien soldiers died,” and Stars and Stripes went with “several.” CNN’s tally was five but the New York Times didn’t mention Nigerien soldiers at all. Fox News, surprisingly, said that four were killed, as did the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which even expanded to record that there had been eight Nigerien soldiers wounded.

It isn’t to be expected that the US media would ever concern themselves with deep research into how many foreign soldiers are killed in any of the countries in which the US is involved in armed conflict, but the sloppy reporting is a good indicator of the shrug factor.

And the western media continues to shrug about the deep involvement of the US military and the CIA in countries throughout Africa.

President Donald Trump claims he would win an IQ contest against his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson (how bizarre and nationally demeaning that a President of the United States of America can stoop to such childish yah boo behaviour), but it’s a fair bet he would not be able to identify on a blank map of Africa the countries in which his armed forces are at present engaged in various degrees of conflict. As recorded by Alexis Okeowo in the New Yorker,

“Publicly, Africa may not be on the radar of the Trump Administration, but it is a priority for the US military. At the moment, seventeen hundred members of the Special Forces and other military personnel are undertaking ninety-six missions in twenty-one countries, and the details of most are unknown to Americans.”

It is intriguing that the US military — the Pentagon — so rarely informs the public of their global operations, yet much of the world knows about them down to the last detail. For example, it’s obvious that the Taliban in Afghanistan are well aware of all the crash-and-bash US special forces assaults in villages, because they have become more expert in avoiding them and then concentrating on defeating the weak, corrupt, and increasingly ineffectual Afghan armed forces. Not only that, but they reap massive propaganda benefit from publicising the fact that the wham-bam kick-the-doors-down infidels have once again struck a blow for Islamic State recruiting efforts. In Africa, it’s much the same game, with no publicity until that becomes unavoidable because there has been a major disaster involving the deaths of US soldiers. (Mere injuries are never mentioned, but some reporters keep an eye on casevac [casualty evacuation] flights arriving for attention of the caring saints at the US military hospital in Landstuhl in Germany. The numbers are interesting.)

The United States military and the CIA have a large presence in Africa and, as recorded by Nick Turse in April,

“A set of previously secret documents, obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act, offers clear evidence of a remarkable, far-ranging, and expanding network of outposts strung across the continent . . . AFRICOM lists 36 US outposts scattered across 24 African countries.”

According to the Pentagon

“US forces are in Niger to provide training and security assistance to the Nigerien Armed Forces, including support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance efforts, in their efforts to target violent extremist organizations in the region.”

In fact, as CNN reports,

“There are about 800 US troops in Niger and the US military has maintained a presence in the northwest African country for five years, with small groups of US Special Operations Forces advising local troops as they battle terrorist groups, including, Islamic State in Greater Sahara, the ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram and al Qaeda’s North African branch, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”

The place is a war zone, and citizens of the US and Europe have little idea about what’s going on in their names — and at their expense in cash, international credibility and growing distrust and hatred of the West.

Mind you, it’s unlikely that very many Chinese citizens are aware of the deep involvement of their country in the African continent, either. But the difference between ephemeral US policy and long-term Chinese strategy is that Washington seeks domination, while China seeks trade and gradual influence and trust.

While attending the UN General Assembly in September President Trump addressed the leaders of several African nations at lunch. He didn’t mention drones or Special Forces or CIA interrogation cells but made clear his enthusiasm for their countries by declaring that

“Africa has tremendous business potential, I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich. I congratulate you, they’re spending a lot of money. It has tremendous business potential, representing huge amounts of different markets. It’s really become a place they have to go, that they want to go.”

It’s a pity he hadn’t read the Financial Times in June, when it sagely pointed out that in Africa

“In the past 15 years the level of engagement by Chinese state-owned enterprises, political leaders, diplomats and entrepreneurs has put centuries of previous contact in the shade… While Europeans and Americans view Africa as a troubling source of instability, migration and terrorism — and, of course, precious minerals — China sees opportunity. Africa has oil, copper, cobalt and iron ore. It has markets for Chinese manufacturers and construction companies. And, perhaps least understood, it is a promising vehicle for Chinese geopolitical influence.”

Trump doesn’t read the FT or any other source of balanced information, but gets his news and forms his opinions from US television channels, which suits the military-industrial complex very well, as it can count on being unhindered by the White House as it expands its counter-productive military operations across the continent.

Not that China has avoided Africa militarily. Not at all. The United Nations records that China has some 2,600 troops in Africa — all of them firmly under command of UN peacekeeping missions in Congo, Liberia, Mali, Sudan and South Sudan. (The US contributes a total of 48 military personnel and 19 police to worldwide peacekeeping.) The duties of Trump’s soldiers in Africa are, in the words of their chief, General Thomas Waldhauser, to conduct “joint operations, protection of US personnel and facilities, crisis response, and security cooperation.”

General Waldhauser considers that

“Just as the US pursues strategic interests in Africa, international competitors, including China and Russia, are doing the same. Whether with trade, natural resource exploitation, or weapons sales, we continue to see international competitors engage with African partners in a manner contrary to the international norms of transparency and good governance. These competitors weaken our African partners’ ability to govern and will ultimately hinder Africa’s long-term stability and economic growth, and they will also undermine and diminish US influence — a message we must continue to share with our partners.”

But the US doesn’t have any genuine partners in Africa. On the other hand, China has created many. As noted by Forbes,

“In December 2015, President Xi Jinping ushered in a new era of ‘real win-win cooperation’ between China and Africa. This strategy aims to create mutual prosperity, allowing investors to ‘do good while doing right.’ China has backed this proposal up with a commitment of $60 billion of new investment in major capital projects, which are tied to developing local economic capacity. This level of commitment contrasts starkly with the action, or lack thereof from the West.”

The message is clear. The US military-industrial complex has overtaken and indeed supplanted State Department diplomacy in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, and is intent on escalating its military presence while China is quietly winning friends and influencing people by engaging in massive, well-planned economic projects. No prizes for deducing who is winning in Africa.

Featured image is from the author.

First published by Global Research in May 2017

Various sources have accused the U.S. of trying to enforce the model of a unitary world where it alone dictates to all other nations. The following essay develops the idea that seeing the world as multipolar instead is much more in consonance with reality.

 Ability to tolerate the diversity implied by a multipolar world should be seen as a sign not of weakness but of maturity. Such maturity is urgently needed in today’s world, where humanity is sliding down a slippery slope to oblivion. This maturity can only be found if we stay rooted in our spiritual center.

While the argument is a philosophical one, it has life or death application to today’s geopolitical conflicts. Nothing could be more dangerous than the growing threats and conflicts among nuclear-armed powers that have lost the ability for self-examination and mutual respect. It’s as though we are seeing the Cuban missile crisis playing out on a daily basis.

“FULL-SPECTRUM SUPERIORITY”

In the forefront is what seems increasingly obvious—the agenda of the U.S. “deep state” is world conquest. This objective is confirmed through the open declaration by the U.S. military of its intention to attain “full spectrum dominance,” also known as “full spectrum superiority.”

The Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, dated March 2017, defines “full spectrum superiority” as,

“The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains, electromagnetic spectrum, and information environment (which includes cyberspace) that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.” (p.97)

What a world view! If a patient came into a psychiatrist’s office uttering such thoughts he would be recognized immediately as delusional, paranoid, and possibly psychotic. He would be considered an imminent danger to himself and society. In the workplace he would be viewed as a maniac, possibly escorted by security to the front door and told never to come back.

Yet the people who think and talk this way have been given an arsenal sufficient to destroy all life on earth and are stationed on hair-trigger alert in approximately 150 nations, with actual military installations in 30. On the high seas, the U.S. Navy has 273 major “battle force” ships in active service ready for war at any time. Meanwhile, our supposed “adversaries” have made it clear that they are not backing down.

The U.S. quest for “full spectrum superiority” becomes even more bizarre when we realize that it must include, above all, nuclear superiority. The official doctrine therefore abandons any pretense of maintaining a balance-of-power or mutual deterrence, which, before the fall of the Soviet Union, sane people had credited with preventing all-out nuclear war.

The concept of deterrence began to be abandoned during the Reagan administration with President Ronald Reagan’s proposal of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by its critics as “Star Wars.” While Reagan touted the system as “defensive,” in that its aim was to shoot down incoming enemy missiles, everyone recognized that it would be grossly destabilizing by removing the fear of retaliation against the U.S. by the Soviets if the U.S. decided to launch a nuclear first strike.

One name for deterrence is “MAD”—Mutually Assured Destruction. Critics referred to SDI as “Madder than MAD.” But ever since, nuclear superiority has not meant just bigger and better bombs, even as the U.S. now plans to spend a trillion dollars upgrading its aging nuclear arsenal. Since several nations, including Israel, now possess an arsenal sufficient to destroy human life, the search for a decisive edge has meant the building of defensive systems like those conceived of by SDI planners.

This is why today’s “full spectrum superiority” involved tearing up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, as did the George W. Bush administration, and now ringing Russia with batteries of surface-to-air missiles able to knock Russian nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at Europe or the U.S. out of the skies.

It is easy to see how a study just released by the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research concludes that,

“The threat of a nuclear weapon detonation event in 2017 is arguably at its highest in the 26 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Such a conclusion is easy to draw as the U.S. moves its forces in Eastern Europe to a combat-ready status, according to recent testimony by U.S. generals before Congress.

Obviously, “full spectrum superiority” cannot be attained and maintained without the use of force against anyone who dares to stand in the way. It can’t be done by treaty. How, other than by force, can people who do not trust the benevolence of the U.S. military be persuaded to go along?

THE “DEEP STATE”

But who is in control of the U.S. “Deep State” that lies behind these intentions, and by whom, how, and why are decisions made to deploy military force? Especially, who controls the nukes? For three-fourths of a century this has been recognized as the premier political question of our time.

Two things are clear:

1) it is not the president of the United States who is in control. Rather he is presented with decisions that have already been made by someone else and handed to him by the national security establishment.

2) The goal of U.S. military action is not to achieve the stability of a multipolar world. Rather it is to enforce the will of an entity or entities that want to bring the world under the control of a unitary political/economic regime.

This is why every military action carried out by the U.S. focuses, first and foremost, on “regime change.”

So what really is going on here?

Let’s go back in history. Until World War II, the nations of the world had fought many wars. But after armies and navies had been mobilized and a war fought to its conclusion, the world went back to its peaceful ways. Whatever changes the war had wrought may have persisted, but usually the weapons were put away and life went on.

This has changed with the creation of standing, permanent armed forces. One of the big changes had already taken place by the late 19^th century with the construction of a British Navy large enough to “protect” and control a worldwide empire.

But even after World War I the land armies that remained were largely demobilized. After World War II, however, the fighting went on. In the 1950s came the Korean War, then the Vietnam War in the 1960s-70s.

Over the next half-century, the situation gradually worsened. As indicated above, the danger escalated when Ronald Reagan was elected president. Many of his controllers came from an organization called The Committee on the Present Danger that argued that the power of the Soviet Union required that the U.S. be placed on a permanent wartime footing.

This was new. Then, after the first Iraq war under President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, today’s doctrine of endless active warfare was implemented.

Thus, after President Bill Clinton’s attacks on Yugoslavia and 9/11 under President George W. Bush, came the “War on Terror.” What this meant in practice was that any nation the U.S. identified as an “adversary” could justifiably be conquered and subjected to regime change as a matter of our national right.

Obviously there can be no multipolar world under such conditions. There can only be one rule and one law anywhere in the world at any time—whatever the U.S. Deep State decides and enforces through military action.

ECONOMIC SINKHOLE

Meanwhile, as might have been foreseen, the U.S. military machine has become the nation’s chief economic sinkhole. The Department of Defense budget in 2015 was $598 billion. The U.S. is also the world’s leading exporter Millions of people work for this system, including the uniformed services, civilian employees, contractors, and lobbyists. Then there are the dependents and pensioners. We can add in the millions of employees in the service and manufacturing industries who work directly or indirectly in meeting the needs of everyday living for all the people employed by the military machine. This includes the nationals of other countries who service the U.S. military abroad.

We might call the system “corporate welfare,” but it can just as well be termed “military communism,” as all the managers, employees, and hangers-on get their livelihood from federal government spending. These people claim to be defending the “free-enterprise system,” though they themselves are effectively on the government payroll for their entire careers.

The system is leading the U.S. into bankruptcy. It can only be financed by more government debt through the T-bond bubble and quantitative easing, both managed by the Federal Reserve.

Meanwhile, as other nations mature economically, the U.S. is steadily losing its profit margins from utilization of the dollar as the international reserve currency. This utilization is based on the petrodollar as the denominator of worldwide trade in oil, but that too is declining in international markets.

In the early 1970s the U.S. abandoned the gold standard as a medium of international exchange. The petrodollar became the backing for the dollar, enforced by military might. Now this house of cards has begun to crumble. Panic has set in as the U.S. comes to resemble in its top-heavy inefficiency the Soviet Union just before that empire collapsed.

This is the soft underbelly of “full-spectrum superiority.” The shakiness of the system creates an urgency to complete its mission of total global control before it comes crashing down or is defeated by one or more adversaries.

CANCER

To approach these matters comprehensively requires us to dig deeply into the human psyche. No other species on earth could even begin to act according to such blind assumptions as does the U.S. military machine. In contrast, Nature always seeks balance and limits in the midst of diversity. When dinosaurs get too big or voracious they die off. How can Americans think they are exempt from natural law?

The only other phenomenon in nature that acts in a similar manner to “full spectrum superiority” is cancer cells. If left unchecked, such cells very quickly kill their host and die themselves.

This doctrine of the U.S. military, and hence that of the U.S. government which stands behind it, does in fact resemble cancer.

So indeed does any doctrine that seeks to base its own survival on the destruction or enslavement of other human beings. “Full spectrum superiority” requires worldwide slavery. By extension that means enslavement to the system the U.S. military is protecting and extending. This system is that of international finance capitalism—the full power of money over human life and values.

Among those who espouse this worldview are some who view themselves as “chosen people.” So it doesn’t take long to discover in their cultural mythology many references to their supposed religious, racial, cultural, and historical superiority to others. Nor is there an absence of instances where they have been slighted, abused, persecuted, etc., thereby justifying revenge.

Such an ideology is professed most emphatically and openly by the leaders of the state of Israel. The rise of the U.S. military doctrine of “full spectrum superiority” coincides with the rise of Israel to power on the world stage and the extension of its influence over U.S. politics through institutions such as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

In the 1990s, PNAC laid out the doctrine whereby the U.S military would engage in ongoing warfare for regime change in the countries surrounding Israel in the Middle East and Central Asia. The U.S. has been doing this ever since, with the dismantlement of Yugoslavia by U.S. bombing of Serbia providing a prelude. Next came Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Libya.

PNAC said that for its aims to be achieved a “new Pearl Harbor” was needed. Curiously, 9/11 took place soon afterwards.

PNAC assumed that with the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, U.S. military hegemony involving nations close to or adjacent with the Russian state that remained after the collapse would not meet any serious opposition.

A MULTIPOLAR WORLD?

Russian president Vladimir Putin has now appeared, however, and proposes something radical—that we are in fact living in a “multipolar world.” This is a world conceived as having more than one power center, one where the views and interests of many different players must be taken into account. Naturally, to the proponents of “full spectrum superiority,” Putin is seen as the devil himself.

But can it be that this perception—so compellingly real to those who hold it—is a projection? Can it be that the aims of “full spectrum superiority” are themselves diabolical and that unable to face such a prospect its proponents see what they hate and fear not in themselves but in what psychology calls “the Other”? Let’s at least entertain that possibility.

I would like to suggest that the perspective of a “multipolar world” is more aligned with reality than that of “full spectrum superiority.”

Humanity is composed of 7.5 billion individuals, a number that continues to grow. We don’t know why there are so many, though it no longer surprises us to hear that a single human body, according to the late Dr. Linus Pauling, consists of some 10 trillion cells.

We tend to panic at the size of the human population. Yet somehow the intelligence of the normal human body has the ability to nourish and coordinate the activity of its trillions of cells without getting into a big worry over it. Why can’t earth do the same with its human family?

Maybe instead of panicking we should stand in amazement at the incredible genius of Nature and its ability to engage in such infinite profusion of life and its bounty.

What if we saw the earth as a living being that itself possessed so much energy and intelligence that it could sustain life for the very long period of time that planetary creatures have been in existence? I don’t think earth believes it has to go out and kill a bunch of other planets out of fear that it will not have enough to support everything living on it.

Each human individual is a distinct piece of creation with its own intelligence and spirit. The most enlightened spiritual teachings have been telling us for thousands of years that these individuals—of which we are one—have been created by a Higher Being, that we live for a time on earth to do certain work and attain some degree of spiritual maturity, and that at death our spirit goes off to our next rendezvous elsewhere.

According to such teachings—and earth has witnessed many both past and present—we are here for a purpose. And obviously this purpose must be sought and found in coexistence with all other created beings. Clearly this purpose is not to attain “full spectrum superiority” over everyone and everything else.

Jesus Christ said the two great commandments were to love God and our neighbor. The existence of a neighbor that we should love and respect and whom we must view as having rights equal to our own points in fact to a multipolar world.

The idea of equality is stated clearly in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” This is the foundation principle of America and has been replicated in the constitutions of most of the nations of the world. This principle also postulates a multipolar world.

These concepts must apply collectively as well as individually in order to be consistent. It is normal and natural for each individual to view his own existence as more important than others, simply because his own is the only one he is directly conscious of. In order to fully sense and appreciate the existence of others he needs either an obvious connection—as part of a family, for instance—or he needs consciously to extend himself to take others into account.

THE UNITED NATIONS

Thus people of wisdom have created social mechanisms for individuals to come together to share their views, coordinate their activities, and compromise their aims for the sake of social harmony. One such mechanism is the United Nations, created at the end of World War II. Contrary to the fears of some within the U.S., the U.N. does not represent a plot to take away their nation’s sovereignty as much as it is a forum to adjudicate differences among nations that arise in a multipolar world.

The need for orderly world government has long been recognized by people with vision. This need became more urgent with the Industrial Revolution, given the huge changes in transportation and communication technologies.

The enormous diversity of humanity became ever more apparent as people of different races, religions, and geographic locations came into contact. Technology applied to weapons, however, along with increased ability to extract resources, created great temptations for some nations to lord it over others. By the time of World War II, the potential for world cataclysm had become clear to everyone, especially after the U.S. dropped the A-bomb on Japan.

Nuclear weapons created an emergency. In this emergency, the people who set up the United Nations recognized the importance of a multipolar world by establishing a Security Council to be the chief forum for discussing and then taking action on matters of worldwide importance.

No one expected the Security Council to be a daily love fest. But it is there for a purpose. Yet the U.S. believes that it can take unilateral action, as with its recent attack on Syria, without reference to the United Nations or without even a discussion with other members of the Security Council. Indeed, the primary function of the U.S. representative to the U.N., Nikki Haley, seems to be to utter threats, as when she says, “I don’t think anything is off the table” in using military force in Syria.

Nor was PNAC ever discussed by the United Nations.

Now, with the resurgence of Russia, a major obstacle to PNAC exists. The backers of PNAC, both in the U.S. and Israel, have been trying to arouse fear of Russia in the minds of the American electorate, similar to the Cold War. Perhaps an even greater threat to PNAC is China, which clearly has time on its side in becoming the world’s greatest threat to U.S. hegemony.

A showdown is clearly looming. To get ready for the showdown, the U.S. strategy seems to be to complete the conquest of Syria, which has begun with the arming of ISIS and other “rebel” groups by the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East—Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. An attack against Iran is in the planning stages. North Korea is on the agenda for elimination as a threat. And preparations are probably underway for a nuclear first strike against both Russia and China when the time is right and sufficient defenses against retaliation have been deployed.

What would it take to walk back from the brink?

Clearly it would require recognition of the multipolar world that Putin and many others speak of. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc., do not show signs of wanting to conquer the U.S. With the benefit of wise statesmanship, the U.S., Israel and other nations could at least attempt to co-exist with these nations as part of the world community.

The only way to world community lies along the path of peace, not war and conquest. Trade and scientific partnership, as with the International Space Station, have long been recognized as aids to world peace.

THE TESTIMONY OF LANGUAGE

These things require communication. So those who would unite the world have been talking for a long time about coming up with a common language. That’s why Esperanto was invented. Reviving ancient Greek has been talked about.

But not too many years ago the head of NASA said—not as a joke—that his motivation for the U.S. taking the lead in interplanetary travel was so that “my language” would be spoken on the moon, Mars, and other planets. Of course English (including “American” and “tourist” English) is a long way from “full spectrum superiority” even on earth.

While English is spoken in many countries, and has become a language of convenience for world trade, only a fraction of humanity converses in it. According to nationsonline.org, the following languages are the most used in the world as a first or second language: Chinese (including Mandarin or Standard Chinese): 1.34 billion; English: 508 million; Hindi: 487 million; Spanish: 417 million; Arabic 280 million; Russian: 277 million; Bengali: 211 million; Portuguese: 191 million; German: 128 million; French: 128 million; Japanese: 126 million; Thai: 100 million; Korean: 78 million. Among language families, 180 million speak Niger-Congo languages in Africa and 145 million speak Dravidian languages, mainly in southern India. Altogether there are over 5,000 languages currently being spoken on the planet.

It’s probably an ethnocentric illusion that causes the British and Americans to think English is so important anyway. In fact, with Brexit looming, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says he it going to stop speaking English. He says,

“Slowly, but surely, English is losing importance.”

It won’t be Anglo-American military might that causes Juncker to change his mind, even though global unity is our most urgent need in the nuclear age. But again, not on the basis of war, control, slavery, and conquest, and certainly not by demanding that others give up cultural diversity.

Thus we are a long way from one language, one religion, one race, indeed if they will ever happen, or if it is even desirable they happen. But we can still work together.

After all, diversity keeps the gene pool fluid and allows discovery and innovation. Competition will always exist and is both necessary and desirable, including competition of ideas. The bland uniformity of the U.S. controlled media, for instance, where ideas that conflict with the prevailing war-based ideology is not just unhealthy—it is deadly. Thank God for the internet.

THE REAL ENEMY: GLOBAL FINANCIAL CONTROL THROUGH USURY

Whatever movement we take in the direction of world unity, there is still a requirement for all parties to recognize that we are in a multipolar world and will remain so if there is to be a world at all.

Not only does the idea of one world under military conquest have to be abandoned, so too does that of one world under global financial control.

The international banking system seeks to unite the world under a suffocating blanket of usury that diverts all of the world’s cash flow into the hands of the monetary controllers. This is what globalism and the New World Order are all about—worldwide slavery to materialism and money. It’s a system of totalitarian control based on violence and greed, but it also uses tools like entertainment, drugs, and pornography to corrupt, exhaust, and control the population.

The financial system is even more insidious than outright military aggression, but it is just as deadly. “Full spectrum superiority” of international finance is leading to massive species extinction, drastic climate change, and a threat to the survival of humanity itself.

Alternatives to the system have been increasingly researched and discussed. Turning economic power back to the level of autonomous localities which are yet part of the worldwide marketplace is urgently needed. So is the kind of spirituality whereby humans don’t just escape into their own personal cloud but take responsibility for the consequences of their presence on earth.

I believe that creating and facilitating a vibrant multipolar world that supports a healthy human freedom is our spiritual duty. Let’s tell that to the politicians, the militarists, and the financiers. And let’s ask them to donate their skills and resources to help bring it about before they destroy us all.

These ideas will be discussed in greater detail in future articles.

Richard C. Cook is a retired U.S. federal government analyst and the author of numerous articles for Global Research and other venues. He may be reached at [email protected].

European business deals with Iran are safe: Tillerson – AFP, October 20 2017

Washington (AFP) – The United States does not intend to disrupt European business deals with Iran, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in comments published Friday.
…
“The president’s been pretty clear that it’s not his intent to interfere with business deals that the Europeans may have under way with Iran,” Tillerson told The Wall Street Journal.“He’s said it clearly: ‘That’s fine. You guys do what you want to do.'”

Tillerson Warns Europe Against Iran Investments – NYT, October 22 2017

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia —
…
Speaking during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Tillerson said, “Both of our countries believe that those who conduct business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, any of their entities — European companies or other companies around the globe — really do so at great risk.” Mr. Tillerson appeared at a brief news conference in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, with the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir.
…
Mr. Tillerson’s remarks were the administration’s most pointed warning to date …

This not the way to get the European Union in line with U.S. policies. So what is going on here?

Trump in often inconsistent in what he says. That is his privilege. But it does not mean that the Secretary of State has to contradict himself each and every day. It is Tillerson’s task to project a steady foreign policy. If there is none – for whatever reason – he must keep his comments vague. Contradictions like the above make him a joke.

‘Rexxon’ has experience in doing international businesses. He knows that consistency is one of the most important factors in getting things done. No one will make deals with a party that changes its mind every other day.

So why is Tillerson jumping around like this? He seeks to replace Ms. Jubeir as court jester in Riyadh? Or does he want to sabotage his own position?

One inevitably gets the impression that Tillerson wants out. That he wants to chuck his job rather sooner than later. That he longs for the inevitable day he will be fired.

Tillerson is a realist at heart. He is no fan of Netanyahu. He despises the fake human rights blabber others use to hide their motives. The neo-conservatives would love to see him go. Josh Rogin lists their favorite candidates:

The most popular parlor game in Washington right now is speculating who will replace Rex Tillerson as President Trump’s next secretary of state … two qualified and apparently willing candidates have emerged. … The top two contenders, Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, …

Haley is way too loud and incompetent. Pompeo is too narrow minded.

I wonder who the White House junta will prefer as new Secretary of State. One from its own stable? David Petraeus?

He would be another nail in the coffin of Trump’s presidency.

First published by WSWS and Global Research in October 2013

After years of promotion, lobbying and political wrangling, health insurance exchanges are opening for business today across the country as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Under the health care overhaul, people without health insurance are mandated to purchase coverage from private insurers or face a penalty. Coverage for enrollees is set to begin January 1, 2014.

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.

In his bid for the presidency, Barack Obama pledged to implement a sweeping social reform in the provision of health care in the United States. He claimed that under his plan no insurer would be allowed to deny coverage to a sick child, or an individual with a preexisting condition; no family would go bankrupt or hungry due to health care costs; and that the insurance companies would be held to account.

The process now underway demonstrates that a colossal fraud has been perpetrated against the American population in the name of Obamacare, and that all of these promises were lies.

Any nominally progressive feature of the legislation has been long since stripped away or abandoned. But the truth of the matter is that it was neverabout improving medical care for ordinary Americans, and it was always about setting up an even more heavily class-based system of health care delivery. From the beginning, Obama promised that his “reform” would slash hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, and costs would be further cut by eliminating “unnecessary” treatments and services.

Even after the bill’s passage, without the much-vaunted “public option,” one concession after another was made to big business: only companies with 50 or more employees would have to provide insurance, only those working 30 hours or more had to be covered. Bare-bones, “skinny” plans—without hospitalization and surgery coverage—would be considered “adequate” employee-sponsored plans. Those businesses that do not comply would face minimal penalties.

People without coverage through their employer, or from a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid, are to make up the fresh pool of captive, cash-paying customers who must fend for themselves on the insurance exchanges. Beginning today, those browsing the offerings on the new “marketplace” will confront a confusing array of plans, but with one common feature: The least expensive plans offer the lowest levels of coverage with limited choices, and the highest out-of-pocket costs.

While those shopping for insurance plans will be provided with minimal government stipends or none at all, there is no meaningful oversight over what the insurance companies can charge for coverage. If an insufficient number of young, healthy people sign up, the insurers can be expected to jack up premiums even higher to bolster their cash flow.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the health care overhaul will leave an estimated 31 million people—about a tenth of the US population—uninsured by 2023. Undocumented workers and their families are barred from purchasing coverage on the exchanges. Due to a “family glitch” in the law, businesses are only required to provide “affordable” insurance to their employees, not to their employees’ families, so those family members will not receive subsidies to purchase coverage on the exchanges.

