Global Research

The bill introduced by a bipartisan group of House members last week to end the direct U.S. military role in the Saudi coalition war in Yemen guarantees that the House of Representatives will vote for the first time on the single most important element of U.S. involvement in the war—the refueling of Saudi coalition planes systematically bombing Yemeni civilian targets.

In doing so, moreover, the bipartisan bill, H. Con. Res. 81, will provide a major test of Congressional will to uphold the War Powers Act of 1973, which reasserted a Congressional role in restraining presidential power to enter into wars without its approval in the wake of the Vietnam War debacle.

Since the Obama administration gave the green light to the Saudi war of destruction in Yemen in March 2015, it has been widely recognized by both Congress and the news media that U.S. military personnel have been supplying the bombs used by Saudi coalition planes. But what has seldom been openly discussed is that the U.S. Air Force has been providing the mid-air refueling for every Saudi coalition bombing sortie in Yemen, without which the war would quickly grind to a halt.

The Obama administration, and especially the Pentagon and the U.S. military, became nervous about public statements about that direct U.S. military role in the Saudi war after some legal experts began to raise the issue internally of potential U.S. legal responsibility for apparent war crimes in Yemen. Refueling Saudi coalition bombing missions “not only makes the U.S. a party to the Yemen conflict, but could also lead to U.S. personnel being found complicit in coalition war crimes,” Kristine Beckerle, Yemen and UAE researcher at Human Rights Watch, has observed.

The political sensitivity of that direct and vital U.S. military role in the Saudi coalition airstrikes was so great in the last year of the Obama administration that U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, in an interview with a New Zealand journalist twice declared, deceptively,

“We are not involved in carrying out airstrikes in Yemen.”

The bill introduced by Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Republican Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Walter Jones of North Carolina, calls for Congress to “direct” the president to “remove” U.S. military personnel from their role in the Saudi air war against the forces of the Houthi-Saleh alliance in Yemen. It would give the President 30 days in which to end the U.S. military role in support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen unless and until Congress has enacted either a declaration of war or an authorization of those activities.

The co-sponsors believe members will support it because U.S. direct involvement in the Saudi war of destruction in Yemen has enmeshed the United States in the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis in many years. Some 542,000 Yemenis, already weakened by starvation, have now succumbed to a cholera epidemic that is far worse than any in the world for the past fifty years, as the New York Times reported in August.

The starvation and cholera epidemic are the consequences of a multi-faceted strategy aimed at creating such civilian suffering as to finally break the resistance of the Houthi-Saleh forces. The Saudi strategy has included:

• Targeting of hospitals, markets and agricultural infrastructure.
• Destruction of cranes necessary to offload any large-scale humanitarian assistance at the main port of Hodeida and refusal to replace them with new cranes.
• A naval blockade that has strictly limited shipping of food, fuel and other necessities to Hodeida port.
• Closing down the civilian airport to prevent delivery of humanitarian aid.
• Destruction of roads and bridges necessary for delivery of humanitarian aid.
• Closing down the Central Bank of Yemen – the only institution in Yemen that was providing liquidity to millions of Yemenis.

Another selling point for H. Con Res. 81 is that it is based explicitly on the language of the War Powers Act of 1973, passed by a two-thirds majority in the House overriding a veto by President Richard M. Nixon. The War Powers Act includes a provision that,

“[A]t any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.”

The proposed bill argues that the direct U.S. military involvement in the Saudi Yemen war has never been authorized by Congress, and that the provision in the wars powers act is therefore applicable. It specifically exempts U.S. forces operating in Yemen against al Qaeda, which were authorized under the 2001 Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) and which have not generated critical public and Congressional reactions.

Con. Res. 81 applies a provision of the War Powers Act to ensure that opponents in the Foreign Affairs Committee or the majority leadership won’t be able to keep it bottled up without a vote. The War Powers Act puts any proposed Congressional resolution for action regarding an unauthorized use of force on a fast track for an early floor vote, making it a “priority resolution.” Once the measure is referred to the House or Senate foreign affairs committee, the War Powers Act requires that the committee report out a resolution within fifteen days, and that the resolution must then come to a vote within three days.

Aides say the co-sponsors will present the measure as a response to a policy initiated and carried out for nearly two years by the Obama administration.They say a number of Republican offices are now seriously considering co-sponsorship of H. Con. Res. 81.

In addition to the humanitarian disaster and war powers issues linked to the direct U.S. military role in Saudi airstrikes, the co-sponsors will be pointing to multiple ways the U.S. role in the war makes the American people less secure, according to Congressional aides. One of the effects of the war has been to enormously strengthen the position of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), considered the biggest single foreign threat to carry out terrorist actions against the United States after two failed efforts in recent years. Saudi-backed Yemeni forces have been fighting alongside AQAP against the Houthis-Saleh forces. And the war has given AQAP much greater territorial control, political legitimacy and access to money and arms than it ever had before.

Yet another argument is the longer-term hatred of the United States that the U.S. direct involvement in the Saudi bombing campaign and starvation strategy is creating. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN’s Jake Tapper in June 2016,

“If you talk to Yemenis, they will tell you, this is not perceived to be a Saudi bombing campaign. This is perceived to be a U.S. bombing campaign. What’s happening is that we are helping to radicalize the Yemeni population against the United States.”

Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, has been meeting with Republican House members to urge them to support the bill.

“The war being waged in Saudi Arabia with U.S. assistance is brutal and vicious, and it is a losing one for both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia but a boon for AQAP,” Wilkerson said in an interview with TAC. “It should cease immediately.”

But sponsors and advocates of H. Con. Res. 81 may have to refute arguments about Iran that the Saudis and the Obama administration have used to justify the Saudi war in Yemen. Wilkerson noted Republican members who cited Iran’s alleged role in the Houthi war effort and the common U.S.-Saudi opposition to it.

“They argue that the Saudis are doing our work for us, so we’ve got to hold our nose and support them,” said Wilkerson.

But that argument reflects a false narrative created by the Obama administration that Iran has been arming the Houthis for years. Administration officials used a UN panel obviously set up at Washington’s behest to recycle old and demonstrably fabricated claims of Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis. The Houthis have undoubtedly obtained missiles and other weapons from Iran, but the UN panel of experts on Yemen reported in January 2017 that it did not have sufficient evidence to “confirm any direct large-scale supply of arms” from Iran to the Houthis.   

More importantly, the modest military assistance from Iran came in response to the Saudi coalition air assault on Yemen—not the other way around. And contrary to the official Pentagon myth of a “proxy war” against Iran in Yemen, the Houthis are fighting the Saudis for Yemeni interests—not to serve Iranian interests.

Gareth Porter is an independent journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of numerous books, including Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books, 2014). Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter

Featured image is from Hugh Macleod / IRIN/Creative Commons.

Yesterday’s historic vote – the Referendum decided by the Government of Cataluña, called illegal by the neoliberal Rajoy Government of Madrid – turned into an event of abject police violence against masses of unarmed voters. The Referendum may have been illicit according to the Spanish Constitution, but voting in a referendum as an expression of opinion is a human right, regardless of whether the central government of Madrid would or would not accept the result of the vote.

In the early Monday morning hours, the Catalan Government issued statements saying that about 2.3 million Catalans, 42.3% out 5.3 million eligible voters, casted with 90% a ‘yes’ ballot for Independence. Without the violent interference of the national police and civil guard, the Catalan Government estimated that at least 80% of eligible voters would have cast their ballot.

Clearly, the Spanish Government’s demonstration of ruthless and brute force was and is a reminder that in Europa fascism is alive and well, that Generalissimo Franco in Spain is not dead. Brussels, miserable, spineless puppets to the transatlantic empire and the European oligarchy, remained shamefully silent – arguing it was a Spanish internal affair, as if Spain, a full member of the EU wasn’t a European Union’s ‘internal affair’.

At the end of the day of the Referendum, 1 October, President Rajoy had the audacity to declare literally that there was no referendum taking place in Cataluña. He congratulated and thanked the Spanish police to protect law and order in Barcelona and elsewhere in Cataluña and to uphold the Spanish Constitution. Yet, the media showed and reported all-day long violent police battles against peaceful voters. The forceful, riot-clad Spanish police smashed windows and broke into schools where voting boots were located, attempting to prevent voter from voting; they also removed and destroyed ballot boxes.

At the end of the day nearly 1,000 people – 844 officially – were injured by national police force, extreme violence, by utterly harmful and potentially deadly rubber bullets and batons smashing indiscriminately into nonviolent unarmed voters, including elderly people, women and children. There were hundreds of thousands of people, families who came with kids to this historic event, some camping since Friday in the schools to make sure that their right to vote was protected.

Since the Catalan police decided a hands-off policy, not to interfere with the referendum, but rather to protect the voters from possible violence, the fascist Rajoy Government sent in police and the civil guard from other parts of Spain to prevent the vote to take place. Their brutal and excessive violence against unarmed voters was shocking. They clearly had firm instructions for their brutality from their masters in Madrid – the very masters that congratulated them for carrying out their duties. It was a horrible sight to see.

President Rajoy lauding the violent police that left hundreds of inured, many seriously wounded, is yet another testimony that fascism in Europe is growing. Franco’s blood must be running in Rajoy’s veins. Brussels, the headquarters of the European Police state – of the growing European military regime – already today engulfing the bulk of the 28 EU member states, concurred with this violence by remaining disgracefully silent.

Let’s look a bit closer at some of the reasons behind this horrendous crackdown on people who were merely intent of expressing their opinion – a full human right, according to the UN Charter.

Cataluña with a population of about 7.5 million (out of Spain’s 46 million) and a surface of about 7% of Spain’s 506,000 km2 contributes about 20% to Spain’s economic output, produces 25% of Spain’s exports, receives 23.5% of Spain’s foreign tourist, and 57% of foreign of Spain’s investments. There is a lot to lose by Cataluña’s secession.

Cataluña today receives about 1,800 euros per capita in tax devolution from Madrid, but contributes at least double that amount to the Spanish Treasury. This imbalance has long been a sore thumb in the relations between Barcelona and Madrid. But Rajoy’s PP (Partido Popular) Government has always staunchly refused any dialogue for more autonomy and more financial justice.

Spain’s northern Basque Region fought for decades (1959-2011) for independence. The Spain-ETA armed political conflict, also known as the Basque National Liberation Movement, caused hundreds of violent deaths. When they finally reached disarmament and a peace agreement in 2011 with the central government in Madrid, they settled for a considerably fairer fiscal agreement with Madrid.

Looking at history, Cataluña became part of Spain in the 15^th Century under King Felipe VI and Queen Isabella. In the 20^th Century, under the Spanish Republic, Cataluña with her own culture and language, received full autonomy in 1932. I was abolished by Franco, when he came to power in 1938. After Franco’s death in 1975, Cataluña regained temporary autonomy which lapsed in 2006, when a Spanish High Court challenged the Statute of Autonomy and ruled some articles of the Statute ‘unconstitutional’. That was the time when the most recent Catalan Independence Movement began. Since then several mock referenda took place, including the latest in 2014, when 80% of those who voted (about 30% of eligible voters) opted for independence.

The 1^st October 2017 Referendum was the first serious attempt at secession since 2006. Though non-conform with the Spanish Constitution, the forceful and violent suppression of the people’s freedom of expression – was a grave human right’s abuse. It will most likely backfire – badly.

This fierce oppression by Madrid, the unwillingness for dialogue, has definitely turned most Catalans against Madrid and for independence. A few weeks ago the polls in Cataluña indicated a close call with a slight edge for those who wanted to remain with Spain. After threats from Madrid for weeks and the violent police crackdown of yesterday’s election, at least 80% of eligible Catalan voters now seek independence. A similar trend could be found within Spain. A couple of months ago, 10% to 20% of Spaniards were neutral or favored independence for Cataluña. After yesterday’s police fiasco, close to half of Spaniards in solidarity with their Catalan brothers support Cataluña’s independence.

The fight is by no means over after Madrid’s violent attempted oppression of the vote. We can just hope that civil war can be avoided.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge.

Featured image: Stephen Paddock (Source: WFTV.com)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

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On Sunday, reportedly at least 59 people were killed, another 527 injured in a mass shooting incident during a concert near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

Police blamed a lone gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, called a “local resident,” reportedly firing from a window on the Mandalay hotel’s 32nd floor. Raw video footage from a taxi driver showed muzzle flashes from the 4th floor. The Harvest Music Festival took place across the street.

Did he take his own life as Las Vegas police claimed or did SWAT team members lethally shoot him? His brother, Eric, said “(t)here is no reason we can imagine why Stephen would do something like this.”

“We have no idea how this happened. It’s like an asteroid just fell on top of our family.” Stephen was “not an avid gun guy at all…He ha(d) no military background or anything like that.”

Police located Marilou Danley’s whereabouts, living outside America, thought to be his “companion” and “roommate,” calling her a “person of interest.” She’s not considered a suspect.

City police tweeted overnight: “Confirming that one suspect is down. This is an active investigation. (P)lease do not head down to the Strip at this time.”

Was it a lone wolf attack or something more sinister? It’s too soon to know. One gunman able to kill or wound hundreds of people single-handedly raises suspicions.

Nearly two dozen rifles and other firearms allegedly found in his room begs an obvious question. How could anyon get them into the hotel unnoticed? How many suitcases and/or satchels are needed to transport this arsenal, along with munitions?

Dead men tell no tales, so his account of what happened won’t be told. Witnesses on the scene suggested multiple shooters. One unnamed individual insisted there were more than one. It would seem likely given the high casualty count.

Even using a semi-automatic weapon, one shooter able to cause this much carnage singlehandedly begs a couple of questions. Were others involved? Was the incident as reported or a false flag?

It’s reminiscent of multiple July 22, 2011 shootings on Norway’s Utoeya Island, scores of children killed, blamed on Anders Breivik, called a lone gunman.

Several eyewitness saw two shooters. Evidence suggests Breivik couldn’t have acted alone.

Yesterday’s incident was also reminiscent of the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School incident.

The official narrative blamed Adam Lanza. Investigative work by Professor James Tracy questioned whether any shootings took place – “at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media” described things.

Contradictions abounded. Key questions weren’t answered. How did one alleged gunman fire so many shots in so little time and supposedly inflict so many casualties?

Connecticut’s coroner, Wayne Carver, and police officials said Lanza shot each victim from three to 11 times – 182 shots, one every 2 seconds plus likely misses.

Yet the official narrative called him the sole gunman, a youth with no military training, said to have used a 30-shot magazine in one weapon, having to reload over half a dozen times to have done the alleged shootings himself.

Tracy explained “(p)hotographic and video evidence (was) lacking in terms of its capacity to demonstrate that a mass shooting took place on a scale described by authorities.”

There was “no visual evidence of Lanza’s violent entry” – nor any “broken glass, blasted security locks and doors, bullet casings and holes, bloodied walls and floors,” no evidence that any more than small number of the school’s 600 students were evacuated.

Tracy concluded that the incident was an “elaborate hoax,” citing the following reasons:

1. “Proof of death (was) suppressed.”

2. “Emergency protocols were not followed.”

3. “Drill protocols were” used instead.

4. “(F)oreknowledge of the event” existed.

5. Reports about weapons used were “contradictory.”

6. No verifiable evidence indicates Adam Lanza’s responsibility for the shootings – after supposedly killing his mother, then taking his own life after the incident.

7. Authorities and media sources “displayed inappropriate behavior.”

8. Photos of the crime scene and victims “look(ed) staged or fake.”

9. The crime scene was deliberately contaminated and destroyed, making it unusable for investigation.

10. Alleged “(d)eceased children sang at the 2013 Super Bowl.”

Was Sunday’s Las Vegas incident another Utoeya Island, Norway or Sandy Hook-type incident? The fullness of time may tell.

Note: ISIS claiming responsibility for the Las Vegas shootings is meaningless. America supports the terrorist group. Why would it bite the hand feeding it!

On Monday, the FBI said Paddock has no connection to ISIS. What’s behind Sunday’s carnage remains to be revealed.

The official account has a familiar disturbing aroma. Was Paddock a convenient patsy? He’s not around to tell his side.

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

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The economic crisis continues to plague Greek households struggling too make ends meet – month in, month out. A survey conducted by Nielsen shows a decline in consumption and therefore the plight of thousands of families. Greeks cut on essential goods like milk and bread. The drop in the category of milk in the organized retail market reached 8.6% in the first half of 2017.

Sales of essential consumer goods continue to drop, according to a Nielsen survey of the Greek market. Sales of milk, bread and alcoholic beverages are among the goods that suffer most.

In the first half of 2017 the drop in the sale of milk reached 8.6%, while sales of packaged bread shrank by 5.3%.

Sales of alcoholic beverages also recorded significant losses, as whiskey sales dropped by 6.8% over the same period.

Overall, retail trade lost 1.1% in value in the first half of the year compared to the same period last year.

More pronounced downward trends were recorded in personal care products at 4.4%, and household goods at 3.5%.

Sales of deodorants and diapers dropped by 7.3% and 7.2% respectively. In household goods, chlorine dropped by 8.9% and kitchen paper towel by 7.7%.

The only positive trend in all sectors was in fresh / bulk products where sales increased by 2.0%.

An earlier Nielsen survey has shown that food sales in Greece have dropped by 18 percent since 2009, when the current economic crisis begun.

In 2009, food sales reached a record high, totalling 13.15 billion euros.

However, as Greece entered the first bailout program in 2010, the demand for food items started to drop. The decrease was also attributed partly to the closing down of small grocery and convenience stores.

PS Packaged bread sold in supermarkets is exceptionally expensive, IMO, when a loaf of fresh bread at the bakery is just 60 to 70 cents.

Featured image is from Keep Talking Greece.

The move risks provoking the already distraught Wahhabi clergy who fear that the monarchy is breaking its old alliance with them by sidelining the Kingdom’s most conservative religious gatekeepers in its quest for socio-economic modernization.

Hardcore Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia have warned for generations that allowing women to drive would be a very dangerous development for the ultra-fundamentalist Kingdom, arguing that it would somehow degrade society by leading to an epidemic of immorality which would clash with what they believe is the purest way to practice Islam. That’s not why Riyadh’s recent decree granting woman this long-overdue right by next summer is so dangerous, however, as the real reason rests with the unpredictable and possibly violent reaction of the Saudi clergy. Before talking about that, a few words need to be said about the Kingdom’s much-publicized decision to finally allow women to drive.

The Vision 2030 Disruption

This wasn’t about “diverting attention” from the War on Yemen or the perilous situation of the Shiite minority in the Eastern Province like some cynics have alleged, though that might end up being a short-term media-driven consequence which would of course work out to the government’s temporary favor. Instead, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman is actually sincere about reforming the socio-cultural situation in his country in order to enable it to more effectively carry through with his Vision 2030 structural reforms that intend to eventually transition Saudi Arabia to a “normal” non-energy-dependent economy with time. There are still many other reforms which are necessary to implement if the Kingdom’s women are to enjoy the same rights as their counterparts elsewhere in most Muslim-majority countries, to say nothing of the West, but this is still a very powerful step in the direction of increasing female participation in the future workforce.

Understanding this, it’s evident why the most conservative elements of the clergy would be opposed to Vision 2030, as they know that its gradual socio-economic reforms (even if not carried out to their eventual conclusion and still comparatively lagging behind other Muslim countries and the West) will inevitably lead to transformational changes in the country that they believe would contradict their ultra-fundamental interpretation of Islam. In other words, although they won’t say so openly for fear of being detained by the ubiquitous but largely unseen hand of the state security services, it can be presumed that most of these clerics believe that the Crown Prince’s initiative is “haram”, or forbidden by Islamic law (Sharia).

Undermining The Basis Of Saudi Stability

This pretext – that someone, let alone a professed Muslim, is encouraging and/or engaging in prohibited behavior – has been used as the rallying cry for organizing jihadi terrorist wars in “Syraq” and Yemen, so it can reasonably be anticipated that something similar of the sort might be planned against the Saudi monarchy if it can’t control the reactions of the Wahhabi-Takfiri clergy. It’s at this point where it’s relevant to briefly reference Saudi Arabia’s political structure, which is less of an authoritarian dictatorship than it is an authoritarian power tandem between the royals and the clerics. This alliance between the Saud family and the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab forms the political basis of the Kingdom, with each side delineating certain spheres of internal influence for themselves.

This was a stable enough arrangement (in a relative sense) up until Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman decided to push through the socio-economic reforms inherent in his Vision 2030 agenda, as the clerics have come to see this as a de-facto power grab – even a “soft coup”, if one will – by the monarchy over the previously agreed upon domain of the clergy. It’s in view of this why the issue of allowing women to drive is so dangerous for Saudi stability – not because of any misogynist reasons but due to the explosive reaction that it could provoke from the Wahabbi clerics. That’s probably why the Kingdom carried out its recent crackdown against some religious leaders, prudently expecting that the most extreme among them might seek to rally rioters around their cause of Takfiri demagoguery in seeking to overthrow the monarchy once it was announced that women will soon be allowed to drive.

Multipolar Ramifications

There are inarguably some observers who might feel a touch of schadenfreude at Saudi Arabia’s prospective domestic destabilization because of what it’s done in the Mideast and even to its own people (Shiites and women), but the fact remains that any forthcoming monarchy-cleric conflict would affect more than just the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s top oil suppliers and is endowed with a geostrategic location at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia. In the past year, the country has also grown incredibly close to both Russia and China, so any Saudi unrest would assuredly harm their long-term multipolar interests as well.

Regarding Russia, Riyadh agreed to an unprecedented OPEC output deal with Moscow and even renewed it after its expiration, is coordinating with the Russian Foreign Ministry over unifying the Syrian “opposition”, signed an unspecified $3.5 billion arms agreement with it this summer, is dispatching its King to Russia for the first time in history, and even plans to hold its first-ever military-technical forum with Russia by the end of the year. Concerning China, the People’s Republic is building an armed drone factory in Saudi Arabia, the King just visited Beijingearlier this year, and both sides signed two separate series of agreements totaling over $130 billion in the past six months alone.

“Balkanizing” The Arabian Peninsula

The most immediate geopolitical consequence of pronounced monarchy-cleric unrest in Saudi Arabia would be the “Balkanization” of the Arabian Peninsula into a collection of emirates, an outcome which mirrors what would happen if the US were ever successful in turning the manufactured Gulf Cold War into a hot one. The UAE, which masterminded the Saudi-Qatari tensions, is unique in the Mideast because it’s essentially a collection of emirates which function as a semi-united entity, and this creative governing model could be replicated all across the territory of a “Balkanized” Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to extend Abu Dhabi’s reach further inland into the peninsula and its rich natural resources.

In addition, the spread of the Emirati system throughout this strategic corner of the Mideast might also create a structural precedent for dividing and ruling other parts of this fractured region at large, particularly in Yemen and “Syraq”.

Therefore, the unleashing of “calculated-controlled chaos” in Saudi Arabia could be part of the US’ plans for geopolitically reengineering a so-called “New Middle East” modelled along the lines of implementing a hybrid Emirati-“Identity Federalized” system.

This can’t happen so long as Saudi Arabia remains unified, ergo the interest that the US and its regional allies have in dismembering it, a scenario which they might try to advance by capitalizing off of the hardcore Wahhabi clerics’ opposition to the Kingdom’s recent decree allowing women to drive.

Concluding Thoughts

It would be difficult to find anyone who isn’t applauding Saudi Arabia’s latest socio-cultural reform in granting women the right to drive, despite the cynicism about it being long overdue and not going far enough. Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman is serious about fulfilling the Vision 2030 initiative that he’s staked his legacy on, which therefore requires embarking on transformational changes within the Kingdom which come up against the ultra-hardline Wahhabi dogma preached by part of the clerical half of his country’s power tandem. It was already anticipated that this would result in a strong backlash from that sector, which explains the preemptive crackdown that Riyadh commenced against what it believed would be some of the key figures leading the Takfiri demagoguery against the monarchy.

Ultimately, however, Saudi Arabia will only be saved from the boomerang of Wahhabi destabilization if it can succeed in winning over relatively “moderate” clerics, guaranteeing the support of the military and anti-terrorist special forces, and genuinely securing the backing of the country’s growing youth demographic. This would in turn allow the authorities to isolate the fundamental preachers, effectively deal with their radicalized and militant followers, and count on the support of the masses in a similar manner as President Erdogan did in masterfully employing “democratic security” mechanisms to counteract the failed pro-US coup against him in summer 2016.

Given how “provocative” Riyadh’s latest reform is in the context of the country’s delicate power tandem, especially in terms of how it could easily be interpreted as the monarchy overstepping its agreed-upon boundaries with the clergy in an arguable “soft coup” attempt, it’s plain to see why allowing women to drive is indeed a dangerous step to take, which is why the authorities should be commended for going through with this move. There’s still an ever-present potential for destabilization despite the preemptive crackdown so Saudi Arabia isn’t out of the woods just yet, but any forthcoming anti-government protests led by the Wahhabi clergy would be a red flag indicating that the US has finally commenced a regime change operation against its long-time allies in Riyadh.

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.

All images in this article are from the author.

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This past week Trump introduced his long awaited Tax Cut, estimated between $2.0 to $2.4 trillion. Like so many other distortions of the truth, Trump claimed his plan would benefit the middle class, not the rich—the latest in a long litany of lies by this president.

Contradicting Trump, the independent Tax Policy Center has estimated in just the first year half of the $2 trillion plus Trump cuts will go to the wealthiest 1% households that annually earn more than $730,000. That’s an immediate income windfall to the wealthiest 1% households of 8.5%, according to the Tax Policy Center.  But that’s only in the first of ten years the cuts will be in effect. It gets worse over time.

According to the Tax Policy Center,

“Taxpayers in the top one percent (incomes above $730,000), would receive about 50 percent of the total tax benefit [in 2018]”.  However, “By 2027, the top one percent would get 80 percent of the plan’s tax cuts while the share for middle-income households would drop to about five percent.”

By the last year of the cuts, 2027, on average the wealthiest 1% household would realize $207,000, and the even wealthier 0.1% would realize an income gain of $1,022,000.

When confronted with these facts on national TV this past Sunday, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, quickly backtracked and admitted he could not guarantee every middle class family would see a tax cut. Right. That’s because 15-17 million (12%) of US taxpaying households in the US will face a tax hike in the first year of the cuts. In the tenth and last year, “one in four middle class families would end up with higher taxes”.

The US Economic ‘Troika’

The Trump Plan is actually the product of the former Goldman-Sachs investment bankers who have been in charge of Trump’s economic policy since he came into office. Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, and Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s economic council, are the two authors of the Trump tax cuts. They put it together.  They are also both former top executives of the global shadow bank called Goldman Sachs. Together with the other key office determining US economic policy, the US central bank, held by yet another ex-Goldman Sachs senior exec, Bill Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve bank, the Goldman-Sachs trio of Mnuchin-Cohn-Dudley constitute what might be called the ‘US Troika’ for domestic economic policy.

The Trump tax proposal is therefore really a big bankers tax plan—authored by bankers, in the interest of bankers and financial investors (like Trump himself), and overwhelmingly favoring the wealthiest 1%.

Given that economic policy under Trump is being driven by bankers, it’s not surprising that the  CEO of the biggest US banks, Morgan Stanley, admitted just a few months ago that a reduction of the corporate nominal income tax rate from the current 35% nominal rate to a new nominal rate of 20% will provide the bank an immediate windfall gain of 15%-20% in earnings. And that’s just the nominal corporate rate cut proposed by Trump. With loopholes, it’s no doubt more.

The Trump-Troika’s Triple Tax-Cut Trifecta for the 1%

The Trump Troika has indicated it hopes to package up and deliver the trillions of $ to their 1% friends by Christmas 2017. Their gift will consist of three major tax cuts for the rich and their businesses. A Trump-Troika Tax Cut ‘Trifecta’ of $ trillions.

1.The Corporate Tax Cuts

The first of the three main elements is a big cut in the corporate income tax nominal rate, from current 35% to 20%. In addition, there’s the elimination of what is called the ‘territorial tax’ system, which is just a fancy phrase for ending the fiction of the foreign profits tax.  Currently, US multinational corporations hoard a minimum of $2.6 trillion of profits offshore and refuse to pay US taxes on those profits. In other words, Congress and presidents for decades have refused to enforce the foreign profits tax. Now that fiction will be ended by officially eliminating taxes on their profits. They’ll only pay taxes on US profits, which will create an even greater incentive for them to shift operations and profits to their offshore subsidiaries. But there’s more for the big corporations.

The Trump plan also simultaneously proposes what it calls a ‘repatriation tax cut’. If the big tech, pharma, banks, and energy companies bring back some of their reported $2.6 trillion (an official number which is actually more than that), Congress will require they pay only a 10% tax rate—not the current 35% rate or even Trump’s proposed 20%–on that repatriated profits. No doubt the repatriation will be tied to some kind of agreement to invest the money in the US economy. That’s how they’ll sell it to the American public.  But that shell game was played before, in 2004-05, under George W. Bush.  The same ‘repatriation’ deal was then legislated, to return the $700 billion then stuffed away in corporate offshore subsidiaries. About half the $700 billion was brought back, but US corporations did not invest it in jobs in the US as they were supposed to. They used the repatriated profits to buy up their competitors (mergers and acquisitions), to pay out dividends to stockholders, and to buy back their stock to drive equity prices and the stock market to new heights in 2005-07. The current Trump ‘territorial tax repeal/repatriation’ boondoggle will turn out just the same as it did in 2005.

2. Non-Incorporate Business Tax Cuts

The second big business class tax windfall in the Trump-Goldman Sachs tax giveaway for the rich is the proposal to reduce the top nominal tax rate for non-corporate businesses, like proprietorships and partnerships, whose business income (aka profits) is treated like personal income. This is called the ‘pass through business income’ provision.

That’s a Trump tax cut for unincorporated businesses—like doctors, law firms, real estate investment partnerships, etc. 40% of non-corporate income is currently taxed at 39.6% (the top personal income tax rate). Trump proposes to reduce that nominal rate to 25%.  So non-incorporate businesses too will get an immediately 14.6% cut, nearly matching the 15% rate cut for corporate businesses.

In the case of both corporate and non-corporate companies we’re talking about ‘nominal’ tax rate cuts of 14.6% and 15%.  The ‘effective’ tax rate is what they actually pay in taxes—i.e. after loopholes, after their high paid tax lawyers take a whack at their tax bill, after they cleverly divert their income to their offshore subsidiaries and refuse to pay the foreign profits tax, and after they stuff away whatever they can in offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, and a dozen other island nations worldwide.

For example, Apple Corporation alone is hoarding $260 billion in cash at present—95% of which it keeps offshore to avoid paying Uncle Sam taxes. Big multinational companies like Apple, i.e. virtually all the big tech companies, big Pharma corporations, banks and oil companies, pay no more than 12-13% effective tax rates today—not the 35% nominal rate.

Tech, big Pharma, banks and oil companies are the big violators of offshore cash hoarding/tax avoidance schemes. Microsoft’s effective global tax rate last year was only 12%. IBM’s even less, at 10%.  The giant drug company, Pfizer paid 18% and the oil company, Chevron 14%.  One of the largest US companies in the world, General Electric, paid only 1%.  When their nominal rate is reduced to 20% under the Trump plan, they’ll pay even less, likely in the single digits, if that.

Corporations and non-corporate businesses are the institutional conduit for passing income to their capitalist owners and managers. The Trump corporate and business taxes means companies immediately get to keep at least 15% more of their income for themselves—and more in ‘effective’ rate terms. That means they get to distribute to their executives and big stockholders and partners even more than they have in recent years.  And in recent years that has been no small sum. For example, just corporate dividend payouts and stock buybacks have totaled more than $1 trillion on average for six years since 2010! A total of more than $6 trillion.

But all that’s only the business tax cut side of the Trump plan.  There’s a third major tax cut component of the Trump plan—i.e. major cuts in the Personal Income Tax that accrue overwhelmingly to the richest 1% households.

3. Personal Income Tax Cuts for the 1%

There are multiple measures in the Trump-Troika proposal that benefits the 1% in the form of personal income tax reductions. Corporations and businesses get to keep more income from the business tax cuts, to pass on to their shareholders, investors, and senior managers. The latter then get to keep more of what’s passed through and distributed to them as a result of the personal income tax cuts.

The first personal tax cut boondoggle for the 1% wealthiest households is the Trump proposal to reduce the ‘tax income brackets’ from seven to three. The new brackets would be 35%, 25%, and 12%.

Whenever brackets are reduced, the wealthiest always benefit. The current top bracket, affecting households with a minimum of $418,000 annual income, would be reduced from the current 39.6% to 35%. In the next bracket, those with incomes of 191,000 to 418,000 would see their tax rate (nominal again) cut from 28% to 25%. However, the 25% third bracket would apply to annual incomes as low as $38,000.  That’s the middle and working class. So households with $38,000 annual incomes would pay the same rate as those with more than $400,000. Tax cuts for the middle class, did Trump say?  Only tax rate reductions beginning with those with $191,000 incomes and the real cuts for those over $418,000!

But the cuts in the nominal tax rate for the top 1% to 5% households are only part of the personal income tax windfall for the rich under the Trump plan. The really big tax cuts for the 1% come in the form of the repeal of the Inheritance Tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax, as well as Trump’s allowing the ‘carried interest’ tax loophole for financial speculators like hedge fund managers and private equity CEOs to continue.

The current Inheritance Tax applies only to those with estates of $11 million or more, about 0.2 of all the taxpaying households. So its repeal is clearly a windfall for the super rich.  The Alternative Minimum Tax is designed to ensure the super rich pay something, after they manipulate the tax loopholes, shelter their income offshore in tax havens, or simply engage in tax fraud by various other means. Now that’s gone as well under the Trump plan. ‘Carried interest’, a loophole, allows big finance speculators, like hedge fund managers, to avoid paying the corporate tax rate altogether, and pay a maximum of 20% on their hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars of income every year.

Who Pays?

As previously noted, folks with $91,000 a year annual income get no tax rate cuts. They still will pay the 25%. And since that is what’s called ‘earned’ (wage and salary) income, they don’t get the loopholes to manipulate, like those with ‘capital incomes’ (dividends, capital gains, rents, interest, etc.). What they get is called deductions.  But under the Trump plan, the deductions for state and local taxes, for state sales taxes, and apparently for excess medical costs will all disappear. The cost of that to middle and working class households is estimated at $1 trillion over the decade.

Trump claims the standard deduction will be doubled, and that will benefit the middle class. But estimates reveal that a middle class family with two kids will see their standard deduction reduced from $28,900 to $24,000. But I guess that’s just ‘Trump math’.

The general US taxpayer will also pay for the trillions of dollars that will be redistributed to the 1% and their companies.  It’s estimated the federal government deficit will increase by $2.4 trillion over the decade as a result of the Trump plan.   Republicans in Congress have railed over the deficits and federal debt, now at $20 trillion, for years.  But they are conspicuously quiet now about adding $2.4 trillion more—so long as it the result of tax giveaways to themselves, their 1% friends, and their rich corporate election campaign contributors.

And both wings of the Corporate Party of America—aka Republicans and Democrats—never mention the economic fact that since 2001, 60% of US federal government deficits, and therefore the US debt of $20 trillion, are attributable to tax cuts by George W. Bush and Barack Obama: more than $3.5 trillion under Bush and more than $7 trillion under Obama. (The remaining $10 trillion of the US debt due to war and defense spending, price gouging by the medical industry and big pharma driving up government costs for Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance, bailouts of the big banks in 2008-09, and interest payments on the debt).

The 35-Year Neoliberal Tax Offensive

Tax cutting for business classes and the 1% has always been a fundamental element of Neoliberal economic policy ever since the Reagan years (and actually late Jimmy Carter period). Major tax cut legislation occurred in 1981, 1986, and 1997-98 under Clinton. George W. Bush then cut taxes by $3.4 trillion in 2001-04, 80% of which went to the wealthiest households and businesses.  He cut taxes another $180 billion in 2008. Obama cut another $300 billion in his 2009 so-called recovery program. When that faltered, it was another $800 billion at year end 2010.  He then extended the Bush tax cuts that were scheduled to expire in 2011 two more years. That costs $450 billion each year. And in 2013, cutting a deal with Republicans called the ‘fiscal cliff’ settlement, he extended the Bush tax cuts of the prior decade for another ten years. That cost a further $5 trillion.  Now Trump wants even more. He promised $5 trillion in tax cuts during his election campaign. So the current proposal is only half of what he has in mind perhaps.

Neoliberal tax cutting in the US has also been characterized by the ‘tax cut shell game’. The shell game is played several ways.

In the course of major tax cut legislation, the elites and their lobbyists alternate their focus on cutting rates and on correcting tax loopholes.  They raise rates but expand loopholes. When the public becomes aware of the outrageous loopholes, they then eliminate some loopholes but simultaneously reduce the tax rates on the rich.  When the public complains of too low tax rates for the rich, they raise the rates but quietly expand the loopholes. They play this shell game so the outcome is always a net gain for corporations and the rich.

Since Reagan and the advent of neoliberal tax policy, the corporate income tax share of total US government revenues has fallen from more than 20% to single digits well below 10%. Conversely, the payroll tax has doubled from 22% to more than 40%.  A similar shift within the personal income tax, steadily around 40% of government revenues, has also occurred. The wealthy pay less a share of the total and the middle class pays more.   Along the way, token concessions to the very low end of working poor are introduced, to give the appearance of fairness. But the middle class, the $38 to $91,000 nearly 100 million taxpaying households foot the bill for both the 1% and the bottom.  This pattern was set in motion under Reagan. His proposed $752 billion in tax cuts in 1981-82 were adjusted in 1986, but the net outcome was more for the rich and their corporations. That pattern has continued under Clinton, Bush, Obama and now proposed under Trump.

To cover the shell game, an overlay of ideology covers up what’s going on. There’s the false argument that ‘tax cuts create jobs’, for which there’s no empirical evidence.  There’s the claim US multinational corporations pay a double tax compared to their competitors, when in fact they effectively pay less. There’s the lie that if corporate taxes are cut they will automatically invest the savings, when in fact what they do is invest offshore, divert the savings to stock and bond and other financial markets, boost their dividend and stock buybacks, or stuff the savings in their offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes.

All these neoliberal false claims, arguments, and outright lies continue today to justify the Trump-Goldman Sachs tax plan—which is just the latest iteration of neoliberal tax policy and tax offensive in the US.  The consequences of the Trump plan, if it is passed, will be the same as the previous tax giveaways to the 1% and their companies:  it will redistribute income massively from the middle and working classes to the rich. Income inequality will continue to worsen dramatically.  US multinational corporations will begin again to divert profits, and investment, offshore; profits brought back untaxed will result in mergers and acquisitions, dividend payouts, and financial markets investment.  No real jobs will be created in the US.  The wealthy will continue to pump their savings into financial asset markets, causing further bubbles in stocks, exchange traded funds, bonds, derivatives and the like.  The US economy will continue to slow and become more unstable financially.  And there will be another financial crash and great recession—or worse.  Only this time, the vast majority of US households—i.e. the middle and working classes—will be even worse off and more unable to weather the next economic storm.

Nothing will change so long as the Corporate Party of America is allowed to continue its neoliberal tax giveaways, its tax cutting ‘shell games’, and is allowed to continue to foment its ideological cover up.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes?: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017, and the previously  published ‘Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges’, October 2016, and ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, January 2016, also by Clarity press. More information is available at Claritypress.com/Rasmus. For more analyses on the Trump and neoliberal taxation, listen to Dr. Rasmus’s, September 29, 2017 radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network at http://alternativevisions.podbean.com. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his website is http://kyklosproductions.com.

Featured image is from TheFreeThoughtProject.com.

Many readers likely never heard the name of the remarkable Serbia-born political operator named Srđa Popović. Yet he and his organization, CANVAS, have played a lead role in most every CIA-backed Color Revolution since he led the toppling of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, at least fifty according to last count. Now he has turned his sights on Hungary and Hungary’s popular and defiant Prime Minister Victor Orban.

On September 8, the professional regime-change specialist Srđa Popović came to Budapest and joined with the anti-Orban opposition groups in front of the Hungarian Parliament. It‘s clear that Popović was not in town to promote his Hungarian book on nonviolent regime change but rather to give aid to the anti-Orban parties before Hungarian elections in spring of 2018.

Because of the manufactured aura of “hip doer-of-good-deeds” surrounding the personality of Srđa Popović, it’s useful to look closely at who sponsored his remarkable career since he founded a tiny Belgrade student opposition NGO called Otpor! in 1998 with its now famous clenched fist logo. The career of Srđa Popović from 2000 until today suggest a remarkably dishonest manipulator in the service of foreign intelligence agencies and governments, despite his vehement claims otherwise.

Serbia’s Otpor!

Popović first came to international notice as the founder of the Belgrade student political activist organization Otpor! which means “Resistance!” in Serbian. In October 1998 Popović founded Otpor!, initially as a student protest group at Belgrade University dealing with student grievances. That was soon to change. He and other Otpor founders were trained in the methods of US regime-change specialist Gene Sharp founder of the Albert Einstein Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts and by US State Department soft coup specialists such as Belgrade Ambassador Richard Miles and other trained US intelligence operatives, including election specialists and public relations image makers.

Guiding Otpor!’s Milošević ouster operation, US Ambassador to Serbia Richard Miles was a specialist in regime change, far more so than in classical diplomacy. He orchestrated the CIA coup in Azerbaijan that brought Aliyev to power in 1993 before arriving in Belgrade, and after that went on to orchestrate the CIA coup in Georgia that brought US asset Mikheil Saakashvili to power.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), widely known as a CIA front, had channeled the Serb Otpor! Millions of dollars in funds through commercial contractors and through the US-government-financed NGOs: the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. The Open Society Institute of George Soros was also funneling money into Popović ’s Otpor! for the toppling of Milosevic. I have yet to find a CIA and US State Department regime change or Color Revolution in which the “democracy-building” foundations of Soros were not in a kind of harmony with the Washington State Department and CIA agenda. Maybe just a coincidence.

The NED with all its affiliates was a project of Ronald Reagan CIA head, Bill Casey, in the early 1980’s to conceal CIA regime change operations around the world behind the front of a “private” democracy NGO, the NED. Allen Weinstein, cofounder of the NED admitted to the Washington Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

According to Michael Dobbs, who was foreign investigative reporter for the Washington Post during the Milosevic ouster, the IRI paid for Popović and some two-dozen other Otpor! leaders to attend a training seminar on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest in October,1999. There Popović and the other handpicked Serbian students received training in such matters as how to organize a strike and how to communicate with symbols, such as the clenched fist that became their logo. They learned how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime.

The principal lecturer at the secret Hilton Hotel meeting was Gene Sharp’s associate, retired US Army Col. Robert Helvey, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who trained and then used the Otpor! activists to distribute 70,000 copies of a manual on nonviolent resistance in Serb translation. Helvey worked with Gene Sharp, founder of the controversial Albert Einstein Institution, teaching techniques to the US government to conceal its coup d’états under the guise of nonviolence. Sharp was described by Helvey as “the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement,” a reference to the renowned Prussian military strategist.

Popović and his Otpor! NGO were recipients of a major share of over $41 million US government money for their “democracy-building” campaign in Serbia. Dobbs describes the US involvement:

Behind the seeming spontaneity of the street uprising that forced Milošević to respect the results of a hotly contested presidential election on September 24 was a carefully researched strategy put together by Serbian democracy activists with active assistance of Western advisers and pollsters… US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across Serbia.

In short, Popović began his revolution-making career as a regime change specialist in an operation funded by the CIA, US State Department, US Government NGOs including the infamous NED and the Open Society Institute. The question is what did Srđa Popović do after his first helpful service to Washington in 2000?

Globalization of revolutions

After his success in getting rid of Milosevic for his US Government sponsors, Popović created a new organization called CANVAS. He decided to globalize his business model that worked so well in Belgrade in 2000, to make himself an international “go to” person for making US State Department fake democracy regime change. CANVAS or the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies calls itself a non-profit, non-governmental, “educational institution focused on the use of nonviolent conflict.” According to Wikipedia, CANVAS seeks to “educate pro-democracy activists around the world in what it regards as the universal principles for success in nonviolent struggle.”

Popović and CANVAS claim that at least 50% of their obviously substantial funding for this philanthropic work comes from Popović ’s Otpor ally, Slobodan Đinović, co-chair of CANVAS and listed as CEO of something called Orion Telecom in Belgrade. A Standard & Poors Bloomberg business search reveals no information about Orion Telecom other than the fact it is wholly-owned by an Amsterdam-listed holding called Greenhouse Telecommunications Holdings B.V. where the only information given is that the same Slobodan Đinović is CEO in a holding described only as providing “alternative telecommunication services in the Balkans.” It sounds something like a corporate version of the famous Russian matryoshka doll nested companies to hide something.

Leaving aside the unconvincing statement by Popović ’s CANVAS that half their funds come from Dinovic’s selfless generosity from his fabulous success as telecom CEO in Serbia, that leaves the other roughly 50% of CANVAS funds unaccounted for, as Popović declines to reveal the sources beyond claiming they are all private and non-government. Of course the Washington NGO is legally private though its funds mainly come from USAID. Of course the Soros Open Society Foundations are private. Could these be some of the private patrons of his CANVAS? We don’t know as he refuses to disclose in any legally auditable way.

There is no charge for CANVAS workshops and its revolutionary know-how can be downloaded for free on the Internet. This generosity, when combined with the countries CANVAS has trained regime-change opposition group “pro-democracy activists” suggests that the other 50%, if not more, of CANVAS funding comes from money channels that lead at least in part back to the US State Department and CIA. The Washington Freedom House is known to have financed at least a part of the activities of CANVAS. Freedom House, closely tied to the US neo-conservative war lobby, gets most of its funding from the US Government.

Popović’s CANVAS claims to have trained “pro-democracy activists” from more than 50 countries, including Ukraine, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Burma (actually the legal name since independence from the British is Myanmar but Washington insists on the colonial name), Ukraine, Georgia, Eritrea, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Popović ’s CANVAS was involved as well in unsuccessful attempts to start Color Revolution regime change against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and the opposition in the failed 2009 Iran Green Revolution.

Every one of those countries happen to also be targets for Washington regime-change of governments who refuse to toe the Washington line on key foreign policy issues, or which contain vital raw materials such as oil, natural gas or strategic minerals.

Goldman Sachs and Stratfor

Even more interesting details recently came to light on the intimate links between the US “intelligence consultancy”, Stratfor—known as the ”Shadow CIA” for its corporate clients which include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and U.S. government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

It was revealed in a huge release of internal memos from Stratfor in 2012, some five million emails provided them by the hacker community Anonymous, that Popović, after creating CANVAS also cultivated very close relations with Stratfor. According to the Stratfor internal emails, Popović worked for Stratfor to spy on opposition groups.

Revealed in the same Stratfor emails by Wikileaks was the intriguing information that one of the “golden geese” funders of the mysterious CANVAS was a Wall Street bank named Goldman Sachs. Satter Muneer, a Goldman Sachs partner, is cited by Stratfor’s then-Eurasia Analyst Marko Papic. Papic, asked by a Stratfor colleague whether Muneer was the “golden goose” money behind CANVAS, writes back, “They have several golden gooses I believe. He is for sure one of them.”

Now the very remarkable Mr Popović brings his dishonest career to Hungary where, not a dictator, but a very popular true democrat who offers his voters choices, is the target for Popović’ peculiar brand of US State Department fake democracy. This will not at all be as easy as toppling Milošević, even if he has the help of student activists being trained at Soros’ Central European University in Budapest.

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.”

Featured image is from the author.

This text was originally published in November 2010.

Let us reflect on president Trump’s recent threats at the UN General Assembly to wage a nuclear war against North Korea, which could lead to triggering a Third World War.

In the words of Fidel Castro, “In a Nuclear War the Collateral Damage would be the Life of All Humanity”

Introductory Note

From October 12 to 15, 2010, I had extensive and detailed discussions with Fidel Castro in Havana, pertaining to the dangers of nuclear war, the global economic crisis and the nature of the New World Order. These meetings resulted in a wide-ranging and fruitful interview.

The first part of this interview published by Global Research and Cuba Debate focuses on the dangers of nuclear war.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads. We have reached a critical turning point in our history.

This interview with Fidel Castro provides an understanding of the nature of modern warfare: Were a military operation to be launched against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the US and its allies would be unable to win a conventional war, with the possibility that this war could evolve towards a nuclear war.

The details of ongoing war preparations in relation to Iran have been withheld from the public eye.

How to confront the diabolical and absurd proposition put forth by the US administration that using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran will  “make the World a safer place”? 

A central concept put forth by Fidel Castro in the interview is the ‘Battle of Ideas”. The leader of the Cuban Revolution believes that only a far-reaching “Battle of Ideas” could  change the course of World history. The  objective is to prevent the unthinkable, a nuclear war which threatens to destroy life on earth.

The corporate media is involved in acts of camouflage. The devastating impacts of a nuclear war are either trivialized or not mentioned. Against this backdrop, Fidel’s message to the World must be heard;  people across the land, nationally and internationally, should understand the gravity of the present situation and act forcefully at all levels of society to reverse the tide of war.

The “Battle of Ideas” is part of a revolutionary process. Against a barrage of media disinformation, Fidel Castro’s resolve is to spread the word far and wide, to inform world public opinion, to “make the impossible possible”, to thwart a military adventure which in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity.  

When a US sponsored nuclear war becomes an “instrument of peace”, condoned and accepted by the World’s institutions and the highest authority including the United Nations, there is no turning back: human society has indelibly been precipitated headlong onto the path of self-destruction.

Fidel’s “Battle of Ideas” must be translated into a worldwide movement. People must mobilize against this diabolical military agenda.

This war can be prevented if people pressure their governments and elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens regarding the implications of a thermonuclear war, initiate debate and discussion within the armed forces.

What is required is a mass movement of people which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of war, a global people’s movement which criminalizes war. 

In his October 15 message (see video below), Fidel Castro warned the World on the dangers of nuclear war:

“There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people. In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity. Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!”

The “Battle of Ideas” consists in confronting the war criminals in high office, in breaking the US-led consensus in favor of a global war, in changing the mindset of hundreds of millions of people, in abolishing nuclear weapons.  In essence, the “Battle of Ideas” consists in restoring the truth and establishing the foundations of World peace.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG),

Montreal, Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2015 

“The conventional war would be lost by the US and the nuclear war is no alternative for anyone.  On the other hand, nuclear war would inevitably become global”

“I think nobody on Earth wishes the human species to disappear.  And that is the reason why I am of the opinion that what should disappear are not just nuclear weapons, but also conventional weapons.  We must provide a guarantee for peace to all peoples without distinction

“In a nuclear war the collateral damage would be the life of humankind.  Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!”

“It is about demanding that the world is not led into a nuclear catastrophe, it is to preserve life.”

Fidel Castro Ruz, Havana, October 2010. 

 

CONVERSATIONS

Professor Michel Chossudovsky: I am very honored to have this opportunity to exchange views concerning several fundamental issues affecting human society as a whole. I think that the notion that you have raised in your recent texts regarding the threat against Homo sapiens is fundamental.

What is that threat, the risk of a nuclear war and the threat to human beings, to Homo sapiens?

Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz: Since quite a long time –years I would say- but especially for some months now, I began to worry about the imminence of a dangerous and probable war that could very rapidly evolve towards a nuclear war.

Before that I had concentrated all my efforts on the analysis of the capitalist system in general and the methods that the imperial tyranny has imposed on humanity.  The United States applies to the world the violation of the most fundamental rights.

During the Cold War, no one spoke about war or nuclear weapons; people talked about an apparent peace, that is, between the USSR and the United States, the famous MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) was guaranteed.  It seemed that the world was going to enjoy the delights of a peace that would last for an unlimited time.

Michel Chossudovsky: … This notion of “mutual assured destruction” ended with the Cold War and after that the nuclear doctrine was redefined, because we never really thought about a nuclear war during the Cold War.  Well, obviously, there was a danger –as even Robert McNamara said at some point in time.

But, after the Cold War, particularly after September 11 [2001],  America’s nuclear doctrine started to be redefined.

Fidel Castro Ruz: You asked me when was it that we became aware of the imminent risk of a nuclear war, and that dates back to the period I talked to you about previously, barely six months ago.  One of the things that called our attention the most regarding such a war danger was the sinking of the Cheonan during a military maneuver. That was the flagship of the South Korean Navy; an extremely sophisticated vessel.  It was at the time when we found on GlobalReasearch the journalist’s report that offered a clear and truly coherent information about the sinking of the Cheonan, which could not have been the work of a submarine that had been manufactured by the USSR more than sixty years ago, using an outdated technology which did not require the sophisticated equipment that could be detected by the Cheonan, during a joint maneuver with the most modern US vessels.

The provocation against the Democratic Republic of Korea added up to our own earlier concerns about an aggression against Iran.  We had been closely following the political process in that country. We knew perfectly well what happened there during the 1950s, when Iran nationalized the assets of the British Petroleum in that country- which at the time was called the Anglo Persian Oil Company.

In my opinion, the threats against Iran became imminent in June [2010], after the adoption of Resolution 1929 on the 9th of June, 2010, when the United Nations Security Council condemned Iran for the research it is carrying out and the production of small amounts of 20 per cent enriched uranium, and accused it of being a threat to the world.  The position adopted by each and every member of the Security Council is known: 12 member States voted in favor –five of them had the right to veto; one of them abstained and 2 –Brazil and Turkey- voted against. Shortly after the Resolution was adopted –the most aggressive resolution of of them all– one US aircraft carrier, embedded in a combat unit, plus a nuclear submarine, went through the Suez Canal with the help of the Egyptian government.  Naval units from Israel joined, heading for the Persian Gulf and the seas nearby Iran.

The sanctions imposed by the United States and its NATO allies against Iran was absolutely abusive and unjust.  I cannot understand the reason why Russia and China did not veto the dangerous Resolution 1929 of the United Nations Security Council.  In my opinion this has complicated the political situation terribly and has placed the world on the brink of war.

I remember previous  Israeli attacks against the Arab nuclear research centers.  They first attacked and destroyed the one in Iraq in June 1981.  They did not ask for anyone’s permission, they did not talk to anybody; they just attacked them and the Iraqis had to endure the strikes.

In 2007 they repeated that same operation against a research center that was being built by Syria.  There is something in that episode that I really don’t quite understand:  what was not clear to me were the underlying tactics, or the reasons why Syria did not denounce the Israeli attack against that research center where, undoubtedly, they were doing something, they were working on something for which, as it is known, they were receiving some cooperation from North Korea.  That was something legal; they did not commit any violation.

I am saying this here and I am being very honest: I don’t understand why this was not denounced, because, in my opinion, that would have been important. Those are two very important antecedents.

I believe there are many reasons to think that they will try to do the same against Iran:  destroy its research centers or the power generation centers of that country.  As is known, the power generation uranium residues are the raw material to produce plutonium.

 

Michel Chossudovsky:  It is true that that Security Council Resolution has to some extent contributed to cancelling the program of military cooperation that Russia and China have with Iran, especially Russia cooperates with Iran in the context of the Air Defence System by supplying its S-300 System.

I remember that just after the Security Council’s decision, with the endorsement of China and Russia, the Russian minister of  Foreign Affairs said: “Well, we have approved the Resolution but that is not going to invalidate our military cooperation with Iran”. That was in June.  But a few months later, Moscow confirmed that military cooperation [with Iran] was going to be frozen, so now Iran is facing a very serious situation, because it needs Russian technology to maintain its security, namely its [S-300] air defence system.

But I think that all the threats against Russia and China are intent upon preventing the two countries from getting involved in the Iran issue. In other words, if there is a war with Iran  the other powers, which are China and Russia, aren’t going to intervene in any way; they will be freezing their military cooperation with Iran and therefore this is a way [for the US and NATO] of extending their war in the Middle East without there being a confrontation with China and Russia  and I think that this more or less is the scenario right now.

There are many types of threats directed against Russia and China. The fact that China’s borders are militarized –China’s South Sea, the Yellow Sea, the border with Afghanistan, and also the Straits of Taiwan- it is in some way a threat to dissuade China and Russia from playing the role of powers in world geopolitics, thus paving the way and even creating consensus in favour of a war with Iran which is happening under conditions where Iran’s  air defence system is being weakened.   [With the freeze of its military cooperation agreement with Russia] Iran is a “sitting duck” from the point of view of its ability to defend itself using its air defence system.

Fidel Castro Ruz:  In my modest and serene opinion  that resolution should have been vetoed.  Because, in my opinion, everything has become more complicated in several ways.

Militarily, because of what you are explaining regarding, for example, the commitment that existed and the contract that had been signed to supply Iran the S-300, which are very efficient anti-aircraft weapons in the first place.

There are other things regarding fuel supplies, which are very important for China, because China is the country with the highest economic growth.  Its growing economy generates greater demand for oil and gas.  Even though there are agreements with Russia for oil and gas supplies, they are also developing wind energy and other forms of renewable energy. They have enormous coal reserves;  nuclear energy will not increase much, only 5% for many years. In other words, the need for gas and oil in the Chinese economy is huge, and I cannot imagine, really, how they will be able to get all that energy, and at what price, if the country where they have important investments is destroyed by the US.  But the worst risk is the very nature of that war in Iran.  Iran is a Muslim country that has millions of trained combatants who are strongly motivated.

There are tens of millions of people who are under [military] orders,  they are being politically educated and trained, men and women alike.  There are millions of combatants trained and determined to die.  These are people who will not be intimidated and who cannot be forced to changing [their behavior]. On the other hand, there are the Afghans –they are being murdered by US drones –there are the Pakistanis, the Iraqis, who have seen one to two million compatriots die as a result of the antiterrorist war invented by Bush.  You cannot win a war against the Muslim world; that is sheer madness.

Michel Chossudovsky:  But it’s true, their conventional forces are very large,  Iran can mobilize in a single day several million troops and they are on the border with Afghanistan and Iraq, and even if there is a blitzkrieg war, the US cannot avoid a conventional war that is waged very close to its military bases in that region.