The very poorest people will also be ineligible in some states. While the US Supreme Court ruled the ACA constitutional, it struck down a component of the law that called for expanding Medicaid. The result is that in 21 states, many people making below the poverty level will not be eligible for either ACA subsidies or Medicaid. Still others will be forced to go without coverage because they simply cannot afford it, with or without the government subsidies.

The health care overhaul is effecting a shift in the insurance market as a whole. Some companies and municipalities are already planning to end coverage for retirees and/or active workers, dumping them onto the exchanges. Still others are ending traditional employer coverage and offering workers a defined contribution to purchase coverage on private insurance “exchanges” set up by their employers, with limited choices and high out-of-pocket costs. One in four employers are reportedly considering moving their workers to a private exchange over the next three to five years.

The health care bill is thus playing an additional insidious role, serving as a model for employers and local governments that currently provide insurance to an estimated 150 million people.

Employer-sponsored insurance, which since World War II has been the traditional way workers at most companies received coverage, is being eliminated by many employers and replaced with a voucher system. The same type of sea-change is being eyed in relation to Medicare by politicians of both big business parties, who would like to see the government-run program for millions of seniors and the disabled scrapped in favor of a voucher system.

Those ostensibly liberal Obama supporters who have long championed the ACA as a progressive reform are still attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of an increasingly skeptical American public. The New York Times, which has campaigned relentlessly for cost-cutting in health care, headlined an editorial Saturday, “Dawn of a Revolution in Health Care,” writing that the legislation “Is a striking example of what government can do to help people in trouble.”

What a pack of lies! Obamacare is a thoroughly counterrevolutionary measure, crafted in the interests of the type of elite, wealthy layers that populate the Times editorial staff.

The World Socialist Web Site has told the truth about the health care reform from the beginning of the debate and warned of its reactionary nature. In opposition to the proposals of the entire political establishment, we have insisted that health care is a social right that should be provided to all, free of charge. Decisions about medical care and the well-being of society should not be subordinated to the interests of a tiny minority, who hold the rest of society hostage to their profit motives.

The wealth and technological means exist to establish a system that can provide universal, quality health care to every American. But in this most unequal of societies—where the richest one percent now monopolize more than 22 percent of all household income—the ruling elite hoard their cash while millions of Americans are plunged into poverty, are jobless or underemployed, and go uninsured.

The Obamacare catastrophe demonstrates the incompatibility of the private ownership of the means of production and the basic social rights of the working class, including health care, education, jobs, and a secure retirement. It points to the necessity of placing the entire health care industry—the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and the giant health care chains—on socialist foundations.

October 20th, 2017, marks the sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of Muammar Qaddafi, revolutionary Pan-Africanist and champion of the Global South. This day also marks the sixth anniversary of the historic battle of Sirte, where Qaddafi, along with an heroic army, including his son Mutassim Billal Qaddafi, and veteran freedom fighter, Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, fought until their convoy was bombed by French fighter planes. Wounded and demobilized, they were captured by Qatari scavengers and executed by Al-Qaeda operatives.

The courageous men of the original Free Officers’ Union, who were guides and leaders of the then 42 year-old Al-Fatah Revolution, demonstrated extraordinary revolutionary fortitude, heroism and audacity in the face of their enemies. As young men in their twenties, they overthrew the Western-installed Libyan monarchy and ushered in the Jamahiriya, and as elders in their seventies, they refused to leave Libya, and instead, fought to the bitter end, on the frontlines, alongside their people. Their example will forever shine as an eternal light in the hearts of all those who struggled alongside them to build the closest thing to a real democracy, and a United States of Africa, that modern history has ever seen. The execution of Muammar Qaddafi and those that fought alongside him, and the destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya is one of the greatest crimes of this century.

Circa 1970: Muammar Qaddafi with members of the Free Unionist Officers who later formed
the Revolutionary Command Council. Far right is Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr who, at 71 years of age, was captured alongside Qaddafi at the Battle of Sirte.

Those responsible, including Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani, should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Heroes: the millions of armed Libyan men and women who stepped up to defend their Revolution

What we knew all along is now a substantiated and indisputable fact – there was never a mass uprising in Benghazi or anywhere in Libya. The Libyan people in their millions made it clear that they supported the Al-Fatah Revolution.

During the invasion of Libya, 1.7million people – 95% of the population of Tripoli and one third of the entire population of Libya – gathered in downtown Tripoli in what has been called the largest demonstration in world history to support Qaddafi and the revolution. Syrians living in Libya can be seen in the centre of the photo waving the Syrian flag.

A coalition of the wicked, comprising US/NATO forces, the semi-feudal Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Sudan, and a rag-tag bunch of monarchists and al-Qaeda linked terrorists inside Libya, that had been working with the CIA and M15 for decades, was assembled, and united in their goal. For them, total destruction was the only solution.

Every attempt was made by Qaddafi and his supporters to negotiate a peaceful solution, including inviting international observers into the country to see for themselves what was really taking place, something the imperialists could not allow to happen. This was their golden opportunity to destroy Qaddafi and the Jamahiriya, a plan they had been waiting to execute for years. There were mass uprisings on either side of Libya, in Tunisia and Egypt. The West had already coined the term “Arab Spring” and was busy hijacking revolts elsewhere. Time was of the essence. In fact, in what can only be described as a frenzy, they may have set a world record for the speed with which they managed to push through the illegal resolution at the UN, their cover for the invasion. The fake news and false narrative machine was in full swing. Within 24 hours, UN bodies had transformed Qaddafi from a person about to receive the UN Human Rights Award into a man killing his own people. The Jamahiriya was targeted for destruction and nothing was going to stop them.

Foreign forces, including the CIA, Dutch Marines, French and Sudanese military personnel, Qatari Special Forces, Al Qaeda fighters – facilitated by the Saudis, as they are facilitating Al Qaeda in Yemen today, were all in place weeks before the staged protests began in Benghazi in February 2011. This was a well-planned and coordinated operation.

“Sometimes the enemy is the best teacher”

Kwame Ture, revolutionary Pan-Africanist and former executive member of the World Mathaba, opined that sometimes the enemy is the best teacher. He instructed us to study the enemy’s strategy and tactics and to remember that the enemy only goes after those whom they deem to be a real threat to their imperial interests. Pan-Africanist and former president of Guinea, Ahmed Sekou Toure, said that, “if the enemy is not bothering with you, then know that you are doing nothing”.

The forces of US-EU imperialism were always bothering Muammar Qaddafi. They were bent on discrediting, demonizing and finding a way to obliterate him and the Libyan Jamahiriya from its inception in 1969, until they finally achieved their nefarious objective in 2011.

Referring to Qaddafi as “the mad dog of the Middle-East”, Ronald Reagan, in a nationwide broadcast, said that Qaddafi’s goal was “world revolution”, claiming that he (Qaddafi) was promoting “a Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which targeted many of his own Arab compatriots.”

There is an African saying: “Mouth open, story jump out”. What Ronald Reagan was describing sounds like the imperialist plan. It was Ronald Reagan who welcomed leaders of the Afghan Mujahadeen who were fighting the Soviets at the time, to the Oval Office and referred to them as Jihadi freedom fighters. Today as we face Al Qaeda and their various offshoots, including the infamous ISIL, we are witnessing the devastating results of this sinister imperialist game plan. Ever since the days when the British colonial forces facilitated the creation of the Wahhabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the imperialists have encouraged, supported and funded the growth of Islamic fundamentalist groups. They understood that this was imperative if they were to counter the resurgence of an Islamic theology of liberation, in the revolutionary tradition of Abu Dharr al Ghifari, and as propounded in contemporary times by outstanding Islamic thinkers, such as Muammar Qaddafi, Ali Shariati, Kaukab Siddique, Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani, Muhammad Iqbal and Mahmoud Ayoub.

Again, we can learn from the enemy. Just as the imperialists and right-wing Christian fundamentalists waged an unrelenting war against the Social Gospel Movement and Christian liberation theology, as articulated by revolutionary theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez, Miguel Bonino, James Cone and Enrique Dussel, they knew very well that Islamic liberation theology must be countered. The enemy understood the power of this theology in term of its ability to act as a bulwark against the imperial hegemon. They knew that this authentic and revolutionary Islam would prevent them from exercising control over an awakened Muslim World.

Reagan was right about one thing, Muammar Qaddafi indeed had a goal of world revolution – it was a revolution that would put the tenets of Islamic liberation theology into practice. Qaddafi’s conception of this revolution was holistic. His revolution would challenge every aspect of Eurocentric epistemology and its inherent racism. The Libyan revolution was more than a social, political and economic revolution; it was nothing short of a spiritual and cultural revolution. This confounded not only the imperialist powers but also their reactionary Arab satraps.

The World Mathaba

The World Mathaba, established by Muammar Qaddafi in 1982, had as its stated mission, “to resist imperialism, racism, fascism, Zionism, colonialism and neo-colonialism”.

The Mathaba denotes a place where people gather for a noble purpose. Based in Libya, it became a meeting place for revolutionary and progressive forces from all over the world. Similar to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which became a major intellectual center during the Islamic Golden Age and the University of Sankore in Timbuktu, where scholars of the day converged to discuss and debate ideas and formulate new ideas, the Mathaba became a forum for the advancement of a Third Universal Theory beyond Capitalism and Communism. Prior to the Mathaba, the only international formations for progressive and revolutionary organizations had been the Soviet dominated Comintern, that demanded an ideological allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and the Socialist International, which brought together social-democratic parties. The ideological rigidity of these two international formations excluded organizations and movements that rejected Eurocentric ideologies, including many Indigenous and Pan-African organizations who found a home in the World Mathaba.

Through the Mathaba, Qaddafi assisted all those who were fighting for liberation and self-determination, regardless of whether or not it was in Libya’s geo-political interests to do so. Under Qaddafi’s visionary leadership, material assistance and moral support was provided to the oppressed from every corner of the earth, regardless of religion or ideology. All were helped – from the Roma people of Eastern Europe to the Kanak people of New Caledonia in the Southwest Pacific, to the Rohinga people, who are presently being ethnically cleansed by the Buddhist chauvinists of Myanmar, and who the UN recently referred to as “the most friendless people”. What the hypocritical UN body failed to mention was that they once had a friend in Muammar Qaddafi.

Qaddafi noted on many occasions that the Libyan Revolution had a sacred duty to help all those who were in legitimate need and suffering persecution, since this was in accordance the teachings of the Quran, which was Libya’s constitution The bedrock of Islam is to enjoin that which is good and condemn that which is wrong and unjust. Any Muslim, regardless of their interpretation of Quranic teachings, will admit that the Quran clearly states that the weakest response to injustice is to hate it in your heart, the second weakest response is to speak against it and the strongest response is to oppose it in every way possible.

Leader of the Philippine based Moro National Liberation Front, Nur Misuari, in a lecture he delivered in 1990 at the Green World Institute in Tripoli, explained that inserting the word “Islamic” into the name of a country or organization, like the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ or ‘Moro Islamic Liberation Front’ did not make the country or organization Islamic.

Declaring yourself an “Islamic” country like Saudi Arabia and Qatar does not make you Islamic. To be a truly Islamic society and nation, there has to be a spiritual revolution. A revolution that raises the spiritual consciousness of the people. A revolution that counters the false Islam that the oppressors promote, that abolishes capitalism and the semi-feudal social relations sustained by the ruling elites in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Sudan. This is why Qaddafi was such a threat to the imperialists and their Muslim surrogates. He was not only propounding dangerous ideas, he was building a new society – a Jamahiriya – a state of the masses, a real democracy based on the revolutionary teachings of the Quran, which according to South African political scientist, Themba Sono, “created conditions for the many to rule themselves”. Sono goes on to explain,

“For Qaddafi, this is part of the natural order in which the majority rules themselves rather than for a minority to exercise power over a majority… Qaddafi denies that the emanations from the activity of electoral participants can never be called rule, not only because such rule would be unethical and thereby unstable, but also because it would contradict the very essence and fundamental tenet of democracy, which is, to be tautological, that, naturally, free people must and can rule themselves.”

It was a dangerous precedent that the imperialists could not allow to continue.

As Sono notes in his book, The Qaddafi Green Syndrome: Shaking the Foundations:

“Qaddafi does not care to investigate whether or not the people are capable of ruling themselves, for he asks the question, how do we do that without giving the people, not only the right but the opportunity to do so? Who is to know beforehand and therefore to decide a priori that the people are not qualified to rule themselves?”

Dangerous Ideas Indeed

Applying the principles of Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory transformed Libya from one of the poorest countries in the world, to not only one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, but in many respects, one of the most prosperous countries worldwide.

Facts and figures substantiate this claim. Libya had no foreign debt and actually deposited payments from oil revenue into the bank accounts of its citizens. As is by now well documented, Libyans had access to free quality healthcare, free education from nursery to university level, rent free housing, free electricity, subsidized food – a very high standard of living. Imperialists hate these types of precedents. What if, upon seeing these achievements, other nations decided to disregard the Western-style systems of governance and the neo-liberal capitalist model that simply widens the gap between have and have-nots?

What if countries in Africa, seeing Libya’s advancement and prosperity, decided to rid themselves of the bogus liberal-democratic tradition that empowers 1% of humanity to rule over 99%? What if others decided to reject the multi-party electoral circus, designed to divide and fragment our countries along ethnic and tribal lines, and instead, opted for a Jamahiriya or State of the Masses?

Once asked by a journalist, what was the one thing he wanted to achieve most in his lifetime, Qaddafi replied, “to change the world”. And he was coming close. Muammar Qaddafi and the empowered Libyan Jamahiriya were leading the movement to establish a United States of Africa, with a united military and a single currency, a dinar backed by Africa’s gold reserves. This would have actually dethroned the US dollar and shifted the global economic imbalance.

This would have indeed changed the world.

So, on October 20, 2011, the Satanic forces that had been at war with Qaddafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya from its inception in 1969, dealt their final blow to the man known to revolutionaries throughout the world as the Brother-Leader, and to revolutionary Muslims throughout Africa and the world, as the “Commander of the Faithful”.

“If they get past Libya, they are coming for you…”

Six years later and the fallout from this criminal act is still being felt everywhere. Key development projects throughout Africa, financed by Libya, have all grounded to a halt. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, key players in Libya’s demise, are now busy grabbing large tracts of land in Africa. This would not have been possible if Qaddafi was alive. The expansion of AFRICOM, the expansion of US military bases, and the building of new military bases by the Chinese and the Turks in Africa would also not have been possible if Qaddafi was alive. Indeed, there would have been a fierce resistance to the current recolonization and re-carving of Africa if Muammar Qaddafi was alive and the Libyan Jamahiriya was flourishing as before.

Of course, the urgent need to recolonize an Africa that was awakening to its own power and ability to unite and self-determine was the very reason for the overthrow of Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution. It is not surprising that the French led the charge. In March 2008, former French president, Jacques Chirac said, “Without Africa, France would slide down into the rank of a Third World power”. As early as 1957, long before he became president, Francois Mitterrand said, “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”.

Libya has been transformed into a dysfunctional neo-colonial entity, where an array of militias squabble over territory and spoils. Its vast landmass has become a safe haven and training ground for ISIL and other Al-Qaeda offshoots. Thousands of Libyans and other African nationals are still detained without trial in what can only be described as concentration camps. Many have been tortured and executed in these same camps, their only crime, being Qaddafi loyalists. Those now in control of Libya hated Qaddafi’s Pan-African objectives. They are Arab supremacists and are persecuting Black Libyans and other African nationals.

Thousands of loyalists and migrants from other African countries languish in prisons.

Africans who once travelled to Libya to work and send back much needed funds to their families are now crossing the Mediterranean. Entire boatloads of people, including women and children are drowning as they make the perilous journey. Our ancestors were once captured and forced on to boats against their will, many perished during that crossing, today, we are clamoring to secure a place on boats that are not even seaworthy to escape the conditions created by our former enslavers. Many are still perishing.

Qaddafi would often lament, “the world shakes, but it doesn’t change”.

Workers from as far afield as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Turkey, Germany, England, Italy, Malaysia and Korea lost their jobs.

The entire refugee crisis across Europe is a result of the destruction of the Jamahiriya.

February 2, 2011: Muammar Al Qaddafi in a desert tent in the Aziziya army barracks in Tripoli.

The push to establish a United States of Africa, which prior to Libya’s demise was a dynamic and energized initiative, is presently a dream deferred. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism has suffered a huge setback. Today’s African leaders, with the exception of a few, are only good for talking Pan-Africanism in the halls of the African Union headquarters. Outside of these confines, they are committed to maintaining the old neo-colonial relationships that keep Africa in bondage.

We Salute You

On this day, all those who resist oppression and tyranny worldwide, salute the great freedom fighter and our Brother-Leader, Muammar Qaddafi and the other revolutionary leaders of Al Fatah. We pay homage to their dedicated and life-long struggle for human emancipation and dignity. We are forever inspired by their steadfast and courageous fight to the end, and by their unwavering faith in, and service to God. We are grateful for their undying love for the African continent and all of humanity. We salute the millions of Libyan men and women who heroically resisted the invasion of their country, and who continue to suffer to this day. We stand in solidarity with the family of Muammar Qaddafi and the families of all the martyrs. We stand in solidarity with the thousands of political prisoners inside Libya and the more than 1.5 million Qaddafi loyalists exiled from their country. We commit our full support to the struggle being waged by the patriotic and nationalist forces to liberate and reunify Libya once again. For the Green revolutionary, death is not the end, but the doorway to a new beginning. Martyrs never die.

Gerald A. Perreira is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP). He is an executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for Defense of Humanity. He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fatah revolution, and was a founding member of the World Mathaba, based in Tripoli, Libya. He can be reached at [email protected].

All images in this article are from the author.

In early October, 2017, I had the pleasure of visiting Syria on a mission to get a sense of the toll of the war, the mindset of the people, and the general situation on the ground. The goal was to see the country in person, get a sense of what life is like in Syria today, talk to the Syrian people and hear their side of things; i.e. their opinions on the government and the “rebels/terrorists,” their living conditions, Syria before the war versus Syria now, and whatever else they wanted to share. We wanted to see the areas formerly under control of the terrorists and talk to the residents there. We also wanted to visit the areas firmly under government control and speak to the residents living in these areas as well.

Having covered the Syrian crisis for the entire six years of its duration, I had a pretty good sense of the opinions of the Syrian people and the situation they are facing as a result of numerous contacts inside Syria. However, there is no substitute for examining a situation first hand and talking with Syrians themselves with whom one has no prior personal connection as well as random strangers on the street in order to get an unfiltered response to the many questions we wanted to ask.

After having the chance to visit many of the places I had written about during the course of the crisis, everything I have written has now been confirmed first hand. I am now more convinced than ever that the “information” being spread across mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and the rest are, quite simply, complete and total bullshit. There is no wonder Americans are so tragically ignorant of what is happening in Syria and the rest of the world when the constant barrage of media propaganda they are subjected to does nothing but promote claims and statements that are in direct contradiction to the facts.

The itinerary of the trip involved seeing a number of cities – Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Tartus – and many smaller towns and villages in between.

Upon arriving in Damascus, the first thing that stands out is not the architecture or the traffic or even the fact that life has almost fully returned to the areas liberated by the Syrian military, but the people themselves. Many Americans, constantly tortured by media propaganda telling them that everyone in every foreign country hates them for freedom, religion, and short shorts, might be surprised to know that many of the people are intelligent enough to separate the American people from the American government even if Americans are not always intelligent enough to extend the same courtesy to them.

Regardless of the propaganda peddled to Western audiences, the Syrian people mark as some of the most welcoming, friendly, human beings in the world. From the first moment of entering the country, we were greeted by Syrian soldiers who, at virtually every checkpoint, welcomed us to Syria and then on to Damascus where the Syrian people expressed their famous hospitality. Everywhere we went for the entirety of the visit, we were greeted “Welcome to Syria” by soldiers, strangers, passersby on the street, business owners, and virtually everyone we came in contact with. The welcomes were clearly genuine. Everyone was obviously pleased and felt strangely honored that foreigners were visiting Syria and many expressed happiness that “tourists” were returning to Syria after six years of war. It was a sign that things are slowly returning to normal.

While Americans may remain under the impression that Syrians are obsessed with religion, wary and hateful towards foreigners (particularly Americans due to all our alleged “freedom”), I can say without qualification that this is not true and that never once did I experience any hostility from any Syrian during my entire visit. In fact, we were shown the complete opposite with myself and others being repeatedly invited to homes for dinner, tea, and coffee following a short conversation.

While one may be quick to dismiss the content of this article as mere ramblings of a tourist, it is nonetheless important. After six years of bombing, funding terrorists, and hysterical propaganda on the screens of virtually every American, Americans know as little about Syria as they did in 2010. The average American views Syria and Syrian culture as something similar to Saudi Arabia where all the women are covered from head to toe with no rights whatsoever, where non-Muslims are persecuted, and where Islamic law dictates that such an unlucky soul who might be born there cannot even access alcohol to drown his sorrows.

The landscape of Syria to the average American is nothing but sand dunes as far as the eye can see – no water and no trees. Indeed, Hollywood and corporate media have done an excellent job at convincing middle America that these “normal” people are sand-dwelling savages from the Stone Age. This is no mistake since it is easier to hate and bomb savages than it is to murder human beings with families, jobs, and dreams of their own. American media has earned its money in this regard.

To dispel a few of these myths that should have been dispelled long ago it might be worth mentioning that the traditional depiction of the Middle East (covered women, savagery, and beheadings) is closer to the reality of America’s ally Saudi Arabia than anything in Syria. The country has deserts for sure but it also has mountains, lush green areas, coastal regions, and lakes. Women are able to drive, vote, hold public office and do virtually everything a man can do in Syria if they desire. Women are not covered. Instead, walking the streets of Damascus or any other major city, you will see plenty of uncovered women wearing tight jeans and tank tops. There are no religious police hunting them down, as the government is secular and enforces secularism in terms of law and policy. Religious freedom applies to Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike.

Bars are plentiful in the cities as are liquor stores and the general ability to be as drunk as one needs to be in order to feel like a Westerner is always present.

Religious fetishism plays harder in the minds of Americans themselves than it does in the life of the average Syrian. Muslim, Christian, Jew, and all the other branches of religion have coexisted peacefully for generations and continue to do so today. A walk on the street of any city will reveal this clear as day. No one in Syria is engaged in a religious civil war. Only in the minds of Westerners subjected to daily propaganda is the Syrian crisis related to religion and only on the teleprompters of CNN and MSNBC is the crisis a civil war.

All throughout Syria, even after six years of intense fighting and some of the most brutal atrocities the world has ever seen having been committed by America’s terrorists, the Syrian people are beginning to rebuild. Even in areas formerly controlled by America’s cave-dwelling proxies, life is returning to Syria. Shops are reopening. Homes are being rebuilt and services are being restored. This is a hallmark of Syrians which has helped see the country through; resilience in the face of unimaginable odds.

A walk in the Souk near the Aleppo citadel which, once teeming with life and shops is now reduced to rubble and pockmarked walls, revealed Syrians walking to their old shops with bags and a shovel to begin the process of digging through the dirt, rocks, and rubble and clear out their shop stalls for the eventual remodeling and reopening. Even in the midst of the constant sounds of shelling and bombing and under the hovering threat of suicide bombs, sleeper cell attacks, and counterattacks by America’s terrorists, restaurant owners and shopkeepers are back to work, carrying on with life in the aftermath and the fringe continuation of such incredible amounts of death.

Syrian Determination

It is almost impossible to put to words the determination that the Syrian people have shown in not only preserving their culture through possibly the darkest period of the country or in rebuilding their homes and businesses but also their defiant will to refuse to submit to the attempts by Western imperialists to destroy their country and their culture.

Syria is a special country and most Syrians are conscious of that. It is not an abstraction to the people who live there. Having dinner in a hotel restaurant in Damascus, we met a Syrian couple who expressed their own knowledge that Syria was a special country on every level and how they were themselves tied to that land in a way in which most people would have no understanding. Truly, the blood of the land runs in their veins.

We spoke to a group of art and theatre students and their teachers who remained in Damascus throughout the war. The girls were in their early twenties, having experienced the entirety of their teenage years in the throes of war. When they should have been learning to drive in the Damascus traffic, going on dates, and generally being teenagers, they were watching bombs drop on their city, seeing their friends and family members murdered, and struggling to get enough to eat day by day. Theirs is a youth wasted by America’s terrorists, teenage years that contain memories of the worst kind of atrocities with no room for teenage angst and resistance to the confines of schooling. Instead, bombs took the place of parties and teenage rebellion.

Despite all this, their outlook was surprisingly positive and incredibly life-affirming.

“For us,” said one of the girls, “life is about living. We are surrounded by death so, for us, living is enough.”

After the conversation, as we were leaving, one member of our group thanked the women for taking the time to invite us in and to speak with us about their lives and the tragedies they each had to endure on such a beautiful day. To that, a woman responded,

“Yes, but all days are beautiful. You only have to be able to recognize the beauty.”

That, in a nutshell, is the Syria I experienced over ten days.

Later on, in discussions with a Syrian man, the question was asked how Syrians seem to be able to get back up on their feet and start living again, sending their children to school, working, rebuilding even as the war continues two miles away. The answer was simple: “This is Syria.” When it was suggested that the Western powers do not understand the Syrian connection to their country and their unmatched resolve to continue living and rebuilding what was lost, he agreed. “That’s right,” he said. “They don’t understand us. And that is why they lost.”

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

All images (except the featured) in this article are from the author.

Global Research announces the release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes one additional chapter. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

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The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) are going to establish 8 military bases in Syria’s Idlib province, according to the conservative Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Şafak.

“The Taftanaz Air Base and the Abu al-Duhur Military Airbase [in Syria’s Idlib province] are also two separate points that the TAF uses,” the daily writes.

According to the daily, the Syrian Arab Army’s largest garrison in the vicinity of the Deif region is now controlled by Turkish forces.

The TAF entered Syria’s Idlib province under a pretext of implemeting the de-escalation zones agreement reached by Tehran, Ankara and Moscow in the Astana talks on the Syrian conflict.

The Turkish military announced that it established the first observation post on October 13. Considering that no clashes between the TAF and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) have been reported since then, it becomes clear that Turkey has some kind of deal with the terrorist group which is the most influential “opposition faction” in the province.

Featured image is from aa.com.tr.

In George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two illegal wars of aggression, which killed 7,000 U.S. servicemen and at least 210,000 civilians, displaced more than 10 million people from their homes, condoned torture, initiated a global drone assassination campaign, and imprisoned people for years without substantive evidence or trial in Guantanamo Bay, the punishment evidently is to be given the Thayer Award at West Point.

On October 19th, George W. Bush traveled to the United States Military Academy, my alma mater, to receive the Sylvanus Thayer Award at a ceremony hosted by that school’s current superintendent and presented on behalf of the West Point Association of Graduates. The honor is “given to a citizen… whose outstanding character, accomplishments, and stature in the civilian community draw wholesome comparison to the qualities for which West Point strives.”

The Thayer may be one of the most important awards that hardly anyone has ever heard of. In a sense, it’s a litmus test when it comes to West Point’s moral orientation and institutional values. Academy graduates around the world — in dusty GP medium tents as well as Pentagon offices — all sit at the proverbial table where momentous, sometimes perverse decisions are regularly made. To invade or not to invade, to bomb or not to bomb, to torture, or not to torture — those are the questions. As the Trump era has reminded us, the U.S. military’s ability to obliterate all organized human life on Earth is beyond question. So it stands to reason that the types of beliefs pounded into cadets at West Point — the ones that will serve to guide them throughout their military careers — do matter.  To the classes of cadets now there, this award will offer a message: that George W. Bush and the things he did in his presidency are worth emulating. I could not disagree more.

The United States Military Academy is, or at least should be, a steward of American military values and yet the presentation of the Thayer Award to our former president represents an unprincipled lapse in judgment. In what it condones, it has committed a brazen violation of West Point’s honor code, which instructs that “a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

George W. Bush deceived the nation, cheated noncombatants of both their bodily autonomy and moral significance, and waged unjustifiable, unnecessary wars, which misallocated trillions of dollars that would have been better used to ensure the prosperity and well-being of Americans.  And he once described his messianic mission as “this crusade.” Is the world’s premier military academy not then honoring the dishonorable?

As I recall from my time wearing cadet grey, West Point regularly indulged in talk about doing “the harder right rather than the easier wrong,” about exhibiting “moral courage,” and about “Army Values.” Our ethical compass was given to us, standard issue, early on, often in the form of quaint military parables.

These were meant to set the ethical standards for behavior in war. Despite serious transgressions of those values by West Point graduates in these years, I still believe that the majority of West Pointers, even in the most stressful situations, are challenged by a nagging little voice asking what West Point would do.  In a sense, we have all been hard-wired to follow the ethical protocols we learned at the academy. As far as I’m concerned, however, this award shifts the goal posts. It establishes a new moral paradigm for what should be considered acceptable behavior in war and foreign policy.

As someone who also fought in one of those wars, let me just say that presenting Bush’s legacy as a template for cadets to follow is — not to mince words — a moral obscenity. Once the collective “we” — that is, West Point and its alumni — acknowledge that Bush’s wars and the state-sanctioned torture that went with them are not just acceptable, but laudable, we have lost any plausible claim to the moral high ground, the ground I once believed West Point was founded on.

Now that the Thayer Award has been given to former President Bush and we, the alumni, have even officially sponsored the act (not me, of course), it seems that the values we were taught don’t stand for anything at all.

A Cadet Will Not Lie

By idolizing Bush, a man whose major legacy is defined by acts of state terrorism (rebranded “counterterrorism”), West Point and its alumni have canonized by association his now-16-year-old war on terror. West Pointers have long been placed in a precarious position in relation to that war, simultaneously helping to perpetrate it and suffering from it. Too much energy has been devoted to pursuing it and too much lost for it not to have some grand meaning. By retrofitting the past, West Point and its graduates are now attempting to lessen the sting of, the reality of, those last 16 years.  In the process, they are continuing to delude its graduates, who are still being deployed to commit political violence in, at best, a morally dubious set of wars.

The very act of misleading a generation of salt-of-the-earth people — as most West Pointers I’ve encountered are — making them willing participants (and I include myself in this) in Bush’s supreme international crime should qualify as a tragedy. Convincing cadets of Bush’s widely discredited, false narrative is also a lie by West Point’s own doctrinal definition of the word.  The academy’s honor code defines lying as “an untruth or… the telling of a partial truth and the vague or ambiguous use of information or language with the intent to deceive or mislead…”

West Point generally doesn’t teach those facts that would cause cadets to feel embarrassed by or skeptical of the state. During wars of aggression like Bush’s, cadets will never be permitted to come to the conclusion that the political violence they will be sent off to commit after graduation is illegal or morally unsavory. Acknowledging all the emotive connotations that come with the word, one could still credibly call this practice “brainwashing.”  

At West Point, it’s still possible to believe that we are fighting in the interests of the Afghan people when, for 16 years, a coalition of the most powerful armies on Earth led by the United States — supposedly with the support of most Afghans — hasn’t been able to get rid of a few thousand ragtag Taliban fighters. Why is it that, at the academy, the contradictoriness of such claims never leads to an inconvenient but possibly more reasonable explanation: that we’ve failed because enough of them oppose us, that we’re part of the problem, not the solution? In his final address to the Afghan parliament in 2014, President Hamid Karzai suggested as much, claiming that the last 12 years of war had been “imposed” on Afghanistan.

The extreme psychosocial dynamics of West Point make it a masterful teacher of such Orwellian “doublethink.” In the process, people like Bush — or former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (another Thayer Award recipient) — are deified. They must exist as role models, not villains or war criminals. Being sure that the enemy is the enemy is an imperative of combat, so it’s essential that no one thinks about this topic too much or too deeply.

Inconvenient facts are deliberately omitted as threats to both recruitment and retention. Blind devotion is considered a virtue. Cadets are trained to proverbially place all their self-esteem eggs in the military basket. Morality is partitioned. Emphasis is put on individual actions in combat, not the morality of the war being fought. We were typically taught that, a few bad apples aside, throughout its history the United States has always been “the good guy,” never the perpetrator.

In direct combat in Afghanistan, my soldiers and I faced death, disability, and despair. But perhaps the deepest wound was coming to realize that such tragedies were in service to, at best, a quixotic cause and, at worst, political expediency.

Due to an overriding obligation to the state and a purely subordinate obligation to the truth, West Point is structurally incapable of adhering to its own honor code in practice. Dishonesty, however, has a subtler aspect to it. It leeches away whatever integrity the academy does possess beneath its granite foundation. In that sense, the latest Thayer Award is an attempt to revise history by denying the illegality of Bush’s wars and absolving him of any accountability for them.

Lest we forget: none of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Iraqi or Afghan citizens, nor did Iraq’s autocratic ruler have nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, nor was he in any way involved with al-Qaeda. Instead, as revealed in the leaked Downing Street Memo, President Bush “wanted to remove Saddam, through military action… [T]he intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Meanwhile, his top officials continued to publicly push the lie that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical weapons,” as well as supposed evidence (fraudulent, as they knew at the time) indicating that Iraq was “reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.” This claim would be explicitly contradicted by the U.S. intelligence community’s prewar National Intelligence Estimate, which stated that Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have “sufficient material” to manufacture any nuclear weapons and that “the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.” The very justification for Bush’s invasion and occupation of that country, in other words, was built upon lies. This year’s Thayer Award is simply a concrete manifestation of those lies.

To former President Bush, I’d like to say: there is no betrayal more intimate than being sent to kill or die unnecessarily by your own countrymen.

… Cheat

Whatever one thinks about soldiers invading another country or the people who defend that country from those foreign aggressors, this year’s Thayer Award cheats the far more numerous victims of those wars, Iraqi and Afghan civilians, of their status as human beings. To give this award to Bush is to say that their lives didn’t matter, that they got what they deserved. Or as soldiers I came across liked to say, often with high-wattage smiles, “We freed the shit out of them.”

Osama bin Laden was connected to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, George W. Bush to hundreds of thousands (at least 70 September 11ths), not to speak of the unrecorded torments of millions. One can only argue that Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were less of a crime if Iraqi and Afghan noncombatants are counted as fractional human beings — if, that is, there is one set of rules for America and another, heavily enforced by the U.S. military, for the rest of the world. By any elementary definition, this is “cheating.”

It should be self-evident that the use of torture is a dishonorable thing. What then could be a worse crime than for a leader of a democracy to organize the state-sanctioned torture of both the innocent and the guilty on a large scale?  The very act of torture cheats people of their bodily autonomy. When West Point overlooks the hypocrisy of giving an award for “outstanding character” to a former leader who put his stamp of approval on torture — for which the U.S. once punished Japanese war criminals with hanging or lengthy prison sentences — it makes a mockery of those values. The International Criminal Court reported that, under the Bush-era torture program, members of the U.S. Army and the CIA may be guilty of war crimes. Former National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism Richard Clarke went further, saying, “It’s clear that some of the things [the Bush administration] did were war crimes.”

Think of this Thayer Award, then, as an undeserved rehabilitation of George W. Bush’s reputation that’s meant to cheat history. Put another way, West Point supports giving the former president this award not because he earned it, but because they wish he had.

… Steal

 It’s hard to find a time in American history when more was spent to accomplish less. Even on the most practical level, the spread of terror groups and insurgencies of various kinds continues to outpace the rate at which the U.S. can kill the latest “bad guys.” The entire war is, in the long run and to the tune of trillions of taxpayer dollars, unsustainable. It’s only a question of how much damage we want to do to our own soldiers, how much public funding we intend to divert, while destroying the social fabric of other countries, before we pack it up and leave.

At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.” (Source: Consortiumnews)

What did Bush, or any of us, get from stealing sovereignty from the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? Global terrorism deaths increased 4,000% from 2002 to 2014 (from 725 to 32,727). The Taliban now hold more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since the invasion of 2001.  TSA airport screenings fail to detect mock weapons in 95% of tests. The U.S.-friendly client regime established in Iraq looted billions of dollars in American aid. And that’s just to start down a long, long list.  As journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote, “The invasion and occupation of Iraq by the U.S…. destroyed Iraq as a united country and nobody has been able to put it back together again. It opened up a period when Iraq’s three great communities — Shia, Sunni and Kurds — are in a permanent state of confrontation, a situation that has had a deeply destabilising impact on all of Iraq’s neighbours.”

Bush leveraged the future prosperity of America into trillions of dollars of debt, an intergenerational heist meant to give him the appearance of being “tough on terror.” That’s a reality that should be unappealing to members of both political parties.  For fiscally conservative Republicans, it bloats the budget; for Democrats, it diverts precious funding that might otherwise have gone into crucial social programs. In short, the honored former president stole from American citizens a chance to deal adequately with climate change, infrastructure needs, education, and healthcare.

And it’s difficult to discuss stealing without recalling Bush’s illegal mass surveillance program. It’s hard to imagine how spying on one’s own citizens without a warrant could be emblematic of what the Thayer Award stands for.

… Or Tolerate Those Who Do

When cadets, soldiers, and other servicemen swear an oath, they trust that the president will be guided by sound principles. By sending us to fight his bogus war on terror, George W. Bush betrayed that commitment. In giving the Thayer Award to him, West Point and its graduates not only put their stamp of approval on a president who broke with their stated values, they glorified and cleansed him. This award, in Dubya’s hands, is distinctly stolen valor.

There are many Americans who exemplify the very best of what our country — and West Point — could be. As graduates of the academy, none of us should have difficulty finding deserving Thayer Award recipients. George W. Bush’s terror wars, however, were not just a tragedy but also a crime. It’s now a secondary tragedy that West Point lacked both the honor and conviction to say so.

The former president deserves a cold metal bench in a stockade awaiting trial, not an award and a warm round of applause from the academy. No coffee table books featuring his paintings — a perverse form of macabre exhibitionism — will atone for his actions. If West Point and its Association of Graduates want to maintain any credible pretense of adhering to the values they claim to espouse, they should revoke the most recent Thayer Award immediately.

Erik Edstrom is a graduate of the West Point class of 2007. He was an infantry officer, Army Ranger, and Bronze Star Medal recipient who deployed to direct combat in Afghanistan.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Few Americans know anything about the country. They’re minimally knowledgeable geographically about nations only when Washington goes to war – testimony to public ignorance, a national disgrace in a nation where it’s simple to stay informed by following reliable independent online sources.

Niger is landlocked in central northwest Africa, nearly twice the size of France territorially. It’s the world’s fifth largest source of uranium, its fourth largest producer, reason enough for America’s presence.

Its other valued resources include coal, iron ore, tin, phosphates, gold, molybdenum, gypsum, salt and oil – with at least 40 billion barrels of proved reserves, perhaps multiples this amount, it’s believed, along with plentiful natural gas.

Niger became newsworthy with reports of militants killing four US special forces, the Pentagon saying little about what happened.

It failed to explain why around 800 US troops are based in the country, congressional members not told earlier. Trump likely didn’t know.

What are they doing there? Valued Niger resources alone explain. In October 2015, America and Niger agreed to cooperate in combating terrorism the US supports. Green Berets were deployed to the nation.

On February 5, Washington sought permission to build a drone base in the country. Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou approved a status of forces agreement (SOFA), legitimizing America’s presence – a deplorable arrangement, denying host countries jurisdiction over US military and civilian personnel.

They prevent them from enforcing their laws against crimes committed by US personnel, unacceptable noise, pollution, environmental contamination, and use of valued public land.

Construction of a second drone base is underway in Agadez, construction completion expected next year. Niger is key for America’s planned expanded presence on the continent, a northwest African regional hub.

The Pentagon operates an airbase near Niamey, Niger’s capital and largest city, its population about 1.3 million.

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.

US forces in Africa are all about controlling and carving up the continent for profit – preventing China and Russia from gaining a greater foothold than already – a modern-day great game.

America’s military operates in nearly all African countries, some more important than others, most troops at Camp Lemonnier at AFRICOM’s Djibouti headquarters in the continent’s northeast horn.

According to TomDispatch (TD), “(h)ighly classified AFRICOM files…obtained…via the Freedom of Information Act offer clear evidence” of the Pentagon’s continental reach – US military facilities in at least 46 of Africa’s 54 countries, perhaps more not yet disclosed.

They’re “integral to expanding US military operations on the African continent and in the Middle East,” said TD – waging phony war on terror the pretext used to justify their presence, “expanding at a rapid pace.”

Wherever US troops show up, violence and destabilization follow.

Entire countries and regions are harmed, some devastated like the Middle East, central Asia and north Africa – part of Washington’s aim for unchallenged global dominance, no matter the human cost.

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

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

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

Featured image is from VOA News.

The fisherman who found five-year old Elián Gonzalez in 1998 thought he’d been saved by angels and dolphins. His mother put him on an inner tube before she and everyone else on the boat drowned. They were trying to get to Florida. It was US Thanksgiving. The Cuban boy became a household name.

This week, at 24, Elián González, speaking in Russia, condemned US imperialism. 1 He talked about the lies he was told in Florida. He called them a violation. In early 1999, the media showed a small boy in a huge toy car, surrounded by colorful children’s paraphernalia, saying he didn’t want to return to Cuba.

His father, who hadn’t known the boy’s mother’s plans, saw his son on TV and cried. In Havana, almost daily, people marched. Night after night, children took the microphone before large crowds. They asked how the US could be “saving” Elián when 11 million of its own children had no health care, and when children were killing other children with guns in US schools.

I remember an eight or nine year old, speaking for ten minutes, without notes, under the lights, citing statistics, wondering aloud about the stupidity of believing a six-year old lives better with sophisticated toys and Disney World than with his father who loves him, just because his dad happens to be poor.

Another child commented that Elián, who wanted to be a pilot, would, in the US, be able to travel the world, bombing people’s dreams.

A student from Honduras, studying at the newly inaugurated Latin American Medical School, described children in his own country carrying huge loads of wood, or working in the mines, burdened by illiteracy. He asked why the US wanted to destroy a beacon of hope, Cuba, where he’d received a full scholarship and a chance to help his people.

The North American media, of course, said the kids were “forced”. But children can’t fake the kind of enthusiasm and confidence I saw expressed at rallies across the island. Maybe they don’t fully understand respect, dignity, and solidarity. I don’t either. But they knew these values matter.

One teenager said loudly in front of the US Interest Section, now the US Embassy,

“I wasn’t sent, you know. Did you hear that?” She went on to explain to the dark, silent building: “You don’t know us. And in particular, you don’t know that nothing is more important in Cuba than one child”.

In fact, most of the US population (82%) thought Elián should be returned to his father in Cuba, and he eventually was. Fidel Castro used to say that the US people, for the most part, want to do the right thing. The problem, he’d add, is that their government lies to them. 

It is no small challenge. Those lies, at least some, are an identity. They become expectations, rooted in social practises. They are presupposed, day by day.

Some are reliable. I expect fire to be hot and I withdraw my hand, without thinking. I have that expectation because of collaborative social practises. Some expectations are based in true beliefs. We rely upon them necessarily. But some are arbitrary, based in social conventions.

It is why José Martí, nineteenth century independence leader, thought a false idea of knowledge was a bigger hurdle for Latin American independence than the powerful northern neighbour. 2 Expectations determine how we understand the world, even what we see. This is well-known in philosophy. It means, if the insight is pursued, as it should be, that imperialism must be challenged in order to think – properly.

Some are now asking why the levels of anxiety in US teenagers are so high. One answer is dehumanizing social practises, promoting false expectations about life. 3

Elián was right to say this week that the lies he was told in Florida, as a small child, were a violation. A violation is an action that breaks something. When lies are about human possibilities, about who we are as human beings, and they become expectations, they break humanness, and the imagination that might feed its possibility.

The same year Elián was held in Florida, the governor of Illinois visited Cuba, the first such visit in forty years. After five days, back in Illinois, he said he was impressed that Cuba’s infant mortality rate was only 7.1 deaths per thousand live births, that there is one doctor for each 170 persons, that all children, even in remote mountain areas,  receive thirteen vaccinations.

The governor was accused of having been brain-washed. He was impressed that a poor country takes care of its most vulnerable citizens. The statistics, though, are well-known. What was startling was the importance the governor gave them.

It raises a question, or might have. Cuba has few natural resources. But it has people. And for hundreds of years, starting long before the Cuban Revolution, it has cultivated ideas explaining why this matters.

Those ideas aren’t known in the North, and they won’t be, easily, for reasons Martí identified: a false view of knowledge. They won’t be known because of expectations that violate. They are part of a national identity, expectations that must be challenged in order to think, properly.

The kids I heard at those rallies raised a question: about imperialism and the truths it denies. But it wasn’t what they said. It was how they were. And it wasn’t just them. It was the social practises that made what they said – about respect, dignity and solidarity – credible. They made it matter.

Some of those kids are still speaking out – Elián, for one – about lies that violate.

Ana Belén Montes spoke out, with her actions.4 She is in jail, in the US, having hurt no one, although she damaged violating lies. Please sign petition here.

Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014) and José Martí, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Global Development Ethics (Palgrave MacMillan 2014).

Notes

1. http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2017/10/19/delegado-no-173-elian-dejo-huellas-de-unidad-en-tribunal-antimperialista/#.WexaYltSzIU; http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2017/10/18/sochi-estados-unidos-al-banquillo-de-los-acusados-video/#.WexccltSzIU

2. In “Our America”. José Martí: Selected Works, tr. Esther Allen (Penquin Books, 2002) 290

3. E.g. https://www.globalresearch.ca/human-anxiety-in-late-stage-capitalism/5614090

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

China’s colossal industrial overcapacity needs global markets and it drives the country to explore wide-scale and costly corridors for overland access to the east and west.

China’s vision to establish a brand new international currency in lieu of the US dollar under powerful bloc of BRICS nation;

China and Russia’s shared efforts to shatter petrodollars and of the highest concern, China’s mega “Belt and Road” project is cautioning the US about its future economic hegemony in the region. Remember, the entire global violence of any sort, anywhere has its ultimate roots in economic interests.

China is laboring on its Central Asia economic corridor without a bump, though this robust economy’s CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] as well as Bangladesh-China-India- Myanmar road network could meet a number of obstructions. China has even fixed eyes on the US-occupied Afghanistan as a potential ground for another “Belt and Road” whose foreign policy is entirely at the discretion of the US.

Pakistan went through never-before-seen warnings of Washington under Trump, which were primarily instigated as a result of Pakistan-China’s joint economic scheme. The week following Trump’s critical comments against Pakistan in the UN Summit in September, the Secretary of Defense James Mattis flew to India in an apparently provocative official trip and spoke of India’s role in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, Washington couldn’t hold back and unearthed that CPEC is passing through the disputed region [Kashmir]. The US Defense Secretary James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Chinese One Belt One Road project is controversial. India objects to CPEC because it may automatically bestow Kashmir to Pakistan once the project comes into practice. At this point, the US and India’s strategic interests coincide.

The US’s posture towards the project has turned upside down. In July last year, the US ambassador to Pakistan David Hale had welcomed the deal and stated:

“The United States welcomes the project and is supportive of any effort that brings about economic growth and development in Pakistan”.

China is working to craft an additional economic corridor that commences from China’s southwestern provinces and runs across Myanmar, Bangladesh and ends up in India’s Kolkata. Recently, China released a white paper vision for Maritime Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative to join CPEC with Bangladesh-India-Myanmar corridor. China has come to the sense that India’s disapproval may keep the project from progress, so the latest scheme seems to have surfaced to appease India.

It is believed that CPEC is a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, while China calls the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor also important. India is apathetic to the latest Belt and Road project. Beijing recently said it was willing to wait for New Delhi to join the project. India’s green light to the latest Belt and Road project may suggest that it has no issue with CPEC passing through disputed Kashmir claimed by India.

Even though India skipped China’s Belt and Road forum in May and made its opposition to CPEC clear, Beijing has continued building the controversial project, saying it has nothing to do with a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan.

To the south of China’s Central Asia Belt and Road corridor, China seeks to build one through its narrow border with Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor to connect to new markets along the route. Besides trading purposes, China’s Afghanistan Belt and Road project is intended to establish security in the region as well as undercut the US’s military agenda. On the other hand, Afghanistan’s conflict is on the upheaval with no imminent end which is barring China from moving ahead. To this end, China’s Afghanistan scheme would be blocked as long as US forces are stationed in Afghanistan.

It is not over; China’s Myanmar-Bangladesh-India economic corridor with limited progress in place is facing problems ed in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Has the Rohingya’s crisis been engineered to challenge China’s Belt and Road.

The fury that broke out last August in this state imperils China’s massive economic interests. As China expands its geo-political influence and opens up economic corridors to its southern neighbors, it needs peace and stability in Rakhine state. China has business interests accounting for billions of dollars in investment in Rakhine where violence hinders the implementation of ongoing Belt and Road project.

China’s impulse to back Myanmar is said to include cementing its foothold in Myanmar and proactive efforts to cut short the West’s intervention in the countries south of China’s borders. Rakhine’s violence is no less than Kashmir’s dispute to interrupt China’s Belt and Road constructions. On August 25, the insurgent group called ARSA conducted a spate of attacks on a number of Myanmar military’s outposts and killed enough to prompt military into a sweeping and brutal reaction.

Hired media outlets gave vent to Rakhine’s violence and scattering of people to draw global attention into Myanmar’s “crisis”. Yet, some of the world’s major countries including China, Russia and India have refused to specifically condemn the ongoing violence in Rohingya.

In a video message released recently, the front man, Ata Ullah, who is believed to have been born to a Rohingya family in the Pakistani city of Karachi and to have lived in Saudi Arabia, strongly rebuked Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya. Myanmar’s authorities have asserted that ARSA has links to militants trained by Pakistani Taliban and declared it a “terrorist organization”.

To our surprise, analysts even opined that the climax of Rakhine’s violence is a favorable opportunity for infiltration by networks with a global terrorist agenda such as the Islamic State group (ISIS).

Is the UN acting and responding on behalf of Western interests against China? In February, the UN accused the Myanmar’s military of mass killings and rape of Muslims in Rakhine’s villages. The UN held a closed-door briefing on the crisis. Myanmar barred a UN fact-finding mission from visiting Rakhine state.

Last September, reports appeared that Myanmar was negotiating with Russia and China to protect Yangon from any UN Security Council actions. Noteworthy is that China refrained to step into Myanmar’s crisis, yet the unfolding chaos and the UN’s purposeful attack on Myanmar’s government compelled Beijing it to protect Mandalay. News emerged that China opposed UN involvement in Myanmar’s crisis.

China continues to provide diplomatic protection to Myanmar as some Western nations press the government and military on the Rakhine issue.  In March, China along with Russia blocked a brief UNSC statement when the 15-member body met to discuss the situation in Rakhine. It suggests that certain circles within the UN are working against the interests of China and Russia.

The Cuban Workers’ Confederation (CTC) and the national trade unions released a statement strongly condemning over 50 yearlong US economic, financial and commercial US blockade on Cuba.

The document published by the weekly Trabajadores indicates that the hostile policy of the United States government continues to be a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of the Cuban people.
It called the blockade a genocidal action, as expressed in the report to be presented by Cuba to the United Nations General Assembly on November 1.

The CTC joins the rest of the organizations of Cuban civil society, which demand the cessation of the measure imposed more than half a century ago, in the useless attempt to subdue the Revolution.

According to the statement, the blockade constitutes the biggest obstacle to the economic and social development of the island and must be seen as part of the historical interventionist policy of the empire towards Cuba.

It points out that its implementation has become a process of war to stifle the country and constitutes a tool to try to show that Cuba is part of the territory of the United States.

Cuban workers, it reads, have suffered like all our people from the effects of the longest economic, commercial and financial siege in history.

Noting that the economic damages of the blockade add up billions of dollars, it points out that it has intensified with the arrival of Donald Trump to power and the implementation of the Presidential Memorandum of National Security.

Featured image is from ACN.

A warning by the governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, that the country’s financial system faces a possible “Minsky moment” has again raised concerns over the level of the country’s debt.

Zhou, who is expected to retire soon from his position as head of the central bank, made his remarks at a sideline meeting during the Chinese Communist Party congress last week.

The term “Minsky moment” refers to a situation described by the US economist Hyman Minsky in which growth in the economy hides potential financial risks that suddenly reveal themselves and lead to a crisis. It was widely used during the 2008 global financial crisis.

Zhou clearly employed the term to ensure his comments would have maximum impact. Zhou, who has said he will “retire soon,” has been speaking increasingly candidly about the problems confronting the Chinese economy.

Zhou said asset speculation and property bubbles could pose a “systemic financial risk” that would be made worse by wealth management products and off-the-books lending. Corporate debt had reached disturbingly high levels and local governments were using tricks to evade curbs on their credit.

“If there is too much pro-cyclical stimulus in an economy, fluctuations will be hugely amplified,” Zhou stated. “Too much exuberance when things are going well causes tensions to build up. That could lead to a sharp correction, and eventually to a so-called Minsky moment. That’s what we really must guard against.”

Zhou’s remarks are particularly significant. In general commentary on the state of the Chinese economy, the prospect of a full-blown crisis is often ruled out because the banks are under government control. This control has been undermined, however, by “free market” measures introduced by the regime as it seeks to integrate the Chinese economy and financial system more deeply into the global economy.

Zhou himself has been an advocate for greater liberalisation of the Chinese financial system, including the relaxation of government controls on capital movements and increased access for foreign banks, but has faced opposition within government circles.

Zhou was the main force behind the push to have the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recognise the renminbi as an international currency last year. Without the freedom of movement of capital in and out of the financial system, however, it does not have the status of other reserve currencies.

Free capital movement is a two-edged sword. On the one hand it is seen as applying pressure to domestic financial institutions, forcing them to deal with bad debt on their balance sheets. On the other, it runs the risk of creating the conditions for a major outflow of capital, as was seen in the Asian financial crisis of 20 years ago, an occurrence which would have a major impact on the Chinese economy.

Zhou’s warnings came as the growth rate for the third quarter was reported to be 6.8 percent on an annual basis, well above the government’s target of “around” 6.5 percent. But there are concerns that this higher growth rate has been achieved largely as a result of stimulus measures, relying on the expansion of credit, particularly in the property market, which is creating risks for the future.

Eswar Prasad, economics professor at Cornell University and former head of the China department at the IMF, said the latest growth data painted a “reassuring” picture of an economy that “on the surface, is firing well on all cylinders. But beneath the surface, potential financial market stresses continue to build up but remain at bay for now.”

If growth continues at the current level, China will experience its first acceleration in growth since 2010. At that time, the economy expanded rapidly due to stimulus measures—increased government spending and credit—adopted in response to the global financial crisis, which resulted in the loss of around 23 million jobs.

In his remarks last week, Zhou said corporate debt was “very high” and household debt, while still low, was rising rapidly. While there were no plans to reduce household debt, its quality would need to be monitored as it grew.

The IMF has issued several warnings about the high level of Chinese corporate debt, describing it as “dangerous.” Last August, it expected China’s total non-financial debt to rise to almost 300 percent of gross domestic production by 2022, up from 242 percent last year.

Last month, the S&P global ratings agency cut China’s sovereign credit rating, following a similar decision by Moody’s in May. The Chinese finance ministry claimed the S&P downgrade was the “wrong decision.”