Fidel Castro Ruz: But the fact is that the US would lose that conventional war. The problem is that nobody can win a conventional war against millions of people; they would not concentrate their forces in large numbers in a single location for the Americans to kill them.

Well, I was a guerrilla fighter and I recall that I had to think seriously about how to use the forces we had and I would never have made the mistake of concentrating those forces in a single location, because the more concentrated the forces, the greater the casualties caused by weapons of mass destruction….

From left to right: Michel Chossudovsky, Randy Alonso Falcon, Fidel Castro Ruz

Michel Chossudovsky: As you mentioned previously, a matter of utmost importance: China and Russia’s decision in the Security Council, their support of Resolution 1929, is in fact harmful to them because, first, Russia cannot export weapons, thus its main source of income is now frozen.  Iran was one of the main customers or buyers of Russian weapons, and that was an important source of hard currency earnings which supported Russia`s consumer goods economy thereby covering the needs of the population.

And, on the other hand China requires access to sources of energy as you mentioned. The fact that China and Russia have accepted the consensus in the UN Security Council, is tantamount to saying: “We accept that you kill our economy and, in some ways, our commercial agreements with a third country”.  That’s very serious because it [the UNSC Resolution] not only does harm to Iran; is also harms those two countries, and I suppose –even though I am not a politician –that there must be tremendous divisions within the leadership, both in Russia and in China, for that to happen, for Russia to accept not to use its veto power in the Security Council.

I spoke with Russian journalists, who told me that there wasn’t exactly a consensus within the government per se; it was a guideline.  But there are people in the government with a different point of view regarding the interests of Russia and its stance in the UN Security Council.  How do you see this?

Fidel Castro Ruz: How do I see the general situation? The alternative in Iran –let me put it this way –the conventional war would be lost by the US and the nuclear war is not an alternative for anyone.

On the other hand, nuclear war would inevitably become global.  Thus the danger in my opinion exists with the current situation in Iran, bearing in mind the reasons you are presenting and many other facts; which brings me to the conclusion that the war would end up being a nuclear war.

Filming of Fidel’s message on October 15. From left to right: Fidel Castro, TV crew, Michel Chossudovsky, Randy Alonso Falcon

Michel Chossudovsky: In other words, since the US and its allies are unable to win the conventional war, they are going to use nuclear weapons, but that too would be a war they couldn’t win, because we are going to lose everything.

Fidel Castro Ruz: Everyone would be losing that war; that would be a war that everyone would lose. What would Russia gain if a nuclear war were unleashed over there? What would China gain?  What kind of war would that be? How would the world react? What effect would it have on the world economy? You explained it at the university when you spoke about the centralized defence system designed by the Pentagon.  It sounds like science fiction; it doesn’t even remotely resemble the last world war.  The other thing which is also very important is the attempt [by the Pentagon] to transform nuclear weapons into conventional tactical weapons.

Today, October 13th, I was reading about the same thing in a news dispatch stating that the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were drawing up strong protests about the fact that the US had just carried out subcritical nuclear tests.  They’re called subcritical, which means the use of the nuclear weapon without deploying all the energy that might be achieved with the critical mass.

It reads:  “Indignation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of a United States nuclear test.”…

 “The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that suffered a nuclear attack at the end of WW II, deplored today the nuclear test carried out by the US on September last, called sub critical because it does not unleash chain nuclear reactions.

“The test, the first of this kind in that country since 2006, took place on September 15th somewhere in Nevada, United States.  It was officially confirmed by the Department of Energy of that country, the Japan Times informed.”

What did that newspaper say?

“I deeply deplore it because I was hoping that President Barack Obama would take on the leadership in eliminating nuclear weapons”, the governor of Nagasaki, Hodo Nakamura, stated today at a press conference.

A series of news items related to that follows.

“The test has also caused several protests among the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including several survivors of the atomic bombs attacks that devastated both cities in August of 1945.

“We cannot tolerate any action of the United States that betrays President Barack Obama’s promise of moving forward to a world without nuclear arms, said Yukio Yoshioka, the deputy director of the Council for the Victims of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb.

“The government stated that it has no intention of protesting.”  It relegates the protest to a social level and then said: “With this, the number of subcritical nuclear tests made by the United States reaches the figure of 26, since July 1997 when the first of them took place.”

Now it says:

“Washington considers that these tests do not violate the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) since they do not unleash any chain reactions, and therefore do not release any nuclear energy, and so they can be considered to be laboratory tests.”

The US says that it has to make these tests because they are necessary to maintain the “security of its nuclear arsenal”, which is the same as saying: since we have these great nuclear arsenals, we are doing this in order to ensure our security.

Michel Chossudovsky:  Let us return to the issue of the threat against Iran, because you said that the US and its allies could not win a conventional war.  That is true; but nuclear weapons could be used as an alternative to conventional warfare, and this evidently is a threat against humanity, as you have emphasized in your writings.

The reason for my concern is that after the Cold War the idea of nuclear weapons with a “humanitarian face” was developed, saying that those weapons were not really dangerous, that they do not harm civilians, and in some way the nuclear weapons label was changed.  Therefore, according to their criteria, [tactical] nuclear weapons are no different from conventional weapons, and now in the military manuals they say that tactical nuclear weapons are weapons that pose no harm to civilians.

Therefore, we might have a situation in which those who decide to attack Iran with a nuclear weapon would not be aware of the consequences that this might have for the Middle East, central Asia, but also for humanity as a whole, because they are going to say: “Well, according to our criteria, these [tactical] nuclear weapons [safe for civilians] are different from those deployed during the Cold War and so, we can use them against Iran as a weapon which does not [affect civilians and] does not threaten global security.”

How do you view that?  It’s extremely dangerous, because they themselves believe their own propaganda.  It is internal propaganda within the armed forces, within the political apparatus.

When tactical nuclear weapons were recategorized in 2002-2003, Senator Edward Kennedy said at that time that it was a way of blurring the boundary between conventional and nuclear weapons.

But that’s where we are today; we are in an era where nuclear weapons are considered to be no different from the Kalashnikov. I’m exaggerating, but somehow nuclear weapons are now part of the tool box –that’s the word they use, “tool box” –and from there you choose the type of weapon you are going to use, so the nuclear weapon could be used in the conventional war theatre, leading us to the unthinkable, a nuclear war scenario on a regional level, but also with repercussions at the global level.

Fidel Castro Ruz: I heard what you said on the Round Table [Cuban TV] program about such weapons, presumably harmless to people living in the vicinity of the areas where they are to be targeted,  the power [explosive yield] could range from one-third of the one that was used in Hiroshima up to six times the power [explosive yield] of that weapon, and today we know perfectly well the terrible damage it causes.  One single bomb instantly killed 100,000 people.  Just imagine a bomb having six times the power of that one [Hiroshima bomb], or two times that power, or an equivalent power, or 30 per cent that power.  It is absurd.

There is also what you explained at the university about the attempt to present it as a humanitarian weapon that could also be available to the troops in the theatre of operations.  So at any given moment any commander in the theatre of operations could be authorized to use that weapon as one that was more efficient than other weapons, something that would be considered his duty according to military doctrine and the training he/she received at the military academies.

Michel Chossudovsky:  In that sense, I don’t think that this nuclear weapon would be used without the approval, let’s say, of the Pentagon, namely  its centralised command structures [e.g. Strategic Command]; but I do think that it could be used without the approval of the President of the United States and Commander in Chief.  In other words, it isn’t quite the same logic as that which prevailed during the Cold War where there was the Red Telephone and…

Fidel Castro Ruz: I understand, Professor, what you are saying regarding the use of that weapon as authorized by the senior levels of the Pentagon, and it seems right to me that you should make that clarification so that you won’t be blamed for exaggerating the dangers of that weapon.

But look, after one has learned about the antagonisms and arguments between the Pentagon and the President of the United States, there are really not too many doubts about what the Pentagon decision would be if the chief of the theatre of operations  requests to use that weapon because he feels it is necessary or indispensable.

Michel Chossudovsky: There is also another element.  The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons now, as far as I know, is being undertaken by several European countries which belong to NATO.  This is the case of Belgium, Holland, Turkey, Italy and Germany.  Thus, there are plenty of these “little nuclear bombs” very close to the theatre of war, and on the other hand we also have Israel.

Now then, I don’t think that Israel is going to start a war on its own; that would be impossible in terms of strategy and decision-making.  In modern warfare, with the centralization of communications, logistics and everything else, starting a major war would be a centralized decision.  However, Israel might act if the US gives Israel the green light to launch the first attack.  That’s within the realm of possibilities, even though there are some analysts who now say that the war on Iran will start in Lebanon and Syria with a conventional border war, and then that would provide the pretext for an escalation in military operations.

Fidel Castro Ruz: Yesterday, October 13th, a crowd of people welcomed Ahmadinejad in Lebanon like a national hero of that country.  I was reading a cable about that this morning.

Besides, we also know about Israel’s concerns regarding that, given the fact that the Lebanese are people with a great fighting spirit who have three times the number of reactive missiles they had in the former conflict with Israel and Lebanon, which was a great concern for Israel because they need –as the Israeli technicians have asserted – the air force to confront that weapon.  And so, they state, they could only be attacking Iran for a number of hours, not three days, because they should be paying attention to such a danger.  That’s the reason why, from these viewpoints, every day that goes by they are more concerned, because those weapons are part of the Iranian arsenal of conventional weapons. For example, among their conventional weapons, they have hundreds of rocket launchers to fight surface warships in that area of the Caspian Sea.  We know that, from the time of the Falklands war, a surface warship can dodge one, two or three rockets.  But imagine how a large warship can protect itself against a shower of weapons of that kind.  Those are rapid vessels operated by well-trained people, because the Iranians have been training people for 30 years now and they have developed efficient conventional weapons.

You yourself know that, and you know what happened during the last World War, before the emergence of nuclear weapons.  Fifty million people died as a result of the destructive power of conventional weaponry.

A war today is not like the war that was waged in the nineteenth century, before the appearance of nuclear weapons.  And wars were already highly destructive.  Nuclear arms appeared at the very last minute, because Truman wanted to use them.  He wanted to test the Hiroshima bomb, creating the critical mass from uranium, and the other one in Nagasaki, which created a critical mass from plutonium.  The two bombs killed around 100,000 persons immediately.  We don’t know how many were wounded and affected by radiation, who died later on or suffered for long years from these effects. Besides, a nuclear war would create a nuclear winter.

I am talking to you about the dangers of a war, considering  the immediate damage it might cause.  It would be enough if we only had a limited number of them, the amount of weapons owned by one of the least mighty [nuclear] powers, India or Pakistan.  Their explosion would be sufficient to create a nuclear winter from which no human being would survive.  That would be impossible, since it would last for 8 to 10 years.  In a matter of weeks the sunlight would no longer be visible.

Mankind is less than 200,000 years old.  So far everything was normalcy.  The laws of nature were being fulfilled; the laws of life developed on planet Earth for more than 3 billion years.  Men, the Homo sapiens, the intelligent beings did not exist after 8 tenths of a million years had elapsed, according to all studies.  Two hundred years ago, everything was virtually unknown.  Today we know the laws governing the evolution of the species.  Scientists, theologians, even the most devout religious people who initially echoed the campaign launched by the great ecclesiastical institutions against the Darwinian Theory, today accept the laws of evolution as real, without it preventing their sincere practice of their religious beliefs where, quite often, people find comfort for their most heartfelt hardships.

I think nobody on Earth wishes the human species to disappear.  And that is the reason why I am of the opinion that what should disappear are not just nuclear weapons, but also conventional weapons.  We must provide a guarantee for peace to all peoples without distinction, to the Iranians as well as the Israelis.  Natural resources should be distributed.  They should!  I don’t mean they will, or that it would be easy to do it.  But there would be no other alternative for humanity, in a world of limited dimensions and resources, even if all the scientific potential to create renewable sources of energy is developed. We are almost 7 billion inhabitants, and so we need to implement a demographic policy.  We need many things, and when you put them all together and you ask yourself the following question:  will human beings be capable of understanding that and overcome all those difficulties? You realize that only enthusiasm can truly lead a person to say that he or she will confront and easily resolve a problem of such proportions.

Michel Chossudovsky:  What you have just said is extremely important, when you spoke of Truman.  Truman said that Hiroshima was a military base and that there would be no harm to civilians.

This notion of collateral damage; reflects continuity in [America’s] nuclear doctrine ever since the year 1945 up until today.  That is, not at the level of reality but at the level of [military] doctrine and propaganda.  I mean, in 1945 it was said: Let’s save humanity by killing 100,000 people and deny the fact that Hiroshima was a populated city, namely that it was a military base.  But nowadays the falsehoods have become much more sophisticated, more widespread, and nuclear weapons are more advanced.  So, we are dealing with the future of humanity and the threat of a nuclear war at a global level. The lies and fiction underlying [US] political and military discourse would lead us to a Worldwide catastrophe in which politicians would be unable to make head or tails of their own lies.

Then, you said that intelligent human beings have existed for 200,000 years, but that same intelligence, which has now been incorporated in various institutions, namely the media, the intelligence services, the United Nations, happens to be what is now going to destroy us.  Because we believe our own lies, which leads us towards nuclear war, without realizing that this would be the last war, as Einstein clearly stated. A nuclear war cannot ensure the continuation of humanity; it is a threat against the world.

Fidel Castro Ruz: Those are very good words, Professor.  The collateral damage, in this case, could be humanity.

War is a crime and there is no need for any new law to describe it as such, because since Nuremberg, war has already been considered a crime, the biggest crime against humanity and peace, and the most horrible of all crimes.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  The Nuremberg texts clearly state: “War is a criminal act, it is the ultimate act of war against peace.” This part of the Nuremberg texts is often quoted. After the Second World War, the Allies wanted to use it against the conquered, and I am not saying that this is not valid, but the crimes that they committed, including the crimes committed against Germany and Japan, are never mentioned.  With a nuclear weapon, in the case of Japan.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  It is an extremely important issue for me and if we are talking about a “counter-alliance for peace”, the criminalization of war seems to me to be a fundamental aspect. I’m talking about the abolition of war; it is a criminal act that must be eliminated.

Fidel Castro Ruz –  Well, who would judge the main criminals?

Michel Chossudovsky.- The problem is that they also control the judicial system and the courts, so the judges are criminals as well. What can we do?

Fidel Castro Ruz   I say that this is part of the Battle of Ideas.

It is about demanding that the world not be spearheaded into a nuclear catastrophe, it is to preserve life.

We do not know, but we presume that if man becomes aware of his own existence, that of his people, that of his loved ones, even the U.S. military leaders would be aware of the outcome; although they are taught in life to follow orders, not infrequently genocide, as in the use of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons, because that is what they were taught in the [military] academies.

As all of this is sheer madness, no politician is exempt from the duty of conveying these truths to the people. One must believe in them, otherwise there would be nothing to fight for.        

Michel Chossudovsky .- I think what you are saying is that at the present time, the great debate in human history should focus on the danger of nuclear war that threatens the future of humanity, and that any discussion we have about basic needs or economics requires that we prevent the occurrence of war and instate global peace so that we can then plan living standards worldwide based on basic needs;  but if we do not solve the problem of war, capitalism will not survive, right?          

Fidel Castro Ruz.– No, it cannot survive, in terms of all the analysis we’ve undertaken, it cannot survive. The capitalist system and the market economy that suffocate human life, are not going to disappear overnight, but imperialism based on force, nuclear weapons and conventional weapons with modern technology, has to disappear if we want humanity to survive.

Now, there something occurring at this very moment which characterizes the Worldwide process of disinformation, and it is the following: In Chile 33 miners were trapped 700 meters underground, and the world is rejoicing at the news that 33 miners have been saved. Well, simply, what will the world do if it becomes aware that 6,877,596,300 people need to be saved, if 33 have created universal joy and all the mass media speak only of that these days, why not save the nearly 7 billion people trapped by the terrible danger of perishing in a horrible death like those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

Michel Chossudovsky. -This is also, clearly, the issue of media coverage that is given to different events and the propaganda emanating from the media.

I think it was an incredible humanitarian operation that the Chileans undertook, but it is true that if there is a threat to humanity,  as you mentioned, it  should be on the front page of every newspaper in the world because human society in its totality could be the victim of a decision that has been made, even by a three-star general who is unaware of the consequences [of nuclear weapons].

But here we are talking about how the media, particularly in the West, are hiding the most serious issue that potentially affects the world today, which is the danger of nuclear war and we must take it seriously, because both Hillary Clinton and Obama have said that they have contemplated using nuclear weapon in a so-called preventive war against Iran.

Well, how do we answer? What do you say to Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama regarding their statements pertaining to the unilateral use of nuclear weapons against Iran, a country that poses no danger to anyone?      

Fidel Castro Ruz.- Yes, I know two things: What was discussed. This has been revealed recently, namely far-reaching arguments within the Security Council of the United States.  That is the value of the book written by Bob Woodward, because it revealed how all these discussions occurred. We know the positions of Biden, Hillary, Obama, and indeed in those discussions, who was firmer against the extension of the war, who was able to argue with the military, it was Obama, that is a fact.

I am writing the latest reflection, actually, about that. The only one who got there, and gave him advice, who had been an opponent because of his Republican Party membership, was Colin Powell. He reminded him that he was the President of the United States, encouraging advice.

I think we should ensure that this message reaches everybody; what we have discussed. I think many read the articles you have published in Global Research.  I think we need to disclose, and to the extent that we have these discussions and harbor the idea of disclosure. I am delighted every time you argue, reasonably, and put forth these issues, simply, in my opinion, there is a real deficit of information for the reasons you explained.

Now, we must invent. What are the ways to make all this known? At the time of the Twelve Apostles, there were 12 and no more, and they were given the task of disseminating the teachings a preacher transmitted to them. Sure, they had hundreds of years ahead of them. We, however, we do not have that. But I was looking at the list of personalities, and there are more than 20 prominent people who have been working with Global Research, prestigious people, asking the same questions, but they do not have hundreds of years, but, well, very little time.

Michel Chossudovsky. –  The antiwar movement in the United States, Canada and Europe is divided. Some people think the threat comes from Iran, others say they [the Iranians] are terrorists, and there is a lot of disinformation in the movement itself.

Besides, at the World Social Forum the issue of nuclear war is not part of the debate between people of the Left or progressives. During the Cold War there was talk of the danger of nuclear conflict, and people had this awareness.

At the last meeting held in New York on non-proliferation, under the United Nations, the emphasis was on the nuclear threat from non-state entities, from terrorists.

President Obama said that the threat comes from Al Qaeda, which has nuclear weapons.  Also, if someone reads Obama’s speeches he is suggesting that the terrorists have the ability of producing small nuclear bombs, what they call “dirty bombs”. Well, it’s a way of [distorting the issues] and shifting the emphasis.

Fidel Castro Ruz. – That is what they tell him [Obama], that is what his own people tell him and have him believe.

Look, what do I do with the reflections? They are distributed in the United Nations, they are sent to all governments, the reflections, of course, are short, to send them to all the governments, and I know there are many people who read them. The problem is whether you are telling the truth or not. Of course, when one collects all this information in relation to a particular problem because the reflections are also diluted on many issues, but I think you have to concentrate on our part, the disclosure of essentials, I cannot cover everything.

Michel Chossudovsky. – I have a question, because there is an important aspect related to the Cuban Revolution. In my opinion, the debate on the future of humanity is also part of a revolutionary discourse.  If society as a whole were to be threatened by nuclear war, it is necessary in some form, to have a revolution at the levels of ideas as well as actions against this event, [namely nuclear war].

Fidel Castro Ruz .- We have to say, I repeat,  that humanity is trapped 800 meters underground and that we must get it out, we need to do a rescue operation. That is the message we must convey to a large number of people. If  people in large numbers believe in that message, they will do what you are doing and they will support what you are supporting. It will no longer depend on who are those who say it, but on the fact that somebody [and eventually everybody] says it.

You have to figure out how you can reach the informed masses. The solution is not the newspapers. There is the Internet, Internet is cheaper, Internet is more accessible. I approached you through the Internet looking for news, not through news agencies, not through the press, not from CNN, but news through a newsletter I receive daily articles on the Internet . Over 100 pages each day.

Yesterday you were arguing that in the United States some time ago two thirds of public opinion was against the war on Iran, and today, fifty-some percent favored military action against Iran.

Michel Chossudovsky .- What happened, even in recent months, it was said: “Yes, nuclear war is very dangerous, it is a threat, but the threat comes from Iran,” and there were signs in New York City  saying: ” Say no to nuclear Iran, “and the message of these posters was to present Iran as a threat to global security, even if the threat did not exist because they do not have nuclear weapons.

Anyway, that’s the situation, and The New York Times earlier this week published a text that says, yes, political assassinations are legal.

Then, when we have a press that gives us things like that, with the distribution that they have, it is a lot of work [on our part]. We have limited capabilities to reverse this process [of media disinformation] within the limited distribution outlets of the alternative media. In addition to that, now many of these alternative media are financed by the economic establishment.            

Fidel Castro Ruz.- And yet we have to fight.

Michel Chossudovsky .- Yes, we keep struggling, but the message was what you said yesterday. That in the case of a nuclear war, the collateral damage would be humanity as a whole.

Fidel Castro Ruz.- It would be humanity, the life of humanity.

Michel Chossudovsky.-   It is true that the Internet should continue to function as an outreach tool to avoid the war.

Fidel Castro Ruz.- Well, it’s the only way we can prevent it. If we were to create world opinion, it’s like the example I mentioned: there are nearly 7 billion people trapped 800 meters underground, we use the phenomenon of Chile to disclose these things.

Michel Chossudovsky .- The comparison you make with the rescue of 33 miners, saying that there are 33 miners below ground there to be rescued, which received extensive media coverage, and you say that we have almost 7 billion people that are  800 meters underground and do not understand what is happening, but we have to rescue them, because humanity as a whole is threatened by the nuclear weapons of the United States and its allies, because they are the ones who say they intend to use them.        

Fidel Castro Ruz.- And will use them [the nuclear weapons] if there is no opposition, if there is no resistance. They are deceived; they are drugged with military superiority and modern technology and do not know what they are doing.

They do not understand the consequences; they believe that the prevailed situation can be maintained. It is impossible.

Michel Chossudovsky. – Or they believe that this is simply some sort of conventional weapon.           

Fidel Castro Ruz. – Yes, they are deluded and believe that you can still use that weapon. They believe they are in another era, they do not remember what Einstein said when he stated he did not know with what weapons World War III would be fought with, but the World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. I added there: “… there wouldn’t be anyone to handle the sticks and stones.” That is the reality; I have it written there in the short speech you suggested I develop.

Michel Chossudovsky .- The problem I see is that the use of nuclear weapons will not necessarily lead to the end of humankind from one day to the next, because the radioactive impact is cumulative.

Fidel Castro Ruz. – Repeat that, please.

Michel Chossudovsky. – The nuclear weapon has several different consequences: one is the explosion and destruction in the theater of war, which is the phenomenon of Hiroshima, and the other are the impacts of radiation which increases over time.           

Fidel Castro Ruz.- Yes, nuclear winter, as we call it. The prestigious American researcher, University of Rutgers (New Jersey) Professor Emeritus Alan Robock irrefutably showed that the outbreak of a war between two of the eight nuclear powers who possess the least amount of weapons of this kind would result in “nuclear winter”.

He disclosed that at the fore of a group of researchers who used ultra-scientific computer models.

It would be enough to have 100 strategic nuclear weapons of the 25,000 possessed by the eight powers mentioned exploding in order to create temperatures below freezing all over the planet and a long night that would last approximately eight years.  Professor Robock exclaims that it is so terrible that people are falling into a “state of denial”, not wanting to think about it; it is easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist”.  He told me that personally, at an international conference he was giving, where I had the honor of conversing with him.

Well, but I start from an assumption: If a war breaks out in Iran, it will inevitably become nuclear war and a global war. So that’s why yesterday we were saying it was not right to allow such an agreement in the Security Council, because it makes everything easier, do you see?

Such a war in Iran today would not remain confined to the local level, because the Iranians would not give in to use of force. If it remained conventional, it would be a war the United States and Europe could not win, and I argue that it would rapidly turn into a nuclear war. If the United States were to make the mistake of using tactical nuclear weapons, there would be consternation throughout the world and the US would eventually lose control of the situation.

Obama has had a heated discussion with the Pentagon about what to do in Afghanistan; imagine Obama’s situation with American and Israeli soldiers fighting against millions of Iranians. The Saudis are not going to fight in Iran, nor are the Pakistanis or any other Arab or Muslim soldiers. What could happen is that the Yanks have serious conflicts with the Pakistani tribes which they are attacking and killing with their drones,  and they know that. When you strike a blow against those tribes, first attacking and then warning the government, not saying anything beforehand;  that is one of the things that irritates the Pakistanis. There is a strong anti-American feeling there.

It’s a mistake to think that the Iranians would give up if they used tactical nuclear weapons against them, and the world really would be shocked, but then it may be too late.

Michel Chossudovsky .- They cannot win a conventional war.          

Fidel Castro Ruz .- They cannot win.

Michel Chossudovsky. – And that we can see in Iraq; in Afghanistan they can destroy an entire country, but they cannot win from a military standpoint.          

Fidel Castro Ruz. – But to destroy it [a country] at what price, at what cost to the world, at what economic costs, in the march towards catastrophe? The problems you mentioned are compounded, the American people would react, because the American people are often slow to react, but they react in the end. The American people react to casualties, the dead.

A lot of people supported the Nixon administration during the war in Vietnam, he even suggested the use of nuclear weapons in that country to Kissinger, but he dissuaded him from taking that criminal step. The United States was obliged by the American people to end the war; it had to negotiate and had to hand over the south. Iran would have to give up the oil in the area. In Vietnam what did they hand over? An expense. Ultimately, they are now back in Vietnam, buying oil, trading. In Iran they would lose many lives, and perhaps a large part of the oil facilities in the area would be destroyed.

In the present situation, is likely they would not understand our message. If war breaks out, my opinion is that they, and the world, would gain nothing. If it were solely a conventional war, which is very unlikely, they would lose irretrievably, and if it becomes a global nuclear war, humanity would lose.

Michel Chossudovsky.- Iran has conventional forces that are …significant.

Fidel Castro Ruz.-   Millions.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  Land forces, but also rockets and also Iran has the ability to defend itself.

 Fidel Castro Ruz.-   While there remains one single man with a gun, this is an enemy they will have to defeat.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  And there are several millions with guns.

 Fidel Castro Ruz.-   Millions, and they will have to sacrifice many American lives, unfortunately it would be only then that Americans would react, if they don’t react now they will react later when it will be too late; we must write, we must divulge this as much as we can.   Remember that the Christians were persecuted, they led them off to the catacombs, they killed them, they threw them to the lions, but they held on to their beliefs for centuries and later that was what they did to the Moslems, and the Moslems never yielded.

There is a real war against the Moslem world.  Why are those lessons of history being forgotten?  I have read many of the articles you wrote about the risks of that war.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  Let us return to the matter of Iran.  I believe that it is very important that world opinion comprehends the war scenario.  You clearly state that they would lose the war, the conventional war, they are losing it in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has more conventional forces than those of NATO in Afghanistan.

 Fidel Castro Ruz.-   Much more experienced and motivated.  They are now in conflict with those forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and one they don’t mention: the Pakistanis of the same ethnic group as those in the resistance in Afghanistan. In White House discussions,  they consider that the war is lost, that’s what the book by Bob Woodward entitled “Obama’s Wars” tells us.  Imagine the  situation if in addition to that, they append a war to liquidate whatever remains after the initial blows they inflict on Iran.

So they will be thrust into a conventional war situation that they cannot win, or they will be obliged to wage a global nuclear war, under conditions of a worldwide upheaval.  And I don’t know who can justify the type of war they have to wage; they have 450 targets marked out in Iran, and of these some, according to them, will have to be attacked with tactical nuclear warheads because of their location in mountainous areas and at the depth at which they are situated [underground].  Many Russian personnel and persons from other nationalities collaborating with them will die in that confrontation.

What will be the reaction of world opinion in the face of that blow which today is being irresponsibly promoted by the media with the backing of many Americans?

Michel Chossudovsky.-  One issue, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, they are all neighbouring countries in a certain way.  Iran shares borders with Afghanistan and with Iraq, and the United States and NATO have military facilities in the countries they occupy.  What’s going to happen? I suppose that the Iranian troops are immediately going to cross the border.

Fidel Castro Ruz.-   Well, I don’t know what tactic they’re going to use, but if one were in their place, the most advisable is to not concentrate their troops, because if the troops are concentrated they will be victims of the attack with tactical nuclear weapons. In other words, in accordance with the nature of the threat as it is being described, the best thing would be for them to use a tactic similar to ours in southern Angola when we suspected that South Africa had nuclear weapons; we created tactical groups of 1000 men with land and anti-air fire power.  Nuclear weapons could never within their reach target a large number of soldiers. Anti-air rocketry and other similar weapons was supporting our forces.  Weapons and the conditions of the terrain change and tactics must continuously change.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  Dispersed.