The concerns over the financial system centre on the property market, which is assuming ever-greater significance for the Chinese economy and the banking system. According to official data, 38 percent of all bank loans in the year to August were for home mortgages, while local government bought 18 percent of all residential floor space.

Last August, a senior government legislator warned of the effects of the property boom.

Yin Zhongqing, deputy director of the National People’s Congress finance and economics committee, said in a speech:

“The real estate industry’s excessive prosperity has not only kidnapped local governments but also kidnapped financial institutions—restraining and even harming the development of the real economy, inflating asset bubbles and accumulating debt risk. The biggest problem currently facing the country is how to reduce reliance on real estate.”

Zhou’s remarks underscore this warning. Financial Times market columnist John Authers described them as a “startling moment of clarity,” likening them to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. He said the term “Minsky moment” should never be used by a central banker.

Authers pointed to the timing of Zhou’s comments to coincide with the CCP congress. The installation of President Xi Jinping and his supporters for another five years could be the optimum time to take uncomfortable measures that could allow China to avoid a debt unraveling “to match the Lehman crisis.” The invocation of Minsky “was the earliest possible point to send the signal, and a sign of urgency.”

Featured image: Sheikh Qais al-Khazali (Source: Pars Today)

The Baghdad government and its paramilitary forces increasingly see American troop presence as the actual foreign menace.

A prominent Iraqi militia leader with close ties to Iran has told the United States to go home while also accusing US forces of not actually being interested in fighting ISIS:

 “Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daesh’s presence is over,” said Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, the commander of the Shiite PMU group Asaib (Popular Mobilization Unit), through the group’s TV channel on Monday.

The threatening statement was issued the same day Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi publicly rejected Secretary of State Rex Tillerson‘s earlier suggestion that Iraqi paramilitary units who have for years fought Islamic State terrorists are actually “Iranian” and not Iraqi nationals.  

On Sunday Tillerson controversially asserted that Iranian “militias” need to leave Iraq as the fight against Islamic State militants was coming to an end while in Riyadh where he engaged in rare high level talks with Abadi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.

“Certainly Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fighting against (the Islamic State group) is coming to a close, those militias need to go home,” Tillerson said during a press conference in Riyadh, just before boarding a plane for Baghdad. “All foreign fighters need to go home,” he added.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Monday. Image source: Government of Iraq/Prime Minister’s office.

But Iraqi PM Abadi pushed back against the Secretary of State in a face to face meeting in Baghdad on Monday. Abadi’s words to Tillerson were publicized through a statement on the prime minister’s official Facebook page posted late Monday, which has been translated by Zero Hedge (emphasis ours):

Prime Minister Dr. Haider al-Abadi during his meeting with the American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson assured him that the fighters of al-Hash’d al Shaabi [PMU militias] are Iraqi fighters who fought terrorism and protected their country, they sacrificed in order to win against Daesh [ISIS], and that Hash’d al Shaabi is an official institution under the state. The Iraqi Constitution doesn’t allow for foreign armed groups under state institutions, and further said that we should encourage these fighters because they are the hope of our country and for the region.

And a separate statement issued earlier in the day by the prime minister’s media office warned,

“No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters.”

So it appears, based on today’s rebuttals, that the Iraqi government and its paramilitary forces increasingly see American troop presence as the actual foreign menace which potentially threatens Iraqi national sovereignty.

Interestingly, Abadi’s defense of the PMU forces appears to hinge on Article 9 section 1A of the Iraqi Constitution:

Tillerson’s statements, however, are a reflection of the Washington foreign policy establishment’s increased frustration at Shiite-led Iran’s expanding sway in the region, especially in Syria and Iraq. US regional allies Saudi Arabia and Israel are arguably even more frustrated, reflected in the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric coming out of both countries, and the fact that the two former enemies are finding more and more common ground against Iran and Syria.

But the US and its allies have created the very situation and conditions they now find untenable. In Syria the West’s fueling of an international proxy war for regime change pushed President Assad to increasingly rely on Iranian forces in a now more than 6-year long war against both homegrown and foreign Sunni jihadists. Furthermore, Iran’s chief paramilitary ally in the region, Hezbollah, has played an even bigger role in pushing out ISIS and other al-Qaeda linked insurgents from Syria’s major cities.

In Iraq, Shiite parties have dominated politics since the U.S. toppled the Sunni-dominated secular Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Essentially, the neocons handed Baghdad to the very pro-Shia forces in Iraq that they now rant in frustration against, as is now commonly understood even among some of the very architects of Bush’s war.

The ultimate fear from the perspective of the US-Israel-Saudi axis remains the possibility of, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “a Shia and pro-Iran territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut” and the establishment of a supposed “Iranian radical empire.” For neocons, the next Middle East threat ever-looms ad infinitum (there will always be another boogeyman…and another, and another, and another…) as an excuse to maintain America’s “forever wars” in the region.

And of course, Iraqi PM Abadi understands all of this very well – he further knows that American officials believe in the principle of “sovereignty” until they simply don’t, that is, up until the point that US allied sovereign governments refuse to remain pliant puppets of American interests. In this case, the some 80,000 to 100,000 Iraqi PMU militias perceived by the US as being under Iranian influence and serving Iranian interests are considered by American and Saudi officials as intolerable, even while they fight ISIS.

Featured image: Scott Pruitt (Source: Greenpeace USA)

In what critics are calling “a blatant example of the scientific censorship” being imposed on climate researchers by the Trump White House, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) late Sunday abruptly canceled the presentations of three government scientists who were set to discuss recent climate change findings at a conference in Rhode Island. 

“They don’t believe in climate change, so I think what they’re trying to do is stifle discussions of the impacts of climate change,” John King, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, said of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and other top White House officials.

Robinson Fulweiler, a Boston University ecosystems ecologist, echoed King’s critique in an interview with the Washington Post, calling the EPA’s move an “abuse of power.”

“The silencing of government scientists is a scary step toward silencing anyone who disagrees,” Fulweiler concluded. “The choice by our government leaders to ignore the abundant and overwhelming data regarding climate change does not stop it from being true or prevent the negative consequences that are already occurring and those that are on the horizon.”

The Rhode Island conference, still set to take place on Monday, was planned by the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, which is funded by the EPA. Pruitt’s 2018 budget would eliminate the program entirely.

The three scientists who have been barred from speaking at the event contributed substantially to a new report released to coincide with the conference, and all three were planning to discuss the present and future impacts of human-caused climate change, Lisa Friedman of the New York Times reports.

Specifically, Friedman notes, the event was “designed to draw attention to the health of Narragansett Bay, the largest estuary in New England and a key to the region’s tourism and fishing industries.”

Friedman went on to highlight the topics of the researchers’ scrapped presentations:

Autumn Oczkowski, a research ecologist at the EPA’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory Atlantic Ecology Division in Rhode Island, was scheduled to give the keynote address. Colleagues familiar with her speech said she intended to address climate change and other factors affecting the health of the estuary.

Rose Martin, a postdoctoral fellow at the same EPA laboratory and Emily Shumchenia, an EPA consultant, were scheduled to speak on an afternoon panel entitled “The Present and Future Biological Implications of Climate Change.”

Though the EPA’s unexplained last-minute cancellation raised the ire of environmentalists, lawmakers, and climate researchers, it can hardly be viewed as surprising, given the Trump administration’s track record and stated aims.

As EcoWatch reported late last week, the EPA scrubbed more than a dozen mentions of climate change from its website recently as part of “the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to pretend that climate change doesn’t exist.”

Trump’s EPA has also issued a four-year “strategy” document that doesn’t include the word “climate,” threatened to “purge” scientists who refuse to toe the fossil fuel industry line, and overwhelmingly privileged the views of oil and gas industry representatives over those of environmental groups.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is scheduled to speak at Monday’s conference, slammed the EPA’s decision as harmful to both his home state and the nation.

“Muzzling our leading scientists benefits no one,” Whitehouse concluded.

If you haven’t heard of the NGA, you can be forgiven. The NGA – the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency employs over 15,000 people in its shadows. The NGA is the cutting-edge spy agency that oversees the surveillance trade.

Forget the CIA and NSA. This newish acronymic organization – taking its new existence (started as the National Photographic Interpretation Center in WWII) in 2003 – is massive. Billions are granted for budget and in 2011, its main building measured “four football fields long and covers as much ground as two aircraft carriers,” costing $1.4 billion to complete.

James Bamford reported for Foreign Policy this month how even President Obama, five months into his presidency, didn’t know of this agency.

“So, what do you [do]?” Obama asked a customer at the Five Guys hamburger restaurant in Washington in May 2009.

“I work at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” he answered.

Obama, astonished, asked “So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial …” unable to recall the agency’s full name.

Bamford reports that “eight years after that videotape aired, the NGA remains by far the most shadowy member of the Big Five spy agencies, which include the CIA and the National Security Agency.”

But What Exactly is NGA?

“In 2016, the agency purchased 99 acres in St. Louis to construct additional buildings at a cost of $1.75 billion to accommodate the growing workforce, with 3,000 employees already in the city.

“The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe. But because it has largely kept its ultra-high-resolution cameras pointed away from the United States, according to a variety of studies, the agency has never been involved in domestic spy scandals like its two far more famous siblings, the CIA and the NSA. However, there’s reason to believe that this will change under President Donald Trump.”

Before the name switch to NGA, the agency was largely tasked with cartography. In 2003 it was reborn for the purpose of its current mission: satellite surveillance. They work closely with the U.S. Air Force, collecting and analyzing aerial surveillance through the use of drones and other unmanned systems. They play a crucial role in gathering US intelligence, including the intelligence gathering and replication of Bin-Laden’s compound for SEAL Team Six.

“How precise were its measurements and analysis? The NGA figured out how many people lived at the compound, their gender, and even their heights,” author David Brown said.

Located at the main headquarters in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, the NGA has two additional facilities in Missouri and St. Louis at Scott Air Force Base. Ironically, Lt. Gen. James Clapper, better known for his position as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Director of National Intelligence, arrived at NGA (then known as NIMA) only 2 days after 9/11 occurred. Clapper recalls his ‘transformative’ years with the agency:

“The events of 9/11 changed all that. It became clear to me and to the other senior leaders of NIMA that we did not have the luxury of implementing change over a prolonged period of time. We were at war and we needed to act immediately. So, we held a long weekend offsite at which we dramatically altered the organization and outlook of the Agency. In hindsight, this was exactly the right thing to do. Our nation, and our Agency, was fully engaged in a war and we had no choice but to focus on doing the best we could.”

Should We be Worried?

Currently, the NGA is one agency set to benefit under the requested $70.3 billion laid out for the 2017 US Intelligence Community Budget. The Trump administration is set to bolster the amount, taking the total amount for the Pentagon’s 2017 fiscal budget to a whopping $541 billion. (The NGA falls under the Pentagon category as a “highly-classified Pentagon intelligence agency.”)

This leads to the worrying observation that the NGA may soon be granted more authority. The aerial system used against Iraq and Afghanistan may soon be used against the American people, Bamford reports:

“With the capability to watch an area of 10 or even 15 square miles at a time, it would take just two drones hovering over Manhattan to continuously observe and follow all outdoor human activity, night and day. It can zoom in on an object as small as a stick of butter on a plate and store up to 1 million terabytes of data a day. That capacity would allow analysts to look back in time over days, weeks, or months. Technology is in the works to enable drones to remain aloft for years at a time.”

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… It isn’t farfetched, Bamford says. The CIA and NSA’s evil brother is more than capable of assisting the Trump administration in their quest, and the lack of domestic overhead spying legislation that currently stands allows for just that.

All images in this article are from AnonHQ.com.

UPDATE 2: The SDF media wing released a new statement in English (source):

“Our forces carried out a large-scale military operation aimed at the concentration of mercenaries in the fields of Omar oil in the early hours of this morning (22 October 2017) in order to summon mercenaries and to miss the opportunity to commit acts of sabotage through their defeats in the liberated areas, Our forces, as a result, liberated the old fields of mercenaries and drove them out of the fields with little damage.

Our forces continue to hunt down their remnants who have taken refuge in the labor housing neighborhood adjacent to the fields where they are stationed in and protected by these buildings, while our forces clashed with them to expel them or eliminate them

Laila Al Abdullah, Official spokesperson for the Asefat AL-Jazeera campaign.”

To do so, the SDF had to cross the Khabur River and to capture al-Khurayzah, al-Maashiq, al-Qusayriyah and many nearby points. Only then, SDF units were able to enter the Omar oil fields.

Thus, the initial reports that the SDF could find a common ground with local ISIS members and to incorporate them into the ranks of “democratic forces” became more possible.

UPDATE 1: Reuters updated its article on the issue. Now, it quotes Lilwa al-Abdallah, one of the SDF spokespersons.

“Our forces managed to liberate the fields without notable damages,” Reuters quoted Lilwa al-Abdallah as saying.

The source of the  quote is this article released the SDF media wing. [Only in Arabic]

The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) says the Omar oil fields are in hands of the SDF.

قوات سوريا الديمقراطية تسيطر بشكل كامل على حقل العمر النفطي أكبر حقول سوريا”

— pyd rojava (@PYD_Rojava) October 22, 2017

Original Post:

According to the mainstream media and some pro-Kurdish sources, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized the strategic Omar oil fields east of Deir Ezzor city on October 22.

REUTERS REPORTS (source):

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they gained control of al-Omar oil field, one of Syria’s largest, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river.

With air strikes and special forces from the U.S.-led coalition, the SDF has been battling Islamic State in oil-rich Deir al-Zor, bordering Iraq. The SDF alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias has been focused on territory east of the river, which bisects the province.

The Syrian army, with Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, has been waging its own separate offensive against Islamic State militants, mostly to the west of the river.

The U.S.-led coalition and the Russian military have been holding deconfliction meetings – to prevent clashes between planes and troops – though the offensives have sometimes come into conflict.

Al-Omar oil field lies some 10 km (6.21 miles) north of the town of al-Mayadin, which government forces and their allies took earlier this month.

Reuters refers to some SDF statement in their article. However, the article released by the SDF media wing on the issue has been already deleted:

The cached version of the SDF announcement can be found here. Screenshot:

Furthermore the video, which is aimed to confirm the advance, is fake:

The SDF supported by @CJTFOIR liberated al-Omar oil field, the largest oil field in Syria.

قسد تحرر حقل العمر، أكبر حقل نفط في سوريا. pic.twitter.com/t8X6hlc5aH

— Hammurabi's Justice (@Hammurabi_News) October 22, 2017

The video is old and shows the advance of Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) and its allies in the area.

Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a hard-core anti-government media outlet, provides own version of the events.

According to SOHR, the Syrian army reached the vicinity of the oil fields from the southern direction after crossing the Euphrates near Mayadin, but was forced to retreat after the ISIS counter-attack. On the same time, the SDF entered the area from northwestern direction.

Thus, it’s clear that the SDF “success” in the Omar oil fields area does not exist. The situation has few explanations:

1. The SDF and its media frieds have decided to spread fake reports in an attempt to slow down the Syrian Army and its allies that also want to capture these oil fields. In this attempt, they just copy the approach implemented by the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq (more here);
2. Some local ISIS members operating on the Omar oil fields area joined the SDF and the mainstream media now tries to hide the cooperation with ISIS in the area. In this case, ISIS in the Omar oil fields need some time to re-brand itself into “US-backed democratic fighters”. The fake news reports about the SDF advance are needed to buy this time;
3. Some reconnaissance units of the SDF really entered the Omar oil fields area but then were forced to withdraw from it by some reason. So, the reports about the control over the oil fields appeared to be premature.

The situation remains unclear. However, no doubts the real developments on the ground are very different to the coverage provided by the mainstream media.

This map provides a general look at the military situation in the area:

All images in this article are from South Front.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is very upset with Baghdad’s decision to drive back pro-Barzani forces from important cities and energy sites in Iraq.

One week ago, Iraqi pro-government forces launched a powerful offensive along the entire Kurdish frontier in northwestern Iraq, liberating a number of cities and towns and re-claiming from pro-Barzani militants the strategic Kirkuk oilfields and the Mosul Dam.

Perhaps more upset with this outcome than Barzani loyalists is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government on a whole whose sense of oil security has been somewhat breached.

Under the control of pro-Barzani forces, the Kirkuk oil fields provided Israel with 77 percent (2015 estimate according to the Financial Times) of its imported oil needs at rock-bottom prices.

The Israeli head of state is currently lobbying world powers to take action against Haider Al-Abadi’s government and turn back the gains of Iraqi forces.

Whilst it is highly unlikely that Baghdad will cease sending oil to Israel, the price for its purchase will undoubtedly go up to levels that Israel is traditionally uncomfortable with.

Featured image is from the author.

An anthropogenic mass extinction is underway that will affect all life on the planet and humans will struggle to survive the phenomenon. So claims Dr Rosemary Mason in a paper (2015) in the Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry. Loss of biodiversity is the most urgent of the environmental problems because this type of diversity is critical to ecosystem services and human health. Mason argues that the modern chemical-intensive industrialised system of food and agriculture is the main culprit.

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.

Cited in The Guardian (see previous link), Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study, says,

“We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life… If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

In the same piece, it is noted that flying insects are vital because they pollinate flowers. Moreover, many, not least bees, are important for pollinating key food crops. Most fruit crops are insect-pollinated and insects also provide food for many animals, including birds, bats, some mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and important decomposers, breaking down dead plants and animals. And insects form the base of thousands of food chains; their disappearance is a principal reason Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970. Indeed the 2016 State of Nature Report found that one in 10 UK wildlife species are threatened with extinction, with numbers of certain creatures having plummeted by two thirds since 1970. 

Rosemary Mason has been providing detailed accounts of massive insect declines on her own nature reserve in South Wales for some time. She has published first-hand accounts of the destruction of biodiversity on the reserve in various books and documents that have been submitted to relevant officials and pesticide regulation authorities in the UK and beyond. The research from Germany validates her findings.

Mason has written numerous open letters to officials citing reams of statistical data to support the contention agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiraling rates of illness and disease, especially among children.

She indicates how the widespread use on agricultural crops of neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.

Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ crops, Mason indicates how our over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on this planet.

The global pesticides industry has created chemicals of mass destruction and succeeded in getting many of their poison on the commercial market by highly questionable means:

“The EPA has been routinely lying about the safety of pesticides since it took over pesticide registrations in 1970.” Carol Van Strum.

Van Strum highlights the faked data and fraudulent tests that led to many highly toxic agrochemicals reaching the market – and they still remain in use, regardless of the devastating impacts on wildlife and human health.

The blatant disregard over the use of these substances by regulatory agencies around the world is apparent. At each stage of her letter-writing campaign to make the authorities call agrochemical manufactures to account, Mason has been frustrated by the lack of concern demonstrated by officialdom. This indifference to the poisoning of both humans and the environment is a result of high-level collusion (which she goes to great lengths to document) and institutionalised corruption between government and the agrochemical corporations.

The research from Germany follows a warning by a chief scientific adviser to the UK government who claimed that regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the “effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored.”

And prior to that particular warning, there was a report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council saying that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole. Authored by Hilal Elver, special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, special rapporteur on toxics, the report states,

“Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”

Although the pesticide industry argues that its products are vital for protecting crops and ensuring sufficient food supplies, Elver says, “It is a myth.”

The report argues:

“While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals, and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.”

Elver says:

“The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies.”

The report recommends a move towards a global treaty to govern the use of pesticides and (like many other official reports) a shift to sustainable practice based on natural methods of suppressing pests and crop rotation and organically produced food.

Rachal Carson‘s book Silent Spring (1962) raised the red flag about the use of harmful synthetic pesticides, yet, despite the warnings, the agrochemical giants have ever since been conning us with snake oil under the pretense of ‘feeding the world‘, while hiding behind bought science to mask their own ignorance or to cover up the harm they knowingly do. When you drench soil with proprietary synthetic chemicals, introduce company-patented genetically tampered crops or continuously monocrop as part of a corporate-controlled industrial farming system, you kill essential microbes, upset soil balance and end up feeding soil a limited “doughnut diet” of unhealthy inputs.

In their arrogance (and ignorance), these companies claim to know what they are doing and attempt to get the public and various agencies to bow before the altar of corporate ‘science’ and its scientific priesthood.

Michael McCarthy, writer and naturalist, says that three generations of industrialised farming with a vast tide of poisons pouring over the land year after year after year, since the end of the second world war is the true price of pesticide-based agriculture, which society has for so long blithely accepted. Modern farming is in effect a principal source of global toxification and soil degradation. However, companies like Monsanto have no shame: they use tobacco tactics and science to try to confuse the issues and will even get their media and academic mouthpieces to ghost write ‘independent’ pieces to defend their products: they too have no shame, if the price is right, of course.

Chemical-intensive Green Revolution technology and ideology has effectively uprooted indigenous/traditional agriculture across the planet and has recast farming according to the needs global agribusiness and its supply chains. This has had devastating effects on regions, rural communities, diets, soils, health and water pollution. However, this financially lucrative venture for transnational corporations continues apace, spearheaded by the Gates Foundation in Africa and the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’.

This model of agriculture is poisoning life and the environment and undermining food security throughout the globe. Power is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations which put profit and market control ahead of food security, health and nutrition and biodiversity.

Due to their political influence and financial clout, these companies are inflicting various forms of structural violence on humanity, including the waging of chemical warfare on nature and people, while seeking to convince us that their model of agriculture – based on proprietary seeds and chemicals – is essential for feeding a burgeoning global population. They mouth platitudes about choice and democracy, while curtailing both as they infiltrate and subvert regulatory agencies and government machinery. And they seek to continually degrade and marginalise approaches to agriculture that are sustainable and which produce healthy food.

Instead of accepting their model is both a failure and destructive, what we see under the banner of ‘innovation’ is even stronger pesticides and the roll-out of next generation untested genetically engineered food and synthetic alternatives to food coming down the pipeline (with all that entails for health and the further undermining of food security).

While governments, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, trade agreements and regulatory agencies remain tethered to the interests of the powerful corporations that have come to define the nature of global food and agriculture, there are alternatives to this system and the discussion of issues surrounding food and agriculture are now appearing in the mainstream media with increasing frequency.

It took a long time to finally curtail the activities of big tobacco. Tackling big agribusiness (and the system of capitalism that allows it to prosper at one expense) and its entrenchment within the heart of governments and international institutions is urgent. Unfortunately, given the scale of the problem and what is at stake, time is not on our side. 

In previous installments of the Episodes, we have frequently described the obvious examples of British diplomatic maneuvering in regard to Hitler immediately prior to and at the beginning of World War II (please read, for example, the chapters Poland Betrayed and Who Signed the Death Sentence for France in 1940?) The main goal of Britain’s policy at that time was to set German fascism on a collision course with the USSR. The non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union that was signed in August 1939 upset the Foreign Office’s plans in many respects, but in no way changed Great Britain’s strategic stance.

After France’s crushing, almost instantaneous defeat, Hitler, now operating from a position of strength, resumed his attempts to reach an agreement with Great Britain on the division of global spheres of influence – efforts that had been suspended in the summer of 1939. We have already written about his famous “peace-loving” speech in the Reichstag on July 19, 1940. The radio address – “We Remain Unmoved By Threats” – that was broadcast in response by the current head of the Foreign Office, Lord Halifax, was unapologetically defiant:

The peoples of the British Commonwealth, along with all those who love the trust and justice and freedom will never accept this new world of Hitler’s.

But upon close examination of the details of the odd war that followed, known as the “Battle of Britain,” one is struck by a sense of the grotesqueness of what actually occurred. During much of that campaign, German aces attacked their enemy’s military installations. The British alternated their air raids on military targets with their bombardment of German cities. For example, in late August 1940, British bombers strafed Berlin. But not until Sept. 7 did German aircraft launch regular raids over London. By the time the Battle of Britain was over, 842 Londoners had died during the German Blitz and the famous attack on Coventry on Nov. 14, 1940 left 568 victims. Germany’s share of civilian casualties from British air raids was incomparably higher (although surprisingly there are still no official statistics on the number of these deaths). We are constantly faced with one inescapable fact: Hitler is waging only a half-hearted war on Britain, merely reciprocating with counter attacks. Obviously that is not how you win a war. But if we start with the assumption that the Führer did not actually intend to win a war against Britain, but was only seeking to make London more amenable to peace terms that were more favorable to Germany, then the logic behind the events becomes clear. Great Britain did not need peace, she needed Hitler to turn eastward!

Rudolf Hess in Spandau prison, 1987

Throughout this period, the leader of the Reich engaged in unrelenting yet generally unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with London through unofficial channels. Without question the most pivotal and mysterious figure in these attempts was Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, the only Nazi war criminal sentenced to life imprisonment who never managed to get out of prison alive. Without delving into the details (worthy of a detective novel) of his whirlwind of activity between the fall of 1940 and the spring of 1941 (suffice it to mention the story of his famous Sept. 23, 1940 letter to the Duke of Hamilton, which was later “lost”), it must be admitted that the quintessence of these attempts was Hess’s flight to Britain on May 10, 1941 with the intent of obtaining a promise from Britain that she would not enter the fray in support of the USSR should Operation Barbarossa be launched.

In May 1941, London gave Hitler the assurances he so desired of her neutrality in his future war with the USSR and of the establishment of the peace Germany had so long awaited once Russia was soundly defeated … Otherwise, Hitler would never have decided to attack the USSR. This is the biggest secret of Britain’s WWII policy, and in order to keep it hushed up, Nazi #3 Rudolf Hess spent 46 years in prison and was strangled at the age of 93 with an electrical cord.

It was to be expected that the new documents on the Hess case that were declassified by the Foreign Office several months ago would not shed any light on this critically important angle of his negotiations in London in May 1941.

The summer house in Spandau prison garden where Rudolf Hess was killed on Aug 17, 1987

And thus by June 1941, the situation in the European theater of war was back on a track that was favorable to Britain. London’s first order of business was to drag the war out as long as possible in the East – a quick victory by either side would have posed unacceptable risks to British interests in Europe and the Middle East. Therefore, British aid to Russia needed to be offered in dribs and drabs. Great Britain had verbally joined sides with the USSR immediately after June 22, 1941, but in terms of real action – London not only did not begin providing assistance, it did not even make any moves toward binding itself through explicit, formal commitments. On July 12, 1941 an agreement to render mutual military assistance was signed in Moscow. This document had only two clauses:

1. The two Governments mutually undertake to render each other assistance and support of all kinds in the present war against Hitlerite Germany.

2. They further undertake that during this war they will neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement.

It would be hard not to notice that this document does not cite anything specifically and is extremely vague, which had the net result that Britain did not immediately do anything at all in that joint struggle against the Nazis or in its efforts to offer at least some help to the Soviet Union.

After a few weeks, Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, indignantly berated the head of the British Foreign Ministry:

The USSR and England are allies in this terrible war, but how is our British ally helping us at present? It is doing nothing at all! All these last ten weeks we have been fighting alone! … We have asked you to open up a second front, but you have refused. At the Atlantic Conference you promised us wide-ranging economic and military assistance, but so far that has been nothing but fine words … Only think, our air service has asked yours to immediately provide 60 large bombs – and what then? … A lengthy correspondence ensued, as a result of which we were promised six bombs! (Ivan Maisky, Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador)

Amb. Ivan Maisky with his spouse arriving to London, 1932

The British were well pleased all around: a war was being fought, but they were doing little of the fighting. Hitler had turned his attentions eastward and the raids over the British Isles came to an end. A few more months passed, and on Nov. 8, 1941, Stalin himself, in a letter to Churchill, demanded an explicit, clear treaty, because without such, Downing Street was able to send only empty words of support instead of actual military assistance.

“I agree with you,” Stalin wrote, “that we need clarity, which at the moment is lacking in relations between the U.S.S.R. and Great Britain. The unclarity is due to two circumstances: first, there is no definite understanding between our two countries concerning war aims and plans for the post-war organisation of peace; secondly, there is no treaty between the U.S.S.R. and Great Britain on mutual military aid in Europe against Hitler. Until understanding is reached on these two main points, not only will there be no clarity in Anglo-Soviet relations, but, if we are to speak frankly, there will be no mutual trust …”

After Stalin’s insistence and Churchill’s prolonged attempts to refuse, the USSR and Britain became allies in the true sense of the word only in May 1942, when a full-fledged treaty of alliance was signed during Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit to London. But this fact did not change the bottom line of London’s policy at all. One month after signing the treaty of alliance, the British quite blatantly betrayed the Soviet Union. One of the most dramatic and puzzling pages out of the history of World War II was the German decimation of the PQ 17 ship convoy.

Signing of the Soviet-British Treaty, London, May 26, 1942

To be continued…

The presented text was taken from the book by the Russian historian, writer and political activist Nikolay Starikov “Proxy Wars“, St.Petersburg, 2017. Adapted and translated by ORIENTAL REVIEW.

Previous Episodes

Episode 17. Britain – Adolf Hitler’s star-crossed love

Episode 16. Who signed death sentence to France in 1940?

Episode 15. Poland Betrayed

Episode 14. How Adolf Hitler turned to be a “defiant aggressor”

Episode 13. Why London presented Hitler with Vienna and Prague

Episode 12. Why did Britain and the United States have no desire to prevent WWII?

Episode 11. A Soviet Quarter Century (1930-1955)

Episode 10. Who Organised the Famine in the USSR in 1932-1933?

Episode 9. How the British “Liberated” Greece

Episode 8. The Great Odd War

Episode 7. Britain and France Planned to Assault Soviet Union in 1940

Episode 6. Leon Trotsky, Father of German Nazism

Episode 5. Who paid for World War II?

Episode 4. Who ignited First World War?

Episode 3. Assassination in Sarajevo

Episode 2. The US Federal Reserve

Episode 1. Bank of England

Nikolay Starikov is a Russian historian, writer and civil activist from St.Petersburg, leader of the “Great Homeland” party.

All images in this article are from the author.

Environment activists and watchers will be detaching themselves briefly from their various points of resistance to observe the implications of a High Court decision in Australia that was handed down last week. The decision found that various anti-protest provisions of the Tasmanian parliament found in the Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Act 2014 were invalid.[1]

The Protesters Act had been passed to muzzle and control protesters concerned that the Lapoinya state forest was going to be felled for the Malaysian logging company Ta Ann. The Tasmanian government seemed enthusiastic enough with Forestry Tasmania to wish for the operation to go ahead. 

To that end, Premier William Hodgman promised targeted action against “radical” environmentalists. What he got were those very “man and dad” protestors he was attempting to avoid. It fell to the former Greens leader and senator, Bob Brown, to take the standard and march the issue into the chamber of the Australian High Court.

No experience in the English language is more painful than wading through the constipating exercises of an Australian High Court decision. Grand principles expire in procedural dryness; ideals freeze over in explanations of murderous boredom. Principles and rights often seem like afterthoughts rather than mountainous feats of human endeavour, the stuff to revere rather than wear down.

To win a High Court action requires, not an understanding of Cicero and the medium of justice in its ideal form, but an awareness of an accountant’s counting apparatus, its dulling effects, it conservative values.

Brown was fortunate to have the spirit of the accountants on his side, specifically on the issue of convincing the court that the Protesters Act was an unwarranted intrusion on Australia’s mild, even lukewarm version of free speech. Five judges favoured the position; two (Justices Gordon, in part, and Edelman) did not. 

A glance at the definition of protest activities in the legislation alerts us to the problem. Section 4 breezily covered protest activities as those taking place on a business premise or access area in relation to a business “in furtherance of” or “for the purposes of promoting awareness of or support for” an “opinion, or belief about a “political, environmental, social, cultural or economic issue”.

What Chief Justice Kiefel, joined by Justices Bell and Keane, found was an unwarranted burden on the implied freedom of political communication magically conjured up by the High Court in previous decisions:

 “Even if the plaintiffs were not on business premises or in a business access area the police officers who arrested and removed them were unable to correctly determine whether they were on those premises or in that area. As a result of their error the plaintiffs’ protests and their communications to others about the forest operations were silenced.”

The judges also noted the impact the legislation would have had on protesters in general, including a broadening of areas of operation and consequences for not complying with directions given by police officers and forestry staff, not to mention stiff penalties. These would have deterred “protests of all kinds”, and were hardly reasonable in the context of achieving the act’s purpose.

The judges’ view is hardly remarkable, though it is couched in ginger footsteps of reasoning. Caution is expressed.  Striking the balance, for instance, on what might be an appropriate burden on political communication has yet, according to Justice Nettle, been settled in Australia. But his honour did find that the legislation gave unwarranted discretion to police officers to remove and prevent people from returning the forestry areas. Justice Gageler went so far as to call such powers “capricious”.

When looking at the purpose of the Protesters Act, there could be no other reason for its design: to frustrate and prevent conduct that could damage a business or disrupt its activities, while also deterring protesters who might harm those activities.

A look at the dissenting judgments suggests how difficult defending such implied political rights can be. Justice Edelman, in a manner typical of an Australian High Court, finds expanding rights problematic. They should be narrow, preferably to the point of a needle. The good judge decided, for instance, that the Protesters Act only applied to unlawful activity which was independent, an odd formulation, to say the least. It was only applicable “to State or Commonwealth legislative power if there is a ‘burden on the freedom’.”

Both judges in dissent could not quite see why the challenge to the Protesters Act could succeed because of vagueness, though Justice Gordon found the four-day prohibition on entering a business premises after an officer directed a person to leave lacked a legitimate purpose “other than for the suppression of political communication”.  The question, in other words, is always one of degree, and the legislative drafters of future anti-protest legislation will be taking note.

The stifling setting, and language, of the High Court did not discourage Bob Brown. This was a famous victory for the environmental movement, even if the court had not passed judgment on Premier Hodgman’s “decision to flatten the Lapoinya state forest in northwest Tasmania”.[2]  The catch-all nature of the legislation, the fact that it applied to all protestors of whatever ilk, sank the legislation.

What this supplies the Australian pro-environment protester is a potential weapon for future activity, though much it will depend on a drafter’s keen eye. Other governments across Australia, including Queensland, are promising to enact similar anti-protest acts to protect coalmine operations. The Lapoinya forest may well have been razed, “but it has proved,” concluded a satisfied Brown, “a pyrrhic victory for the destroyers.”

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

Notes

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General Kelly’s Tirade and the Threat of Military Dictatorship in America

By Bill Van Auken, October 23, 2017

Kelly’s extraordinary intervention at Thursday’s White House press conference constitutes a sharp warning. Anyone who thinks that “it can’t happen here,” that a US government that has sponsored countless coups and regime-change operations around the globe cannot itself become the target of a military takeover, is making a serious political mistake.

US Mercenaries, Iraqi Highways and the Mystery of the Never-Ending ISIS Hordes

By Ulson Gunnar, October 23, 2017

The Jordanian-Iraqi and Saudi-Iraqi border crossings and the highways running through them represent an alternative means to reorient Washington’s proxy conflict either now or in the near future.

“Above All” – America’s Military Junta Expands Its Claim to Power

By Moon of Alabama, October 23, 2017

With the help of the media the generals in the White House defeated their civilian adversary. In August the Trump ship dropped its ideological pilot. Steve Bannon went from board. Bannon’s militarist enemy, National Security Advisor General McMaster, had won.

Desecration of Church Property to Silence Syrian Voices

By Vanessa Beeley, October 23, 2017

The desecration of Christian church property  is a crime that has been committed throughout Syria by the US Coalition-financed & armed extremist globe-trotters. Drugged-up mercenaries, whose disdain for sacred sites, protected by Syria’s secular state for centuries, translates into the destruction of Christian heritage sites with a violent, brutal hatred. They have had pretty much the same intent as the two saboteurs in London, to simply destroy all that stands in the way of their ideological supremacy in the region.

Medicaid Is a Scam

By Richard Hugus, October 23, 2017

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.

Breaking: France’s Minister of Defense: French Citizens Who Joined Jihad Should Die on the Battlefield – “We Don’t Want Them Back”

By Peter Koenig, October 23, 2017

French Minister of Defense, Florence Parly, told Europe 1 radio last week, “If the [French] jihadis perish in this fight, I would say that’s for the best.”

On October 22, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they took control over the Omar oil fields in eastern Deir Ezzor, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Lilwa al-Abdallah, one of the SDF spokespersons, said in a statement that the SDF “managed to liberate the fields without notable damages”.

Pro-SDF sources also claimed that the SDF established control over a large area north of the fields, including Tayyib al-Fal, al-Qusayriyah, al-Khurayzah, Shuhayl and other points.

On October 23, spokesman for the US-led coalition Army Colonel Ryan Dillon said in Twitter that the SDF caught ISIS off guard and the terrorist group had no time to destroy the infrastructure.

Meanwhile, according to Syrian sources, the SDF reached a deal with local ISIS members operating in the oil fields area and the only goal of media campaign showing the rapid SDF success was to hide this cooperation. A lack of videos and photos from the ground and no damage do the oil infrastructure contribute to this version.

On October 22, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the SDF and ISIS are working on an unprecedented deal that would allow the US-backed force to establish control over the eastern bank of the Euphrates. The negotiations, which are allegedly sponsoredby local tribes linked to ISIS, would extend the surrendered area between the villages of Khsham and Hajin.

The SOHR has a strong anti-government attitude. So, it’s hard to expect that it spreads this reports in order to support the so-called Assad propaganda campaign against the SDF.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, advanced southeast from al-Mayadin and liberated the villages of Mahkan and Quriyah and advanced on al-Asharah. The advance took place amid intense firefights with ISIS units operating in the area.

An intense fighting between the SAA and ISIS was also reported in Saqr Island near Deir Ezzor. Pro-government sources speculate that the SAA Tiger Forces will be actively involved in the operation in the area.

However, it’s unlikely that the Syrian military will be able to develop the large-scale operation inside Deir Ezzor city and to push further towards al-Bukamal simultaneously.

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Once upon a time the leftwing of the political spectrum was committed to the advancement of the working class and its protection from political and economic abuse by the owners of the means of production. Consequently, the leftwing was politically potent and reached a pinnacle of power when Henry Wallace was selected by Franklin D. Roosevelt as his third term vice president. Despite his wealth from the company he founded, Wallace stood for the farmer and the working class.

The Democratic Party power brokers refused to accept Wallace as the vice president candidate until FDR told them he otherwise would decline the presidential nomination.  

Wallace was Roosevelt’s and the Democratic voters’ choice for vice president in Roosevelt’s fourth term. But Wallace’s progressive views had alienated the party bosses, Wall Street bankers, anti-union businesses, and America’s British and French allies with his support for labor unions, women, minorities, and victims of colonialism.  When he called for the emancipation of colonial subjects and for working with the Soviet Union in the cause of peace and working class justice, he sealed his fate. Despite a Gallup Poll released during the Democratic national convention in July 1944 showing that Wallace was the favorite with 65% of the vote and Roosevelt’s announcement that if he were a delegate, he would choose Wallace, the party bosses chose Harry Truman who was preferred by only 2% of Democratic voters.  

This was a turning point in US politics and world history. If the people had prevailed over the corrupt Democratic party bosses, Wallace instead of Truman would have become the first postwar US president. Most likely, there would have been no Cold War, no Korean War, no Vietnam War, no NATO, and no decades of mutual distrust between the US and Russia that today threatens life on earth.

Moreover, in place of today’s highly skewed income and wealth distribution toward the very rich fraction of one percent, there would be an equitable distribution that would support a strong consumer market instead of declining real incomes and debt expansion that threatens economic growth, business profits, employment, and high equity values.

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in their best seller, The Untold History of the United States, describe the Clinton-style Democratic Party corruption that was used to block Wallace as the vice presidential candidate:

“Party insiders made sure they had an iron grip on the convention. Yet the rank-and-file Democrats would not go quietly, staging a rebellion on the convention floor. The groundswell of support for Wallace among the delegates and attendees was so great that despite the bosses’ stranglehold over the proceedings and strong-arm tactics, Wallace’s supporters almost carried the day as an uproarious demonstration for Wallace broke out on the convention floor. In the midst of the demonstration, Florida Senator Claude Pepper realized that if he got Wallace’s name into nomination that night, Wallace would sweep the convention. Pepper fought his way through the crowd to get within five feet of the microphone when the nearly hysterical Mayor Kelly, purporting that there was a fire hazard, got the Chairman, Senator Samuel Jackson, to adjourn the proceedings. Had Pepper made it five more feet and nominated Wallace before the bosses forced adjournment against the will of the delegates, Wallace would have become president in 1945 and the course of history would have been dramatically altered.”

The next day Senator Jackson apologized to Senator Pepper:

“I had strict instructions from Hannegan not to let the convention nominate the vice president last night. So I had to adjourn the convention in your face.”  

Thus was the power of interest groups to prevail over democracy 73 years ago when there was still a press that would on occasion speak for the people. Dave Kranzler and Brett Arends describe the power of the interests and the degeneration of the media today:

“It’s been my view since circa 2003 that [the oligarchs] would hold up the system with printed money and credit creation until every last crumb of middle class wealth was swept off the table and into the pockets of those in position to do the sweeping.

“Obama delivered nothing on his original campaign promises. He was going to “reform” Wall Street. But the concept of Too Big To Fail was legislated under Obama, and Wall Street indictments/prosecutions fell precipitously from the previous Administration. 

“Obama left office and entered into a world of high six-figure Wall Street-sponsored speaking engagements and to live in a $10 million estate in Hawaii paid for by the Chicago elite (Pritzkers etc).  Now Obama will be paid off $10’s of millions for his role in aiding and abetting the transfer of trillions from the middle class to the elitists. Look at Bill and Hillary – need I say more? Trump has reversed course on his campaign promises twice as quickly as Obama. Almost overnight after his inauguration, Trump became a war-mongering hand-puppet for the Deep State’s ‘Swamp’ creatures.

“The media has been willingly complicit in this big charade. Much to my complete shock, Brett Arends has published a commentary on Marketwatch which, from an insider, warns about the media:

‘Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world. Once upon a time you saw people like this in every newsroom in the country. They often had chaotic personal lives and they died early of cirrhosis or a heart attack. But they were tough, angry SOBs and they produced great stories.

‘Do you want to know what kind of people get promoted and succeed in the modern news organization? Social climbers. Networkers. People who are gregarious, who “buy in” to the dominant consensus, who go along to get along and don’t ask too many really awkward questions. They are flexible, well-organized, and happy with life. And it shows.’

“This is why so many reporters are happy to report that U.S. corporations are in great financial shape, even though they also have surging debts, or that a ‘diversified portfolio’ of stocks and bonds will protect you in all circumstances, even though this is not the case, or that defense budgets are being slashed, when they aren’t, or that the U.S. economy has massively outperformed rivals such as Japan, when on key metrics it hasn’t, or that companies must pay CEOs gazillions of dollars to secure the top ‘talent’ when they don’t need to do any such thing and such pay is just plunder.” Source 

The American leftwing has been transmogrified. The left, which formerly stood for “peace and bread,” today stands for Identity Politics and war. The working class has been redefined as “the Trump deplorables” and splintered into separate “victim groups”—women, racial minorities, homosexuals, transgendered. The oppressors are no longer oligarchs who own the means of production. The oppressor is the sexist, misogynist, homophobic, heterosexual, fascist, white supremacist male working class.  

The rise of Identity Politics has brought with it politically controlled speech. Primarily white people, especially heterosexual white males, are subject to this control. The limits on their free speech are growing ever more severe, and no one has to be concerned about white heterosexual males being offended by offensive or threatening speech.  White males can be called anything and they are.

By splintering the working class into victim groups, Identity Politics has made opposition to war and income inequality impossible. In place of unity, Identity Politics has dismembered the working class and directed its energies into internal disputes. We now have fistfights in London’s Hyde Park between radical feminists and transgendered activists. Source

Diana Johnstone has shown how Antifa, the violent arm of Identity Politics, has turned the leftwing into a suppressor of free speech and a supporter of war.  See this and this.

A splintered society cannot recognize or resist its oppression by a ruling elite. Feminism turns wives and husbands from complements into rivals. Indeed, Sarah Knapton, science editor for the London Telegraph, reports on the rise of “bromance,” strong emotional relationships between heterosexual men. Feminist attacks on men and political correctness have reduced millennial heterosexual males’ relationships with women to sex only. Their emotional commitments are to their male friends. This doesn’t seem like a victory for women. 

The cultivated hyper-sensitivity of political correctness, which arises from Identity Politics, is destroying language, history, and free speech. The UK government opposes the term “pregnant woman” because it excludes and offends transgender people.  

The British Medical Association has issued guidelines that doctors should not use the word “mother” to refer to a pregnant woman as the term could offend transgender people. Instead, the term “pregnant people” should be used.   This has led to more conflict between feminists and the transgendered. Feminists see it as a plot to make “women” unmentionable.

British National Health Service doctors are no longer to use the term “expectant mother” because it is “non-inclusive.”    

Identity Politics, together with the rising American police state, have just about destroyed the First Amendment. A professor at one of America’s research universities was dressed down by a dean because he used the word “girls” in class and a woman was offended. Google fired one of its senior software engineers because he wrote a memo that men and women have different traits that make them suitable for different kinds of jobs. This statement of ordinary common sense got the engineer fired for “gender stereotyping.”  

Economic commentator Marc Faber was removed from the board of the investment company, Sprott, and banned from CNBC and the Fox Business Network for expressing his views against monument removal and that white Americans have done a better job of building an economy than black Zimbabwe.   

Source: @Beardedmiguel

Free speech is not supposed to be limited to words that give no offense to anyone. What this definition of free speech does is to eliminate all criticism of wrong or criminal activity and all dissent against war, police brutality, and political, social, and economic programs.  In other words, political correctness silences a population. Silencing is permitted regardless of whether the “offensive” statement is true or false. Just expressing a truth, as the Google engineer did, can destroy a person’s career. There is no freedom in such a system. As George Orwell said,

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” 

Universities themselves, traditionally dependent on free speech, are now themselves banning free speech.  Controversial speakers likely to offend some “victim group” are simply prevented from speaking at universities.  

For example, speakers in favor of multiculturalism are welcomed even though the speech might offend those who believe the US is a white Christian society, but a white supremacist, whose speech at the University of Florida could not be blocked, caused the Florida governor to declare a state of emergency.   

It seems simple enough that if a person doesn’t want to be offended by a speaker, don’t go to the speech. On the other hand, if a person wants to learn what the opposition is up to, why miss the chance? In the end, political correctness is about regulating what can be said and controlling explanations, not about protecting the hyper-sensitive from hurtful words.

What Identity Politics and political correctness are doing is demonizing white people and heterosexual males. Only white people are racists. Only heterosexual males—essentially white gentile ones except for Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein—commit sexual violence. As David Rosen writes in CounterPunch, “Male sexual violence: as American as cherry pie.”

Rosen defines sexual abuse as “a form of sexual terror, an all-American male sport” that is “as old as the country.” In other words, all or most American males practice sexual terror on women. We have reached the point where a wife who gets angry at her husband can accuse him of rape and have him imprisoned, a far departure from the days when husband and wife were legally regarded as one and neither could testify against the other. When the most intimate personal relationship is subject to outside intervention, how does marriage prosper?  

It doesn’t. According to the American Psychological Association, “about 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.”

If husband and wife, mother and father, can’t stay together, how does society stay together?

How does society stay together when Identity Politics teaches hate and inflames social divisiveness?

How does society stay together when thugs claiming to be offended offend others by destroying historical monuments that are associated with the memory or identity of others?

How does society stay together when its history is erased, its schools, streets, and public buildings are renamed? As George Orwell said,

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

The next monuments to be removed are those of the Founding Fathers, racists all who adopted a Constitution that permitted slavery.

In the United States history is being rewritten and language corrupted in order to foster hatred of white “oppressors,” especially white heterosexual males.  

Little wonder Russia responds diplomatically to Washington’s aggression. Why bother replying in kind when an enemy is destroying itself.

A historic opportunity is being missed. The disastrous 2016 presidential election could and should have been a wakeup call. A corrupt political system that gave voters a choice between two terrible candidates is not democracy. 

This should have been the signal to face reality. The U.S. political system is totally rotten, contemptuous of the people, serving the corporations and lobbies that pay to keep them in office. The time had come to organize a genuine alternative, an independent movement to liberate the electoral system from the grip of billionaires, to demand a transition from a war economy to an economy dedicated to improving the lives of the people who live here. What is needed is a movement for the pacification of America, at home and abroad.

That is a big order. Yet this approach could meet with wide support, especially if vigorous young people organized to stimulate popular debate, between real live people, from door to door if necessary, creating a mass movement for genuine democracy, equality and peace. This is as revolutionary a program as possible in the present circumstances.  A moribund left should be coming back to life to take the lead in building such a movement.

Quite the opposite is happening.

Provoking a new Civil War?

The first step toward preventing such a constructive movement was a false interpretation of the meaning of the Trump victory, massively promoted by mainstream media. This was essentially the Clintonite excuse for Hillary’s loss. Trump’s victory, according to this line, was the product of a convergence between Russian interference and the votes of “misogynists, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, and white supremacists”. The influence of all those bad people indicated the rise of “fascism” in America, with Trump in the role of “fascist” leader.

In this way, criticism of the system that produced Trump vanished in favor of demonization of Trump the individual, making it that much easier for the Clintonites to solidify their control of the Democratic Party, by manipulating their own leftist opposition.

The events of Charlottesville resembled a multiple provocation, with pro- and anti-statue sides provoking each other, providing a stage for Antifa to gain national prominence as saviors. Significantly, Charlottesville riots provoked Trump into making comments which were seized upon by all his enemies to brand him definitively as “racist” and “fascist”. This gave the disoriented “left” a clear cause: fight “fascist Trump” and domestic “fascists”. This is more immediate than organizing to demand that the United States end its threats against Iran and North Korea, its open and covert project to reshape the Middle East to ensure Israel’s regional dominance, or its nuclear buildup targeting Russia. Not to mention its support for genuine Nazis in Ukraine. Yet that trillion dollar policy of global militarization contributes more to violence and injustice even in the United States than the remnants of thoroughly discredited lost causes.

The Left and Antifa

All those who are sincerely on the left, who are in favor of greater social and economic equality for all, who oppose the endless aggressive foreign wars and the resulting militarization of the American police and the American mentality, must realize that, since the Clintonian takeover of the Democratic Party, the ruling oligarchic establishment disguises itself as “the left”, uses “left” arguments to justify itself, and largely succeeds in manipulating genuine leftists for its own purposes.  This has caused such confusion that it is quite unclear what “left” means any more.

The Clintonian left substituted Identity Politics for the progressive goal of economic and social equality, by ostentatiously coopting women, blacks and Latinos into the visible elite, the better to ignore the needs of the majority. The Clintonian left introduced the concept of “humanitarian war” to describe its relentless destruction of recalcitrant nations, seducing much of the left into supporting U.S. imperialism as a fight for democracy against “dictators”.

Antifa contributes to this confusion by giving precedence to the suppression of “bad” ideas rather than to the development of good ones through uninhibited debate. Antifa attacks on dissidents tend to enforce the dominant neoliberal doctrine that also raises the specter of fascism as pretext for aggression against countries targeted for regime change.

Antifa’s excuses

Antifa has several favorite arguments to justify itself those who criticize its use of force and intimidation to silence its adversaries.

1. Its violence is justified by the implicit violence of its enemies who if left alone plan to exterminate whole groups of people.

This is demonstrably untrue, as Antifa is notoriously generous in distributing the fascist label. Most of the people Antifa targets are not fascists and there is no evidence that even “racists” are planning to carry out genocide.

2. Antifa is engaged in other political activity.

That is completely beside the point. Nobody is criticizing that “other political activity”. It is the violence and the censorship which are the hallmarks of the Antifa brand, and the target of criticism. Let them drop the violence and the censorship and get on with their other activities. Then nobody will object.

3. Antifa defends threatened communities.

But that is certainly not all they are doing. Nor is that what its critics are objecting to. Actual defense of a truly threatened community is best done openly by respected members of the community itself, rather than by self-styled Zorros who arrive in disguise. The problem is the definition of the terms. For Antifa, the victim community can be a whole category of people, such as LGBTQI, and the threat may be a controversial speaker at a university who could say something to hurt their feelings. And what community was being defended by Linwood Kaine, younger son of the Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate, Senator Tim Kaine, when he was arrested in St Paul, Minnesota, last March 4 on suspicion of felony second-degree riot for attempting to break up a pro-Trump rally at the State Capitol? Although Kaine, dressed in black from head to toe, resisted arrest, the matter ended there. What downtrodden community was the young Kaine defending other than the Clintonite Democrats? His own privilege as a family member of the Washington political elite?

4. Antifa claims that it is in favor of free speech in general, but racists and fascists are an exception, because you can’t reason with them, and hate speech is not speech but action.

This amounts to an astounding intellectual surrender to the enemy. It is an admission of being unable to win a free argument. The fact is that speech is indeed speech, and should be countered by speech. You should welcome the chance to debate in public in order to expose the weaknesses of their position. If indeed “you can’t reason with them”, then they will shut down the discussion and you don’t have to. If they resort to physical attack against you, then you have the moral victory. Otherwise, you’re giving it to them.

5. Antifa insists that the Constitutional right to free speech applies only to the State. That is, only the government is banned from depriving citizens of the right to free speech and assembly. Among citizens, anything goes.

This is a remarkable bit of sophistry. Bullying and intimidation are okay if done by an unofficial group. In keeping with neoliberalism, Antifa is out to privatize censorship, by taking over the job itself.

Verbal Violence

The verbal violence of Antifa is worse than their physical violence insofar as it is more effective. The physical violence is usually of minor consequence, at most temporarily preventing something that will happen later. It is the verbal violence that succeeds most in preventing free discussion of controversial issues.

Alarmed by the proliferation of pro-Antifa articles on CounterPunch, I ventured to write a critique, Antifa in Theory and Practice. My criticism was not personal; I did not mention the authors of those pro-Antifa CounterPunch articles and my mention of author Mark Bray was respectful. The result was a torrent of vituperation on CounterPunch’s FaceBook page, as well as in a hostile email exchange with star Antifa champion Yoav Litvin. This culminated with a hit piece by Amitai Ben-Abba published on CounterPunch itself. Note that both Litvin and Ben-Abba are Israelis, but pro-Palestinian, which provides the two with impeccable left credentials.

These reactions provided a perfect illustration of Antifa discussion techniques. It is a sort of food fight, where you just throw everything you can pick up at the adversary, regardless of logic or relevance. On the FaceBook page, Litvin, on the basis of my past carefully objective articles on French politics, accused me of “shilling for Marine Le Pen”. Irrelevant and inaccurate.

In his hit piece Ben-Abba dragged in this totally off-topic assertion:

“Much in the same way that her early ’00s pseudo-historical denial of the massacre in Srebrenica worked to embolden Serbian nationalists, her present analysis can embolden white supremacists.”

Need I point out that I never denied the “massacre” but refuse to label it “genocide”, nor did Serbian nationalists ever need my humble opinion in order to be “emboldened” – especially since the war was over by then.

I happily grant that there are issues raised in my initial article that deserve debate, such as immigration or whether or not the “fascism” of the early twentieth century still exists today. Indeed my whole point was that such issues deserve debate. That’s not what I got. Ben-Abba came up with this imaginary allusion to the immigration issue:

“‘antifa’ is a broader umbrella term that allows formerly unaffiliated folks (like the sans-papiers migrant baker who makes Johnstone’s croissants) to participate in defense of their communities against neo-fascist intimidation.”