Fidel Castro Ruz.-   Dispersed, but not isolated men, there were around 1000 men with appropriate weapons, the terrain was sandy, wherever they got to they had to dig in and protect themselves underground, always keeping the maximum distance between components.  The enemy was never given an opportunity to aim a decisive blow against the 60,000 Cuban and Angolan soldiers in southern Angola.

What we did in that sister country is what, a thousand strong army, operating with traditional criteria, would have done.  Fine, we were not 100 000, in southern Angola there were 60,000 men, Cubans and Angolans; due to technical requirements the tactical groups were mainly made up of Cubans because they handled tanks, rockets, anti-aircraft guns, communications, but the infantry was made up of Cuban and Angolan soldiers, with great fighting spirit, who didn’t hesitate one second in confronting the white Apartheid army supported by the United States and Israel.  Who handled the numerous nuclear weapons that they had at that moment?

In the case of Iran,   we are getting news that they are digging into the ground, and when they are asked about it, they say that they are making cemeteries to bury the invaders. I don’t know if this is meant to be ironic, but I think that one would really have to dig quite a lot to protect their forces from the attack which is threatening them.

Michel Chossudovsky.-  Sure, but Iran has the possibility of mobilizing millions of troops.

Fidel Castro Ruz.-   Not just troops, but the command posts are also decisive.  In my opinion, dispersion is very important.  The attackers will try to prevent the transmission of orders.  Every combat unit must know beforehand what they have to do under different  circumstances.  The attacker will try to strike and destabilize the chain of command with its radio-electronic weapons.  All those factors must be kept in mind.  Mankind has never experienced a similar predicament.

Anyway,  Afghanistan is “a joke” and Iraq, too, when you compare them with what they are going to bump into in Iran: the weaponry, the training, the mentality, the kind of soldier…  If 31 years ago, Iranian combatants cleaned the mine fields by advancing over them, they will undoubtedly be the most fearsome adversaries that the United States has ever come across.

Our thanks and appreciation to Cuba Debate for the transcription as well as the translation from Spanish.

Fidel’s Message on the Dangers of Nuclear War

Recorded on the last day of the Conversations, October 15, 2010 the original Global Research/Cuba Debate video (our copyright) was removed on alleged copyright infringements alongside many other Youtube postings.

TRANSCRIPT

The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. This was candidly foreseen by scientist Albert Einstein who was able to measure their destructive capability to generate millions of degrees of heat, which would vaporize everything within a wide radius of action. This brilliant researcher had promoted the development of this weapon so that it would not become available to the genocidal Nazi regime.

Each and every government in the world has the obligation to respect the right to life of each and every nation and of the totality of all the peoples on the planet.

Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.

The World’s peoples have an obligation to demand of their political leaders their Right to Live. When the life of humankind, of your people and your most beloved human beings run such a risk, nobody can afford to be indifferent; not one minute can be lost in demanding respect for that right; tomorrow will be too late.

Albert Einstein himself stated unmistakably: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. We fully comprehend what he wanted to convey, and he was absolutely right, yet in the wake of a global nuclear war, there wouldn’t be anybody around to make use of those sticks and stones.

There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people.

In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.

Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 15, 2010

Without any doubt, the Puerto Rico humanitarian crisis not only exposed the fraud of Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” nationalist slogan but it also uncovered the criminal offense against the victims of the Hurricane by the U.S. “leaders”. Regardless of any excuses, either because of an old “law” from 1920’s or because of a clear case of negligence and incompetence -either way- the authorities in the White House and Congress have already committed a crime in this regard and they have to be brought to justice.

On top of these criminal acts, the cover ups by the Trump Administration and the corrupt media which minimized the dire situations in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands right after the disaster should be seen as an insult to the injury.

During the recent hurricanes, the rating driven media sent their best “reporters” to the different areas to foolishly stand in the middle of awful rain and wind to inform us that the impending hurricanes are dangerous and will cause heavy rain and destruction! However, as soon as the rain stopped, the reporting about the hurricanes stopped with it. The ladies and gentleman of the media immediately found NFL news more interesting, while the hurricane victims were dying under blockade and in darkness.

Only after the desperate cries for help from the hurricane victims which slowly and against all odds surfaced and only under the pressure of national and international condemnation, did the media first and then the administration start to reflect only a glimpse of the misery and suffering.

The fact is today Puerto Rico is re-occupied by the U.S. military power again not for the benefit of the victims but only to be contained from a potential civil unrest. Thousands are practically homeless and desperately are in need of water, food and medical care. Babies are thirsty and hungry. The militarization of the relief efforts in Puerto Rico is just a repetition of the U.S. disastrous Haiti experience.

Only a planned economy based on the working peoples’ needs can make Puerto Rico prosperous again. An economic system that puts PROFIT over PEOPLE only nurtures the capitalist evil.

Informative Fact: In the late 1990, during “Operation Desert Storm” the U.S. military transferred enormous quantity of heavy equipment of mass destruction to Saudi Arabia in a short period of time against Iraq. In 2017 the U.S. government is unable to deliver water to its own citizens in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands!

Massoud Nayeri is an independent Peace and Justice Activist and Freelance Graphic Designer in Houston.

Featured image: Omid Kabar a commander of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) 

On October 1, Omid Kabar a commander of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said at a funeral for SDF fighters who were killed in Raqqa city that the SDF will not handover al-Tabqah town or any other area to the Syrian government.

“The regime says we will hand over our regions or al-Tabqah town to the regime’s army … Our people must realize that within five years of our revolution as the People Protection Units and after our alliance with other factions in the name of Syrian Democratic Forces, we have not handed over any inch of our land… We will never hand it over. Our law is clear. The land that is watered with the blood of the martyrs belongs to the people and we will not hand them over to any force,” Kabar said.

Moreover, Kabar claimed that over 300 Syrian Army (SAA) soldiers defected to the SDF during the “last period”. However, Kabar did reveal no details or proofs.

Kabar’s  statement is a reflection of the SDF policy that publicly refuses working with the Syrian government in any way. However, in reality the SDF is not only working with the Syrian government to run the areas under its control, but also cooperating with key figures of the so called “Syrian Regime”.

While Kabar was attacking the Syrian government, Syria Water Resources Minister Nabil al-Hassan discussed with Kirill Molodtsov, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, in Damascus plans to repair the Euphrates, Tishrin and Baath dams on the Euphrates river, according to the Syrian state TV.

As the three dams are under the SDF control, it will be impossible to repair any of them without an agreement between the SDF and the Syrian government. Such an agreement might be much more possible than some want to believe.

Kurdish sources confirmed on September 14 that Syrian mobile network provider Syriatel services are again available in Raqqa countryside, al-Tabqah town and some parts of Raqqa city itself. The services were back after Syriatel repaired its towers in the SDF-held areas.

What’s interesting in this is that Syriatel is owned by Rami Makhlouf, the cousin of Syria president Bashar al-Assad. The SDF closely worked with Makhluf to restore communication in its areas.

Furthermore, the Kurdish-Iraqi news agency Rudaw confirmed in a report on June 7, that the SDF handed over the management of the Rmelan oil fields in al-Hasakah governorate to Syria Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ministry. Later, it was confirmed that the Syrian government started shipping oil to its areas from Rmelan fields through the Khanasir road.

The SDF “success” in running and managing the large areas it has captured in Syria is a result of cloose cooperation with the Syrian government. The Euphrates dam or the recently captured oil and gas fields by the SDF in the Deir Ezzor governorate will not likely be an exception.

Right now the SDF is not able to fully consumption, export or even refining the oil of these fields on its own. With the US and EU sanctions it will also impossible to the SDF to allow foreign companies to invest in these fields.

If the SDF is planning to make any sort of profit out of these oil and gas fields, the only way will be by working with the Syrian government. Rmelan oil fields are for sure a live example of this.

Trump’s petulant tweet storm on Saturday accused Puerto Ricans of wanting everything done for them.

He expressed these sentiments as his secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, was forced to resign for flying around on expensive government airplanes or charters, costing tax payers over $1 million, even though many of these flights could have been replaced by inexpensive train rides or economy seats on civilian airliners.

So who is it again who has things done for him by the Federal government?

The whole point of the Trump cabinet is to allow filthy rich groups and individuals to feed at the public trough.

Rick Perry wants artificially to use government to make consumers buy electricity generated by coal and nuclear plants. This is a way of deploying the state to benefit one narrow sliver of the wealthy, while harming everyone else.

Scott Pruitt has turned the Environmental Protection Agency upside down, using it to increase corporate profits by allowing the pollution of public spaces, including the sources of our drinking water.

In contrast, San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz has been out in the water with a bullhorn trying to find people still trapped by the flooding.

The illegitimate POTUS dares to call Carmen Yulin Cruz "Nasty"? He plays golf all day, she wades through sewage trying to help her people! pic.twitter.com/aABj4Q9iiq

— Tom D'Angora (@TomDangora) October 1, 2017

In trying to portray the 3.4 million Puerto Ricans, all of them US citizens, as welfare queens, Trump in typical fashion used a Reagan cliche so stupidly as to undermine Republican Party ideology. Reagan demeaned the working poor for resorting to the social safety net erected for that purpose. Trump attempted to use the same meme with regard to pure victims. The Puerto Ricans did not get hit by Maria because they don’t know how to save money or because they spend it frivolously. They cannot exploit the system. They are outside the system. They are drowning or dying of hunger and thirst, in part because the Trump administration watched Hurricane Maria head for Puerto Rico for five days and did not swing into action to prepare for the aftermath.

Featured image is from @TomDangora.

Syrian forces with the support of their Russian and Iranian allies, crossed the Euphrates River near the city of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

The move is not only a significant step forward in restoring security nationwide and ensuring the nation’s territorial integrity, it is also a significant step toward turning the tables on the very interests who provoked and have perpetuated this conflict since 2011.

US policymakers as early as 2012 openly declared their intent to partition Syria through the use of “safe zones” or “buffer zones.” From these zones – established with and protected by direct US military intervention – militant proxies would attempt to expand deeper into Syrian territory until the nation could either be toppled entirely, or sufficiently partitioned, effectively eliminating the Syrian Arab Republic as it was known before the conflict began.

Understanding “Safe Zones” 

A March 2012 Brookings Institution paper titled, “Middle East Memo #21: Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change” (PDF), proposed the concept of “safe zones” or “safe-havens” not to fight the yet-to-be invented so-called Islamic State (ISIS), but specifically to assist US-backed regime change. It claims (emphasis added): 

An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.

A 2015 Brookings paper titled, “Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country” would elaborate on the nature of these zones, not as bases for fighting terrorism – but as a means of incrementally dividing and literally “deconstructing” Syria as a unified nation-state (emphasis added):

The end-game for these zones would not have to be determined in advance. The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones and a modest (eventual) national government. The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force, if this arrangement could ever be formalized by accord. But in the short term, the ambitions would be lower—to make these zones defensible and governable, to help provide relief for populations within them, and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.

It would also elaborate regarding the role ISIS specifically plays in all of this – not as an enemy to be defeated – but as a pawn to be used against the Syrian government:

It was clear in 2012 and being demonstrated on the ground by 2015 that US commitment to this policy of creating “safe zones” was complete.

Safe-Zone Judo 

The nearly full manifestation of this policy can be seen in northeast Syria, where the United States has military forces literally occupying Syrian territory while US forces accompany Kurdish and Arab militants as they push southwest deeper toward Syria’s heartland, supposedly fighting ISIS. However, even within the deepest Kurdish-held regions of Syria, the Syrian government maintains a presence.

And now, with Syrian forces on the east bank of the Euphrates, the Syrian government maintains an even greater presence within and along the edges of this tenuous “safe zone.”

Today – just as US policymakers had planned the US and its proxies would do in 2012 – Syrian forces can at any time during this current conflict or after it – expand incrementally into America’s “safe-zone.” The crossing of the Euphrates and the increasingly exhausted political legs the United States stands on regarding its military aggression in Syria, combined with Russia’s direct military intervention upon Damascus’ request – have severely complicated this “safe zone” policy.

It is no longer a matter of “Assad” being “foolish enough to challenge these zones,” they are being challenged, regularly, and by Syrian forces backed by Russian airpower, which is in turn backed by a nuclear deterrence preventing the sort of escalation against Damascus US policymakers envisioned before the Russian intervention.

In essence, the crossing of the Euphrates represents geopolitical judo – an example of US policy describing an act of military aggression, invasion, occupation, and conquest being turned into a tactic of defense and the incremental uprooting of a foreign invader and the neutralization of its militant proxies.

Syria’s Kurds 

Attempts have been made – and have mostly failed – to foster greater conflict between Syria’s Kurdish minority and the government in Damascus. While seizing back every inch of Syrian territory may not be realistic in the near future, it is very possible in the intermediate future as America’s “guarantees” to the Kurds become increasingly irrelevant and as Damascus works on a deal to bring various groups, including the Kurds, back under the protection and prosperity of a unified Syrian state.

Syria’s Kurdish minority can only realistically hold small swaths of Syrian territory, confined mainly in the northeast. The Kurdish forces may have pushed toward Raqqa and even further south toward Deir ez-Zor with the help of significant US military support, but they now find themselves trying to occupy territory with no demographically significant Kurdish population present. A mainly Kurdish administration, or an Arab administration dependent on Kurdish military protection, is unsustainable.

With such an unsustainable grasp on the territory US proxies are attempting to hold, cracks both between these proxies themselves and as the Syrian government begins reasserting control over its own territory further east, this grasp will weaken further.

Time and momentum are on Damascus’ side. Syria’s Kurds face an unsustainable future as America’s proxies inside what is essentially an American “safe zone.” Syria’s Kurds have a much more sustainable future should they strike a deal with Damascus for greater autonomy. It is a crossroad quickly approaching, and one that will decide whether Syria faces years more of foreign-driven conflict, or the prospect of internal peace and prosperity.

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

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

All images in this article are from the author.

In the event that North Korea tests another Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) or potentially launches an attack on the United States, the Pentagon could try to intercept those missiles with the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. However, as many analysts have pointed out, the interceptors that miss their target could reenter the Earth’s atmosphere inside Russian airspace. Such an eventuality could prove to be a serious problem unless steps are taken to address the issue now.

“You should also be aware of the concern that those interceptors fired from Alaska that miss or don’t engage an incoming North Korean ICBM(s) will continue on and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere over Russia,” Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association told The National Interest.

“This carries a nontrivial risk of unintended escalation.”

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told The National Interest that the United States should open a dialogue with Russia on the issue immediately.

“Good god, yes,” Lewis said emphatically.

Olya Oliker, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies agreed.

“We have time now to consult with Moscow, talk about plans, discuss how notification would work,” Oliker told The National Interest.

“This isn’t the rocket science part of all this.”

Indeed, in a recent op-ed, Lewis argues that an American interceptor launch could accidentally trigger a nuclear exchange if the Russians mistook such a weapon for an incoming ICBM.

“We can’t assume that Russia would realize the launch from Alaska was a missile defense interceptor rather than an ICBM. From Russia, the trajectories might appear quite similar, especially if the radar operator was under a great deal of stress or pressure,” Lewis wrote for The Daily Beast.

“It doesn’t matter how Russia’s early warning system ought to work on paper, the reality of the Russian system in practice has been a lot less impressive.”

Joshua H. Pollack, editor of the The Nonproliferation Review and a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said that the danger is real.

“Whether they actually would enter Russian airspace is probably less important than whether they break the line of sight of Russia’s early-warning radars,” Pollack said.

“They do appear to plan in terms of launch-on-warning. That’s why I call this scenario ‘Russian Roulette.’”

But how exactly the United States might attempt to shoot down a North Korean missile is scenario dependent.

“In an attack on Hawaii, it seems to me that they might not do so, and ought to be clearly identifiable as being aimed well south of Russian territory if they are detected,” Pollack said.

“In an attack on North America, they almost certainly would be detected by Russian radars.”

While defending against an attack on Hawaii should not cause major issues, shooting down an ICBM that is targeted against the U.S. mainland would be problematic. Indeed, to defend against an attack on Washington D.C.—for example—the intercept might take place over Russia.

“In fact, depending on the target of the attack, the actual engagement could take place above Russia,” Pollack said.

“If interceptors in Alaska are going to try to catch the attack more or less head-on, they’ll have to fly out in the direction of Russia. Someone else might be able to model the geometry of the engagement, but just eyeballing it, I could easily envision it happening over Russia’s Far East. If the interceptors had to launch later and attempt a crossing shot, they could even end up flying out in the direction of European Russia.”

Pavel Podvig, an independent analyst based in Geneva who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces research project disagreed with Lewis and Pollack. Podvig noted that the Russian early warning system is in far better shape today than it was during the 1990s. While a GMD launch from Alaska might cause alarm, the Russian philosophy has been to essentially absorb the first initial blows before launching a retaliatory counterstrike.

“The Russian system is built to ‘absorb’ events like this,” Podvig told The National Interest.

“We don’t have hard data, of course, but my understanding is that even at the height of the Cold War the Soviet Union would have chosen to get a single hit—or maybe even a few—rather than launch its missiles in response, especially in a ‘bolt out of the blue’ situation. Having said that, things do happen and a real-world situation may introduce factors that nobody can predict or control. Coincidences of various kind are possible and the command and control system may react in unpredictable ways. So, the real answer is, we don’t know.”

The Russians, however, are not too worried by the prospect of discarded American interceptors landing on their soil. However, Moscow would likely want to be consulted because the interceptors might set off Russia’s ballistic missile early warning system (BMEWS).

“Basically, we would be happy to see them on our soil for study,” Vasily Kashin, a senior fellow at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, told The National Interest.

“Anyway, the chance of them hitting in a populated area in the Russian Far East is extremely small. But of course there is a BMEWS issue, so it is better to hold consultations and establish info exchange mechanism.”

What is surprising to the Russians is that the United States did not install a self-destruct system on the GMD interceptors to prevent the missiles from landing where they should not.

“The fact that it does not have self destruct is surprising,” Kashin said.

“And I am not sure anyone here knew about that.”

Indeed, Lewis flatly stated that the GMD interceptor does not have a self-destruct mechanism while Pollack explained that the weapon is a kinetic kill vehicle with no warhead.

“I’ve never heard of any self-destruct mechanism on GMD’s interceptors,” Pollack said.

“They’re lightweight, hit-to-kill systems that don’t involve any explosives.”

The question that remains, of course, is even if there was a consultative body set up between the United States and Russia, would there be enough time to use such a mechanism?

According to Lewis, the answer is probably not.

“The timeline for a missile defense intercept is so tight—just a few minutes—that the president probably won’t even know about an intercept until after it happens,” Lewis wrote.

Thus, at the end of the day, the United States should probably consult with Russia about the possibility of intercepting North Korean ICBMs over Moscow’s territory and set up an agreement ahead of time. But even then, during a real intercept attempt, the United States will likely have to count on Russia’s early warning system operating correctly and the Kremlin’s restraint to avoid an unintended nuclear war.

“We will not allow the creation of a second Israel in the north of Iraq.”

– Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki. [1]

 

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While the world reels from news of Catalonia’s secession vote from Spain over the weekend, major powers have been sounding off on a similar referendum just six days earlier.

The area in northeastern Iraq known as Iraqi Kurdistan, or the Kurdistan Region, voted 92.73 per cent in favour of independence from Iraq.

While Kurds in the affected area were jubilant, leaders in surrounding countries fulminated and in some cases uttered threats.

The government of the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk called for a curfew on the night of the vote. The central government of Iraq imposed an international flight ban on cities in the Kurdistan Region. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi said he would not enter into negotiations with the Kurdistan Regional Government, claiming the referendum was ‘unconstitutional.’

The Turkish government has threatened to cut off the supply of oil coming into the country from the Kurdistan Region. The United Nations Security Council members discouraged the vote, saying it “could hinder efforts to counter so-called Islamic State (IS) and help displaced Iraqis return home.”

The United States has likewise refused to recognize the referendum outcome. In a Saturday September 30 statement, none other than US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “The vote and the results lack legitimacy and we continue to support a united, federal, democratic and prosperous Iraq.”

Israel meanwhile is the only country expressing support of Kurdistan’s aspirations to statehood.

In the century since British officer Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot signed an agreement setting the boundaries of the Middle East, the Kurds have been frustrated in their desires to secure a homeland. Does the referendum, binding or not, put the Kurds one step closer to achieving that dream? Or will it bring more bloodshed, or even war?

This week’s Global Research News Hour examines the fall-out from the referendum vote with three guests.

Henry Heller is Professor of History at the University of Manitoba. He is also the author of several books including The Capitalist University: The Transformation of Higher Education in the United Stated: 1945-2016 and The Cold War and the New Imperialism: 1945-2005 (1986). In the first half hour, Professor Hellyer puts the referendum in an historical context, explaining the origin of the Kurds, their grievances with its neighbours, and the comparison with stateless Jews in the period before 1948.

Nametuwllah Emre is Vice president of the Kurdish Association of Manitoba. He is also a Canadian citizen of Kurdish extraction living in the city of Winnipeg. Mr. Emre presents ‘the view from the diaspora.’ He does not seem to take the threats by Iraq and Turkey very seriously, and feels that his countrymen abroad are deserving of their own state.

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist. He has written for the Boston Globe, the Sunday Times of London and the Wall Street Journal among other newspapers. He has spent a lot of time in Erbil and was there for the referendum vote. He wrote an article on the eve of the vote published at Consortium news called Vote by Iraqi Kurds Adds to Tensions. He explores his understanding based on the fact he was present during the referendum vote in Erbil. He joins us from Cairo.

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Notes: 

1.  https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Baghdad-Rejects-Second-Israel-US-and-Australia-Rejects-Kurd-Referendum-20170918-0018.html

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept exposes the fake news put out by the US Department of Homeland Security (an euphemistic name for a Big Brother operation that spies on US citizens) that Russia hacked 21 US state elections, news that was instantly spread around the world by the presstitute media. The propagandists running Homeland Security  were contradicted by the state governments, forcing Homeland Security to retract its fake news claims. 

The unasked/unanswered question is why did Homeland Security put out a FAKE NEWS story?

Greenwald explains that the US media is so conditioned by the National Security State to see Russian President Putin lurking behind and masterminding attacks on America that it is “now religious dogma”—a requirement—to find Russian perfidy everywhere. The result Greenwald correctly says is that “an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards.”

In other words, the United States no longer has a media. It has a propaganda ministry for the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby. And the idiot Americans sit in front of the TV and absorb the propaganda, and they read the New York Times and think that they are sophisticated and in the know.

What Greenwald doesn’t address is the effect of the massive amount of fake news on Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Russia knows that Washington knows that the accusations against Russia are false. So why is Washington making false accusations against Russia? 

This is a serious question, not only for Russia but for the entire world. All previous false accusations from the Clinton regime criminals, the Bush/Cheney regime criminals, and the Obama regime criminals ended in military attacks on the falsely demonized targets. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea would be within reason to wonder if the false news propaganda attack on them is a prelude to military attack.

Iran and North Korea cannot attack the US and its European vassals, but Russia and China can. I have written about the Operational Command of the Russian armed forces conclusion that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. Instead of reassuring the Russians that no such planning is in the works, Washington has instead pushed further the fake news Russiagate story with the false report that Russia had hacked the elections of 21 states.

What is the point of US security agencies such as Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA constantly filling the propaganda machine known as the American Media with lies about Russia?  Russia must wonder as well.  Russia knows that they are lies.  Russia knows that it does no good to refute the lies because the West has a Propaganda Ministry instead of a media.  Russia knows that Washington told lies about the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad, Iran. What does Russia conclude from the constant stream of lies about Russia that flow out of Washington and are presented as truth by the Western presstitutes?

If you were the Russian government, would you conclude that your country was the next to be attacked militarily by Washington? If you were the Russian government, you would know that Washington/NATO cannot possibly attack Russia except by surprise nuclear strike. Knowing this, if you were the Russian government, would you sit there and wait on the strike? Imagine yourself the Russian government listening day in, day out, to endless wild improbable charges against Russia. What can Russia possibly conclude other than this is preparation of Western peoples for a nuclear attack on Russia?

Russia is not going to be hung like Saddan Hussein or murdered like Gaddafi. 

I have written many times that provoking nuclear powers such as Russia and China is the most extreme form of recklessness and irresponsibility. 

The crazed morons in Washington are risking the life of the planet. The presstitutes never question the path to war; they only amplify it. Washington’s  craven, cowardly  vassel states in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and the rest of the EU/NATO idiots are, by their cooperation with Washington, begging for their own destruction.

Nowhere in the West is there a sign of intelligence. 

Will Washington follow Adolf Hitler’s folly and march into Russia?

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On Catalonia’s Referendum

By Moon of Alabama, October 02, 2017

Polling stations were set up for today. But Spanish laws do not allow for such polls or a separation. Catalonia, like other Spanish regions, already has a good degree of autonomy. If Catalonia were to secede the Basque areas in the north would likely follow. Spain would fall apart. Under Spanish law the referendum is illegal. The central government sent police to prevent the procedure. Street melees ensued.

Catalan Voters Face Police State Violence

By Stephen Lendman, October 02, 2017

On Sunday, Catalans trying to vote in their independence referendum are being assaulted by thuggish police – smashing glass panels of polling stations, bursting in violently, forcibly removing ballot boxes and voters, attacking them with batons and rubber-coated steel bullets, women as violently as men, the elderly treated the same way.

Catalonia Independence: Five Things to Think About

By Tony Cartalucci, October 02, 2017

Catalonia has a formidable industrialized economy relative to other regions of Spain, with a GDP and population just exceeding those of nations like Scotland or Singapore, and likely could achieve and sustain independence from Spain.

Catalonia Dreaming?

By Guillem Vidal, September 30, 2017

According to the Catalan public polling body, only 15% of Catalans wanted an independent state when the economic crisis broke out in September 2008. Six years later, that number was up to 48%. Given the entire population of Catalonia (7.5m), this would mean that close to 2.5 million Catalans switched in favor of independence in over just six years. Why?

Catalonia: In the Face of Repression, We Defend Human Rights

By Lafede.cat, September 30, 2017

The repressive response of the Spanish State in order to prevent it, with judicial and police actions against democratically elected Catalan institutions, is a serious setback in terms of guaranteeing human rights and individual and collective freedoms in Catalonia, and a deterioration of democracy and the rule of law as a whole. These actions are unacceptable within the framework of democratic states.

Catalonia Referendum: Resisting the Spanish Government Siege

By Dick Nichols, September 25, 2017

At the time of writing (September 17), the Civil Guard claims to have confiscated 1.3 million posters from printeries in Catalonia, while municipal police has been engaged in low-intensity harassment of Yes campaign stalls. However, the main meetings of the referendum campaign, including the Yes case’s 13,000-strong launch in the southern industrial city of Tarragona, have so far gone ahead without impediment.

In Defence of Democratic Rights in Catalonia

By José Luis Martínez, September 25, 2017

September 19, 2017: The Civil Guard took the voters’ census for the referendum and the interrogation by the prosecution of more than 700 Catalan mayors who support the referendum starts. If they do not attend the interrogation, the persecutors office threatens them with jail.

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CD Editor’s note: The following statement—signed by over two hundred scholars, writers, professors, and experts with close personal and/or academic ties to the island—comes amid the growing humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico following the destruction left by Hurricane Maria earlier this month. The Spanish-language version can be read here.

Introduction

The destruction brought by Hurricane Maria has exposed the profound colonial condition of Puerto Rico, as millions of human beings are faced with a life or death situation. The financial crisis manufactured by American bankers, colonial laws such as PROMESA and the Jones Act that controls maritime space, are legal mechanisms that prevent Puerto Rico’s recovery, and even call into question the validity of American citizenship on that island. Given the severity of the situation, political action is necessary.

The State of Facts

Puerto Rico is experiencing a humanitarian crisis as a result of Hurricane Maria, which struck the island on Wednesday, September 20, as a Category Four hurricane. Immediately thereafter, Governor Roselló declared a curfew from dawn to dusk for security reasons. More than a week after the event, hundreds of communities are still flooded, isolated without any food or drinking water, as highways and roads are blocked or destroyed, making communication between towns, neighborhoods and cities impossible. Telephone, internet, drinking water and electricity services have not been re-established in most communities. The weather radar was destroyed as well as the surveillance towers at the San Juan International Airport. There is a public health crisis due to the precarious conditions in hospitals and the threat of epidemics stemming from contaminated water. Cities, towns and neighborhoods outside the metropolitan area have been abandoned, and efforts are concentrated in the San Juan metro area. The western part of the island, for example, lacks minimum services.

The images shared with the world by visibly shaken journalists, television anchors, and meteorologists speak of the human drama caused by the disaster. What is missing from many of those reports is concrete information of plans and immediate, achievable initiatives to move the country ahead, as well as an ongoing plan. Explanations are necessary for why so many efforts to reach, house, feed and clothe many Puerto Ricans are unsuccessful. The people and the local government need the freedom to make and act on decisions quickly. There is no sensible political analysis of the situation due to such dire absence of communication. The state of precariousness in which the entire population of the island finds itself forces individuals to concentrate all of their strength on survival. Many have already opted to leave the country as the re-opening of the Luis Muñoz Marín airport demonstrated in its first day of service after the hurricane. It is a cruel way of emptying Puerto Rico of its most valuable resource, its people; the potential silencing of any dissident voices in the process is unacceptable. This state of emergency could be used to promote new measures of austerity that will not benefit Puerto Rico, a country already devastated by the financial disaster of an unpayable debt.

The Caribbean has been pummeled by two major hurricanes in the month of September: Irma and Maria. The Virgin Islands, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, Barbuda, Antigua, Guadeloupe, St. Kitts, and Puerto Rico are geopolitically precarious: physically as islands and politically for their colonial history and status. They were traditionally called “Overseas Provinces” because of their political and economic dependence on a metropolitan mainland. The world has found out in the past few days what our history has always stubbornly made visible to us.

Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. Its political status stems from the U.S. invasion of 1898 and a series of laws that served only to consolidate U.S. control, hindering the possibility of Puerto Rican sovereignty and political emancipation. One such law is the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, or Jones Act, which determines that Puerto Rico’s maritime waters and ports are controlled by U.S. agencies. The limits on shipping imposed by the Jones Act double the cost of consumer goods arriving at our shores, since they curtail the ability of non-U.S. ships and crews to engage in commercial trade with Puerto Rico. The recent legislation, PROMESA (or “promise,” a cynical and injurious acronym for the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act), which imposes millions of dollars of accrued debt and stringent austerity measures on Puerto Rico and its inhabitants, is yet to be audited. PROMESA has established a supra governmental body with complete control over finances and the laws and regulations adopted by the PR government.  PROMESA represents Congress’ most significant overt act to restate its colonial authority over Puerto Rico in total disregard of democracy, republicanism, and popular sovereignty.  Here is where the need to repeal PROMESA and the Jones Act intersect, as both are exercises of colonial power to further the economic and political interest of the metropolis.  At this time of humanitarian crisis and dire times for Puerto Rico Washington will not act in the best interest of the people of Puerto Rico by repealing both PROMESA and the Jones Act.

The US citizenship of Puerto Ricans, in this circumstance, is not a privilege, but the branding of a slave. It is a restrictive citizenship subject to the limits imposed by the US Congress without any interpellation of the subject to whom it is imposed. As an American colony, citizenship in this case actually denies Puerto Ricans any of the rights obtained by other regions impacted by the same events in the North American mainland. Citizenship makes us hostages, dispensable entities and victims of calculated charity. It is necessary to repeal the Jones Act, which imposes restrictions on the entry of other vessels to the island, even if their intention is only to offer humanitarian aid. It is necessary to abolish the PROMESA Law, since Puerto Rico cannot be rebuilt on the basis of an unpayable and fraudulent debt. Both laws condemn the country to an unsustainable economic future that will intensify the exodus of Puerto Ricans from their island.

The manner in which aid delivered to Puerto Rico has been confiscated and controlled by FEMA, along with the refusal to assist Puerto Rico in a manner similar to that offered to mainland localities affected by Hurricane Irma, for example, shapes our interpretation of this event. It subjects the inhabitants of a territory in crisis to the limits of what a federal agency is willing to do, and denies aid that may come from other countries at this critical time. Beyond the paternalism that this implies, it turns Puerto Ricans into hostages of their colonial condition.

While exploiting the physical deprivation Puerto Ricans are experiencing, FEMA’s presence also promotes psychological servility. As military uniforms increase and become more visible due to this emergency, a very troubling image is emerging of the Puerto Rican people, under increasingly fragile and precarious conditions. Efforts are delayed for a population that the federal government considers expendable. Rampant indifference is affirmed with lack of solidarity with neighboring towns by preventing other kinds of aid from flowing into and through the island. This situation brings Puerto Ricans down to their knees, at the mercy of the equivocal aid provided by the US, while other humanitarian aid is blocked. Puerto Ricans are placed under peril, endangering the lives of thousands that still have not been reached. The ultimate goal of this federal aid is unknown. Its growing militarization at a time when Puerto Ricans are deprived of the basic means of survival and communication is alarming. It turns this state of emergency into an opportunity for some to thrive financially while hundreds of people die from lack of water, food and medical treatment.

No political or economic reason justifies the death of diabetes patients who do not have the means to keep their insulin cool nor dialysis patients who have seen their treatments interrupted due to lack of electricity. The consequences of this blockade on solidarity could be greater than the victims produced by the hurricane itself. The recent statements by President Trump are unworthy of any president. In the midst of a humanitarian crisis, he demands payment of the credit debt. Immediate actions must be taken. The PROMESA law and the Jones Act must be repealed. This is not the time to invoke the false rights inherent in second-degree citizenship, but to claim the right of every human being to life.

Faced with these facts, we demand:

• The recognition of a state of humanitarian crisis.
• The immediate repeal of the Jones Act  (Merchant Marine Act of 1920) for Puerto Rico and the repeal of the PROMESA Law.
• That the aid provided by the federal agencies not be subjected by any conditions that can delay or limit its reach.
• The opening of the ports to all those who wish to show solidarity with the Puerto Rican people.
• The reestablishment of all means of communication across the island.
• Dedicated funds and assistance for the thousands of people without home, water, food, and electricity.

Signatories:

Áurea María Sotomayor Miletti, University of Pittsburgh

Juan Carlos Rodríguez, Georgia Tech University

Sheila I. Vélez Martínez. University of Pittsburgh

Myrna García Calderón, Syracuse University

María de Lourdes Dávila, New York University

Nemir Matos Cintrón, Ana G. Mendez, Florida

Adriana Garriga López, Kalamazoo College

Luis Othoniel Rosa, University of Nebraska

César A. Salgado, University of Texas, Austin

Lena Burgos Lafuente, Stony Brook University

Kahlil Chaar-Pérez, Editor and independent translator

Rubén Ríos, New York University

Julio Ramos, University of California, Berkeley

Arnaldo Cruz Malavé, Fordham University

Jossianna Arroyo, University of Texas, Austin

Miguel Rodríguez Casellas, University of Technology, Sydney

Licia Fiol-Matta, New York University

Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia, University of Maryland

Dafne A. Duchesne Sotomayor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

René A. Duchesne Sotomayor, Junior Architect, Pittsburgh

Margarita Pintado Burgos, Ouachita, Baptist University

Kelvin Durán Berríos, University of Pittsburgh

Edgard Luis Colón Meléndez, University of Pittsburgh

Gustavo Quintero, University of Pittsburgh

Urayoán Noel, New York University

Jaime Rodríguez Matos, California State University, Fresno

María Dolores Morillo López, California State University, Fresno

Ivette Romero, Marist College

Rocío Zambrana, University of Oregon

César Colón Montijo, Columbia University

Ivette N. Hernández-Torres, University of California at Irvine

Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, University of Miami/Rutgers University

Wanda Rivera-Rivera, Bearley School, New York

James Cohen, Université Paris 3, Sorbonne Nouvelle

Nayda COllazo Lloréns, Kalamazoo College, Michigan

Cristina Moreiras-Menor, University of Michigan

Odette Casamayor, University of Connecticut, Storrs

José Quiroga, Emory University

Cristel Jusino Díaz, New York University

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan

Eliseo Colón Zayas, University of Puerto Rico

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Pamela Voekel, Dartmouth College

Diana Taylor, New York University

Alejandra Olarte, Universidad de La Salle, Bogotá

Jasón Cortés, Rutgers University, Newark

Yara Liceaga, Writer and Cultural Activist

Diana Guemarez Cruz, Montclair University

Luis F. Avilés, University of California, Irvine

Ramón López, Hunter College

Carina del Valle Schorske, Columbia University

Pablo Delano, Trinity College

Arlene Dávila, New York University

Néstor E. Rodríguez, University of Toronto

Efraín Barradas, University of Florida, Gainsville

Raquel Salas Rivera, University of Pennsylvania

Ronald Mendoza de Jesús, University of California

Iván Chaar-López, University of Michigan

María R. Scharrón-del Río, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Miguel Luciano, artist

Monxo López, Hunter University

Guillermo Irizarry, University of Connecticut

Myrna García-Calderón, Syracuse University

Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, University of Oregon

Iván Chaar-López, University of Michigan

Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago, Arizona State University

Ángel Rivera, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Claudia Sofía Garriga-López, New York University

Mónica Alexandra Jiménez, University of Texas, Austin

Reynaldo Padilla, University of Puerto Rico

Mónica E.Lugo-Vélez, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Luis J. Cintrón-Gutiérrez, University at Albany/SUNY

Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Jonathan Montalvo, Graceland University

Sandra Casanova, Binghamton University

Diana Guemárez-Cruz, Montclair State University

María del Mar González, Independent Scholar

Alai Reyes Santos, University of Oregon

Nayda Collazo-Lloréns, Kalamazoo College

Isa Rodríguez-Soto, University of Akron

Marcela Guerrero, Whitney Museum of American Art

Vanessa Arce Senati, University of Buffalo

José G. Luiggi-Hernández, Duquesne University

Moisés Agosto-Rosario, Director of Treatment at NMAC, Washington DC

Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, University of Oregon

Patricia Villalobos Echeverría, Western Michigan University

Christina A. León, Princeton University

Frances Aparicio, Northwestern University

Beliza Torres Narváez, Augsburg University

Judith Sierra-Rivera, The Pennsylvania State University

Joshua G. Ortiz Baco, The University of Texas, Austin

Lcdo. Gabriel E. Laborde Torres, Goldstein & Associates

Cristina Pérez Jiménez, Manhattan College

Santa Arias, University of Kansas

Daniel Nevarez, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Sally A. Everson, University of the Bahamas

Aurora Santiago-Ortiz, J.D. University of Massachusetts

Valeria Grinberg Pla, Bowling Green State University

Joseph A. Torres-González, City University of New York

Marco A. Martínez Penn State University

Jessica Mulligan, Providence College

José Martínez-Reyes, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Halbert Barton, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Long Island University

José R. Irizarry, Villanova University

Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Ronald Mendoza de Jesús, University of Southern California

Isatis M. Cintrón, Rutgers University

Karrieann Soto Vega, Syracuse University

José R. Días-Garayúa, California State University Stanislaus

Marisol LeBrón, Dickinson College

Giovanna Guerrero-Median, Yale Ciencia Initiative, Puerto Rico

Agustín Laó-Montes, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Luis J. Beltran Álvarez, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Shariana Ferrer-Núñez, Purdue University

Catalina de Onís, Willamette University

Selma Feliciano-Arroyo, University of Pennsylvania

Emma Amador, Brown University

Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Columbia University

Liza Goldman Huertas, MD, West Haven, CT

José Quiroga, Emory University

Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo, University of Connecticut

Alexa S. Dietrich, Wagner College

Maritza Stanchich, Universidad  de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Don E. Walicek, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Yadira Pérez Hazel, University of Melbourne

Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University

Carlos E. Rodríguez-Díaz, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Recinto de Ciencias Médicas

Stephanie Mercado Irizarry, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Libertad Guerra, Director of the Loisaida Cultural Center

Alfredo Villanueva-Collado, CUNY

Joaquín Villanueva, Gustavus Adolphus College

Laura Briggs, University of Massachusetts

Maximilian Alvarez, University of Michigan

Ivonne del Valle, University of California, Berkeley

Francisco Cabanillas, Bowling Green State University

Jason Ortiz, Hartford CT, President CT Puerto Rican Agenda

Carlos Amador Michigan Technological University

Karen Graubart, History, University of Notre Dame

Raul Santiago Bartolomei, University of Southern California

Oscar Ariel Cabezas, UMCE, Santiago de Chile

Féliz Padilla Carbonell, University of Connecticut

Juan Sánchez, Hunter College, CUNY

Laura Marina Boria González, University of Texas at Austin

Daniel Torres Rodríguez, Ohio University

Anne Garland Mahler, University of Virginia

Vanessa Pérez-Rosario, Brooklyn College/CUNY

Raul Santiago Bartolomei, University of Southern California

Jean Carlos Rosario Mercado, City University of New York

Carlos J. Carrión Acevedo, Universidad de Puerto Rico

Ryan Mann-Hamilton, CUNY Laguardia

José R. Díaz-Garayúa, California State University, Stanislaus

Juana Goergen, De Paul University

Pepón Osorio, Temple University

Ingrid Robyn, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Carlos Fonseca, Cambridge University

Jacqueline Loss, University of Connecticut

Pamela Cappas-Toro, Stetson University

Michelle Osuna-Díaz, KIPP Austin

Kristina Medina, St. Olaf College

Jennifer S. Hughes, University of California, Riverside

Jorge Matos- Valdejulli, Hostos Community College, CUNY

Mariana Cecilia Velázquez, Columbia University

Carmen Rabell, Universidad de Puerto Rico

Pedro López Adorno, Hunter College

Luis J. Cintrón Gutiérrez, University at Albany, SUNY

Idania Miletti, Orlando, Florida

Javier Román Nieves, Yale School of Forestry

Kaliris Y. Salas Ramírez, CUNY School of Medicine

María M. Carrión, Emory University

Stephanie Mercado, University of Connecticut

Arturo Arias. University of California, Merced

Cristián Gómez Olivares, Case Western University, Ohio

John Beverley, University of Pittsburgh

Ana Dopico, New York University

Irizelma Robles, Universidad de Puerto Rico

Mónica Barrientos Olivares, Universidad de Chile

Roger Santibañez, Temple University

Eddie S. Ortiz, Bike Courier

Ivette Román Roberto, Artist

Malena Rodríguez Castro, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Sally Everson, University of The Bahamas

Jorell Meléndez Badillo, University of Connecticut

Elizabeth Monasterios, University of Pittsburgh

Daniel Balderston, University of Pittsburgh

Tania Pérez Cano, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Jerome Branche, University of Pittsburgh

Karen Goldman, University of Pittsburgh

Judith Sierra-Rivera, Penn State University

Nicole Delgado, La Impresora

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Oberlin College

Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús, University of South California

Yomaira Figueroa, Michigan State University

Joshua Ortiz Baco, University of Texas, Austin

Mario Mercado Díaz, Rutgers University

Carla Acevedo-Yates, Michigan State University

Frances Aparicio, Northwestern University

Luis Aponte, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Miguel Cruz-Díaz, Indiana University, Bloomington

Ricardo Monge, Artist

Marina Reyes Franco , Curator

Bianca Premo, Florida State University, History

Talía Guzmán González, University of Maryland

Jara Rios, University of Wisconsin

Yasmin Ramirez, Hunter College, CUNY

Mark Schuller, Northern Illinois University

William García

Nilvea Malavet

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Aurea María Sotomayor, born in Puerto Rico, is professor at the University of Pittsburgh. With her PhD from  Stanford University and JD from University of Puerto Rico, Sotomayor scholarly work focuses on Caribbean Literature, Literature and Law, Women Studies and Violence. A translator and anthologist, she is the author of Femina Faber, Rizoma, and Poéticas que armar.

Juan Carlos Rodríguez is Associate Professor of Spanish at Georgia Tech and co-editor of the collection of essays New Documentaries in Latin America (Palgrave, 2014). He is also co-editing a book series, Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America(Florida University Press).

Sheila Vélez Martínez is the Jack and Lovell Olender Professor of Asylum Refugee and Immigration Law at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also the Director of Clinical Programs and the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Myrna García-Calderón, Ph.D. teaches Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Literature and Culture at Syracuse University.

Lourdes Dávila was born and raised in Puerto Rico, has a PhD from Harvard University, and is Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University, where she directs the online journal Esferas. She writes about the intersection of movement and image with literature.

Nemir Matos Cintrón, is a Puerto Rican poet. She has a Ed.D from Nova South Eastern University and is a Higher Education Learning Designer and Adjunct Professor at Ana G. Mendez University.

Adriana Garriga-López, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Anthropology and chair of the Anthropology and Sociology Department at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Luis Othoniel Rosa is the author of two novels: Otra vez me alejo (2012) and Caja de fractales (2017), and the book Comienzos para una estética anarquista: Borges con Macedonio (2016). He studied at the University of Puerto Rico and holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He currently teaches at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

César A. Salgado teaches Latin American and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of From Modernism to Neobaroque: Joyce and Lezama Lima(2001) and co-editor of Latino and Latino Writers (2004), Cuba (2011), and TransLatin Joyce: Global Transmissions in Ibero-American Literature (2014).

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

Featured image is from The National Guard/flickr/cc.

Some people in Catalonia, a rich and culturally distinct area in north-east of Spain, want to secede from the larger country. According to polls (pdf) less than half of the people in the area support the move. The local government prepared for a referendum and called for a local vote.

Polling stations were set up for today. But Spanish laws do not allow for such polls or a separation. Catalonia, like other Spanish regions, already has a good degree of autonomy. If Catalonia were to secede the Basque areas in the north would likely follow. Spain would fall apart. Under Spanish law the referendum is illegal. The central government sent police to prevent the procedure. Street melees ensued.

A lot of mistakes have been made by the central government. It was stubborn in negotiations. It reacted too late to – at least partially – reasonable demands. Its insensitivity only incited resistance to it. But it is also responsible for the country as a whole. The behavior of local government is not much better. It is just as conservative, in its own way, as the government in Madrid.

Catalonia has a GDP per capita of some $33,580/year. For Spain as a whole the GDP per capita is $26,643/year. Many factors account for the difference. Catalonia has an advantages in climate, in the vicinity of the French border, the high attractiveness for tourists with its capital Barcelona and its beaches. It has a well developed industry. But the “rest of Spain” is also, by far, its biggest market.

A richer part of the country does not want to subsidize the poorer ones. But it still wants to profit from them.

In general the splitting off of sub-states from the bigger, established nations weakens both. It is easier for outside forces to manipulated smaller states than larger ones. While the motives in this or that case are understandable, they are also, in my view, shortsighted.

During the Spanish civil war in the 1930s Catalonia and Basque areas were the last Republican strongholds against the winning right-wing Nationalists. That history lives on in today’s conflict. No one should wish to repeat it.

I am very happy to be in this place to bring to you and to the entire world an accurate picture of what has been (and what still is) happening in Mosul. Civic society needs to be able to bring its problems and difficulties directly to an international audience when it is no longer possible to reach or communicate with Government, let alone when Government is the main cause for these difficulties.

At the same time, the UN needs to hear the facts directly from civic society institutions if it is going to be successful in its difficult task of restoring local and regional security and stability, leading ultimately to the global stability that we all seek.

The population of Mosul cannot find peace and security with any of the institutions of the Iraqi State, and with their city lying in ruins they cannot find a place to shelter.

A chronic dilemma

Security has been a serious issue in Mosul since 2003.

First, because of the sectarian policies of the Iraqi security forces that humiliated the population and refused to listen to their peaceful demands, and enacted a policy of detentions without trial.

Second, during the ISIS occupation (following the utter failure of the Iraqi government to defend the city),

And finally, during the battle to retake the city,a battle in which the Iraqi government ignored the advice and warnings of military experts and encircled ISIS inside the old city, used excessive force and randomly “dumped” weapons to kill more than 40 thousand innocent civilians in the city. Iraqi government forces have been implicated by the United Nations and a multitude of human rights organizations in this crime that has resulted in the destruction of the city.

The catastrophic price for the battle (in terms of lives and the destruction of the city’s infrastructure) can be appreciated when compared with the liberation of Tel Afar from which ISIS fighters were allowed to withdraw and the town was peacefully re-taken sparing the city and its population.

Worse than square one

The political result of this battle is that the city is once more in the hands of the sectarian militias that have now been incorporated within the apparatus of the State, levying taxes and conducting acts of kidnapping, extra judicial executions, and the confiscation/destruction of private property while wearing police and army uniforms. Government sponsored militias are actively changing the political map of the city to influence the results of any future elections, a behavior not befitting a member state of the United Nations and is more reminiscent of the total chaos that follows the failure and collapse of the State, as was the case in Bosnia and Kosovo for example.

Today, the sons of Mosul must prove their innocence from the accusation that they cooperated with ISIS that can be made by any militiaman, resulting in a swift death in front of the Iphone cameras.

The million dollar question

The destruction of Mosul has been estimated at anything between 70% and 100%; the coffers are empty and the government is corrupt. Who will rebuild Mosul and with what funds? The answers are becoming clearer to the people of Mosul.

Catastrophic results

The results would be catastrophic for the city of Mosul and its population. These include:

• The ethnic cleansing on sectarian lines to change the demographics of the population.
• The destruction of the culture of religious and ethnic tolerance for which the city is renowned and which the region is in much need for
• The removal of a major center of civilization in the region, that has long acted as an intellectual safety valve.
• The creation of a drug economy based on the influence of powerful War Lords
• The rise of a vice-based economy.
• Mysterious monies made available to buy land and realestate in Mosul at tempting prices.
• The transformation of the character of city’s population from that of an ancient centerof civilization to one of refugee camp dwellers, and the creation of a new generation of millions of uneducated, helpless young people and extremists.
• The destruction of the cultural, artistic, intellectual and artisan folk heritage of Mosul society.
• Control of the Mosques in the city for aims that do not serve the city and its people.

A failed government

Corruption

These changes will not be reversible with time. This chronic political failure and the record levels of corruption in Iraq have transformed the institutions of the State (the constitution, Parliament, the judiciary and the security forces) into an ethnic/sectarian battleground. This has crippled the instruments of the State and made it impossible for the Government to be held accountable in the normal way.

Unable and unwilling government

The situation is made worst by the inability or unwillingness of the Iraqi government to follow the norms that govern the relationship between a government and its population as defined by the United Nations. The situation also makes it near impossible for Mosul’s civic society to make any form of meaningful contribution toward finding a solution based on the experiences of other nations.

A stark conundrum

The destroyed city of Mosul (named Hiroshima’s twin) is facing a stark conundrum: No re­development without scrupulous, competent administration; no honest administration without security; and no security without the removal of State sponsored militias from the city.

The cost of this conundrum is colossal.

The way out

Security is the key to the rehabilitation of Mosul. The population of the city cannot find peace and security with any of the institutions of the Iraqi State, and the only remaining viable option left in the face of the annihilation of the city is to seek international protection for the city.

In light of these considerations, Mosul society represented by its professional sons and daughters calls the United Nations to declare Mosul a “Disaster City” and provide protection for its citizens to fulfill the following vital duties:

• Provide security and international supervision on the removal of militias from the city.
• Oversee the removal of corrupt, government appointed officials from city offices and institutions.
• Enable civic society to form a temporary, apolitical administration to run the city and prepare for future elections to determine the nature of city governess.
• Oversee the allocation of part of the national oil revenues (as an Oil for Redevelopment and Compensation Program) to be deposited in a special fund together with any international donations.
• International supervision of the funding and execution of all redevelopment projects.

This catastrophic state of affairs was predicted by the Mosul Foundation before the battle. The Foundation warned of the results of this battle and put forward a realistic roadmap to deal with the situation. Today, and after what we had predicted sadly became a reality, we are advocating for this Roadmap with the support of tens of thousands of the sons and daughters of Mosul from all walks of life and from all professions and specializations.

The Mosul Foundation hopes that you and the UN agency will respond positively to this legitimate and just request.

Thank you for your generous attention.

After 267 days, the end of the battle of Mosul was announced on July 10th. “Liberation” is a misleading notion, because the hostilities have not stopped, the human suffering has not stopped.

There are still victims in the city every day on both sides.

Many refugees have no home to go back to and are suffering from severe mental health problems, especially the children.

No reason to celebrate

Were inter alia destroyed:

• 9 of the 10 major hospitals.
• 76 of the 98 medical centres.
• 6 big bridges across the Tigris.
• three-quarters of Mosul’s roads,
• 400 educational institutions, including schools, universities and education centres.
• 11,000 residential housing units.
• 4 electrical power plants and 65 percent of its electrical network
• 6 water purifying systems and much of the city’s water infrastructure has been booby trapped.
• The pharmaceutical industrial complex.
• All grain stores.
• Two large dairies.
• 212 oil refineries, petrol and fuel stations.
• All public buildings
• All state and private banks.
• 63 religious centres (churches and mosques), most of them valuable historical sites.
• 250 workshops, factories and small factories, including agro-industries.
• 29 hotels
• More than 40,000 civilian casualties
• 38 out of 54 residential areas in West Mosul are destroyed. A staff director in the office of the Nineveh governor, said that “while eastern Mosul is half-destroyed, the devastation in the western half is much greater”. A member of a local volunteer group said that the destruction in west Mosul is close to “99 percent.”

And in the rest of Iraq, the humanitarian and security situation remains disastrous.

• 11 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, of which 5.1 million children (OCHA, September 2017)
• More than one million people have been displaced since the military operations to recapture the city of Mosul since October 2016, with about three quarters of West Mosul since April. While 1.95 million people have returned to their residences, 3.2 million people remain internally displaced in Iraq and need humanitarian aid.
• Since June 2014 there were 138 attacks on schools and 58 attacks on hospitals
• More than 3 million children attend school irregularly, while 1.2 million children do not go to school at all. How many more lost generations will this war produce?

The extent of civilian casualties, the massive destruction of American bombs, missiles and artillery and the use by the American army of white phosphorus, a weapon that is internationally forbidden for use in populated areas, are all serious US war crimes.

Little international attention for civilian victims

The catastrophic number of civilian deaths in Mosul receives little international attention from politicians and journalists. This is in stark contrast to the global outrage of the bombing of East Aleppo by the Syrian government and the Russian troops at the end of 2016.

It is believed that more than 40,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the massive firepower that was used against them, especially by the federal police, air attacks and ISIS itself.

Neither ISIS nor the international coalition, neither the Iraqi government nor the United Nations, provide accurate information about numbers of victims, while groups such as Airwars largely focus on press reports. Airwars estimates that 5.805 civilians have been killed between 19 February and 19 June 2017. However, as always, press reports only cover a fraction of the actual number of deaths.

Mosul, one of the world’s largest cemeteries

People are trying to understand why the death toll in Mosul is so high. A solid explanation can be read in a shocking report by Amnesty International (AI): “At Any Cost: The Civilian Catastrophe in West Mosul”.

This report does not provide a precise figure of the number of deaths, but it confirms the terrible damage that was caused by continuous artillery and rocket fire for a period of five months in a closed area with civilians who were unable to escape.

Other reports from Mosul state that the Civil Defense Unit has already removed more than 2.000 bodies from the rubble. Most victims are reportedly women and children. It is believed that more than 4.000 bodies are buried under the rubble in West Mosul. According to the US, the Joint Operations Command, approximately 1,400 bodies were already excavated. The head of the civil defense unit, Lt. Kol. Rabia Ibrahim Hassan, told the Washington Post that he had asked the government for more equipment and resources, but that he had not received any response.

During the fighting to recapture Ramadi and Fallujah – the previous military campaigns – most residents fled or evacuated before the fighting. However, many Moslawis (Mosul residents) remained in their homes, making the operation much more complicated. Some stayed because ISIS killed the people who tried to escape, some remained because they refused to leave their homes or relatives, some because they had some kind of work, but many remained because the government asked them to. The army threw leaflets from helicopters asking residents not to flee.

The reason was not only because they feared that the flow of refugees would be unmanageable in a country where already 3.4 million people were displaced by the war. This decision was mainly based on the view of the generals who thought to be able to use the citizens in their favour. If the Iraqi forces were to treat the Moslawis well, people would probably help the troops, give information about ISIS, and it would also give good publicity about “the Salvation efforts of the Iraqi Army.”

Death toll of Iraqi soldiers

Premier Haider al Abadi organized a victory parade in Baghdad on Saturday, July 15, where Iraqi armed forces marched before his eyes in the strictly protected Green Zone of the capital. It is a sign for the state of the country that the parade was not publicly announced due to security issues, that the media only came to know later and that the people of the city were excluded from the ‘festivities’. But there was no real reason for celebration because of the enormous losses suffered by Iraqi forces.

The Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), an American trained unit, the elite armed forces of Iraq, has lost 40 percent of its people in the struggle for Mosul. While the Baghdad government has always refused to disclose its military losses, this figure was reported by the US Department of Defense, which calls for $ 1,269 billion to rebuild the unit over the next three years and train 20,000 staff members.

“The requested funding will be essential for the reconstruction of the CTS combat force that has lost 40 percent in Mosul,” according to the sentence in the budget proposal. “These funds will be used to replace vehicles and equipment through combat loss while staff will be trained and equipped to restore this military unit in the context of ongoing conflicts.”

About the losses in other units, such as the Hashd al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilization Forces and the regular combat troops, little is known. There are indications that the losses of the regular armed forces are greater than those of the CTS. If this may be an indication: Middle East Monitor reported on February 23 that 7,000 Iraqi soldiers and military members had been killed.

What about the losses of the “enemy”?

Contrary to the underestimation of civilian casualties, Iraq and the US continuously keep on increasing the number of casualties among ISIS warriors. On July 16, General Abdul Amir Yarallah of the Ninewa Operation Command announced that more than 25,000 rebels were killed during the Mosul campaign. On July 19th, that number had already risen to 30,000. To emphasize how the Iraqi government increases its numbers: in January, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense declared that there were only 9,400 IS elements in Mosul. General Sean MacFarland, Commander of the US coalition, estimated that in August 2016 only 15,000 to 20,000 IS fighters remained in Iraq and Syria. The Iraqis claim to have killed more ISIS members in Mosul only than there are in the whole Middle East. During a discussion at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, July 21, General Raymond Thomas, head of the US Special Operations Command, even claimed that the US-led offensive had killed 60,000 to 70,000 ISIS militants. He has probably included the civilian casualties in this figure.