Very funny: I am exploiting some poor undocumented baker and preventing him from being defended. Aside from the fact that I very rarely to eat a croissant, the bakers in my neighborhood are all fully documented, and moreover this largely immigrant neighborhood is the scene of frequent peaceful street demonstrations by African sans-papiers clearly not intimidated by neo-fascists. They obviously do not need Antifa to protect them. This fantasy of omnipresent neo-fascism is as necessary to Antifa as the fantasy of omnipresent anti-Semitism is to Israel.

Antifa rhetoric specializes in non sequitur. If you agree with some conservative or libertarian that it was wrong to destroy Libya, then you are not only guilty of association with a pre-fascist, you are a supporter of dictators and thus probably a fascist yourself. This has been happening in France for years and it’s just getting started in the United States.

The Antifa specialty is labeling anti-war activists and writers as “red-brown”, red for left and brown for fascist. You may pretend to be on the left, but if we can find the slightest association between you and someone on the right, then you are a “red-brown” and deserve to be quarantined.

By claiming to defend helpless minorities from a rising fascist peril, Antifa arrogates to itself the right to decide who is, or might be, “fascist”.

Whatever they think they are doing, whatever they claim to be doing, the one thing they really are doing is to tie the left into such sectarian intolerance that any broad inclusive single-issue anti-war movement becomes impossible.  Indeed, it is precisely the imminent danger of nuclear World War III that leads some of us to call for a non-exclusive single issue anti-war movement – thus setting ourselves up as “red-brown”.

That is why Antifa – unwittingly let us say – is running interference for the war party.

It is most unfortunate to see CounterPunch become a platform for Antifa. It didn’t have to. The site is quite able to reject articles, as it has systematically rejected contentions about 9/11 or as it rejected David Cobb’s and Caitlin Johnstone’s (no relative) right to respond. It could have taken a principled stand against calls for violence and censorship. It did not do so. It is one thing to encourage debate and quite another to sponsor mud wrestling.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. She can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is from Mr. Fish / Truthdig.

Featured image: Sgt. La David Johnson (Source: Patch)

Empires of scale are often spread thinly across fields of operations. Vast, often opaque functions on the ground are not necessarily conveyed with accuracy to the metropolitan centre. Command structures, for all the sophistication of instant modern communication, do not eliminate human error, let alone enlighten.

The four US army deaths in Niger have been shrouded by the bickering unfolding between President Donald Trump and the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has also been catapulted into the sordid business.

What the Johnson episode has obscured, being rich as social media material, are the deaths of three others who perished with Johnson on October 4 in Niger: Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, and Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson.

The Washington Post write up on the fallen is a feeling effort to add substance to those otherwise obscured by the travails of the US empire. Black was multilingual but also fluent in the Hausa language, as “he wanted to communicate directly with the people.”[1] This soldier of empire was similarly adept at chess.

Johnson “loved his country” and proved “loyal”. “For some, he was the beloved crazy uncle who never let a dull moment seep into his day.” Niece Carrie Gomez’s words are noted:

“He was wild and outgoing. Just always on 100; always making you want to pull your hair out”.

These charming if potted accounts serve a few purposes. They add an understandable note of veneration for the fallen, but they also betray the sheer expanse of US deployments in foreign theatres, not all of which are understood in the padded cell of thought that is Washington. Are these parts of a broader imperial mission, or merely the strutting efforts of a global police effort to keep terrorist elements in check?

Some 800 US military personnel operate in Niger, ostensibly to boost local counter-terrorism efforts. In total, some 1,000 operate in the Chad River Basin, spanning Niger, Chad, the top of Nigeria and the Central African Republic.

The four special forces soldiers were killed in an attack while patrolling with Niger troops near Tongo Tongo in the south-western part of the country, circumstances that will prompt some internal, not very pleasant probing. The skirmishing groups along the border with Mali are a motley assortment, varying between the plumage of Islamic State, led by Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, and opportunistic fringes of al-Qaeda.

Sketchy details of the sanguinary encounter have been sporadically supplied since October 4. The Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, Gen Joseph Dunford, attempted to fill in a few details on Monday. Help, it seems, was not sought till an hour after the attack had commenced. French and Nigerian assistance duly arrived, but by the time Mirage jets were doing their best, two hours had passed.

What exactly happened? Pentagon officials initially shot a finger at a self-radicalized IS group that had gotten lucky. According to Joint Staff Director Lt-Gen Kenneth McKenzie, US and Nigerien forces had “done 29 patrols without contact over the previous six months or so” with nothing so much as a sliver to suggest an imminent attack.[2]

Grasping for explanations, McKenzie fanned the murderous appeal of ISIS, which still “have a powerful message in the cyber world”, one which propelled “self-radicalization”. The general, however, was unsure, claiming that there was “also some minimal flow of people across the divide.” For all his doubts, it was unlikely that the attackers “were foreign fighters that came from Syria”.

The engagement could not be read as a failure on the part of the US mission. Neither McKenzie nor Dunford would have you believe that. ISIS was being challenged, lashing out like a terminally challenged animal in various outposts of the globe. The attack “was a natural product of the fact that [it] is being crushed in the core caliphate.”

General McKenzie, along with his colleagues, have insisted that the US mission in Niger is heavily circumscribed, and by the book. They are not there to take part, let alone advise the forces of Niger in direct combat missions.

General Dunford has similarly insisted that there was on reason “to believe or not know that they did anything other than operate within the orders they were given.” But these distinctions are academic points, to be slogged over by believers in operational doctrine and public relations. What matters is the stretch, and expanse, of modern US power, the sort that doesn’t necessarily work, finding itself in bloody muddles, local grievances and struggles.

The US soldier’s imprint is a global one, finding form in theatres many citizens would be surprised, even perturbed by. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham went so far as to express open ignorance that 1,000 US troops were operating in Niger.[3] They continue to apply the policing and erroneous language born in President George W. Bush’s war on terror, with all its conceptual and logistical nonsenses. As they do so, the bodies mount.

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

Notes

Spot the odd one out…

One of these six people says that Russians did not alter the election outcome, or vote for Hillary.

.

.

In a lengthy interview with The New York Times recently, 93-year-old former President Jimmy Carter cut loose on some painful establishment ‘facts’.

As DailyWire.com’s Joseph Curl reports, The Times decided to play up the fact that Carter would love to go over to North Korea as an envoy. But the Times is steadily proving how out of touch it is — and how it no longer seems to actually “get” what real news is.

Here are some major highlights from the interview:

1. The Russians didn’t steal the 2016 election.

Carter was asked “Did the Russians purloin the election from Hillary?”

“I don’t think there’s any evidence that what the Russians did changed enough votes — or any votes,” Carter said.

So the hard-left former president doesn’t think the Russians stole the election? Take note, Capitol Hill Democrats.

2. We didn’t vote for Hillary.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, disagreed on the Russia question. In the interview, she “looked over archly [and said] ‘They obviously did'” purloin the election.

“Rosie and I have a difference of opinion on that,” Carter said.

Rosalynn then said, “The drip-drip-drip about Hillary.”

Which prompted Carter to note that during the primary, they didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. “We voted for Sanders.”

3. Obama fell far short of his promises.

Barack Obama whooshed into office on pledges of delivering “hope and change” to the country, spilt by partisan politics.

He didn’t. In fact, he made it worse.

“He made some very wonderful statements, in my opinion, when he first got in office, and then he reneged on that,” he said about Obama’s action on the Middle East.

4. Media “harder on Trump than any president.”

A recent Harvard study showed that 93% of new coverage about President Trump is negative.

But here’s another shocker: Carter defended Trump.

“I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,”Carter said. “I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”

5. NFL players should “stand during the American anthem.”

Carter, who joined the other four living ex-presidents on Saturday for a hurricane fundraiser, put his hand on his heart when the national anthem played — and he has a strong opinion about what NFL players should do, too.

“I think they ought to find a different way to object, to demonstrate,” he said. ” I would rather see all the players stand during the American anthem.”

Not exactly the narrative The Times was painting.

Combat aircraft of the US and the coalition bombarded Syrian Raqqa like Germany’s Dresden was destroyed during World War II. In the operation to liberate the city from terrorists of the Islamic State (IS, terrorist organization outlawed in Russia), thousands of Syrian civilians were killed, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry General-Major Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday.

“Raqqa has repeated the fate of Dresden of 1945, which was erased in the British-American bombarding,” the general said.

Now, Washington, Paris and Berlin announce urgently they are allocating millions of dollars and euros for as-if restoration of peaceful life there, but in reality they want “to hide evidences of the barbarian bombing by the combat aircraft of the US and ‘coalition’, which buried in Raqqa’s ruins thousands civilians, whom they “liberated” from IS,” the spokesman said. Today, he continued, the West hurries to target the funding to Raqqa only, while earlier the US, France, Germany and the UK refused to send whatever humanitarian assistance to Syria.

“Over recent years, Russia has addressed the US and the European capitals asking to send humanitarian assistance to the Syrians suffering from the war,” he said. “We have put a list of settlements, where that assistance was most wanted – without dividing the Syrians into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Every time, from Washington, Berlin, Paris and London the answer was the same: we cannot and we shall not.”

The general noted “the bravura statements, made by representatives of the US administration about the ‘outstanding victory’ in defeating IS in Raqqa cause bewilderment.” The Defense Ministry’s representative spoke about the statement by the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, published on Friday, where he said “the liberation of Raqqa is a critical milestone in the global fight against ISIS.” Before that, the Pentagon said the US-led international coalition jointly with the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Iraqi governmental forces liberated more than 87% of Iraq and Syria.

“Washington’s imagination is that IS controlled in Syria only Raqqa – a provincial city, where about 200,000 lived before the war, and by beginning of the coalition’s five-months operation to liberate it – not more than 45,000,” he said.

“Compare: Deir ez-Zor with the vast suburbs by the Euphrates before the war had a population of more than 500,000, and it took the Syrian forces with support from the Russian Aerospace Force ten days to liberate all that territory,” he added.

According to the spokesman, Deir ez-Zor, unlike Raqqa ruined in the bombing, every day now welcomes thousands civilians who return to their homes to restore the peaceful life there.

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry reported with support from the Russian Aerospace Force 87.4% of the Syrian territory was liberated from IS.

The Syrian Democratic Forces coalition announced at a news conference in Raqqa the city was liberated from IS militants on October 20. The offensive in Raqqa with support from the US and the coalition began on June 6.

Featured image is from Global Look Press.

Global Research announces the release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

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Featured image: Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

You can’t make this stuff up! Madrid appears desperate to justify its unjustifiable imposition of direct rule over Catalonia, suspending its autonomy, effectively eliminating it, intending to install subservient puppet governance through rigged elections when held – flagrantly breaching the UN Charter and other international law.

Spanish foreign minister Alfonso Dastis lied, calling referendum day video images and photos seen worldwide in real time “fake.”

“Many many of those pictures have been proven to be fake pictures,” he outrageously claimed, adding “if there was any use of force it was a limited one.”

“According to some pictures there was some use of force. It was not a deliberate use of force. It was a provoked use of force.”

Nearly 1,100 injured Catalans, some seriously, tell a different story. On referendum day, national police and civil guards unleashed unrestrained police state thuggery.

Catalans exercising their right to vote were viciously assaulted with batons and rubber-coated steel bullets – the same tactics all police states use, notably Israel against nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators.

Massively assaulting Catalans tried disenfranchising them – in polling stations and streets near them, an outrageous display of Madrid viciousness, encouraging Catalans more than ever to seek independence from fascist Spain they want freedom from.

Separately, Madrid claimed actions by national police and civil guards were “prudent, appropriate and proportionate to the objective of ensuring compliance with the law and the rights of all citizens.”

Images seen live by millions of people proved otherwise – aired by Catalan television, RT, and likely other broadcasters. Many thousands of witnesses saw police state violence firsthand.

International human rights groups condemned state-sponsored viciousness. Brussels and Washington were largely silent.

Dastis’ remarks came after PM Mariano Rajoy exercised Article 155 of Spain’s constitution, imposing Madrid rule over Catalonia, a state-sponsored coup d’etat by any standard.

Not according to Dastis, arrogantly saying “if anyone has attempted a coup, it is the Catalan regional government.”

Later this week, Catalan parliamentarians will meet to discuss how they’ll respond to Rajoy’s actions, Puigdemont saying:

“I ask the parliament to meet in a plenary session during which we, the representatives of the citizens’ sovereignty, will be able to decide over this attempt to liquidate our government and our democracy, and act in consequence.”

“Catalan institutions cannot accept this attack by Spain…Long live Catalonia.”

On October 1, over 90% of Catalans voted for independence from Spain. Puigdemont promised he’d declare it within 48 hours of the vote.

Instead, he equivocated and so far abstained. It’s time to act to uphold the will of the people – what democracy is all about if it’s to have any meaning.

The only option for Puigdemont and parliamentarians is declaring independence from fascist Spain, announcing the formation of a new Catalan republic.

Anything less is betrayal – regardless of how Madrid is sure to respond.

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

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

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

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Dr. Hassan Diab, the Canadian citizen and sociology professor who was unjustly extradited to France in November 2014, approaches his fourth year of imprisonment in France, despite his innocence.

In July 2017, the French investigative judge closed his investigations into the case after finding that there is “consistent evidence” that Dr. Diab was not in France at the time of the 1980 bombing near a Paris Synagogue. However, prosecutors have yet to respond despite the normal practice of defence and prosecution responding within 30-days of the closing of the investigation. Hassan’s lawyers responded within 30 days, urging Hassan’s release.

Hassan’s French lawyer, William Bourdon, noted that “though there is no legal sanction to the non-observance of the delays that apply once the investigations are finished, we are obviously very disappointed that the prosecutor does not comply with them in this case where Hassan Diab has consistently proclaimed his innocence and consistent evidence of his innocence was collected during the investigations. Hassan remains in prison in France where he has now spent almost three years despite repetitive release orders constantly overturned by the Court of Appeal.

Hassan’s Canadian lawyer, Donald Bayne, remarked,

“This is yet another manifestation of the mounting injustices that have plagued this case and victimized Dr. Diab – who is this century’s Dreyfus – for the past 8 years. Surely the great Republic of France will put an end to injustice, will listen to the investigating judge who has stated that there is consistent and corroborated evidence of Dr. Diab’s innocence”.

On September 21, MP Don Davies presented a Parliamentary petition signed by thousands of Canadians urging the Canadian government to bring Hassan home.

In addition, an Open Letter signed by hundreds of Hassan’s supporters was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould urging them to put an end to Dr. Diab’s Kafkaesque situation.

Alex Neve, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, stated that

“this further delay, attributable to the French prosecutor, is one more unconscionable injustice. At a minimum Mr. Diab must be released on bail while the case proceeds, and the Canadian government must – at senior levels – insist that it happens without any further delay.”

Dr. Diab has strongly condemned the crime, and steadfastly maintained his innocence. He has a lifelong record of opposition to all forms of bigotry, anti-Semitism, and violence, as attested by longtime friends, colleagues, and everyone who knows him. Dr. Diab’s fingerprints, palm prints, physical description, and handwriting do not match those of the suspect. Since his ordeal began in 2008, Dr. Diab has been imprisoned or under very strict bail conditions for almost nine years.

How You Can Help:

Help us prevent Hassan’s wrongful conviction and bring him home! Please write to Canadian Government officials and urge them to intervene. Address your letters to the following:

• Prime Minister Justin Trudea –  [email protected]
• Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Chrystia Freeland – chrystia.freeland@internatio nal.gc.ca
• Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Omar Alghabra – [email protected]
• Minister of Justice, Ms. Jody Wilson-Raybould – [email protected] .ca

A sample letter is available:

• Word version
• PDF version

Featured image is from Ottawa Citizen.

The Peoples’ Bank of China has just announced a payment-versus-payment (PVP) system for Russian ruble and Chinese yuan transactions. The stated aim is to reduce currency risks in their trade. The only conceivable risk would be from the US dollar and potential acts of US Treasury financial warfare to damage Russian-Chinese trade which is becoming very significant in volume and value. By December it should reach $80 billion, a 30% rise over 2016. Yet there is more to this seeming technical move by China and Russia than meets the eye.

The official announcement, posted on the website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) adds the enormously significant note that CFETS plans to introduce similar PVP systems for yuan transactions with other currencies based on China’s Belt and Road initiative.

This confirms what I discussed in an article I posted in April 2016, namely that the grand design behind China’s Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) has an integral gold-based currency component that could change the global balance of power in favor of the nations of Eurasia, from Russia and the nations of the Eurasian Economic Union to China and across all Asia.

Earlier termed the New Economic Silk Road, the BRI is a vast network of high-speed rail linkages being constructed criss-crossing the countries of Eurasia including Central Asia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and, of course, the Russian Federation and extending to Iran, potentially to Turkey and East Africa. Altogether at present some 67 countries are participating or have asked to join the ambitious project whose total cost could run into trillions of dollars and will transform global trade. HSBC estimates that the BRI infrastructure project, which today encompasses countries generating almost one-third of global GDP, will generate an additional $2.5 trillion worth of new trade annually This isn’t chump change for the world economy. It’s a game-changer of the first order.

Building a dollar reserve currency

Academic presentations of currency theory and of reserve currency theory tends to be boring beyond at least my patience. This direct currency settlement move by China and Russian, however, is one of the most dynamic game-changing developments since Washington’s Treasury and Wall Street banks came up with the US Dollar system at Bretton Woods in 1944.

It’s not about reducing currency risks in trade between Russia and China. Their trade in own currencies, bypassing the dollar, is already significant since the US sanctioned Russia in 2014—a very foolish move by the Obama Administration Treasury. It’s about creating a vast new alternative reserve currency zone or zones independent of the dollar.

The American Century domination that Time-Life publisher Henry Luce proclaimed in 1941 came into being at the end of the war. In 1945, as the bombs stopped falling over Europe and Japan, President Harry Truman made clear to England that there would be no place for the British Empire as a rival, cancelling US Lend-Lease credits and demanding bankrupt Britain repay its war debts to Washington, as well as demanding a dramatic reduction in world trade conducted in Pound Sterling, then still about 50% of total world trade. The British based their hopes of rebuilding their Empire on their Commonwealth and its Sterling Preference trade region.

For Washington and Wall Street after 1945 there was room for only one dominant monetary power, the United States. Britain was forced to swallow its huge arrogant pride and turn to the newly-created International Monetary Fund and to, step-by-step, dismantle the colonies of the British Empire beginning with India for financial reasons. That opened the door for the dollar hegemony over the world economy outside the communist countries. Since 1945 the power of the United States as global superpower has rested on two pillars—the most powerful military and the dollar as undisputed world reserve currency allowing Washington to control the world economy.

In 1944 the Federal Reserve held over 70% of world monetary gold as part of its reserves. Every other currency was pegged to the dollar. The dollar alone was fixed to gold. A dollar-hungry postwar world in the 1950s desperately needed dollars to finance reconstruction. The dollar began its ascent as the currency held by world central banks as reserve currency or anchor currency, helped by the fact that OPEC countries agreed to sell their oil only for dollars. Most world trade financing was done in dollars.

Nixon and the Great Dollar Inflation

Under Bretton Woods, the US Federal Reserve guaranteed that other countries holding dollar reserves could exchange them for US Federal Reserve gold at any time. By the end of the 1960’s that began to break down as France and other countries demanded gold in exchange for what they saw as inflated US dollars. US industry was rusting from lack of new investment and US Federal deficits were soaring because of the Vietnam War. Other nations were no longer willing to accept that the “dollar was as good as gold.” They demanded the gold, not “as good as.”

After the “Nixon Shock” when President Nixon tore up the Bretton Woods Agreement in August 1971 to let the dollar float, free of any redemption in gold, the world had little choice but to accept inflated paper dollars, an inflation that soared with the 1973 oil price shock engineered by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and the Rockefeller faction in US politics. The gold-dollar convertibility suspension was a Washington reaction to the fact the central banks of France, Germany and other OECD countries demanded more and more hard gold from the Fed for their paper dollars and US gold reserves were in danger of being depleted.

Here began the roots of the most extraordinary global great inflation in history. Beginning the US budget deficits during the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the 400% oil price rise by 1974, a price that Washington’s Treasury in a secret deal with Saudi Arabia in 1974-75 insured would be paid by the rest of the world in dollars, the world dollar supply grew astronomically. Dollars in global circulation, no longer redeemable in gold, rose by 2,000% between 1971 and 2015. Production of real goods did not rise anywhere near 2,000%.

The fact that the dollar remains the most significant foreign central bank reserve currency, still some 64% of all world reserves at present, with the Euro at 20% the closest rival, gives the US Government an extraordinary advantage.

Since 1971, the US has run budget deficits for 41 of the past 45 years, the sole exception being four years in the 1990’s when the Baby Boom generation reached peak income and peak Social Security Trust Fund tax payment. The Clinton Treasury made an accounting manipulation to count this one-off effect as general Treasury tax income, a fraud. Every other year since 2001 the US Budget has resumed huge deficits, exceeding $1.4 trillion in 2009 alone, as in $1,400 billion, during the financial crisis that began in 2008.  In 2000, before the dollar break with gold, the US deficit was $3 billion.

Rightly so, other countries see this as an enormous disadvantage. Their US dollar Treasury bond investments for their own central bank reserves are becoming worthless paper. Because they are more or less forced to invest the trade surplus dollars earned from their exports in secure US Treasury bonds or bills or similar US securities, the annual inflow of China central bank dollars—of Japanese trade surplus dollars, of Russian dollars before 2014, of German and other trade surplus countries—allows the US Treasury to keep interest rates abnormally low. That also allows Washington to finance those deficits with no major stress. This year the US deficit reached an impressive $585 billion.

In effect, China and Russia in recent years finance the US military budget by buying US bonds and bills that allow the Treasury to finance that deficit without raising interest rates. The cynical irony is that that US military budget financed by Russia and China’s need to hold dollar reserves against potential currency wars by Washington as was done against Russia after 2014, is aimed at controlling Russia and China, and ultimately at destroying their economies.

If the Trump tax cut legislation now becomes law, the US deficits will hit the moon. This is the backdrop to better understand what China and Russia and allied countries are preparing in order to reduce their vulnerability to what is on a ballistic trajectory to a bankrupt global dollar reserve system. If China, Russia, and other allied countries of Eurasia, most especially countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and prospective members such as Iran and Turkey turn to bilateral arrangements like China and Russia to settle trade, bypassing the US dollar, the dollar as world reserve currency domina will fall, and other currencies will replace it. The Chinese Yuan is the leading candidate. The Ruble as well.

Yuan Reserve Status

The newest move to a direct settlement of bilateral trade between China and Russia with other countries along the new Silk Road being brought into the system is a major foundation stone in creation of a viable alternative to the US dollar as an anchor reserve currency.

A decade ago such an idea was dismissed by Western economists as preposterous. They claimed it would be decades before the world would accept the Yuan as a reserve. The yuan was not convertible.

In 2016 China was admitted by the International Monetary Fund as one of the five leading currency components of IMF Special Drawing Rights calculated in a currency basket. That step gave the yuan a major boost in international acceptance.

Before 2004 the yuan was not allowed outside China. Since that time the Chinese monetary authorities have laid a careful foundation for internationalization of the yuan. According to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), RMB internationalization is taking place in three phases—first as use for trade finance, then for investment, and long term as reserve currency. Now that “long term” is looking remarkably short-term as China exceeds all conventional economists’ expectations with internationalization of its yuan. This prospect of the yuan becoming a global anchor or reserve currency exceeding the share of the Euro in the next few years is what has the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street banks alarmed, to put it mildly.

In a 2016 report the HSBC bank reported that since 2012 the Yuan RMB has become the world’s fifth most widely used payment currency.

Two years ago, in October 2015, China initiated the China International Payments System (CIPS). While it has signed a cooperation agreement with the dominant SWIFT, it gives a potential option in event of US sanctions on China to function independent of SWIFT. In 2012 Washington pressure on the private Belgian-based SWIFT international bank clearing system, through which virtually every international transaction between banking institutions goes, to block international clearing for all Iranian banks, froze $100 billion in Iranian assets overseas and crippled her ability to export oil. The point was not missed in either Beijing or in Moscow, especially when some foolish US Congressmen called for SWIFT exclusion against the Russian banks after 2014.

In March of this year, Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of Russia’s central bank, stated:

“We have finished working on our own payment system, and if something happens, all operations in SWIFT format will work inside the country. We have created an alternative.”

Creating the new currency architecture

The financial demands of China’s vast Belt Road Initiative reach into the trillions of dollars. Alone in Asia the Asia Development Bank estimates investment of $8 trillion is needed over the coming years to lift those economies into efficient growth. Beijing’s founding of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) last year was a major step towards securing international financing for the BRI project.

In April 2016 China announced its decision to establish the Shanghai Gold Exchange, under the Peoples’ Bank of China, as a major international center for the pricing of gold and gold trading in yuan, with settlement in physical gold between bullion banks, refiners, producers and trading houses. Added to this is China’s decision to launch a daily yuan-denominated price fix on gold that could ultimately displace the dominant London gold fix, a system that has been accused of manipulating world gold prices downward for years.

In announcing its Belt Road Initiative the Chinese government, in a little-noticed comment, declared that the routes of its high-speed railway projects through the countries of Eurasia will connect now remote, inaccessible regions known to have large unmined gold reserves, to the world markets via the BRI.

What China with Russia are doing is not about attacking the US dollar to destroy it. That is highly unlikely and would benefit no one. It’s rather about creating an independent alternative reserve currency for other nations wanting to protect themselves from the ever-more frequent financial attacks by the US Treasury and Wall Street banks and hedge funds. It is about building a crucial element of national sovereignty because the dollar system today is being used to ravage the economic sovereignty of the rest of the world. As Henry Kissinger allegedly said during the 1970’s,

“If you control the money you control the entire world.”

The statement by the Chinese government now that its China-Russia direct payment-versus-payment settlement system will be extended to other countries of the BRI adds another brick in the careful building up of this alternative monetary system, a gold-backed alternative, independent of the politically-explosive US dollar system, that could insulate the nations of Eurasia from Washington and EU financial warfare in the coming years.

This is what has Washington in a dither. Their options are fading by the day. Military, financial, cyberwarfare, color revolution–all are increasingly impotent from a country that allowed its own industrial and manpower base to be destroyed in the interest of a financial oligarchy. That was how the Roman Empire collapsed in the Fourth Century, as did the British between 1914 and 11945, and as did every empire in history based on debt slavery.

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

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook where the image was sourced.

Featured image: Benjamin Stimson (Source: NEO)

On July 14 this year a British man from the Manchester area named Benjamin Stimson, aged 41, a man the London Times called a “socialist” to add to his crimes, was convicted under the British Terrorism Act for “facilitating” acts of “terrorism” by serving with one of the Donbass Republic militias for four months in 2015, as an ambulance driver.

Stimson was arrested in November 2015 immediately on his return to Britain and after having made the mistake of giving an interview to a BBC journalist about his role in the Donbass. He was remanded into custody and in July sentenced to over 5 years in prison. His crime? Simply telling the BBC that he was a “working class man with no work whose last job was on a zero hours contract” and that if attacked in the war he was willing to kill to defend himself. As the British prosecutor described the charges and facts to the judge the public had to wonder why Ben Stimson was sitting in the dock and not being feted around town because the prosecutor, apparently unaware that anything was amiss, portrayed a heroic figure, a real working class hero.

“Mr. Jamieson (the prosecutor) said:

“The defendant suggested that after watching reports in the media about far-right groups in Ukraine, he was inspired to join the rebels. He also complained of his lack of employment prospects back home.

“He went on to say ‘well I just see this as a more Western imperialist aggression towards Russia, to people who are not necessarily playing the Western game. I have come here as a working class man with no work. Last job I had was in December last year, zero hour contracts. You can’t live in Britain anymore now. No housing, so I voted with me feet’.”