The return

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the nine-month siege forced 1,048,044 people to flee. On 25 September, according to UNHCR, 823.000 Moslawi’s remained displaced by the offensive. On 21 September, Iraqi migration authorities have counted 1,74 million refugees since the launch of operations to retake major ISIS strongholds in October 2016. The Iraqi government plans to repatriate all refugees from Mosul by the end of 2017. But that may well be wishful thinking.

Men, women and children who escaped from the destruction of Mosul are housed in tents camps, often in virtual prisons. Women and children suspected of being family members of IS warriors killed in the siege are redirected to “rehabilitation camps”.

Return is impossible for the majority of these internally displaced war refugees. Many do not have homes to return to because of the artillery and air attacks. Most of the city has no access to water and electricity, food is scarce and schools and hospitals are destroyed.

The Ministry of Migration tries to encourage the displaced persons to return to their homes. Seminars are held in refugee camps to encourage people to return. The UN interviewed displaced after such a presentation. Some said they had nothing to return because their homes were destroyed. They had no money left and felt nothing to return until the services were restored and the economy was re-launched. Another problem that the United Nations noted was that the Migration Department has no programs for people returning. The ministry also does not provide the monthly payments on which displaced persons are entitled.

It is estimated that at least 10 percent of explosives from the US coalition have not exploded, causing thousands of bombs and grenades waiting to explode, on top of the abandoned booby traps left by ISIS. Experts have warned that it may take a decade to clear all explosives in the city.

Peace is possible when corruption ends

There is a high level of corruption among the Iraqi soldiers occupying Mosul. They undermine the security measures to neutralize ISIS in the wake of their defeat. Suspects may proceed through military checkpoints, after payment of $ 1,000 and can bring a vehicle after payment of $ 1,500.

Mosul residents are sceptic of what they can expect from government forces. Corruption by the occupying military takes various forms. Moslawis pay soldiers $ 100 for removing a body from the debris and others pay $ 500 to return to their home, if it’s still habitable. Iraqi military and military units have always been accused of asking money for citizens’ protection, demanding money for truckers bringing goods to the civilian population and thus being a particularly profitable milk cow if they have to go through military checkpoints.

Destruction is nothing new in Iraq, and neither is the mismanagement of rebuilding, This problem was on prominent display in a 2013 report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which found that the $60 billion in U.S. funds spent over 10 years in the country produced few tangible results. The report blamed this on poor coordination with Iraqis, misplaced priorities, misplanned projects, contractor wastefulness, corruption, and security problems. Iraq’s government, which spent $138 billion during this period, did not do any better.

Prime Minister al-Maliki shakes hands with U.S. President Barack Obama in Baghdad (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has “lost” 500 billion dollars during his term of office (2006-2014), according to the Iraqi Commission of Integrity (CoI). The CoI is responsible for investigating corruption scandals in Iraq. “Nearly half of government revenues during the eight-year period was  ‘stolen’”, according to the spokesman for the Col, in what he called “the biggest political corruption scandal in history”. Iraq’s oil revenues amounted to $ 800 billion between 2006 and 2014, and the Maliki government also received $ 250 billion from various countries, including the US.

The destruction of the Sunni heartland in Iraq

Mosul (Nineveh) is one of the oldest and largest cities of ancient times. The area around the city was already sedentary in 6,000 BC, and in 3,000 BC it was an important religious center in honor of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. The early city was built on a geological fracture line and suffered enormous damage by earthquakes several times.

In the 8th century BC 120,000 people lived in the walled city of Nineveh.The population of Nineveh amounted to about 300,000 people after the reign of Sanherib (704-681 BC). It was the largest city in the world for more than fifty years (668-612 BC).

The destruction of Mosul is not only the destruction of history, but is part of the widespread destruction of cities with Sunni Arab-majority populations.

Under the umbrella of the war against ISIS, the majority of Sunni cities have been destroyed. Thousands of Sunni civilians have been killed. Before the Mosul “liberation”, Tikrit and other cities and villages had already been destroyed, burnt and looted. A UN team described the destruction of Ramadi as “staggering”, with 80% of the city destroyed. Then came Fallujah. Then Al Qaim…. and the US-led coalition airstrikes are still transforming Sunni areas into rubble.

Many Iraqis believe destruction was the plan all along to definitively silence the Iraqi resistance and rebellious Sunni-majority provinces.

Peace is possible with good governance

Remarkable is MercyCorps’s two-year investigation “Investing in Iraq’s Peace”, published in January 2016. The main finding is that sectarianism is not the main cause of the current unrest.

When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) quickly conquered a large part of the Sunni part of Iraq in 2014, experts described this as a natural consequence of the sectarian heritage of the country and a consequence of the Sykes-Picot accords, with the artificially drawn border between Iraq and Syria. But from MercyCorps research between 2013 and 2015, it appears that the main factor for the rise of ISIS is not the sectarian division, but rather an absence of inclusive, responsive and responsible governance.

After the invasion of Iraq, political actors including the USA, actively planted the seeds of sectarian divisions for political gain. Sunni and other minority groups were systematically marginalized, harassed by security forces, accused of terrorism and locked up without evidence or trial. Public services hardly worked. This policy based on division fuelled sectarian ideas and created sympathy for groups like ISIS, claiming to be an alternative to the corrupt Iraqi government.

The news about the resignation of Prime Minister Maliki in August 2014 was considered by the Sunnis as good news, and Sunni support for armed groups such as ISIS dropped from 49% to 26%. Although Prime Minister Maliki’s successor Haider Al-Abadi is also a shiite, Sunnis expected an improvement in public services and their perceptions about government agencies changed. In other words, sectarianism does not appear to be the primary or only cause of instability. Proper administration would greatly reduce support for further sectarian polarization.

But the expectations of better governance have not been met. Little progress has been made in the promised reforms. As a result, public opinion polls show that trust in the central government continues to erode. From July 2015, public frustration caused major violent demonstrations across the country against corruption, poor services and sectarianism. These protests are still continuing.Nevertheless, the non-violent movement threatens to be overshadowed by the growing success of armed groups, including the increasingly powerful Shiite militias. Premier Abadi seems to have little control over these militias and this poses a major threat to the future of Iraq.

The study shows that improving government performance is essential for a just and peaceful Iraq.

Unfortunately, donor investment in Iraqi civil society is deteriorating. In 2011, the US government’s annual spending on one soldier in Iraq was an average of $ 802,000 – or 80 billion dollars a year for a minimum attendance of 10,000 troops. What the US government plans to invest in democracy and civilian programs in 2016 is nothing, compared to military spending: $ 72.5 million. There is no miraculous solution for building stability in Iraq, but good governance is essential for addressing the causes of instability and active civil society is essential for good governance.

Testimonies from the war

The toll of the conflict for individuals and families is unusually hard. For close relatives who were locked in the west side of the city, life has been a living hell since the beginning of the conflict.

Not only were they haunted by ISIS, there have been also many crimes and abuses by Iraqi troops since the operation began in 2014. The government in Baghdad has never held anyone accountable. Premier Al Abadi has often criticized human rights organizations investigating the crimes. The fact is that torture and abuse are institutionalized within the Iraqi armed forces, and in all cases they are tolerated by the judiciary. ISIS brought an extreme brutality to Iraq that shocked the country and the world. Now the armed forces are guilty of the same kind of extreme violence.

A testimony in an article from the online news site Middleeasteye reveals the horror of the war.

An Iraqi soldier, fighting the Islamic state said:

“We killed them all, Daesh, men, women and children. We killed everybody.”

What remains of this part of the ancient city of Mosul, where the Islamic state (IS) fighters made their last stand, is a terrible place. And what is under the rubble is testimony of the dark final days of the struggle for Mosul.

Hundreds of bodies lay half buried under the rubble and litter, which was once a flourishing historic district. The dissolution of the bodies occurs rapidly in the scorching 50 ° C summer heat. Feet are the most striking remains.

The last murder party has left terrible traces, and it seems that someone wants to quickly remove these traces. In the past week, armored bulldozers have driven back and forth over the demolished houses and hundreds of bodies buried under the rubble. But the dead do not go away. Rotting body parts color reddish in the midst of the light gray dust and debris of destroyed buildings.

“There are many citizens among the bodies,” says an Iraqi major. “After the liberation was announced, the order was given to kill everyone and everything that moved.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Major said those orders were wrong, but the soldiers had to follow them regardless. “It was not right at all,” he said. “The majority of the Daesh fighters surrendered, and we just killed them.”

The reconstruction

After security is guaranteed, the next major step for Mosul will be reconstruction. Lise Grande of the United Nations claims that the situation in East Mosul is going well. There are schools and businesses open, many residents have returned. Local contractors work hard to restore services, and they use local employees.

West Mosul is a very different story. There are 38 out of 54 residential areas severely damaged. That means that much more has to be done than in the east. The first United Nations forecast was that it would cost $ 470 million to restore electricity, water, sewerage, hospitals, schools and homes in the most affected areas. For the remaining parts of the western half another $ 237 million would be needed. That’s twice the amount originally estimated by the United States, and those figures are likely to continue to rise.The United Nations has a plan to form civilian groups, composed of local leaders, officials, tribes, etc., who will decide which homes and buildings will be rebuilt and which ones. The UN hopes that this will also promote further reconciliation through dialogue in neighborhoods. The provincial government will begin restoring services in the next few weeks in the west. The World Bank is also involved in the process and launching projects to rebuild bridges across the Tigris River. Through the World Bank and foreign donors, Iraq wants to get the largest amount of money to rebuild Mosul. Up to now, approximately $ 300 million has been collected, and two donor conferences will be organized to ask for more. It is unclear whether this will be able to make the city live again.

An Iraqi senior official estimates that the cost of reconstruction of Mosul will be more than $ 50 billion. The regime in Baghdad was mandated in May last year to negotiate a $ 5.4 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund, demanding sharp cuts in social services. The country’s economy declined by 10.3 percent in 2016 due to falling oil prices and the effects of the war.

There is little hope that the reconstruction will start soon. Let’s have a look at Baghdad: There is no improvement in services, nor is there any reconstruction. Journalist Dexter Filkins:

“Baghdad in 2014 looks just like in 2004, despite the fact that the Iraqi government pumps up huge amounts of oil and earns a lot of money: they are the second largest producer in OPEC. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars, over 85 billion dollars a year. There is just not much evidence that the oil money is spent well and I think it’s fair to suspect that a lot of that money is stolen. It’s not a happy story, Baghdad is a wreck. I mean, it looks exactly as during the war. “

The end of ISIS?

The Iraqi government has achieved a major victory by destroying ISIS as a state-structure with an extensive area. But the terrorist movement has shown that it is able to adapt to new realities. How many weapons and heavy equipment of three Iraqi army divisions ISIS captured when Mosul conquered in June 2014 was never communicated. Much of this weaponry was hidden by ISIS in tunnels, gorges and valleys in areas of western Iraq and eastern Syria. If ISIS loses these areas, it will simply recover as an armed organization returning to unconventional warfare.

The real power of ISIS follows mainly from the political circumstances of Iraq after the occupation. The sharp contradictions in Iraq contribute to instability and can create the same conditions that led to the rise of the ISIS. Sunnis were excluded from the political process of the country. So the future of ISIS in Iraq depends on the success of the political process in an ethnically and religiously divided country.

It is unlikely that the Iraqi government will fulfill its promises to the devastated Sunni provinces, and the confidence crisis between the Sunnis and Shiites will only worsen.

Without a political process that can integrate the Sunnis and realize their fair demands, ISIS will come back in many forms and it can even become more violent.

Peace can be achieved with diplomacy, not bombs

Western countries should come up with diplomatic solutions, instead of putting oil on the fire, by always choosing the military option. Unless they do that, no strategy to defeat ISIS or any other extremist group will be effective. Bombs may even prove to be counterproductive: civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure can push communities further into the arms of extremists. Not only ISIS, but also the Iraqi government’s security forces are part of the problem. So it’s a bad idea to side with one butcher to defeat another one.

What has been done up to now to achieve a political solution? Nothing. There is a lot of meaningless talk about diplomatic initiatives, but that has already been the case since 2007. Nothing has happened on the diplomatic front. Only massive arms deliveries, the presence of US advisers in all ministries and an embassy larger than Vatican City with more than 10,000 US intelligence officers and mercenaries or contractors, that has been so far the result of “diplomacy”. On June 19, 2014, American President Barack Obama declared that there is no military solution, and that a political solution is the only way to solve the problems in Iraq. The White House, however, continues to provide the Iraqi government with US troops and weapons.

An estimated 20 percent of the Iraqi national budget of 2016 was spent on defence, including the salaries and arms of the Hashd al-Shaabi militrias. The gross domestic product in Iraq amounted to $ 168,61 billion in 2015. Thus the Iraqi government’s military expenses reached $ 33,72 billion, while Iraq faces a humanitarian disaster. Iraq’s national and foreign debts will most likely to exceed $125 billion before the end of 2017, according to predictions of the IMF. If the deficit keeps on growing, Iraq would be at risk of bankruptcy in 2017, the inability to pay its employees’ salaries and social security services. This situation would seriously hamper the necessary reconstruction of the country.

Military force can be part of fighting extremism, but it is a dangerous method, particularly when the main goal – as it must be – is winning over communities. Only forces that can establish positive local relations should have participated in the assault against ISIS. It was probably better to rule out Shia militias in Sunni-majority areas and Kurdish forces in Arab lands. The Sunni community was able to drive out al Qaeda during the US occupation, but was not so willing to drive out ISIS after 2014, because of the severe repression of the Iraqi government against the Sunni community since the withdrawal of the American troops. Conquering the territory and losing the people – as happened in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq -can make everything worse.

Peace can be achieved if sectarianism stops

The responsibility for the next phase is on the shoulders of the Iraqi government. It must try to control Iraqi armed forces and Shiite militias, punish human rights violations and war crimes, such as happened during the liberation of Tikrit, Fallujah and Diyala. It must ensure that the Arab Sunni population is no longer marginalized and their voices and concerns are heard. The government must act quickly to house the millions of homeless people and restore the services.

The prospects however don’t seem optimistic. Tallha Abdulrazaq, an Iraqi expert at the University of Exeter (UK):

“The sectarian Baghdad regime has always shown its true colors. It’s only a matter of time before something happens, maybe even worse than ISIS.”

It doesn’t look like the Iraqi government will change its attitude. All political groups, both among Shiite, Sunni and Kurds, are hopelessly divided.

In addition,

“The Iraqi government is detaining more than 370,000 people,” said a security guard to Asso Shittad Press’s journalist. “The prisoners suffer from many diseases, including skin diseases,” he said, adding that most of them can not walk through swollen feet. If more human rights violations are committed in the sunni region, this will mobilize young Sunnis to join another extremist organization.”

Peace is possible if foreign interference stops

Without a comprehensive political settlement agreed by all parties, any post-ISIS situation will end in new conflicts, which will have catastrophic consequences for the unity of the Iraqi state and the country will continue to sink further into chaos.

The Iraqi government is faced with the huge challenge of convincing all factions to put their own political ambitions aside.The first signs are not very hopeful, with conflicting statements about governance structures by Kurdish, Shia and Sunni leaders. A sustainable political agreement must be reached about a reconstruction and reconciliation plan for stability in the region, provided that it is considered fair. Any sustainable solution about the country’s future must address fundamental issues in order to achieve greater social and economic integration of the different ethnic and religious groups of Iraq.

Iraq has a strong civil society, trade unions and opposition groups, which do have elaborate plans and offer solutions to get rid of the disastrous situation in the country. The government and the Western coalition don’t want to listen to their pleas. This makes it particularly difficult to restore stability. The reason for not consulting the civil society is obvious: the Iraqi people want an end to foreign interference and they want their pre-invasion semi-socialized country back and the control over their own resources. The neoliberal Western imperial establishments won’t allow that and so they keep on fuelling the flames of sectarianism.

The end of Iraqi sovereignty?

After the US withdrawal in 2011, Iraq remained dependent on US military and logistical support and protection.Collaboration with occupation forces has benefitted at least two-thirds of Iraq’s post-2003 political class, while the Iraqi people suffered greatly.

Meanwhile, Iran has strengthened its grip on the Iraqi state. On 26 November 2016, the Iraqi parliament legalized the Hashd al-Shaabi, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), predominantly Shiite paramilitary troops, now getting legal status besides and apart from the regular Iraqi army.

Why have Iraqi legislators decided to legalize the PMF? What does this mean for the future of the state and society in Iraq? The PMF originated in response to a fatwa, a religious edict, announced June 13, 2014 by Great Ayatollah Ali Sistani, an Iraq-based Iranian spiritual and highest religious authority of the Shiite community. In response to the threat of ISIS, Sistani then called for a jihad against this terrorist group and in his fatwa he urged the Iraqis to take up the weapons against ISIS.

This was conceived as a green light for dozens of Iran-supported Shiite militias to unite in a huge super-militia, the Hashd al Shaabi. Men like Hadi al-Amiri, Qais al-Khazali and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, heads of the three largest and most powerful Iran-supported militias, are now the main commanders of the PMF.

Why does the PMF enjoy so much impunity and lack of accountability? The answer lies in the influence and control of Iran on a large part of the Iraqi state structure, not least the Hashd al Shaabi, now being prepared to become a full Iraqi version of the Iranian Pasdaran, better known as The Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRG), a parallel and potentially competitive force besides the Iraqi army.

The new law states that the PMF is under the direct authority of the prime minister itself, which means that the Iraqi Defense Minister has no authority or control over them.Leaders like al-Amiri, al-Khaz’ali and al-Muhandis are all directly linked to Iran. They are not only loyal to Iraq, but also to the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Three major militias, the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah use images of Khamenei on their posters and websites.

Conclusion

Instead of calling the ISIS fighters and their supporters “sad murderous losers”,we must first of all try to understand the complex social, economic and political factors that made ISIS a success story. In addition, Iraqi civilian peace initiatives should actively be supported and published by the media. With a fraction of the astronomical sums spent on the war, valuable projects that transcend the sectarian fault lines, should be promoted.

The problem is also this: We must urgently come to terms with our own devastating role in the Middle East and North Africa crisis (MENA). Military interventions from the West in the MENA region have played a decisive role in the radicalization of Muslims in the West. The West has supported the Iraqi government when they were shooting unarmed Sunni demonstrators, bombing Sunni territories and supported Shiite militias that committed large-scale war crimes. Putting all the emphasis on ISIS also has an important political role: the denial of the Western destructive war campaign, which has destroyed the region, hurt the population and caused a major refugee crisis.

Military engagement can potentially weaken the influence of ISIS by demonstrating that they are not invincible. But their eventual eradication will be the result of political processes that may take decades. In the meantime, preventing the destructive fragmentation of multicultural Western societies should be the priority. This requires a clear rejection of the politics of fear, and using the means for prevention at home instead of bombing the Middle East.

Dirk Adriaensens is a member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Between 1992 and 2003 he led several delegations to Iraq to observe the devastating effects of the UN sanctions. He was a member of the International Organising Committee of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2003-2005). He is also co-coordinator of the Global Campaign Against the Assassination of Iraqi Academics. He is co-author of ‘Rendez-Vous in Baghdad’, EPO (1994), ‘Cultural Cleansing in Iraq’, Pluto Press, London (2010), ‘Beyond Educide’, Academia Press, Ghent (2012), Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book ‘The Iraq War Reader’, Global Research (2012), ‘Het Midden Oosten, The Times They are a-changin‘, EPO (2013) and is a frequent contributor to Global Research, Truthout, Al Araby, The International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies and other media.

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Self-determination is a universal right, affirmed by the UN Charter and other international law – rejected by despotic states like Spain, masquerading as democratic.

On Sunday, Catalans trying to vote in their independence referendum are being assaulted by thuggish police – smashing glass panels of polling stations, bursting in violently, forcibly removing ballot boxes and voters, attacking them with batons and rubber-coated steel bullets, women as violently as men, the elderly treated the same way.

Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria lied, claiming police “acted with professionalism in an appropriate way.” Images show otherwise, including women battered and bloodied by police violence.

Catalonia is a battleground in Barcelona and elsewhere. War in the streets rages against its people, trying to exercise their right to vote.

Hundreds so far were injured, including at least 11 police officers. Catalan President Carles Puigdemont blasted police state war on the Catalan people, saying:

“The unjustified, disproportionate and irresponsible violence of the Spanish state today has not only failed to stop Catalans’ desire to vote…but has helped to clarify all the doubts we had to resolve today.”

PM Mariano Rajoy bears full responsibility, operating like a tinpot despot, a modern-day Francisco Franco, Spain’s military dictator from the 1930s until 1975.

Thousands assembled pre-dawn ahead of polls opening. People occupied some stations overnight to protect them, ballot boxes brought in during the night, voters urged to resist police tactics nonviolently, some told to hand them flowers.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, police closed 1,300 schools – designated polling stations. Thousands in Barcelona streets chanted “Votarem, votarem” – We will vote, many with their arms raised showing they’re nonviolent.

Catalan television broadcast footage of crowds across the autonomous region ahead of the vote. Regional government spokesman Jordi Turnull said

“(t)he government today is in a position to affirm that we can celebrate the referendum of self-determination – not as we wanted, but (it will have democratic) guarantees.”

Catalans were told ballots can be cast anywhere, including in hospitals and retirement homes by presenting passports or other ID, voters permitted to use printed ballots downloaded from the Internet.

Days earlier, Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra police warned about disrupting order if voters are prevented from casting ballots.

Rajoy’s brutal tactics may convince most Spaniards he’s unfit to serve. Perhaps his days in office are numbered.

Despite police state violence, voting continues – deterred but determined, a courageous show of nonviolent people power.

Catalan independence from fascist Spain perhaps comes next.

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

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

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Featured image is from Sputnik.

Headlines and commentary across both Eastern and Western media have mainly focused on the Catalan independence referendum and the actions of Spanish police and the Spanish government’s attempts to disrupt polls.

However, little is being said about what the real implications of Catalan independence may be. What do those politicians in Catalonia in favor of independence seek to do with it should they succeed? Will they create a Catalonia that serves the best interests of the people? Or serve the EU and NATO more efficiently and eagerly than a united Spain ever could?

There are 5 points those following this conflict should know and keep in mind as events unfold:

1. Catalonia has a formidable industrialized economy relative to other regions of Spain, with a GDP and population just exceeding those of nations like Scotland or Singapore, and likely could achieve and sustain independence from Spain.

2. NATO appears eager to encourage independence and would welcome what they expect to be a robust military capability to add to their wars of global aggression.

An article published in 2014 by the Atlantic Council – a Fortune 500-funded NATO think tank – titled, “The Military Implications of Scottish and Catalonian Secession,” would state:

Catalonia has 7.3 million people, with more than $300 billion in GDP. Spending just 1.6% of that on defense provides over $4.5 billion annually, or roughly the budget of Denmark, which has well-regarded and efficient armed forces. Catalonian military plans are more vague, but so far, they emphasize the navy. With excellent ports in Barcelona and Tarragona, Catalonia is well-positioned as a minor naval power, ‘with the Mediterranean as our strategic environment, and NATO as our framework’, as the nationalists’ think-tank on defense argues. The rough plans call for a littoral security group of a few hundred sailors at first. After a few years, Catalonia would assume responsibility as “a main actor in the Mediterranean,” with land-based maritime patrol aircraft and small surface combatants. Eventually, the nationalist ambition may include an expeditionary group with a light assault carrier and hundreds of marines, to take a serious role in collective security.

The Atlantic Council piece would emphatically conclude that:

If accurately characterized by the few white papers that have surfaced, the separatists’ position suggests a valuable and refreshing view of specialization in collective defense: build a navy that is comparatively focused on influencing events ashore.

4. Some Catalan politicians have begun planning for its military’s integration into NATO.

The Mediterranean: our strategic environment. NATO: our framework 
Catalonia must participate in SNMG2 (Standing NATO Maritime Group 2; formerly Standing Naval Force Mediterranean), a component of the NRF (NATO Response Force).

It would also be convenient to participate in the SNMCMG2 (Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 2). 

5. Like “Kurdistan,” any sort of “independence” is meaningless if the resulting state finds itself utterly dependent and entwined with Western hegemony and the institutions that maintain it – especially at the cost of member states and proxies – be they Kurdish or Catalan.

This article was originally published by Land Destroyer Report where the featured images was sourced.

Introduction

On September 24, 2017, The New York Times published the following letter written by Donald P. Gregg, C.I.A. officer in Vietnam, 1970-1973; C.I.A. station chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975; and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993: excerpts from his letter follow:

“I can’t help thinking about the lessons from Vietnam that might apply today to North Korea. I fear that we are headed down a 2017 version of ‘ignorance alley’ in our dealings with Pyongyang; we do not know what North Korea wants today, because we have not asked its leaders that question directly in several years. When we assume that we are always right, and our opponents always wrong, we overlook the need to ask questions. And as Vietnam demonstrated, in such a scenario, misguided decisions result.”

Another United States official, Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton wrote during the Vietnam War:

“A feeling is widely and strongly held that ‘the Establishment’ is out of its mind. The feeling is that we are trying to impose some U.S. image on distant peoples we cannot understand (any more than we can the younger generation here at home), and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths. Related to this feeling is the increased polarization that is taking place in the United States with seeds of the worst split in our people in more than a century.”  McNaughton wrote this to Secretary McNamara in early May, 1967. (Less than two months later, McNaughton, his wife and their son died in a plane collision near Asheville, North Carolina, a week before he was to be sworn in as Secretary of the Navy.) John McNaughton’s words, regarding the United States’ behavior toward Vietnam, are a precise description of the United States’ behavior toward North Korea at this very moment.

PART 1: North Korea and North Vietnam: The Deadly Chronicle of Western Imperialism

One can take passages from “The Pentagon Papers” and simply replace the name “North Vietnam” with “North Korea,” and we have an exact description of United States aggression toward North Korea today;  this juxtaposition,  on page 580 of the Bantam Edition of “The Pentagon Papers,” would read as follows:

“There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world’s greatest superpower trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States—especially if the damage to North Korea is complete enough to be ‘successful.’ The most important risk, however, is the likely Russian, Chinese and North Korean reaction to intensified US air attacks, harbor-mining, and ground actions against North Korea.”

It seems as though little has  changed in the United States’ attitude toward the world since the Vietnam War, or more precisely, since the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Many participants in this year’s United Nations General Assembly were shocked and horrified when President Trump suggested, on September 19, 2017;

“we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

I have highlighted these words because any suggestion that North Korea would initiate military action is deliberate obfuscation. The DPRK has never sought to impose itself beyond its borders, and has sought only to protect itself from a repetition of the holocaust it suffered during 1950-1953, the intentional slaughter, by the United States military, and its United Nations cohorts, of more than three million North Korean citizens, and the total devastation of the entire country.

I have described the US, the UK and France as “rogue states” and it is imperative  to also highlight the unconscionable hypocrisy of both the United States’ position and that of the United Nations Security Council in criticizing North Korea for its nuclear tests:

Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty states:

“Each of the parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

With unmitigated arrogance, on July 7, 2017, following the adoption of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the US, the UK and France issued the following joint press statement:

“France, the United Kingdom and the United States have not taken part in the negotiation of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it.”

This statement is in scandalous violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and these rogue nuclear powers unscrupulously flaunt their violation and impose their will. The United States, alone, possesses almost 5,000 nuclear weapons and is investing one trillion dollars more in upgrading them. Together with the nuclear arsenals of the UK and France, these rogue states possess the capacity to annihilate the entire earth multiple times. Their demonization of North Korea is a manifestation of their own psychotic obsession with domination, which itself is jeopardizing all life on earth.

Article 1 of the NPT states:

“Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.”

The US, in reckless violation of the NPT, has transferred its B61-12 nuclear bombs to five non-nuclear weapon states: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey, all members of NATO. The United States has also placed nuclear-powered submarines in the territory of South Korea, terrorizing the DPRK.

Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly is filled almost entirely with hackneyed propaganda, but the speech is enormously dangerous, because the US economy is weak and failing, and the classic capitalist remedy for economic disaster is war. There is every indication that the US is preparing the American public to accept, at least initially, the horrific consequences of an attack on North Korea. Many of Trump’s advisers share the appalling assumption that there may be millions of deaths resulting, but the deaths will be “over there”!

On September 23, 2017, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho eloquently stated, in reply to Trump’s dangerously provocative remarks, that:

“Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations stipulates ‘to bring about by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.  Due to high-handedness and arbitrariness of one particular big power however, at present the purpose and principles of the UN Charter and other established basic principles of international relations are now wantonly ignored in the UN arena.  Abnormal acts of justifying and legitimizing high-handedness and arbitrariness and the acts of violating truth and justice are connived at or tolerated.  The most rampant violation of international justice can be seen on the Korean peninsula.  Unprecedented acts of injustice such as imposing harsh sanctions on a victim for the reason that the victim chose to stand up to the offender are openly committed in the name of the UN.”

In the section of letters to the editor of The New York Time, September 24, 2017 is another witness to the horrors of imperialism, (“the highest stage of capitalism,”) during the Vietnam War, a prelude, and a warning to persons of conscience of what capitalism probably intends for North Korea. The letter was written by Anh Le, of San Francisco and states:

“During the French-Indochina War, my father, a highly educated Vietnamese man was imprisoned and tortured by the French for two years. My mother was raped.”

AnLe’s letter continues:

“(the war) was waged based on a Cold War mentality, a misguided American foreign policy, and anti-Communist propaganda from the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and a series of propped-up governments in Saigon. Americans were deceived and misled by their government with the ‘domino theory’ and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Vietnamese were seen as the enemy, ‘gooks’ or ‘dinks.’ The My Lai Massacre was not an aberration.  Napalm, Agent Orange, cluster bombs, destruction of villages and towns, rapes, tortures, Kim Phuc, the naked young girl running down the country road and screaming with pain from the napalm on her body, are seared in our collective conscience.”

These excruciating methods of torture of Vietnam, just described in a letter, by a Vietnamese victim, to The New York Times, are essentially what the UN Security Council is preparing  for the North Korean people to suffer. While the Security Council boasts and congratulates itself on its “consensus” on the barbarous sanctions, it enables and nourishes the arrogance and aggression of the US and its proxies, which then cite this same “consensus” to justify escalating its relentless march toward war against North Korea, and ultimately against China and Russia. Many onlookers within the United Nations,  including journalists with no ax to grind, are alarmed at the likelihood of a war against North Korea, spreading uncontrollably, and question the complicity of Russia and China in supporting these provocative sanctions. Some “laid back” but extremely astute American journalists are perplexed at the passivity of China and Russia, whose double vetoes prevented Syria from suffering the obliteration inflicted upon Iraq and Libya, with the Security Council’s blessing. One Ambassador from the Middle East pointed out that Russia and China used their veto power to protect Syria from becoming a failed state, but today are failing to use their veto power (in his own words) “now that it is really needed” to prevent a nuclear war in Asia. Unless these heinous sanctions inflicted on North Korea are opposed by those who have the power to do so, North Korea will continue to suffer intolerable provocations, and war may become inevitable,  sooner rather than later.

Source: Quora

No doubt, China is aware that on September 27, 2017 General  Joseph Dunford, reappointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China will become “the greatest threat to our nation by about 2025….Chinese President Xi Jinping’s military reforms and plans for economic expansion have presented a challenge to U.S. hegemony.”

In 1950 the US-ROK axis attacked and almost extinguished North Korea as a nation and as a people. There were many who considered that war as the prelude to an attack on China, with the goal of replacing the communist government of Mao Tse-tung with the fascist government of Chaing Kai-chek. Senator Joseph McCarthy was terrorizing the American people with his anti-communist psychopathology, and Truman, John Foster Dulles, and General MacArthur attacked North Korea with the ultimate goal of attacking and demolishing the People’s Republic of China. The American aggressors were humiliated by the defeat they were handed by the peoples of North Korea and China, who preferred their communist systems to the brutal injustices of capitalism, and fought with heroic courage and determination to defend their chosen way of life, much to the chagrin of the arrogant Americans. South Korea was, and remains a colony of the US, and atrocities committed within the ROK have been exposed throughout the years. It now seems that nothing has changed, and the goals of US-NATO are the same now as they were from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 up to today. But while it is convenient to denounce Trump as an aberration, Trump is simply the symptom of a system that is failing to provide a decent life for its people, and may inevitably resort to war as its only option, as it is either unwilling or incapable of change to meet the needs of its citizens, and the demands of its oligarchy.

PART 2: Alternative to Annihilating War

On September 27, 2017, the Baltimore Sun published a “Plan B” by Dave Anderson, an alternative to war:

“The chief reason that North Korea keeps testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles is self-defense. They rightly fear that the United States and our allies would dismantle the current regime if we could. During the Korean War the United States destroyed 80 percent of North Korea……It is just not logical to presume that there are conditions under which they would give up the very weapons they believe are critical to their survival, and President Trump’s recent remarks about destroying North Korea or hinting at regime change have only made that more true….What should the United States do? There are many possibilities, but all good ones rely on publicly recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power and publicly dropping the goal of creating a denuclearized Korean peninsula.  ….What is holding up peaceful relations between the United States and North Korea is just these two points. President Trump is not willing to treat North Korea as a nuclear power, and as a result he and the Congress continue to sanction North Korea, and he personally continues to threaten North Korea. It is time for the United States to stop trying not to lose face against a foe who needs to be recognized as a player on the world stage. They don’t want to lose face either, and it is time for us, the bigger country in this dispute, to act like the bigger, more powerful country. North Korea is surrounded by countries that either have nuclear weapons – China and Russia – or are protected by countries (i.e. the United States) that have nuclear weapons and will defend them.  A fair question is: Why should North Korea not have a right to have nuclear weapons, too? Once we get over this hurdle, then the way will be cleared to figure out the best way to make peace with North Korea. And if we do not get over this hurdle, then we risk a major war in the Korean Peninsula and even World War III.”

PART 3: Will China Repeat Gorbachev’s Disastrous Mistake?

According to AFP, Jia Qingguo, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, is urging China’s abandonment of North Korea. According to this report, it is suggested that China abandon North Korea, and expects the United States to permit it to “manage” a collapsed DPRK, as well as expecting US withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula, and removal of the THAAD missiles from South Korea. If these reports are accurate, and suggest significant trends in China’s thinking, they indicate staggering naivete by the Chinese leadership, and indicate it is following Gorbachev’s gullible path which led to the disastrous collapse of the Soviet Union. In so betraying North Korea, China would squander both credibility and moral authority, and would, in fact, betray those great Chinese leaders of the first half of the Twentieth Century whose enormous sacrifices created the foundation that enabled China to become the great power it is today. China would actually be embracing a “lose-lose” situation. One wonders what will result from Trump’s upcoming visit to China, and meeting with Xi Jinping. Will the siren song that seduced Mikhail Gorbachev succeed in luring China to its destruction?

Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

The benign-sounding term “settler” or “settlement” is used so often in the news without reference to Jewish colonization of Palestine that the world often loses sight of the immoral nature of the Zionist project in Palestine. The term is used to describe Jews moving illegally to the West Bank, and commandeering land that belongs to Palestinians. Waves of Jews moving to Israel are no longer called colonists or even settlers in the news media, but rather immigrants. 

Palestine is the only and last active act of settler colonialism. Since the creation of the UN, “more than 80 former colonies [including several in the Arab world] comprising some 750 million people have gained independence since the creation of the United Nations.”

Why the exception in the case of Palestine? Because the ideological driving force behind the process, Zionism, is the most virulently and insidiously powerful force on the planet. Over the course of the past one hundred years — i.e., since the Balfour Declaration, Zionism has successfully manipulated imperial powers, first Britain and now the United States, and also instrumentalized Christianity, as well as Judiasm, to serve its political purpose.

As John Berger put it:

“Certain voices across the world are raised in protest [against the Jewish state]. But the governments of the rich, with their world media and their proud possession of nuclear weapons, reassure Israel that a blind eye will be cast on what its soldiers are perpetrating.”

Colonialism justifiably has a bad name. When Third World Quarterly published an article titled “The Case for Colonialism”, voices rose sharply demanding “retraction, to fire the journal editors, even to fire author and to revoke his PhD.” In that piece, Bruce Gilley argues controversially that Western colonialism was, “as a general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in most of the places where it was found.”

Because of the moral questions raised by Western colonialism, the truth about the colonial nature of the Zionist project in Palestine has long been suppressed — consider, for example, the repulsion generated when a course was proposed at UC Berkeley titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis”.

But despite the strong veil of Zionist hasbara that shielded the moral degeneracy of Zionism from view, the paradigm of Israel as a settler-colonial project did gain traction. When that happened, the attitude among pro-Israel and Zionist voices took on the same point of view as that expressed in the Third World Quarterly article.

“Settler colonialism conveys an unarguable sense of delegitimization, racial exclusion and financial exploitation”, wrote Arnon Degani in a Sep 2016 Haaretz opinion piece, titled: “Israel Is a Settler Colonial State — and That’s OK.”

…arguing for the comparability of Israeli history to that of the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, pulls the rug from under the agenda of singling out Zionism and its deeds as particularly evil… Israel, though, is probably heading more towards an arrangement similar to that of South African settler colonialism: a consolidation into a democratic republic in which the Whites are recognized as sons of the land and yet still enjoy many of the privileges they accumulated during Apartheid. In Israel, from the left (Haaretz’s own Gideon Levy and Rogel Alpher) and right (President Reuven Rubi Rivilin, MK Yehuda Glick), there is growing sentiment in favor of pursuing this particular one state settler colonial road.

The case being made here by Degani and his ilk is that Israeli Jews will still come out on top if Israel pursues the “one state settler colonial road”. They will be recognized as “sons of the land”, just as white settlers are in the U.S. or Canada, etc. have been, and “yet still enjoy many of the privileges they accumulated during Apartheid.” Clearly, this is a contention filtered through a Jewish supremacist ideology that is dismissive of the human rights of non-Jews.

BDS, on the other hand, is aimed at ending the three-tiered regime of injustice that has ruined Palestinian society since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948: 1) the military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian — and other Arab — territory occupied by Israel in 1967; 2) the system of institutionalized and legalized racism within Israel against non-Jews, and 3) the persistent denial of the internationally-sanctioned rights of the Palestine refugees, especially their right to return to their homes of origin and to reparations.

As Omar Barghouti observes,

“Moral reconciliation between conflicting communities is impossible if the essence of the oppressive relationship between them is sustained.”

And, in the case of Palestine, not even recognized.

And as long as the fundamental racism and moral blindness of Zionism continues to be obscured – as in negative references to “right-wing Zionism” rather than to plain Zionism or Jewish supremacy – the monumental ideological cover-up to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians will endure.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

Perhaps the only thing more incredible than quickly expanding conspiracy theories regarding the Kremlin’s influence over the White House is who is selling them and who is buying them.

Organizations popping up overnight with advisory boards lined with Neo-Conservatives who came to prominence during the administration of former US President George Bush and who became notorious for selling the 2003 US invasion of Iraq based on intentional fabrications, now find themselves building an audience of unlikely political allies – left-leaning liberals.

Who is Selling?  

The so-called “Alliance for Securing Democracy” recently accused Russia of manipulating news to target the US-based National Football League (NFL). It claims in its mission statement that:

In 2016, American democracy came under unprecedented attack. 

The government of the Russian Federation attempted to weaken the pillars of our democracy and undermine faith and confidence in our society’s most fundamental right — the ability to choose our own leaders.

The organization’s “Disinformation Dashboard” even includes a disclaimer admitting nothing about the information it presents constitutes evidence. Ambiguous terms like “Russia aligned” are never qualified. Instead, it claims (emphasis added):

Content is not necessarily produced or created by Russian government operatives, although that is sometimes the case. Instead, the network often opportunistically amplifies content created by third parties not directly linked to Russia. Common themes for amplification include content attacking the U.S. and Europe, conspiracy theories and disinformation. Russian influence operations also frequently promote extremism and divisive politics in Western countries. Just because the Russia-aligned network monitored here tweets something, that doesn’t mean everyone who tweets the same content is aligned with Russia.

An organization that accuses Russia and in particular, President Vladimir Putin for undermining US elections, inferring Russia’s responsibility for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, counts among its advisory council Michael Chertoff, a Bush-era Neo-Conservative who served as President Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security.

There is also David Kramer who served in the US State Department under President Bush, served as president of the Neo-Conservative chaired State Department front, Freedom House, and currently serves as a member of the advisory council for the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s “Human Freedom Project.”

William Kristol, considered by many as one of the chief architects, or at least leading salesman of the 2003 Iraq War, also chairs the Alliance for Securing Democracy advisory board. He was a signatory of the Neo-Conservative Project for the New American Century and the pro-war Foreign Policy Initiative. He served the administrations of US President Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.

Michael Morell – who recently declared interest in killing Russians and Iranians in Syria as the armed forces of all three nations fight Al Qaeda and militants of the so-called Islamic State – also serves as an adviser. He has worked in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for over 30 years, and is currently a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies – an organization that appears to specialize in professional warmongering – along side other former US State Department, Department of Defense, and CIA employees.

Kori Schake is described as having assisted with policy for the White House, Department of Defense, and the State Department as well as serving as senior policy adviser for John McCain and Sarah Palin during their 2008 bid for the White House

Michael Rogers, a former US Representative for Michigan and a Republican along with Admiral James Stavridis who helped wage President Bush’s wars and also serves as an adviser for the above mentioned Beacon Global Strategies help round off the advisory board.

It is safe to say that the majority of this exclusively anti-Russian propaganda organization, eagerly promoted by American liberals, consists of Neo-Conservatives many of these same liberals at one point rightfully rejected, opposed, and vehemently condemned as they sold serial wars of aggression during the Bush administration.

A similar list of Neo-Conservatives and long-time warmongers fills out the “Committee to Investigate Russia” (CIR) who recently made headlines when they hired veteran actor Morgan Freeman to appeal to audiences’ emotions rather than their intellect.

CIR includes Max Boot, James Clapper, and Norman Ornstein who occupy various seats and positions at corporate-financier funded think tanks ranging from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Center for a New American Security, to the American Enterprise Institute all of which share sponsorship from big-oil, big-defense, big-banks, and big-industry – in other words – Wall Street.

Other pop-up anti-Russian fronts have similar boards of directors, representing similar interests, and are similarly and very ironically, finding fertile ground among American liberals who at one point in recent history opposed the very sort of war propaganda now being sold versus Russia.

Wall Street, Not Moscow Controls the White House 

The United States possesses over 800 military bases worldwide, with a military operating on a budget that eclipses the combined military budgets of the next 7 leading nations, including Russia and China. Of the top 10 Fortune 500 international corporations,  4 are American, none are Russian.

While the Russian Federation protects its interests with a formidable nuclear and conventional military, a respectable stake in the global energy sector, and strong diplomatic ties with other alternative centers of power, it lags far behind in military and economic clout, ranked 12 by GDP behind nations like South Korea, Canada, Italy, and Japan, and obviously behind larger emerging nations including Brazil, India, and China.

The Russian military budget, estimated at around $70 billion, when compared to the annual net sales of a single Wall Street defense contractor – like Lockheed Martin for example at around $50 billion in 2016 – helps further put the actual “reach” of Russia in perspective versus interests upon Wall Street.

In fact, US policy think-tanks like those chaired by the above mentioned Neo-Conservatives, are sponsored by some of the largest corporate-financier interests on Earth, who with their combined resources and influence, eclipse even the most fantastic claims made regarding Russia.

Not only do US corporations and financial institutions possess an immense advantage in resources and influence in general, they also enjoy the benefit of proximity – many operating offices or employing lobbying services located directly in Washington D.C.

Wall Street also possesses immense influence over the Western media, often controlling media platforms on both the left and right of American politics, controlling narratives that safely divide Americans against one another and leave special interests on Wall Street in a convenient and well protected void of impunity.

The administration of current US President Donald Trump consists of representatives from these Wall Street corporations and financial institutions – many of them representing the same interests who composed former US President Barack Obama’s administration and who would have composed Hillary Clinton’s administration had she prevailed in the 2016 election.

These interests include large banking institutions, the defense industry and big-oil. While supporters of President Trump blame the “deep state” for his inability to make good on campaign promises, and opponents of President Trump blame “Russians” for his apparent disregard for America’s best interests – it is clear that Wall Street is responsible for both – as it was during President Obama’s administration before him and for decades before him- and as it would have been had Hillary Clinton won the election.

Who is Buying? 

The notion that Russia holds more influence over the White House than the multitude of powerful, corrupt multinational multi-billion dollar corporations and financial institutions upon Wall Street is at face value absurd. These interests, however, see an opportunity to jettison responsibility for the most negative aspects of policy implemented under the Trump administration by implicating Russia.

They are able to do this by exploiting anger and frustration following the 2016 presidential election – regardless of the fact that virtually all of President Trump’s “decisions” including expanding wars in Syria, tensions with North Korea and Iran, as well as imposing crippling sanctions on Venezuela were all policies pursued by President Obama and promoted eagerly by Hillary Clinton both in her role as US Secretary of State and on the campaign trail.

Angry and frustrated Americans who might otherwise be tempted to trace the money and motivations underpinning the Trump administration’s flawed policies to Wall Street, are now being intentionally diverted with accusations of “Russian” interference.

Instead of exposing and condemning corrupt corporations like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Exxon, and BP, or financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Americans are looking for Russian influence that simply does not exist. Nearly a year after President Trump stepped into office, no significant evidence has emerged implicating Russia or even providing a cursory explanation as to how Russia has managed to eclipse Wall Street’s influence over the White House.

It is another unfortunate case of emotions and ignorance prevailing over suspicion and due diligence. Many are now genuinely concerned regarding “Russian influence.” Others are opportunistically joining this modern day witch hunt for notoriety and attention, while others still are simply paid lobbyist like those lining the advisory boards of  the “Alliance for Securing Democracy” and the “Committee to Investigate Russia.”

What Americans Should Really Be Doing 

The White House is supposed to represent the American people. Instead, it represents Wall Street. The corporations that constitute Wall Street enjoy the wealth and influence they currently hold because Americans are easily diverted from recognizing and addressing this unwarranted concentration of power. While Americans fight themselves and phantom Russians, they continue paying their monthly paychecks into these corporate-financier monopolies, enhancing Wall Street’s control over a White House that is supposed to belong to the people.

Should Americans put aside their witch hunt for “Russians” and recognize the true interests holding power over the White House, they may find common ground that transcends race, religion, and even politics long enough to expose and address the disparity of wealth and influence in America that has existed and divided the American people long before President Trump took office.

Emotional appeals to the public featuring Hollywood actors, graphs and articles laced with weasel words such as “likely,” “apparently,””allegedly,” and “possibly,” and even outright disclaimers admitting nothing resembling evidence underpins accusations should immediately provoke suspicion and investigation – not blind hysteria. The very same interests who sold lies regarding Iraq and “weapons of mass destruction” to American conservatives to initiate a war of aggression that left a million Iraqis dead along with thousands of US troops is now selling similar and equally baseless lies to America’s liberals regarding Russia.

Both conservatives and liberals find themselves the target of manipulation and exploitation by special interests who do not represent the best interests of either political group. In that alone, common ground exists.

Those who oppose the policies presided over by US President Donald Trump need not embrace them. Indeed, they should vehemently oppose them – however, they must identify the true special interests influencing these policies on Wall Street rather than chasing phantoms those who claim they exist know will never be found or caught in the far-off Kremlin.

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

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

All images in this article are from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

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(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Bipartisan neocons infesting Washington want Russia marginalized, weakened, contained and isolated.

They’re recklessly heading things toward possible nuclear war, unthinkable madness if launched.

Endless Russia bashing persists, things invented to vilify the country and its leadership. US imperialism works this way, a diabolical plot for world conquest, colonization and dominance no matter the human cost.

In a letter to Trump, top-ranking Senate Armed Services Committee members John McCain and Ben Cardin claimed congressional sanctions imposed last summer on Russia haven’t been implemented – the so-called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATS).

Enacted on August 2, Trump issued a statement saying

“(w)hile I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed.”

“In its haste to pass this legislation, the Congress included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions.”

“My Administration will give careful and respectful consideration to the preferences expressed by the Congress in these various provisions and will implement them in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations” – indicating he may not enforce certain provisions, notably with regard to Russia.

A second statement said

“(t)he bill remains seriously flawed – particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate.”

“By limiting the Executive’s flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together.”

On August 2, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said newly enacted US sanctions on his country breached the nuclear deal, indicating an appropriate reaction from his government.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called unilateral US sanctions “outrageous leverage to (serve) its own interests.”

Russia responded to the legislation by ordering Washington to reduce its embassy and consular staff to 455 personnel – equaling Russian diplomatic staff in America.

A US retreat and storage facility in Moscow were ordered closed, Putin saying he personally ordered the action in response to unacceptable US behavior toward his country – including end of August closure, seizure and searches of Russian diplomatic facilities in San Francisco, Washington and New York.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry attributed new congressional sanctions to “Russophobic hysteria,” reserving the right to respond appropriately.

Prime Minister Medvedev said Trump was displeased with the legislation but signed it anyway. Apparently he hasn’t implemented its provisions on Russia, at least not to the satisfaction of neocons McCain and Cardin.

In a letter to Trump, they said

“it is imperative that your Administration implement the law to its fullest extent to uphold and protect American interests.”

“Congress’ swift and united action, and your signature, sent a strong message to our allies and adversaries alike, and particularly to those such as Russia, who have sought to undermine our democracy.”

The latter comment referred to nonexistent Russian US election hacking. No US democracy exists.

On Friday, the White House released a memo, directing the State Department, Treasury and Director of National Intelligence to decide on implementing congressional sanctions on Russia.

McCain and Cardin want administration agencies to brief them on what they’re doing. Part of what they’re up to is an attempt to curtail Russian arms exports to benefit US defense firms, their letter saying:

“As the Russian Federation is the second largest arms exporter in the world, arms purchases remain an area of vigilant oversight.”

“The administration should also take full advantage of a provision of the law that allows it to urge countries to significantly decrease Russian arms purchases to avoid sanctions.”

There you have it. Congressional sanctions aim to harm Russia economically, benefitting corporate America, notably its arms and munitions manufacturers, along with its energy industry, hoping to increase US natural gas exports to European countries at the expense of Gazprom.

The legislation prevents Trump from lifting sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea without congressional permission- for sure not forthcoming.

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It was probably premature to write The “Russian Influence” Story Falls Apart:

“The story about “Russian influence” was made up by the Democrats to explain Clinton’s loss of the election and to avoid looking at her personal responsibility for it. It also helps to push the new cold war narrative and to sell weapons. As no evidence was ever found to support the “Russian influence” campaign, Facebook and others come under pressure to deliver the “evidence” the U.S. intelligence services could not produce. The now resulting story of [Russia is] “sowing chaos” is out of la-la-land.”

The last nonsense of the “Russia hacked the election” campaign was a recent letter from the Department of Homeland Security which warned 21 states, a year too late, that their election systems were attacked by something “Russia”. So far three of the 21 states have debunked the DHS claim. Wisconsin, California and Texas all say that their election systems were not attacked at all and DHS had to concede as much.

These states also pointed out that the only “attacks” DHS found were port-scans of some non-election systems. Port scans are requests from one server to another to check for the availability of certain services – some computer asking another computer if a web-service or mail-service is available on it. Such requests are not attacks but regular behavior of internet systems. Sometimes email-spammers use port scans to find unsecured email-servers they could potentially abuse. These are like small time thieves checking a parking lot for the one unlocked car with the expensive camera on the front seat.

But the need to build Russia up as the new enemy is still there. How else can Europe be kept down? How else can more money be spend for useless weapon systems?

Thus the campaign has changed from “Russia installed Trump” or “Russia influenced the election” to “Russian influence wants to destroy America”. The campaign has also grow more lunatic.

Consider the Republican senator James Lankford who’s claims of “Russian influence” have been picked up by the Washington Post, Reuters, NPR and others. They want you to believe that Russia is involved in the NFL protests:

“We watched, even this weekend, the Russians and their troll farms, their Internet folks, start hashtagging out ‘take a knee’ and also hashtagging out ‘boycott the NFL,’ ” Lankford said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.”They were taking both sides of the argument this past weekend …”

Surely, taking both sides on an issue which is heavily debated is a trademark of Russian spies. That is at least what the NPR author implies:

That’s the very same modus operandi that Senate Intelligence Committee investigators and others have detected in Russian influence-mongers’ use of Facebook last year.

No one of course has detected anything like that. Partisans and warmongers simply assert that people discussing a widely discussed issue are part of a “Russian operation”. They have not provided one bit of evidence to support their claims.

The Senator’s claims about the NFL discussion are obviously nonsense. But dozens of media repeated them with no questions asked. Only Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone took a deeper look:

The Post reported that Lankford’s office had cited one of “Boston Antifa’s” tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing on antifa stereotypes:…

Matt digs into the “Boston Antifa” twitter account and finds the two funny nerds in Oregon who are behind it. They are known for pranks and had earlier been interviewed about such stunts:

They also did things like make claims that fidget spinners caused PTSD in hurricane victims. In short, two young people goofing on the Internet.

During the 60s and 70s the assertion of then “Communist influence” over one opinion was widely used to disparage and delegitimize it. Right wing groups like the John Birch Society claimed that that whole Civil Rights movement was a Kremlin plot. FBI investigation and suppression followed such assertions. History is now repeating itself.

Everyone should be concerned when the Washington Post, Reuters and CNN all try to tie Black Lives Matters to “Russian influence”. “The Russians”, you know, bought ads promoting and disparaging that group:

The ads reportedly centered around racial, political, and economic rifts in the U.S., with some promoting groups like Black Lives Matter and others describing the groups as a threat.

Again – “the Russians” are taking both sides. What a wicked concept.

CNN exclusively finds an anonymous facebook and twitter account named Blacktivists that amplifies reports of crimes against black people. CNN tells us that the account looked suspiciously “Russian” because?

The Twitter account, @Blacktivists, provided several clues that in hindsight indicate it was not what it purported to be. In several tweets, it employed awkward phrasing that a native English speaker would be unlikely to use. It also consistently posted using an apostrophe facing the wrong way, i.e. “it`s” instead of “it’s.”

Using the wrong apostrophe must, of course, mean that Putin personally paid whoever hides behind that account.

“Russian influence” is also responsible for activism against fracking. It pushed for voting for Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders and Trump. It even bought Facebook ads promoting Hillary Clinton.

Dozens if not hundreds of stories about “Russian hacking” and “Russian influence” have been published. Not one provided proof of any nefarious Russian involvement. All hacking claims have been debunked. The “influence” issues are fantasies. But that does not make them less influential. They are part of an orchestrated campaign to construct a new Cold War and to build up a caricature of Russia as the a villain.

Looking from the outside the U.S. media have simply gone nuts. There seems to be no other way to explain the silliness of their “reporting”.

Then again: Could they all be under Russian influence? Are Russian secret services paying for such stories?

Consider that all the “Russian hacking” and “Russian influence” stories are amplifying (the illusion of) Russian might.

Isn’t that exactly what Putin wants?

The Socialist German playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote that “famines do not simply occur; they are organized by the grain trade.”

A similar observation could be made about Puerto Rico today. Replace “famine” with “natural disaster,” and the “grain trade” with “U.S. colonialism,” and you have a succinct summation of the human disaster that is unfolding on the island today.

Puerto Rico is reeling in the aftermath of landfalls by two huge hurricanes, Irma and Maria, in the space of a few weeks. As this article was being written, most of the island remained without electricity, and 70,000 residents could be in danger if the damaged Guajataca Dam failed. People all over the island are contending with flooding and food shortages–malnutrition and outbreaks of disease are real possibilities.

Any area that suffered the blows of two powerful hurricanes in succession would face major challenges.

But Puerto Rico isn’t just any area. It is a colony of the United States–its oldest, in fact.

Over the last two decades, Puerto Rico’s economy has been systematically degraded while Wall Street and European capital loaded up its public sector with more than $70 billion of unpayable debt.

As a result, the basic infrastructure of the island–its health care, water and power systems–were already in the grips of a desperate crisis before the hurricanes hit. For ordinary Puerto Ricans, life under successive austerity regimes had become increasingly intolerable–and it will only become more so now.

*

What does the colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico have to do with all this? Start with the basic fact that Puerto Ricans have no say in the biggest economic and political decisions that affect their lives.

Since 1917, Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens. But their rights have always been curtailed. They cannot vote in federal elections while living on the island, for instance. And while they can vote for a local governor and assembly, the U.S. government can overrule any decision those elected officials make. Puerto Rico is ruled now by a seven-member unelected Fiscal Control Board created by the U.S. Congress in 2016.

One pillar of the colonial economic relationship, the 1920 Jones Act, requires all commerce shipped to the island to be on U.S.-flagged ships departing from a U.S. port. So international cargo destined for Puerto Rico has to first be unloaded in the U.S., then reloaded on a U.S. ship. As a consequence of this, ordinary consumer goods, from food to cars, are more expensive in Puerto Rico than they are in the U.S.–and in many other island nations in the Caribbean.

As Nelson Denis, author of War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony, put it, the

Jones Act “makes as much sense as digging a hole and filling it up again. Any foreign registry vessel that enters directly into Puerto Rico must pay extreme tariffs, quotas, fees and taxes, which, again, are passed onto the Puerto Rican consumer. This is not a ‘business.’ It is a shakedown, a Mafia protection racket.”

Since it conquered Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898, the U.S. has always treated it as a laboratory for economic experimentation and a military outpost to project U.S. power into Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S.-sponsored “Operation Bootstrap” of the 1940s and 1950s helped to transform Puerto Rico from a predominantly agricultural country. It was based on creating export processing zones on the island, akin to maquiladoras that took root in Mexico, particularly after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect.

In 1976, the U.S. Congress created section 936 of the U.S. tax code, which offered huge corporate tax breaks for manufacturers that set up in Puerto Rico. This led many multinationals, particularly pharmaceutical companies, to locate operations on the island.