Instead of being feted by the public for volunteering to be an ambulance driver in relief of the besieged peoples of the Donbass under constant attack by the pro-fascist forces in Kiev he is being punished with imprisonment. He acted against the interests of the British NATO government and so was charged with a political crime, given a political trial, that is, no trial at all, and thrown into prison solely for political reasons. It appears that a guilty plea was extracted from him under duress by the Prosecution that threatened him with the more serious charge of engaging in preparation of terrorism that carries a life sentence upon conviction. His lawyer must have worked on him as well to plead guilty to a terrorism charge when he was guilty of nothing at all since he was never engaged in terrorism or with terrorists. He could have won a trial.

Several defences were open to him that had a good chance of being successful if fully developed in a trial. The first is that he did not serve with any terrorists but with the legitimate armed forces of the Donbass republics defending themselves against the illegitimate pro-Nazi regime of Kiev, a regime that came to power through a violent putsch against the legitimate Yanukovich government in 2014, a putsch aided by the NATO powers including Britain.

The Donbass Republics have duly constituted governments and properly organized armed forces with defined chains of command that engage in open military combat with the forces of the Kiev regime. The Donbass forces, whose actions are purely defensive to protect the people of their regions, do not attack civilians. The Donbass Republics are recognized in the Minsk Agreements as legitimate entities that are engaged in diplomacy with all the big powers. They are not “terrorist” organizations. They are committing no acts of terror. It is instead the Kiev forces that are engaged in acts of terror against the civilian population of the Donbass who are under constant bombardment and siege by them.

The second is that the prosecution was selective since British mercenaries have served and are serving with Kiev militias in Ukraine and have returned to Britain without any repercussions. Several mercenary companies have men operating in Ukraine against the Donbass republics. Just on the 12th September the Donbass high command reported the presence in Krasnogorovka of a platoon strength unit of British mercenaries. Their presence is no secret as these men have given interviews to local TV and talk about their presence on social media but the British prosecution service turns a blind eye to their activities.

The third defence is that the trial was a political one arranged to give legitimacy to the Kiev regime, to condemn Russia as the “aggressor,” and to cover the British support for fascism and a fascist regime in control of Kiev and the close cooperation between the British mercenaries working for Kiev and the British regular forces and government.

The fourth is that his case was used by the British government as a device to prove that its anti-terror laws were not targeted at Muslims but can also be used against anyone fighting for a secular cause, so long as it is a cause that falls foul of the British elites.

The London based charity, War on Want, in a damning report on the use of mercenaries in wars, stated that Britain is a central hub of the mercenary business, that there are hundreds of British mercenary companies operating around the globe. The leading ones such as G45, Aegis Defence Services, Control Risks and Olive Group are complex corporations with PR

departments, marketing, and a public face as “risk management consultants” and “security consultants” to those operating in “high risk environments.” They make huge profits on wars from Afghanistan to Africa.

The report states:

“At the heart of the industry is a revolving door between the companies, military intelligence and corporate worlds, with the interests of these sectors closely intertwined. No fewer than 14 companies are based in Hereford, close to the British Special Air Services (SAS) Regiment headquarters and at least 46 companies employ former members of the British Special Forces. Many of the smaller companies consist entirely of ex-military personnel and the larger corporations have ex-military personnel in key posts.”

So if you are an out of work lad in Manchester and you are looking for some pay and some adventure you can freely sign up to work for these companies, be sent to commit acts of terror against the people of the Donbass or the resource rich nations of Africa, or Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, wherever the British government requires you. You will be handsomely paid and guaranteed a career. But if you want to defend people against these terrorists, you will be arrested on a trumped up charge and thrown into prison.

That the conviction was a political one was even admitted by the judge, without any sense of shame, who said, on sentencing him,

“You ultimately did no physical harm to anyone but you assisted the militia by your presence and your involvement, and you will have given a lead to others.” Aye, there’s the rub. He gave a lead to others. He must be made an example of.

The conviction also makes clear the NATO and Kiev regime policy towards the defenders of the Donbass. They are considered criminals not lawful combatants. Instead of the Geneva Conventions applying on capture, they will face criminal charges or perhaps be thrown into the black holes of the CIA and other western intelligence agencies.

The NATO backed war in Ukraine against the peoples of the Donbass has thousands of victims. Now it has a victim in Britain, another political prisoner in a British jail. Ben Stimson is a man who should never have been charged, who was denied a fair trial, whose liberty must be restored. So long as liberty is denied him we can have none. So free Ben Stimson, to free us all.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

European Values Think Tank calls itself an NGO “defending liberal democracy” – it clearly disdains by attempting to discredit RT and guests appearing on the network it called “useful idiots (to a) hostile foreign power.”

Founded in 2005, its funded by Washington, Britain, other EU countries, the European Parliament, European Commission, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and other anti-democratic private sources.

It’s a propaganda operation, opposed to “defending liberal democracy,” supporting “aggressive regimes,” not against them.

Indeed it backs deplorable “values of Western civilization” – trampling on the rights of sovereign independent states, raping and destruction them, enforcing tyranny over fundamental freedoms while pretending otherwise.

European Values’ funders reveal what its agenda is all about, polar opposite what it claims.

Its report on RT is titled “ The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact” – so-called Kremlin watch propagandist, posing as an analyst, Monika Richter involved in preparing it.

The report falsely calls RT a “Kremlin disinformation campaign against the West.” By its standards and Western ones, war is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength – with attribution to George Orwell.

Add truth-telling is lying, RT and numerous credible independent media sources criticized for reporting what Western officials want suppressed – information on their destructive, ruthless practices, harming countless millions of people worldwide, domestically and abroad.

European Values (EV below):

“RT…push(es) its pro-Kremlin agenda under the guise of ‘free speech’ and ‘alternative’ journalism aimed at counteracting the alleged bias of the mainstream media.”

Fact: Though far from perfect, RT airs real news, information and analysis on vital issues. Western major media feature disinformation, Big Lies and fake news, truth-telling on issues mattering most banished from their reporting.

EV:

“(M)any people in Europe and the US, including politicians and other persons of influence, continue to exhibit troubling naivete about RT’s political agenda, buying into the network’s marketing ploy that it is simply an outlet for independent voices marginalized by the mainstream Western press.”

“These ‘useful idiots’ remain oblivious to RT’s intentions and boost its legitimacy by granting interviews on its shows and newscasts.”

Fact: RT’s “political agenda” is truth-telling. I’m a proud “useful idiot,” a guest on RT a number of times, speaking as freely as I write and comment in other interviews.

EV:

“RT’s raison d’etre is to denigrate the West at all costs and undermine public confidence in the viability of liberal democracy.”

“On these grounds, RT categorically qualifies as a Kremlin disinformation outfit and, more specifically, as an instrument of hostile foreign influence.”

False on all counts!

EV:

“RT’s epistemology is rooted in the denial of the very possibility of objective, verifiable truth.” Two RT “themes” are “anti-Westernism (particularly anti-Americanism) and conspiracism.”

False again! Truth-telling about US-led destructive policies is what responsible media is all about – suppressed by deplorable Western sources, agents of imperial terror, neoliberal harshness and police state ruthlessness.

EV:

“RT disguises the malicious objectives of this editorial strategy by claiming to uphold traditional liberal-democratic ideals like free speech, critical journalism, and independent thought.”

Fact: RT shames deplorable Western media, mocking legitimate journalism. RT offers the real thing. That’s why it’s bashed.

EV:

“RT uses guest appearances by Western politicians, journalists and writers, academics, and other influential public personalities to boost its credibility.”

Fact: Truth-telling boosts credibility. Lies and deception destroy it, what Western major media feature daily.

EV:

“Expert consensus suggests that in terms of attitudinal influence on viewers, RT’s impact is minimal to modest.”

Fact: EV wouldn’t have made a major effort, perhaps taking weeks, to produce its shameful report if RT didn’t have a significant impact on viewers.

It’s the only television news I watch daily. The alternative is deceptive trash – brainwashing viewers, not informing them.

EV:

“While the security hazard of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign and influence operations should not be taken lightly, it is imperative to not overinflate the threat of individual influence agents like RT and Sputnik.”

Fact: Over time, credible media like RT and Sputnik News gain viewers and listeners at the expense of worthless scoundrel sources.

EV’s report included names of 2,327 individuals who’ve appeared on RT over the past four years, alphabetized in seven categories, including links to relevant appearances – no simple task to compile.

Everyone appearing on RT is considered complicit with “Russian propaganda.” Shades of deplorable McCarthyism.

Maybe something more sinister is planned. Washington already imposed hostile actions on RT and Sputnik.

It required a company providing services for RT America to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), unrelated to media operations – not so far complied with.

The FBI is investigating Sputnik, likely RT as well. Will banning them follow?

Vladmir Putin vowed to act appropriately if this happens. Given America’s deplorable state, anything ahead is possible, perhaps destroying remaining fundamental rights, including media, speech and academic freedoms.

That’s what tyranny is all about.

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

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

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

Featured image is from European Values.

Featured image: Trump rally in Louisiana, US, December 2016. Image: Tammy Anthony Baker via Flickr

The hurricanes and wildfires that have severely damaged large areas of the United States in recent weeks have had no impact on US president Donald Trump’s determination to ignore the perils of climate change and support the coal industry.

In a deliberate denial of mainstream science, the Trump administration has issued a strategic four-year plan for the US Environment Protection Agency that does not once mention “greenhouse gas emissions”, “carbon dioxide” or “climate change” in its 48 pages.

Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and climate policy manager of the Union of Concerned Scientists, describes this as “stunning” in its ignorance. “This was not an oversight,” she says, “this is a deliberate strategy by this administration.”

Trump effect

However, President Trump’s repudiation in June of the 2015 Paris Agreement designed to combat global warming, and his refusal to acknowledge any connection between recent extreme weather events and climate change, seems to have made the world even more determined to tackle the issue.

The acid test will be the progress that is made in November at the annual meeting of the parties for the Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, hosted by Fiji, one of the small island states expected to be most affected by sea-level rise and more frequent storms.

Ahead of the conference, three of the UN’s most senior climate change figures have issued a statement urging world leaders to see the recent spate of disasters as a “shocking sign of things to come”.

In a joint statement, Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Climate Change Convention and Robert Glasser, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction and head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, said the events of the last few months were a reminder that climate change threatens more frequent and severe disasters such as those just witnessed.

“We will continue to live with the abnormal and often unforeseen consequences of existing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, for many, many years to come”

The three officials emphasise that there have been many more extreme weather events that have not received the publicity given to the hurricanes in the Caribbean and the United States.

They say:

“The record floods across Bangladesh, India and Nepal have made life miserable for some 40 million people. More than 1,200 people have died and many people have lost their homes, crops have been destroyed, and many workplaces have been inundated. Meanwhile, in Africa, over the last 18 months 20 countries have declared drought emergencies, with major displacement taking place across the Horn of Africa.

“For those countries that are least developed the impact of disasters can be severe, stripping away livelihoods and progress on health and education; for developed and middle-income countries the economic losses from infrastructure alone can be massive.”

They continue:

“During the last two years over 40 million people, mainly in countries which contribute least to global warming, were forced either permanently or temporarily from their homes by disasters.”

The three officials do not mention the Trump administration’s refusal to accept basic science, but describe the rising sea levels of 85 millimetres (3.34 inches) in the last 25 years and the potential catastrophic storm damage that coastal areas face as a result.

Clear consensus

Then they say:

“There is clear consensus: rising temperatures are increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, leading to more intense rainfall and flooding in some places, and drought in others.”

They continue:

“Rising and warming seas are contributing to the intensity of tropical storms worldwide. We will continue to live with the abnormal and often unforeseen consequences of existing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, for many, many years to come.”

They point out that the cost of adaptation to climate change will be far cheaper than the repair bill if no action is taken.

“It is critical to remember that the long-term reduction of emissions is THE most important risk reduction tactic we have, and we must deliver on that ambition,” they write.

The three officials conclude:

“The November UN Climate Conference in Bonn provides an opportunity to not only accelerate emission reductions but to also boost the serious work of ensuring that the management of climate risk is integrated into disaster risk management. Poverty, rapid urbanisation, poor land use, ecosystems decline and other risk factors will amplify the impacts of climate change.”

Two-and-a-half weeks after the deaths of four US Special Forces troops during a firefight in the landlocked West African nation of Niger, the American media has remained fixated on the ugly controversy surrounding President Donald Trump’s condolence call to the grieving widow of one of the soldiers, made as she was driving to the airport to meet his coffin.

Accounts given by both family members and Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who was in the car when the call came over the speaker phone, leave no doubt that the indifference of the billionaire conman in the White House to the death of a 25-year-old African-American soldier from an impoverished Florida town and his incapacity to express empathy for the family came through loud and clear.

Out of his mouth, the phrase “he knew what he signed up for” to describe the path that led Sgt. La David Johnson to his death had all of the warmth of his attitude toward the layoff of one of his casino employees or the losses his multiple bankruptcies inflicted on business partners. It is of a piece with his tossing of rolls of paper towels to desperate victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Sergeant Johnson’s widow was reportedly distraught over Trump’s call, noting that the US president did not even know her husband’s name.

The episode encapsulated not merely the sociopathic personality of the US president, but the attitude of America’s ruling oligarchy toward the members of the all-volunteer army that it employs to pursue its profit interests by means of military aggression all over the world.

Behind the backs of the American people, the Pentagon has steadily escalated its military intervention in Africa, with between 650 and 800 US troops deployed in Niger and another 400 or more on the ground in Somalia. At least 1,700 US special operations troops are deployed across the continent, more than in any other region of the globe outside of the Middle East. Under the cloak of the “war on terrorism,” US imperialism is flexing its military might in a bid to counter growing Chinese economic influence in a region rich in strategic resources.

The controversy over Trump’s call to the family of Sergeant Johnson was not only politically damaging to the White House, it cut across Washington’s global aims. To put out the fire, the administration called in the White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, whose son was killed by a land mine in Afghanistan in 2010.

There had been widespread speculation in the media that Kelly had remained silent and out of the public eye because of disgust with Trump’s handling of the Niger casualties and the president’s attempt to present his own attitude to American war dead as superior to that of his predecessors in the Oval Office.

On Thursday, however, Kelly obligingly turned his son’s death into a political asset for Donald Trump, while invoking the supposed superiority of the military over civilian society and its institutions in order to intimidate the media. This tactic included Kelly’s exclusion of anyone save members of Gold Star families (which have lost loved ones in combat) or reporters who knew such families from questioning him.

It was largely successful, finding immediate reflection in the tone adopted by a cowed media. One of the first reporters daring to pose a question to the general began by giving out the Marine Corps motto—Semper Fi—establishing his loyalty to the military.

The message was further driven home on Friday when it emerged that Kelly had falsely accused Congresswoman Wilson of bragging at a public ceremony about securing funding for a government building in Miami named after slain FBI agents. When a reporter pointed out that his charge was a lie, the White House press secretary responded:

“If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”

There has always been a certain tension between military and civilian life. Even during the Second World War, when masses of civilians entered the armed forces, GIs referred with a measure of contempt to those not serving as “feather merchants.” Kelly, however, spoke, with a distinct tone of bitterness and resentment, as the representative of a military caste that has become increasingly alienated from and hostile to civilian society and civilian authority.

“They are the best 1 percent this country produces,” he said, referring to Washington’s all-volunteer military. “Most of you, as Americans, don’t know them. Many of you don’t know anyone who knows any one of them. But they are the very best this country produces, and they volunteer to protect our country when there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate, but required. But that’s all right.”

He went on to compound his defense of the military against supposed civilian contempt and indifference with the expression of extreme right-wing views.

“You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country,” he said. “Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life—the dignity of life—is sacred. That’s gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well.”

While the invocation of women and religion as “sacred” hardly calls to mind the image of Donald Trump, it does resonate, along with “the dignity of life,” i.e., the banning of abortion, with the key political constituency of the Christian right.

The appointment of Kelly, like that of Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis (ret.) as secretary of defense and active-duty Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security advisor, was supported by the Democratic Party and the media as a welcome turn by the Trump administration. The New York Times referred to the retired and active-duty generals that dominate the Trump cabinet as “the adults in the room,” while the Washington Post referred to them as “voices for moderation” and “moral authorities.”

In reality, these senior career military officers are, if anything, to the right of Donald Trump. They see the pseudo-populist and nationalist demagogy of the US president as a useful instrument for advancing the political agenda of the vast “military industrial complex” against which President Dwight Eisenhower warned more than half a century ago, and which has since become the dominant force within the American state.

The politics of these generals and ex-generals should come as no surprise. While Kelly hails the “one percent,” referring to the volunteer troops, many of them economic conscripts brought into the military from poor and working-class backgrounds, he and those like him are part of another 1 percent, drawing down military pensions totaling over $200,000 a year while earning hundreds of thousands more by serving as advisors and board members for military contractors and arms manufacturers.

This intersection of a right-wing military caste and a parasitic capitalist oligarchy under conditions of ever widening social inequality is one of the sharpest expressions of the decay of American capitalism and the thorough erosion of any social or political foundation for democratic forms of rule.

Among Kelly’s most significant remarks was his denunciation of the Democratic congresswoman who criticized Trump’s insensitivity to the family of the slain soldier as part of “the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise,” a definition he undoubtedly would find appropriate for the entire US Congress, the media and other civilian institutions. The “full barrels” are the barrels of the guns employed by the American military.

The Democratic Party poses no opposition to the growing military domination of the American government. On the contrary, it has promoted it, opposing Trump from the right on issues of foreign policy and accusing him of insufficient deference to the military and intelligence apparatus and a reluctance to carry out a military escalation against Russia.

Congresswoman Wilson, the immediate object of Kelly’s ire, is an unabashed supporter of the Pentagon in general and US military intervention in Africa in particular. She is best known in Congress for championing legislation promoting US military deployments in Nigeria and elsewhere under the human rights pretext of intervening to rescue kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls.

Kelly’s extraordinary intervention at Thursday’s White House press conference constitutes a sharp warning. Anyone who thinks that “it can’t happen here,” that a US government that has sponsored countless coups and regime-change operations around the globe cannot itself become the target of a military takeover, is making a serious political mistake.

The Washington Post presents a shockingly imaginary Syria, in which the U.S. Government has been the friend of the Syrian people by trying to eliminate in Syria simultaneously the jihadists and the Syrian Government that’s been fighting against the jihadists, and in which the Syrian war has not been between the Syrian Government and those tens of thousands of jihadists, many of whom have actually been armed by the U.S. Government and financed by the American Government’s allies, especially by the Saudi Government, and brought into Syria through America’s allies, first Turkey, and then more recently Jordan, and the jihadists tended medically by yet another U.S. ally, Israel.

Obviously, the U.S. Government supports jihadists when doing so serves its higher goal, of overthrowing Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad. But this fact is unmentionable in the ‘authoritative’ media. The reality hidden by the Western press is that, according to Western-sponsored polls of Syrians, 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. for the plague of ISIS in their country, and well over 50% want Bashar al-Assad to continue as Syria’s President.

Such extreme reality-denial in the Washington Post is ordinary for the U.S. newsmedia; but, nonetheless, as in this particular case, it reaches occasionally absurd proportions, which the entire world would instantly recognize as being the propaganda-media of a dictatorship, if only the entire world knew about it (rather than its being hidden from the public by and within all of the aristocracies that are allied with the U.S. aristocracy). To mention that the Emperor has no clothes would be a capital offense.

A recent example of this 1984-style ‘news’-coverage in today’s American ‘news’-reporting, is the Washington Post’s October 7th “Civilian casualties spiral in Syria as air raids target areas marked for cease-fire”. It opens by alleging: 

“Civilian casualties have spiraled across Syria in recent weeks as pro-government forces launch hundreds of bombing raids across areas marked for international protection. Groups monitoring the conflict have recorded hundreds of strikes since the end of a sixth round of peace talks among Russia, Iran and Turkey in mid-September. On Friday, the White Helmets rescue group reported that 80 percent of those attacks targeted civilian areas.” 

Here is some of the background reality, which that propaganda-piece ignores and/or blatantly flouts:

First of all, the White Helmets is an Al Qaeda affiliate that’s heavily backed by UK’s MI6 and America’s CIA in order to stir hatred among Westerners against Syria’s Government and especially against its President, Bashar al-Assad (seen here in an interview) by both actually rescuing people in jihadist-controlled areas of Syria and also outright staging ‘rescues’ of children and other residents in those areas who have been alleged to have been hit by Syrian or Syrian-allied bombings of those areas. The best brief introduction to the White Helmets was given on 23 September 2016, “How US Propaganda Plays in Syrian War” by the great American investigative journalist Rick Sterling, which was based largely upon an exhaustive earlier account which had been given on 23 October 2015 by the great British investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, “Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception”. Here’s an excerpt from Sterling’s article:

There were three contestants in the Syrian presidential election of June 2014. Turnout was 73 percent of the registered voters, with 88 percent voting for Assad. In Beirut, the streets were clogged with tens of thousands of Syrian refugees marching through the city to vote at the Syrian Embassy. Hundreds of Syrian citizens living in the U.S. and other Western countries flew to Syria to vote because Syrian Embassies in Washington and other Western capitals were shut down.

While Secretary of State John Kerry was condemning the Syrian election as a “farce” before it had even happened, a marketing company known as The Syria Campaign waged a campaign to block knowledge of the Syrian election. Along with demonizing President Assad, the company launched a campaign which led to Facebook censoring information about the Syrian election.

A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a “no-fly zone,” a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military

Incubating Propaganda

The Syria Campaign was created by a larger company named “Purpose,” which – according to its website – “incubated” The Syria Campaign.  

[ That should have been linked to: 

https://www.purpose.com/white-helmets-profiled-by-nicholas-kristof-in-new-york-times/ 

or better yet, to http://archive.is/phAjI ] 

The company’s website says, “Purpose creates new movements, brands and organizations from the ground up to address complex global challenges. We apply this experience as movement creators to our work with progressive companies, nonprofits and philanthropies, helping them to put purpose and participation at the heart of what they do.”

The “White Helmets” are marketed in the West as civilian volunteers doing rescue work. On Sept. 22, it was announced that the Right Livelihood Award, the so-called “Alternative Nobel Prize,” is being given to the U.S./U.K.-created White Helmets “for their outstanding bravery, compassion and humanitarian engagement in rescuing civilians from the destruction of the Syrian civil war.” The major achievement of The Syria Campaign has been the branding and promotion of the “White Helmets,” also known as “Syria Civil Defense,” which began with a British military contractor, James LeMesurier, giving some rescue training to Syrians in Turkey with funding provided by the U.S. and U.K. The group stole this name from the REAL Syria Civil Defense as documented in this recent report from Aleppo.

*

Both the Rick Sterling article, and the Vanessa Beeley series of articles, are recommended reading, for anyone who trusts the Washington Post and other U.S.-or-allied newsmedia, to report to them what is happening in the world and why it’s happening, and who is actually behind it, and for what reasons. Recommended, that is, in order to disprove the validity of that trust.

Beeley published, at 21st Century Wire on 11 March 2017, her extensive interview of Assad, and one of her questions to him was:

Question 12: Mr. President, as you may be fully aware that the “White Helmets” took an Oscar this year for the best documentary short, but folks are saying that the truth about this “White Helmets” is not like what Netflix has presented, so what is your take on this?

President Assad: First of all, we have to congratulate al-Nusra for having the first Oscar! This is an unprecedented event for the West to give Al Qaeda an Oscar; this is unbelievable, and this is another proof that the Oscars, Nobel, all these things are politicized certificates, that’s how I can look at it. The White Helmets story is very simple; it is a facelift of al-Nusra Front in Syria, just to change their ugly face into a more humanitarian face, that’s it. And you have many videos on the net and of course images broadcasted by the White Helmets that condemn the White Helmets as a terrorists group, where you can see the same person wearing the white helmet and celebrating over the dead bodies of Syrian soldiers. So, that’s what the Oscar went to, to those terrorists.

In fact, Al Nusra, which is Al Qaeda in Syria, was the main group that the Obama Administration relied upon to organize and train the other jihadist groups there.

But, of course, the U.S. regime itself knows the truth about this mater, as I had reported, on 4 August 2016, at Strategic Culture, headlining, “U.S. State Department Refused Entry to Jihadist It Employed for Overthrowing President Al-Assad”. The head of the White Helmets had been barred entry into the U.S. back in April, because the U.S. Government knew that the head of the White Helmets — which group also calls itself “Syria Civil Defense” in order to give itself an official, legitimate, and even government-sounding name — the Government knew that he was a jihadist, a “terrorist,” and President Obama simply wanted to avoid a possible terrorist incident on U.S. soil. The event — this man’s landing at Dulles International Airport only to be barred entry by the U.S. Government there — had occurred on April 20th of 2016, and here’s the way that the U.S. propaganda-media had dealt with the event, at that time: “A man who has helped save more than 40,000 lives in Syria was just denied entry into the US”. That report made his having been barred entry seem like it had been simply an error by unidentified U.S. Customs official(s) at the airport. That report was, basically, a lie. And the report that appeared in the New York Times about the event pretended that the man who had been denied a visa was leading a Syrian charity, and gave no indication whatsoever that he was on Al Qaeda’s side, helping their war to overthrow Syria’s Government. This was presented as a nonpartisan charity: “It was a stance of the unity of humanity.” It was ‘nonpartisan’ like Al Qaeda itself is.

Though you might not have been informed of that matter, perhaps you do remember having seen, during 18 August 2016, this staged ‘rescue’ by the White Helmets being shown on all mainstream U.S. ‘news’media including the networks and including the Washington Post, but not at all the reality, which the terrific independent reporter Brandon Turbeville described so well, in the following, 9 June 2017, as soon as the truth behind the matter became fully revealed (and the mainstream U.S. press ignored the truth altogether, because it was a very “inconvenient” truth):

Nearly a year ago, Western corporate media outlets paraded video of a young Syrian boy, injured in a blast and allegedly being saved by the White Helmets. That video was presented as evidence of “Assad’s cruelty” and his “indiscriminate bombing of civilians” as well as the heroism of the White Helmets.

The picture of the boy, seemingly injured in some type of bombing incident, sitting alone in an orange chair in the back of an ambulance, blood stains on his face and covered in dust from cracked concrete also comes in video form, footage that lasts for about two minutes, showing the boy being carried to a well-equipped ambulance (with English writing on some of the equipment). The boy’s story was also accompanied by “heart wrenching” stories from “activists” in east Aleppo alleging the crimes of the Syrian government and the horrific situation in the area.

It was rather clear that the child was being used as a stage prop. After being passed to the medical “attendants,” little Omran was placed in an orange chair facing the camera and immediately left alone. He was not treated, no one else was lifted into the ambulance, and no one was even in the vehicle with him. Instead, he was left to face the “activists” outside the vehicle and their cameras for what seems like too long a time to be anything other than a photo op for the “activists” videotaping him.

While the Western public was whipped into a fury of concern for one child, largely uninjured, they were able to completely ignore the thousands upon thousands of children murdered by the United States, NATO, and their proxies in the same country. Still, little Omran was paraded in front of Western audiences as an unfortunate little propaganda tool, part of a play where the other actors were the same people who behead children on camera and hang them from doorposts.

Turbeville then presented the interview with the boy’s father, telling the man’s outrage during the actual event, while the jihadists were staging and filming this propaganda-video, which had been broadcast to Western audiences uncritically as ‘news’. Until the Syrian Government rescued the residents of that area from Al Qaeda, in the liberation of eastern Aleppo, neither the boy nor his family were allowed to speak to the press.

Back again to the Washington Post’s October 7th “Civilian casualties spiral in Syria as air raids target areas marked for cease-fire”, that article’s attempt vaguely to convey the false impression that the “hundreds of strikes since the end of a sixth round of peace talks among Russia, Iran and Turkey in mid-September” were a result of some kind of failure of the current Russia-Iran-Turkey “Astana” peace-process for Syria, which process had replaced the previous U.S.-Saudi peace process, which had ended when U.S. President Barack Obama sabotaged his own Secretary of State John Kerry’s signed 9 September 2016 peace-agreement with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, when the U.S. unprovokedly bombed the Syrian Army at Deir Ezzor in Syria on September 17th of last year, is simply false. Whereas the prior, U.S.-Saudi ‘peace’-process demanded the immediate ouster of President Assad, the current peace-process does not, and is, in fact, making steady progress, despite continued efforts by the U.S, Israel, and Saud, regimes (and their ‘news’media such as the Washington Post), to discredit this peace-process, and so to help to make it fail.

On 1 March 2017, the BBC bannered “Lies, propaganda and fake news: A challenge for our age”, and presented a lengthy report on ‘fake news’ which itself constituted fake news, because it focused entirely upon non-mainstream ‘news’media as being the sole creators of ‘fake news’, and pretended as if media such as the BBC itself weren’t fake ‘news’media, perhaps even worse than some of the non-mainstream ones. That BBC report itself demonstrated — as propaganda for itself and for its friends (such as at the Washington Post, NYT, etc.) and against their desired victims, such as the Syrian people, who persist in wanting Bashar al-Assad to lead their nation — demonstrated that, despite all of the West’s lying, the similar deception of foreign publics wasn’t possible, and the deception of their own public was not sufficient. No ‘solution’ that the BBC’s article proposed urged that the system, which causes their ‘news’ to be distorted or even downright false, must be ended, but instead the proposals were all to distract the public, about what the problem itself is: For example, one solution “is an approach being attempted by a number of different groups around the world. Researchers at the University of Mississippi and Indiana University are both working on an automated fact-checking system.” But, when the aristocracy — who own, and whose corporations’ products and services are advertised in and thus fund, the ‘news’media — leave out of their ‘news’reports, the key facts that are essential in order to enable a true understanding to be conveyed of what’s happening and why; then, automating fact-checking (even if it can be done) ignores, instead of addresses, the real problem, which is institutional, and thus can’t possibly be solved merely by automation. In any case, “says Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol in the UK, who studies the persistence and spread of misinformation, ‘Having a large number of people in a society who are misinformed and have their own set of facts is absolutely devastating and extremely difficult to cope with.’” But, why should people such as that, be consulted by a ‘news’medium as ‘experts’, on a matter such as this? They don’t know anything more about it than, say, Americans know about the Syrian war. No computer scientist, nor cognitive scientist, is an expert on, say, political corruption, and all the rest of the system that causes “misinformation” — that causes it to be very profitable, for ‘the right people’ — such as for the propagandists (including the executives, the decision-makers, at BBC). 

That kind of excuse for failure (failure in the efforts by U.S. and allied regimes, against the government of Syria and of other countries whose governments ours want to overthrow) which alleges that “We’re a democracy, and their government isn’t,” or that “Their news-media lie to their public about the war in their country, and ‘ours’ tell our public the truth about that war,” can be believed by the publics in the U.S. and in its allied regimes (and, so, we invaded and destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., just as the regime intended), but it’s not necessarily going to be believed by the publics in the intended victim-countries — and it really shouldn’t be believed by anybody anywhere. But, the sad fact is that, many countries, which claim to be ‘democratic’, are not. The ‘news’media are an important part of that problem, because they’re the way that their public ‘know’ their own country. And — obviously — very few Americans have any realistic idea about ‘our’ Government. Realistically, it’s not really “ours” at all. The system deceives us, because the people who control it want it to — and they fire and demote any of their employees or other agents who refuse to cooperate and do their job, for which they’re being paid. Deceiving the public, in the intended ways, is part of their job. They’re being paid to do it. And, “an automated fact-checking system” or etc., won’t affect that, at all. And, to the extent that such a proposal is imposed, it will be designed to rely instead upon mainstream sources as defining what is ‘true’, and what is ‘fake’. Automated censorship would be the real goal. Truth, and the public, would be even more victimized by the system, if such automated censorship becomes imposed.

For news-consumers, there is no short-cut. Buying a subscription to some mainstream ‘news’media won’t solve the problem, but will only cause to become less costly to the owners, their existing and very successful (at least domestically) system of deception and manipulation of the domestic public.

Nothing should be trusted; everything should be at least spot-checked, many times, and right down to its ultimate sources. Are all of the root-sources reliable? Not every newsmedium is fake, even if all of the mainstream newsmedia now are. But no newsmedium should be trusted. Only if they’re all distrusted, can the few honest ones become even so much as recognized, and — only then — worthy of perhaps donating to, after some free trial period. Because, only in this way, can a person intelligently decide, on one’s own, which those few worthy newsmedia actually are (worthy of being subscribed to). And, as regards ‘free’ newsmedia, nothing is actually free. Every newsmedium has an agenda; but, only if at the very top of that agenda is total honesty and never deceiving about anything, can a newsmedium reasonably be relied upon, as being purely honest news and opinion, never anything else than that — never propaganda.

After all: propaganda is produced and marketed so as to seem to be honest. Nothing should be trusted, unless one has long and carefully vetted it so as to have confirmed, in a strict and rigorous way, its thorough honesty. Because, in this world, to be trusting of ‘news’, or for a person not to know how to test the honesty of ‘news’, is to invite being deceived. There is no short-cut, to truth.

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

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

While the US and European media provided little explanation as to how militants from the self-titled Islamic State (IS) managed to appear, expand and then fight for years against the combined military power of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Russia, it was abundantly clear to many analysts that the IS organization was not only receiving state sponsorship, but it was receiving reinforcements, weapons and supplies from far beyond Syria’s and Iraq’s borders.

Maps of the conflict stretching over the last several years show clear corridors used to reinforce IS positions, leading primarily from Turkey’s southern border and to a lesser extent, from Jordan’s borders.

However, another possible vector may be desert highways in Iraq’s western Anbar province where US military contractors are allegedly to “provide security” as well as build gas stations and rest areas. These highways contributed to the current conflict and still serve as a hotbed for state sponsored terrorism. Whether these US-controlled and improved highways pose a significant threat for a reorganized effort by the US and its regional allies to divide and destroy Iraq and Syria seems all but inevitable.

US Mercenaries “Guarding” Iraqi Highways 

Al Monitor in an April 2017 article titled, “How Iraq is planning to secure key border road,” would claim:

 Due to the imminent threats to the road, which is one of Iraq’s vital economic lines as it connects Basra in the south to Jordan in the west, Iraq commissioned an American company to secure and rebuild the road. The contract also included reconstructing bridges, 36 of which are destroyed. 

The article would elaborate, stating:

A security source from the Iraqi intelligence service told Al-Monitor, “The American company will only secure the two roads reaching Terbil from Basra and Baghdad and will build gas stations and rest areas, in addition to building bridges and cordoning off the roads with barbed wires, as per distances that would be determined later.” 

Al Monitor would claim that Iraq’s popular mobilization units found themselves unable to oppose the move made by the central government in Baghdad. It would also note that Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades claimed, in opposition to the plan, that:

The road connecting Iraq and Jordan is a strategic gateway allowing the US and forces seeking to control it to tighten their grip on Anbar and the potential Sunni region as per a US-Gulf plan.  

One could imagine future potential scenarios including these rebuilt roads, complete with gas stations and rest areas, leading from Jordan and Saudi Arabia and providing an efficient route for future wars waged either directly or by proxy against Iraq. The infiltration of fighters and supplies, for example, would be greatly expedited should the US and its partners decide to shift their efforts along this new axis.

Beyond this more obvious threat comes the fact that US-Jordanian-Saudi influence would be greatly enhanced with stronger logistical lines leading into Iraq’s western regions.

How the US Might Use its New Highways  

The Islamic State’s de facto invasion of Syria and Iraq was a more massive and dramatic replay of an earlier surge of foreign militants into the region, following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

It would be America’s own Combating Terrorism Center at the West Point United States Military Academy in two reports published in 2007 and 2008 (.pdf) respectively that would describe in detail the networks some of Washington’s closest regional allies used to flood post-war Iraq with foreign fighters.

While these fighters indeed attacked US soldiers, what they also did was disrupt a relatively unified resistance movement before plunging Sunni and Shia’a militias into a deadly and costly “civil war.

Fighters, weapons and cash infiltrated into Iraq from a network that fed fighters from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region first into Turkey, through Syria via the help of many of the senior leadership of anti-government militant groups now fighting  Damascus, and then into Iraq primarily where IS has been based and where the remnants of its militancy remains.

During the more recent conflict, these same networks were utilized successfully until Russia’s intervention in 2015 when these terrorist “ratlines” came under fire by Russian warplanes. The cause and effect of attacking these terrorist ratlines was visible on conflict maps, causing an almost immediate shrinking of IS-occupied territory and a corresponding atrophy of IS fighting capacity.

The Jordanian-Iraqi and Saudi-Iraqi border crossings and the highways running through them represent an alternative means to reorient Washington’s proxy conflict either now or in the near future.

US Already Planning to Weaponize the Project 

Raising further alarm bells should be the New York Times’ May 2017 article, “U.S. Sees a Vital Iraqi Toll Road, but Iran Sees a Threat,” which helps frame the very sort of conflict US policymakers are seeking with this move and the reaction it has already provoked among America’s primary targets in the region, particularly Iran.

The article would claim:

 As part of an American effort to promote economic development in Iraq and secure influence in the country after the fight against the Islamic State subsides, the American government has helped broker a deal between Iraq and Olive Group, a private security company, to establish and secure the country’s first toll highway. 

This being Iraq, though, the project has quickly been caught up in geopolitics, sectarianism and tensions between the United States and Iran, which seems determined to sabotage the highway project as an unacceptable projection of American influence right on its doorstep.

The New York Times also helps prepare a narrative so that any attack on American contractors along the highway could easily be blamed on militias linked to Iran, or even on Iran itself. The article states:

Already, Iraqi militia leaders linked to Iran, whose statements are seen as reflective of the views of Tehran, have pledged to resume attacks against American forces if the Trump administration decides to leave troops behind to train the Iraqi military and mount counterterrorism missions, as appears likely. And the militia leaders have specifically singled out the highway project for criticism.

The New York Times ultimately admits that the US is attempting to control the highway specifically to continue its increasingly dangerous proxy war against Tehran. The article also admits that the highways will be entirely controlled by US contractors, including the collection of tolls of which only a portion would be handed over to the Iraqi government. The article also claims other highways, including one leading directly from Saudi Arabia, are being considered.

In essence, these would be terrorist ratlines directly controlled by the United States, leading directly out of the very epicenter of state sponsored terrorism in the region, Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf states and to a lesser but still significant extent, Jordan.

They would be terrorist ratlines difficult for Iraq’s central government or its allies to attack without providing a much welcomed pretext for Washington to directly retaliate against the faction of its choosing.

While the New York Times and US politicians and businessmen involved in the highway deal attempt to portray it as a means of providing peace, stability and economic prosperity for Iraq, a quick audit of US policy in the Middle East should ground those lofty promises in a much more frightening reality.

The scope of this project is nothing short of both a US occupation and a US-administered “safe zone” in which militant groups backed by the US and its regional partners can safely be harbored, and from which they can strike out against Iraq and its neighbors with the full protection of US military force.

Some US policymakers may feel that their failing proxy war against Syria involved a cart-before-the-horse policy in which the creation of US-administered and protected safe zones turned out to be more difficult to implement than initially anticipated, and that in the future, such zones should be created before another round of proxy-hostilities.

No matter what, the US presence and the more-than-certain intentions that underpin it will ensure not peace, stability or prosperity, but another decade of division and strife both in Iraq and beyond. Confounding this project, and those like it, and replacing them with actual projects to fulfill the promises of progress the US is merely hiding behind, will be key to truly moving Iraq and the region forward.

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

All images in this article are from Tony Cartalucci.

It seems the perfect recipe, a union of minds and fates. A case, long disputed, deliberated over, conspired over, meets a modern US president who favours the notion of birther theories, rigged systems, corrupt elites and corrosive establishments. As President Donald Trump announced over the weekend,

“Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”

Having himself been seen as a conspiracy theorist with some clout, Trump fittingly finds himself releasing files that are supposedly meant to shed light on the period in US history known as Camelot, along with its rude and violent conclusion with the slaying of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

Trump has himself been, as he continues to be, an inspiration for the conspiracy aficionados. These tend to come in all political shades in a country where the paranoid strain, as Richard Hofstadter identified with forensic accuracy, nags and convinces.[1]

Be it Senator McCarthy’s claim in June 1951 of communist infiltration on vast scale; the assertion by leaders of the Populist party in 1895 that treacherous “gold gamblers” had forged an impoverishing conspiracy in 1865-6; or the inroads of Papal influences in the White House in the 1850s – all have left their mark on the traumatised psyche of US political unease.

The current set of conspiracies regarding Trump is becoming bibliographic in nature. Is he brain damaged or permanently impaired, the basis to rationally explain his frequent lapses into infantile effusiveness and sporadic bullying? Is he really an out-of-the-closet Russian operative singing and swinging to the score sheet of the Kremlin and strong man figure Vladimir Putin?

One particularly enduring one, even if its legs seemed terribly wobbly, was the claim that he was Hillary Clinton’s true standard bearer, holding the false flag for the Clinton campaign even as he was debunking every campaign tactic in the electoral rule book. Once that particularly flag caught fire, there had to be other explanations: Trump as avenger, vengeful exterminator of the Democrats.

The central problem to the conspiracy advocate is a system of permanent and impervious irrefutability, fuelled by the smallest kernels of truth. Nothing presented is empirically credible to alter convinced minds. For Trump’s own view, the Zeitgeist of the moment is Fake News writ large, a point that is only laughable to a point.

Any cursory understanding of news gathering and dissemination entails an understanding of mechanisms of self-censorship, the restrained (or planted hysterical) voice, the fiction of objectivity. Fabrication is impossible to divorce from news cycles, however stable. Not all news is counterfeit, but much of it is distorted by the lenses of power, decision and editorial consideration.

All evidence obtained can only point to affirming the conspiracy, rather than challenging it. In this context, the view of John Maynard Keynes – that changing facts duly changes opinions – is not only ignored but deemed impossible.

The legend of Camelot has had a decidedly devastating effect on the sober appreciation of US government institutions. The Kennedys were the US variant of the Royal Family and even more to the point, seemed photogenic, intellectual, glamorous.

The Kennedy family was itself the architect behind the faux aristocratic fantasy, the fiction, if you like, of an administration awash with shiny competence and brain heavy awareness. In truth, it was essentially piloted by a medically challenged and heavily medicated figure who suffered, amongst other conditions, Addison’s disease.

President Kennedy’s rocky stewardship, as Robert Dallek notes in considerable detail, was marked by anti-anxiety agents, sleeping pill popping, stimulants, and pain killers. The public image of a formidable, robust Cold War warrior was itself an elaborate fantasy, padded by its own conspiracy of deception. As if realising the implications of his medical burrowing, Dallek had to reiterate the point that Kennedy was still functioning and capable and was at no risk at cocking up during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.[2]

The Kennedys were successful enough, be it through their army of ideological acolytes and publicists (think of the unquestioning pen of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), to create the impression of knight-like purity, intellectual sagacity and calm. To kill, then, what is noble, became an essential American trope: JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. Behind each had to be a gargantuan conspiracy, an establishment puppeteer.

The Kennedy files that are promised for release are hardly going to rock the boat, alter the world, or change a single mind. Historians will be able to bring out modestly updated versions of old texts; official accounts might be slightly adjusted on investigations, locations and suspects, but the conspiracy set is bound to stick with grim determination to ideas long formed and re-enforced by assumptions that refuse revision.

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

Notes

In an advertising campaign in 2008 the U.S. Air Force declared itself to be “Above All”. The slogan and symbol of the campaign was similar to the German “Deutschland Über Alles” campaign of 1933. It was a sign of things to come.

On Thursday Masha Gessen watched the press briefing of White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly and concluded:

The press briefing could serve as a preview of what a military coup in this country would look like, for it was in the logic of such a coup that Kelly advanced his four arguments.

1. Those who criticize the President don’t know what they’re talking about because they haven’t served in the military. …
2. The President did the right thing because he did exactly what his general told him to do. …
3. Communication between the President and a military widow is no one’s business but theirs. …
4. Citizens are ranked based on their proximity to dying for their country. …

Gessen is late. The coup happened months ago. A military junta is in strong control of White House polices. It is now widening its claim to power.

All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of the power triangle, the corporate and the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton. The Pentagon’s proxy defeated the CIA proxy. (Last months’ fight over Raqqa was similar – with a similar outcome.)

On January 20, the first day of the Not-Hillary presidency, I warned:

The military will demand its due beyond the three generals now in Trump’s cabinet.

With the help of the media the generals in the White House defeated their civilian adversary. In August the Trump ship dropped its ideological pilot. Steve Bannon went from board. Bannon’s militarist enemy, National Security Advisor General McMaster, had won. I stated:

A military junta is now ruling the United States

and later explained:

Trump’s success as the “Not-Hillary” candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy – a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.

The military took full control of White House processes and policies:

Everything of importance now passes through the Junta’s hands … To control Trump the Junta filters his information input and eliminates any potentially alternative view … The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump by only proposing certain alternatives to him. The one that is most preferable to them, will be presented as the only desirable one. “There are no alternatives,” Trump will be told again and again.

With the power center captured the Junta starts to implement its ideology and to suppress any and all criticism against itself.

On Thursday the 19th Kelly criticized Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of South Florida for hearing in (invited) on a phone-call Trump had with some dead soldiers wife:

Kelly then continued his criticism of Wilson, mentioning the 2015 dedication of the Miramar FBI building, saying she focused in her speech that she “got the money” for the building.

The video of the Congresswoman’s speech (above link) proves that Kelly’s claim was a fabrication. But one is no longer allowed to point such out. The Junta, by definition, does not lie. When the next day journalists asked the White House Press Secretary about Kelly’s unjustified attack she responded:

MS. SANDERS: If you want to go after General Kelly, that’s up to you. But I think that that — if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.

It is now “highly inappropriate” to even question the Junta that rules the empire.

U.S. soldiers, and especially commanding officers, have a well pampered and safe life. Many civilian jobs pay less and are more dangerous. A myth is build around the U.S. military with the help of hundreds of millions in public relations and marketing expenditures. The U.S. military does not win wars, but its soldiers are depicted as being better humans than the general population. The soldiers themselves drink that Kool-Aid. At the end of his press briefing General Kelly belittled everyone who never signed up for the military or took a swig:

Before walking off the stage, Kelly told Americans who haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do—not for any other reason than that they love this country.”

‘We do not look down on you. We think of you as a pitiable minor creature.’ What an asshole.

If the soldiers do not work “for any other reason than that they love this country” why do they ask to be paid? Why is the public asked to finance 200 military golf courses? Because the soldiers “love the country”? Only a few 10,000 of the 2,000,000 strong U.S. military will ever see an active front-line.

And imagine the “wonderful joy” Kelly “got in his heart” when he commanded the illegal torture camp of Guantanamo Bay:

Presiding over a population of detainees not charged or convicted of crimes, over whom he had maximum custodial control, Kelly treated them with brutality. His response to the detainees’ peaceful hunger strike in 2013 was punitive force-feeding, solitary confinement, and rubber bullets. Furthermore, he sabotaged efforts by the Obama administration to resettle detainees, consistently undermining the will of his commander in chief.

Former U.S. Army Captain and now CIA director Mike Pompeo was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is part of the Junta circle, installed to control the competition. Pompeo also wants to again feel the “wonderful joy”. On Friday he promised that the CIA would become a “much more vicious agency”. Instead of merely waterboarding ‘terrorists’ and drone-bombing brown families, Pompeo’s more vicious CIA will rape the ‘terrorist’s’ kids and nuke whole villages. Pompeo’s remark was made at a get-together of the Junta and neo-conservative warmongers.

On October 19 Defense Secretary General Mattis was asked in Congress about the recent incident in Niger during which, among others, several U.S. soldiers were killed. Mattis set (vid 5:29pm) a curious new metric for deploying U.S. troops:

Any time we commit out troops anywhere it is based on a simple first question and that is – is the well-being of the American people sufficiently enhanced by putting our troops there, by putting our troops in a position to die?

In his October 20 press briefing General Kelly also tried to explain why U.S. soldiers are in Niger:

So why were they there? They’re there working with partners, local — all across Africa — in this case, Niger — working with partners, teaching them how to be better soldiers; teaching them how to respect human rights …

Is the U.S. military really qualified to teach anyone how to respect human rights? Did it learn that from committing mass atrocities in about each campaign it ever fought?

One of the soldiers who were killed in Niger while “teaching how to respect human rights” was a 39 year old “chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist” with “more than a dozen awards and decorations”.

The U.S. military sent a highly qualified WMD specialist on a “routine patrol” in Niger to teach local soldiers “to respect human rights” due to which presumably “the well-being of the American people” would be “sufficiently enhanced”?

Will anyone really buy that bridge?

But who would dare to ask more about this? It is”highly inappropriate” to doubt whatever the military says. Soon that will change into “verboten”.  Any doubt, any question will be declared “fake news” and a sign of devious foreign influence. Whoever spreads such will be blocked from communicating.

The military is now indeed “Above All”. That air force slogan was a remake of a 1933 “Über Alles” campaign in Germany. One wonders what other historic similarities will develop from it.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

The so-called Islamic State organization was primarily a bogeyman encouraged by the western powers.  I’ve been saying this for the last four years.

I asserted, as a former soldier and war correspondent, that IS would collapse like a wet paper bag if proper western ground forces attacked their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.  This week, the western powers and their local satraps finally took action and stormed the last IS stronghold at Raqqa.  To no surprise, IS put up almost no resistance and ran for its miserable life.

The much-dreaded IS was never more than a bunch of young hooligans and religious fanatics who were as militarily effective as the medieval Children’s Crusade.

In the west, IS was blown up by media and governments into a giant monster that was coming to cut the throats of honest folk in the suburbs.

IS did stage some very bloody and grisly attacks – that’s what put it on the map.   But none of them posed any mortal threat or really endangered our national security.   In fact, the primary target of IS attacks has been Shia Muslims in the Mideast.

Many of the IS attacks in North America and Europe were done by mentally deranged individuals or were initiated by under-cover government provocateurs, such as the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.  IS was notorious for falsely taking credit for attacks it did not commit.

Other ‘lone wolf’ attacks were made by Mideasterners driven to revenge after watching the destruction by the US and its allies of substantial parts of their region.  Think Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, and the murderous brutality of Egypt’s-US backed regime.

IS appears to have been shaped by western intelligence in an effort to duplicate its success with the Afghan mujahidin in the mid 1980’s that helped defeat the Soviet Union.  CIA, Pakistani and Saudi intelligence, and Britain’s MI-6 recruited some 100,000 volunteers from across the Muslim world to wage jihad in Afghanistan.  I observed this brilliant success first hand from the ranks of the mujahidin.

The western powers, led by the US, sought to emulate this success in Syria by unleashing armies of mercenaries, disaffected, unemployed youth, and religious primitives against the independent-minded regime of President Bashar Assad.  The plan nearly worked – at least until Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement intervened and reversed the tide of battle.

The canard promoted in the west that IS was a dire military threat was always a big joke.  I said so on one TV program and was promptly banned from the station. I’m also the miscreant who insisted that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction and was consequently blacklisted by a major cable TV news network.

The CIA cobbled together two small armies, one of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and the other of Iraqi mercenaries.  Both were directed, armed, equipped and financed by Washington.  Shades of the British Empire’s native troops under white officers.  The Kurds and Iraqi Arabs are now in a major confrontation over the Kirkuk oil-rich region.

Raqqa and Mosul were so close to western forces that they were merely a taxi ride away.  But it took three years and much token bombing of the desert before a decisive move was made against IS.  Once the US-led campaign against Damascus failed, the crazies of IS were no longer of any use so they were marked for death.

Like Fallujah in Iraq and Mosul, Raqqa was flattened by US air power, a stark message to those who would defy the American Raj. The ruins of Raqqa, the IS capital, were occupied by US-led forces.  This historic déjà vu recalled the dramatic defeat by British Imperial forces at Omdurman in September 1898 of Sudan’s Khalifa and his Islamic dervish army.

The remnants of IS had melted into the Euphrates Valley and the desert.  They will now return to being an irksome guerilla group with very little combat power.  Anti-western IS supporters still cluster in Europe’s urban ghettos and will cause occasional mayhem.  A few high-profile attacks on civilians may be expected to show that IS is still alive.  But none of this is likely to influence the course of events.  IS’s rival, al-Qaida, is likely to resurface and lead attacks to drive the west out of the Mideast.

The Islamic State bogeyman was very useful for the western powers.  It justified deeper military involvement in the Mideast, higher arms budgets, scared people into voting for rightwing parties, and gave police more powers.   By contrast, these faux Muslims brought misery, fear and shame on the Islamic world. We are very well rid of them. And it’s about time.

On Thursday 19th October, the Media on Trial Event was held in the Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church (BCBC) in London. Prior to the event there had been the usual stream of emails denouncing the speakers as “genocide deniers” “Kremlin agents” “conspiracy theorists” and “Assad propagandists” in an attempt to get the event shut down by targeting the venue. BCBC stuck by the principles of freedom of speech and nobly refused to be swayed by what amounted to aggressive lobbying for its suppression. 

When we arrived at the church in the afternoon to set up for the evening event, we were told that two men had entered the church during the afternoon. When asked why they wanted to go into the church, they told the staff that they wanted to pray. They were allowed in. They then poured what smelled like ‘skunk water’ (raw sewage) onto the carpet at the front of church, directly in front of the pulpit where the speakers would be presenting.

This was a deliberate campaign to sabotage the event and to clamp down on any dissent against the corporate media narrative on Syria that has unanimously supported UK State foreign policy ie the removal of President Assad and the destabilisation of Syria by any means available. This, of course, included the backing & promotion of the multitude of terrorist entities inside Syria, euphemistically described by the UK FCO as the “Syrian opposition” or the “democracy”  “freedom fighters”.

The desecration of Christian church property  is a crime that has been committed throughout Syria by the US Coalition-financed & armed extremist globe-trotters. Drugged-up mercenaries, whose disdain for sacred sites, protected by Syria’s secular state for centuries, translates into the destruction of Christian heritage sites with a violent, brutal hatred. They have had pretty much the same intent as the two saboteurs in London, to simply destroy all that stands in the way of their ideological supremacy in the region.

Abdo Haddad is a respected geopolitical analyst and esteemed representative of the ancient Syrian Christian town of Maaloula that was invaded by the US Coalition terrorist factions in 2013/14. When he heard about the attacks on the BCBC & the Media on Trial Event, he wrote the following on his facebook page:

“Two days ago, a group of Syria’s extremist supporters scammed their way into a Church where the honest Vanessa Beeley and a group of loyal friends were going to lecture about the propaganda against Syria. These ingrates distributed some sort of foul smelling liquid in the church without any respect or regard whatsover to the holiness of the place.

This brought to my mind the first hours of our returning to our beloved town Maaloula on April 14 2014 after it was occupied by the same fanatical “rebels” and terrorists. We found our 2000 years old churches full of their stench and garbage of all sorts. I refrain from disclosing any further description because I am trying hard to remove these attrocious scenes from my memory.

Most of the traitors of Maaloula are now in Europe acting as refugees and spreading their culture of poison and hatred everywhere. I am sure that these ingrates are more happy to desecrate a Church in the middle of London as their mates did in Maaloula in order to sabotage Vanessa and her colleagues’ event . They are also passing on this mentality to their children. I believe that the UK has lost the battle against them long time ago and we in Syria remain one of the last defences against the spread of their fanaticism & culture of sectarian racism….