While this helped to sustain a manufacturing sector in Puerto Rico, the capital-intensive nature of the industry meant that unemployment remained above 10 percent, even in good years.

*

When the Cold War ended, the U.S. had less use for Puerto Rico as a showcase for Latin America, wrote José Nicolás Medina Fuentes in a June article about Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.

Congress repealed section 936, phasing it out over the next decade, and then signed free trade agreements with countries throughout Latin American and the Caribbean. The Puerto Rican economy thus lost its “comparative advantage” over other countries in the region. Its economy contracted by more than 10 percent. Medina Fuentes summarized what happened:

Since 2006, the following processes began: depression/recession for 11 years, the departure from the country of 500,000 Puerto Ricans, a decline in tax revenue, the degradation of the territory’s credit, cuts in contributions to and payouts from retirement plans, and the loss of more than 200,000 jobs. The island’s government, with federal approval, was forced to take out loans at triple the normal rate of interest, just to cover current spending, and to refinance and pay the debt.

The public debt grew to $24 billion by the end of 2000…Between then and 2014, the public debt increased 195 percent–that is to say $48 billion in only 14 years, for an unpayable total of $72 billion.

Throughout this period, Puerto Rico’s neoliberal governments–whether under the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which has links to the Democratic Party in the U.S., or the New Progressive Party (PNP), which is connected to the Republicans–had one answer to the crisis: austerity.

Anyone familiar with International Monetary Fund program of “structural adjustments” will recognize the menu of policies pursued by Puerto Rico’s political class: privatization of public assets, like the international airport; increases in fees for utilities and sales taxes; mass layoffs of public-sector workers; restrictions on labor and union rights; and cuts to public services, from the health service to the University of Puerto Rico.

The PROMESA Financial Control Board wants to go even further–ordering cuts to federal standards in the minimum wage, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families to further lower labor costs on the island.

*

While Puerto Rican workers are paying for the economic crisis with layoffs, cuts in social spending and a collapse of basic systems, the Wall Street hedge funds that own more than half of the debt are making out like bandits.

The U.S.-based and international financial industry pressed successive Puerto Rican local governments to take on greater amounts of debt, and hedge funds snapped it up.

In most situations of bankruptcy, courts can impose “haircuts” on creditors–forcing them to accept less than what they’re owed–to allow an insolvent entity to get back on its feet.

But such is the political imbalance between Puerto Rico and its Washington overlords that the 2016 PROMESA–for “Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act,” whose acronym means “promise” in Spanish–establishing the financial control board assures that the biggest losers will be ordinary Puerto Ricans, not irresponsible lenders.

In fact, key members of the financial control board are financiers whose policies helped push Puerto Rico to the brink. The story of the “Corpus Account” for infrastructure investment reads like the 21st century equivalent of the metropolitan looting of wealth from the colonies.

The 1998 privatization of the national telephone company–an act which prompted a massive, but unfortunately defeated, popular uprising known as the “Peoples’ Strike”–produced almost $1.2 billion in proceeds that was supposed to be invested in plans to upgrade the country’s water and power infrastructure.

However, Carlos M. Garcia, president of the Government Development Bank under the right-wing government of Luís Fortuño (2009-13), used most of that money to service a complex series of financial transactions.

These benefited his former employer, the Spanish-based Banco Santander–and left Puerto Rico holding long-term bonds that it’s obligated to pay until 2043. As the financial watchdog website Hedgeclippers.org wrote:

[T]he bulk of proceeds from the privatization of a profitable, publicly owned telephone company, earmarked for crucial Puerto Rican water projects, has been turned into paper dust. The Corpus Account no longer funds infrastructure development, but consists of bond notes due in 2043 that are obligations of COFINA and ultimately, the Puerto Rican sales and use taxpayers.

This scandal of how financial and government elites looted Puerto Rico’s infrastructure fund took on greater significance as thousands fled from the area of the Guajataca Dam. And not coincidentally, Garcia is one of seven members of the current financial control board under PROMESA.

*

Public Health officials had already warned–more than a year before Hurricanes Irma and Maria–that the country’s disinvestment in its water and sewer systems was already making Puerto Ricans more susceptible to infection from the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

Austerity also took its toll on investments needed to upgrade the country’s almost five-decade-old electric grid.

The system had declared bankruptcy in July 2017 after years of austerity had done nothing to reduce its debt. Instead, its managers focused on reducing staff, with 30 percent of the workforce–including its most skilled workers–leaving the utility through retirement, buyouts or migration since 2012, according to the Washington Post’s Steven Mufson.

When the hurricanes hit, the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was operating on a cash-only basis, which led to deferred maintenance and frequent power outages. Despite the fact that ordinary Puerto Ricans pay, on average, double the rate of electric bills that people in the U.S. do, PREPA has struggled to maintain basic services.

“A lot of the reason power has gone out is that PREPA has not been trimming the trees on the power line,” Miguel A. Soto-Class, president of the Centro para una Nueva Economía (Center for a New Economy, or CNE) think tank, told Mufson.

When Irma took out part of the power grid in August, unionized utility workers, members of the Union of Electrical Industry and Irrigation (UTIER) union, worked heroically to restore power.

Meanwhile, two privately owned utilities, EcoEléctrica and AES, shut down to protect their machinery. They only reopened after the hobbled public utility came back online. “If it had been up to EcoEléctrica and AES, Puerto Rico would still be on its knees,” wrote Carlos Fortuño Candelas in the socialist newspaper Bandera Roja.

That’s worth remembering because the Financial Control Board, the hedge funds and local elites are pushing various schemes to “save” PREPA by privatizing it.

*

Ordinary Puerto Ricans living on the island face a terrible situation.

The longer the island goes without power to support hospitals, sewage treatment and clean drinking water, the greater the chances for mass outbreaks of diseases.

“Hysteria is starting to spread,” Mayor Jose Sánchez González of Manati, crying, told a meeting of mayors in the capital of San Juan. “The hospital is about to collapse. It’s at capacity. We need someone to help us immediately.”

Given that Puerto Rico imports up to 85 percent of its food–another aspect of the colonial relationship with the U.S.–shortages will develop if a massive relief effort isn’t mounted.

In the U.S., we need to press federal agencies to move quickly to avert a humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding for the island’s 3.4 million residents. And while it’s necessary to help Puerto Ricans to rebuild their houses, schools, hospitals, workplaces and other parts of ordinary life, just restoring the status quo is no solution.

Those who want to organize solidarity for Puerto Rico in the U.S. should demand the repeal of the Jones Act, a moratorium on Puerto Rico’s debt, and a repeal of PROMESA, with the liquidation of the Financial Control Board. Only measures like these can help to provide some relief to millions of Puerto Ricans.

Observing that the current austerity measures seek to “privatize gains” while “socializing losses,” the CNE’s Sergio M. Marxuach noted that:

the responsibility for these socialized losses usually falls on the poor and the middle class, precisely those least prepared to absorb them. This pressure on the poorest sectors eventually produces a social explosion when the cuts to pensions, to health care and public education, along with the increase in unemployment, poverty and inequality, reaches intolerable levels.

In Puerto Rico, that pressure has been dissipated through migration to the U.S. But the possibility of a social crisis can’t be disregarded.

Puerto Ricans have a great tradition of struggle, from movements for national independence to the 1930s “huelga en la caña” of sugar workers and strikes of dock workers; to protests against induction of Puerto Ricans into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War; to the 1998 “Peoples’ Strike;” to the successful struggle to kick the U.S. Navy out of Vieques; to strikes and occupations at the University of Puerto Rico.

It’s in this tradition–where Puerto Ricans have demanded a right to determine their own fate–that hope for the future lies.

Featured image is from the author.

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Russia’s military intervention in Syria at the request of its government began two years ago today – September 30.

It dramatically changed the dynamic on the ground, turning sure defeat into eventual triumph. 

Thousands of square miles of Syrian territory were liberated from the scourge of US-supported terrorists, defeating Washington’s imperial aims, wanting regime change, the country transformed into another vassal state.

Tass reviewed Russian operations over the past two years, saying “victory over terrorism is near.” Its efforts transformed armed opposition conflicting groups into “a common front in the struggle against terrorists.”

What began two years ago today “is entering its final phase,” Russian air power enabling Syrian and allied forces to regain control over “85% of the country’s territory,” a remarkable turnaround from conditions before Moscow’s involvement.

Washington didn’t expect it, intending to eliminate Assad the way it ruthlessly killed Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

Things didn’t go as planned. Russia foiled US objectives, achieving them highly unlikely, a significant body blow to its regional aims, a step closer to defeating them worldwide.

In Syria, Aleppo was liberated late last year, the country’s pre-war commercial hub. Historic Palmyra was freed twice, hopefully for good after the second time.

The campaign to liberate Zeir Ezzor province entirely from US-supported terrorists continues, ISIS’ last stronghold in the country. Its three-year-long siege of the city was broken, security sweeps underway to eliminate its remnants in residential and other areas.

“Official forecasts regarding the chances of a successful completion of the anti-terrorist operation sound ever more optimistic,” said Tass.

Ahead of the Deir Ezzor campaign, Akerbat was liberated,

“a major transport hub and command center (and stronghold) of the terrorists in the east of Hama province,” Tass explained.

“With the loss of the city the terrorists were no longer able to regroup forces, receive ammunition and supplies, while the Syrian government army gained access to Deir Ezzor.”

During 24 months of combat, 38 Russian military personnel perished, including General Valery Asapov, the coordinates of his location almost certainly provided ISIS by US forces. Washington bears responsibility for his death.

Russian and American objectives in Syria are world’s apart – Moscow combating terrorism, Washington supporting it. Bilateral relations are dismal on virtually everything except cooperation in non-military space activities.

Astana peace talks spearheaded by Russia continue making progress – without significant breakthroughs so far because Washington wants endless war and regime change, waging a losing battle, pursuing it anyway.

According to Russia’s reconciliation center, 2,200 localities joined the ceasefire agreement. More than 230 armed groups agreed to observe it.

Reconstruction in some areas began, restoring power, water and other essential infrastructure a vital first step, along with supplying humanitarian aid – Russia, Iran and Damascus alone providing it.

Nothing from America. Nothing from the EU. Nothing from regional Arab countries. Nothing from Israel, of course. Woefully inadequate UN help, Syrians on their own, dependent on their government and allies.

Moscow remains firmly committed to Syrian sovereign independence, its territorial integrity, and right of its people alone to choose their leadership, free from foreign interference.

“Both Russian and Syrian military commanders stress the intention to push ahead with the operation until the elimination of the last terrorist” nationwide, said Tass.

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

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Stephen Lendman sums up the success of Russian and Syrian militaries against Washington-supported ISIS. Washington claims to be fighting ISIS, but doesn’t. Remember, U.S. General Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed on television that it was the “willful decision” of the Obama regime to use ISIS to overthrow the Assad government. General Flynn said the decision was made over his objection. 

News agencies and writers should stop referring to ISIS and any of the other groups as “terrorists.” The term “terrorists” connotes an independence that the “terrorists” do not have. These so-called “terrorists” are organized, financed, and armed by Washington and Washington’s vassals. Washington uses “terrorists” as a foreign policy tool. This has been going on for decades. Yes, sometimes the “terrorists” escape Washington’s control. Washington supported Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to help organize the Mujahideen to fight against the Soviet occupying force. Everyone knows this, or, perhaps I should say, formerly knew it prior to the presstitutes helping Washington bury all the facts and replace them with fake news.

The CIA has long used presstitutes to rewrite history. But not all facts have yet been thrown down the Memory Hole. Here is former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook:

“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the ’80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.”

Here is Prince Bander bin Sultan on CNN’s Larry King program (October 1, 2001):

“This is ironic. In the mid-’80s, if you remember, we and the United – Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn’t it ironic?”

See also this article.

Cuba has, for decades, been a form of political pathology for US political consciousness. Fidel Castro loomed in his indestructible guise, tormenting a succession of American presidents with his seeming indestructibility. Efforts at deposing and assassination had conspicuously failed. It was left, then, to Washington to insulate, seal off and keep Cuba as an infectious patient of international relations, fearing its global reach and influence.

With the softening of this manic stance under the Obama administration, Cuba ceased being the incurable. It even had promise. US business officials were smacking their lips and rubbing hands. The new Cuba might well return to the Cuba of old, one more open to reverie, smut and cash. The diplomats would return; the US embassy would reopen in Havana.

Then, Donald Trump happened. A new administration, the government of 140 character messages, roars and expectoration. The cool seemed likely to return in the heat of intolerance and misguided encounters. In June, Trump announced that limitations on trade and tourism with Havana would be imposed. It was a corrective of sorts to yet another “one-sided deal” and halted people-to-people exchanges.

Since the fall of 2016, staff at the US embassy have been troubled. Up to 21 diplomats have been affected by what is now being considered an attack. (These had been previously deemed, in State Department speak, “incidents”.) American media outlets, from the Old Grey Lady onwards are unanimous.

“It started as a medical mystery,” went the New York Times. “It then was determined to have been the result of a mysterious attack.”

The symptoms cover a considerable range: nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, difficulty with sleeping, deafness, even mild brain trauma. That these might have arisen from a sonic attack has been suggested. But speculation is rife as the coterie of experts in the field of bio-electromagnetics are entertained. What sort of weapons might have been behind this?

One such figure is Denis Bedat, who made his splash for the AFP new agency.

“Ultrasonic waves, beyond the acoustic capacity of humans, can be broadcast with an amplifier, and the device does not need to be large, or used inside or outside the house.”[1]

Weapons such as the anti-riot gun in the employ of the US police forces, otherwise known as the Active Denial System (ADS), are exponents of such waves.

The Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has been cautious in according blame, despite also pouring over a proposed plan to close the embassy in Havana.

“We have it under evaluation. It’s a very serious issue with respect to the harm that certain individuals have suffered. We’ve brought some of those people home. It’s under review.”[2]

Havana, in turn, has urged caution and restraint, expressing official bafflement at the cases.

“Cuba has told us it will continue to investigate these attacks, and we will continue to cooperate with them in this effort.”

This policy of cooperation is typically troubled, an appellation of suspicion and masochism.

Given that two Cuban diplomats have suffered expulsion as a result, the finger pointing is being presumed, even if those fingers are slightly askew. Punish, but not abolish; tell those in Havana that this is not the sort of thing the US will tolerate, but still keep doors open, if only slightly ajar and barely operating.

On Friday, the State Department did announce a suspension of routine visa operations, giving no clue when they would resume, while limiting official travel to Cuba by US officials, excepting those connected with the investigation or those in need of travelling to the country.[3]

The sting in the tail, however, was a travel warning for Americans in general, suggesting danger to visitors from the US. As “our personnel’s safety is at risk, and we are unable to identify the source of the attacks, we believe US citizens may also be at risk and warn them not to travel to Cuba.”[4]

Tillerson is exercising caution, and the theory that a third party may well be up to mischief is being floated. Officials have spoken about taking measures of protection in the name of prudence. Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, has expressed concern that the US is prizing itself out of the diplomatic game in taking them.

“We’ve got a mission to do,” she explained to The Atlantic. “We operate all over the world, in places with serious health risks… The answer can’t be we just pull the flag down and move American presence from the field.”[5]

Havana has expressed consternation at the moves by the Trump administration, but is still hopeful in cooperation. But all this signals, yet again, the odd mix of machismo mixed with caution; bluster with a U-turn and summersault in Trump’s version of foreign policy.

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

Notes

On the 15th of September the dead bodies of a family were discovered by Burmese security forces In Mayu Mountain Rakhine state. The family are believed to be Daingnet minorities. The murders have been blamed on the Arakanese Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA, formerly Harakah al Yakin) a terrorist group with links to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Myanmar’s Rakhine State has experienced a wave of violence since ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) terrorists attacked security forces on the 25th of August killing 10 police officers, 1 soldier, 9 security officers and several civilians.

The ARSA attacks were clearly timed to coincide with the report before the UN General Assembly of the Advisory Committee on Rakhine led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Dr Annan was appointed by the Burmese government to oversee an independent investigation of violence in the troubled region.

Numerous eyewitness reports in Myanmar say terrorists set fire to villages provoking an exodus, while others, including the Western corporate media, say the fires were lit by the Burmese military (Tatmadaw). There is no conclusive proof of who is responsible for the tragic exodus of Myanmar’s ethnic Bengali Muslim communities from North Rakhine State. But former US chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Burma, Pricilla Clapp contradicted US agencies when she told France 24 News that she believed the Takfiri terrorists were responsible for the burning of villages as well as laying land mines.

If Clapp’s claims are true, it strongly suggests that the terrorist insurgency in north Rakhine state is gaining in strength. The Islamist insurgency is estimated to be between 20 and 30,00 fighters. There are many accounts by Buddhist Muslim and Hindu villagers of being surrounded and attacked by the Takfiri terrorists.

According to American Burmese researcher Rich Heizman, almost all the inhabitants of Ye Bauk Kyar village, three miles from the Bangladeshi border, were hacked to death with machetes, swords and axes by the “Bengali” Islamist terrorists. 92 Hindus were also slaughtered in Kha Maung Seik village.

Mass graves of mostly Hindu villagers have been found near the Bangladeshi border. They are believed to have been murdered in August 2016 terrorist insurgency.

Hundreds of Hindu villagers remain missing. Some Hindu’s, captured by the terrorists, have been found in Bangladeshi refugee camps.

None of this evidence has been mentioned in the mainstream media reports. The horrific suffering of thousands of people has been deliberately and callously ignored. Instead, we are fed a constant, lachrymose refrain about ‘the world’s most persecuted minority’ and ‘genocide against the Rohingya’. The soundbites mask what may be a far more disturbing reality, namely that those screaming genocide are the very people behind the mass killing! The modus operandi is familiar to followers of the Syrian and Libyan wars where false-false terrorist atrocities, designed to gain maximum media attention in order to blame the targeted government, have been the norm.

The discovery of the massacre in the Mayu Mountain comes after the Asian Human Rights Centre (ACHR) recently called on the UN to dismiss its current Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Professor Yanghee Lee, due to serious violations of the UN Human Rights Council’s Resolution 5/2 ‘Code of Conduct for Special Procedures Mandate-holders of the Human Rights Council- article 3 General Principles of conduct.’

Professor Lee is accused of omitting to mention the terrorist groups who are responsible for atrocities. Lee has also been accused of grossly inflating the figures of Bengali (Rohingya) deaths.

The ACHR accuses the UN Special Rapporteur of failing to name the Takfiri groups for the killing of 3 Mro villagers on the third of August, 2017, 5 ethnic Daingnets in Kyandoe village on the 26th of August and 7 Mro people in Kan-Taing village, Maungdaw on the 28th of August.

The anti-terrorist operation in Myanmar is far from over with reports of thousands of terrorists still hiding in the jungle of the Mayu Mountains.

The whereabouts of thousands of victims remain unknown. Some Buddhist and Hindu refugees who fled to Rakhine State capital Sittway after the violence, have been transported by the military back to their villages. Many Buddhist refugees, who are a minority in Maungdaw township in north Rakhine State, have said they will never return to the area due to fear of more attacks.

Thousands of Muslim refugees remain in Bangladesh. Many of the community leaders are refusing to cooperate with Myanmar’s identity verification process, making repatriation impossible. Many Muslims in the refugee camps are also coming under pressure from terrorist groups such as ARSA. Half of North Rakhine’s Muslim community have remained in Rakhine State. But ARSA terrorists have also been murdering Muslim’s accused of collaborating with the Burmese military (Tatmadaw). All Myanmar Islamic Religious Organisation has condemned the terrorists and urged all Muslims to collaborate with the government.

The Burmese military has been accused of torturing and decapitating children. The claims are highly unlikely. In fact, it is far more likely that such atrocities are being committed by the Takfiri terrorists themselves. The Tatdadaw are highly trained soldiers who are armed mostly with Browning Hi-powder, Heckler & Koch G 3s and MP5 submachine guns. The photos of thousands of slaughtered victims have been released by the Burmese government. The bodies are badly mutilated with deep gashes from machetes, swords and knives – the main weapons of the Takfiri terrorists. The Western press is trying to play down the savagery of the ARSA terrorists, claiming that they are ‘lightly armed’. There is nothing ‘light’ about a machete or a sword in the hands of a lunatic Takfiri terrorist!

Since communal violence in 2012 where Mosques and Buddhist temples were attacked leading to the murder of Buddhists and Muslims, Myanmar has been targeted with a growing foreign-backed Islamist insurgency in north Rakhine State, where Bengali Muslims are the ethno-religious majority.

The Buddhist majority in Myanmar fear that if illegal Bengali immigration is not curbed, they may one day face the same persecution as their co-religionists in Bangladesh. Murders and rapes of Buddhists by Takfiri terrorists are regularly documented in Bangladesh, where the growing Wahhabi death cult is receiving copious funding from Saudi Arabia.

Since the destruction of the ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001, there have been growing religious tensions in South East Asia. The strategic objective of Western imperialism in Asia is to exploit those tensions by stoking sectarian hatred – a Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilisations’ which provides the pretext for ‘humanitarian’ intervention’ or ‘anti-terrorist’ counter-insurgency operations by the United States and its allies. The growing Buddhist/Muslim tensions provide Uncle Sam with the pretext he needs to counter the rise of China. Only in that context can one begin to understand imperialism’s new humanitarian cause- the Rohingya.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin, AHT Paris correspondent, is a journalist and political analyst. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle. His articles have been translated into many languages. He is a regular contributor to Global Research, Russia Today International, Press TV, Sputnik Radio France, Sputnik English , Al Etijah TV , Sahar TV Englis, Sahar French and has also appeared on Al Jazeera. He writes in English, Irish Gaelic and French.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Macklemore at the official Seattle Seahawks post game party in Jersey City after Super Bowl XLVIII (February 2014) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

One cultivated myth of human endeavour is the creaky and far from convincing idea that politics and sport are strangers, gazing indifferently from distant across tables, never to engage. Battles on the field can be waged without politics, while politics excludes sport with allergic vigour.

The pretence leads to curious spectacles. It means that the International Olympic Committee can be wooed by a ruthless, canny dictator who ultimately plunges a good portion of the globe into conflict. (Mr Hitler, they were assured, was really a true Olympian at heart, and not prone to fanatical anti-Semitic beliefs.)

From another perspective, it means that anti-apartheid protests had no merit in disrupting touring South African sides in either cricket or rugby during the 1960s and 1970s. The South African players were apolitical, as former conservative prime minister John Howard less than candidly explained, and should be spared the ugliness of conscience. Boycotts should be reserved for other, weightier matters.

Australian Rugby, most specifically the Sunday Grand Final, has now found its way into this curious mix, or, as the invited Seattle rapper Macklemore puts it, “kind of the Super Bowl of their rugby league.”

Macklemore’s invitation by the National Rugby League (NRL) to perform on the occasion has become more than a mere issue of light entertainment. On his slate of promised songs to be performed before the sporting spectators was “Same Love”.

The result was bemusing: the invited artist had been receiving tweets from “angry old white dudes in Australia” and become the subject of a petition seeking to prevent the performance from taking place.

With yawn-inducing predictability, former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, was one such dude off the political mark. To let the American artist perform on one of Australia’s biggest sporting stages was one thing; to let him run a show with a song on same-sex marriage, quite another.

“Footy fans shouldn’t be subjected to a politicised grand final. Sport is sport!”[1]

This fascinatingly constipated position is also intoned by the funereal Senator Eric Abetz from Tasmania, who assumes that the campaign against same-sex marriage is facing unnecessary obstacles put in play by the devils of the Yes campaign. Even Abetz makes Abbott seem moderate on occasion, fearing that Australia’s children are threatened by a “radical gay education”.

Conservative scribblers such as Miranda Devine thought the invitation a poorer reflection on the part of Australia’s sport administrators. Never mind Macklemore; it was the seedy politics of the whole thing.

“The problem is the timing. The National Rugby League has deliberately inserted itself into a divisive political debate by inviting Macklemore to play a song he wrote specifically in 2012 to sway the same-sex marriage campaign in the US state of Washington.”

For Devine, Macklemore’s work became the “anthem for same-sex marriage in the US.” The performer, in other words, was insinuating himself into the Australian debate, his work being used as a fashioned weapon for a cause.

The NRL chief, Todd Greenberg, had effectively co-opted “80,000 fans in ANZ stadium unwittingly to participate in a massive propaganda exercise for the Yes campaign that will be televised to almost four million viewers.”

Former NRL player, Tony Wall, is of similar mind on these fifth column tactics, and has given much time in a vain effort to convince Greenberg to remove “LGBTIQ politics out of the NRL.” Wall would find it “very difficult to watch the NRL Grand Final with my wife and five young children as the event will be heavily politicised with a LGBTIQ anthem taking centre stage.”[2] So much for the love.

Coalition government ministers also found their way into the spat. Most surprisingly of all was the stance from the not always sensible Australian Attorney-General, George Brandis.

“This particular song,” he explained to ABC News Breakfast, “is one of the four songs, I believe, that Macklemore is singing.” It was popular, catchy, and “for Mr Abbott or anyone else to say that it should be banned I think is a bizarre thing to say.”[3]

Australia’s same-sex campaign is getting uglier, with resentments crackling, suspicions blazing. It has wound its way into sports, as it was bound to. It has mobilised groups, businesses and institutions to throw in their lot with the cause. It has sharpened the No position, which is, at points, losing its appeal. Even more fundamentally, it will make absolutely no difference to those whose minds are resolutely made it up, where the debate is but a pantomime to conceal the obvious.

What this particular squib of insignificance has thrown up is the old illusion, some might even say delusion, that the sporting classes do not mix with the political. It has prompted Malcolm Knox to press for a deal: take politics out of sport, but remove the politician from sporting arena.

“No more serving prime ministers up on the podium to hand out the trophy. No more ex-prime ministers in the Cricket Australia box.” Perhaps even more pointedly, “No more pollies having beers at the footy.”[4]

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

Notes

Puerto Rico is not large enough to stand alone. We must govern it wisely and well, primarily in the interest of its own people. – Theodore Roosevelt

Puerto Rico is dying.

Let those words sink in.

Three and a half million people are without power, water, fuel, food, and support. This isn’t some uninhabited atoll. This is where I grew up. This is where my family lives. This is my home.

And my home is dying.

I have been desperately trying to come up with the right words to express what I feel and what I think for the better part of a day. My social media has as of late provided me with a space to write my remarks, observations, and more often than not, rants about the situation on Puerto Rico. I shared my anxieties when hours, then days passed without a word from my family. I cried in silent sobs at the pictures that slowly started to come out of the island. Despair began to unite the large Puerto Rican diaspora as we comforted each other, and waited as the absolute silence became more and more unbearable.

“Have you heard from…”

“Does anyone have any information about my hometown…”

“My mom, she’s not well, I can’t reach her…”

“I can’t find my partner…”

It was only last Friday when I had proof of life from my family in my hometown of Arecibo. And it was on Sunday that I was finally able to speak to them over the phone. Speak… more like share moments of absolute joy and tears of happiness. Of feeling born again. And with that memory fresh in my mind, I sat down to write.

Nothing came except tears. I’m crying as I write this.

How can one put into words how it feels to be completely powerless as the world I’ve always known slowly turns into Hell for those that I love the most? How can one fully express in words that could convey, in any way, the overwhelming sense of constant pain, of horrible uncertainty, the fear of loss, and the fury over what is, in the end, an unnatural disaster? And how can I live with myself for not being there?

How can I explain to people that Puerto Rico, my home, my island, my heart and soul, is dying?

The fear of death is an eternal companion in these situations. So as my country slowly agonizes, would it be appropriate for me to write a eulogy for its seemingly inevitable death? Perhaps some choice words as a send-off to the oldest colony in the world?  As Donald Trump, the biggest psychopath to occupy the Oval Office so far, finally relents to growing public pressure and announces that federal funds will be made available in full to Puerto Rico, and as more aid slowly makes its way to the island, could I dare hope for a stay of its execution? Or is this just another delay in its pre-ordained death-by-empire?

President Trump’s message to Puerto Rico was clear: pay up and drop dead. The island is expected to pay its imaginary debt for the dubious “privilege” of being an imperial colony in the way it’s always done so: in blood. Wall Street’s interests have priority over securing the very survival of nearly four million people. God forbid that millionaire Wall Street bondholders suffer the horror of payment forfeiture over a minor inconvenience like Hurricane María, only the worst storm in eighty years!

The president initially denied full federal assistance to the island and refused to suspend the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, or Jones Act, that has for nearly a century strangled commerce to and from Puerto Rico. Because of this stubbornness an obviously colonial World War One-vintage piece of legal protectionism continues to choke the island as its inhabitants are left to fend for themselves. Colonialism is a self-perpetuating state of exception that thrives on crises precisely because the beneficiaries are always the colonizers and their local flunkies who maintain and benefit from the illusion of “self-governance.”

While Homeland Security steadfastly holds on to its refusal to wave the Jones Act, Herr Trump was later forced by public pressure to amend his remarks on aid, and the USNS Comfort hospital ship is now scheduled to arrive on the island in three to five days (as will our bloviating commander-in-chief himself at some point) any help received from the American imperial mainland now carries with it a stigma, a sense of being a discarded, second-hand lifeline. This is extremely revealing. It’s been over a week since Hurricane María cut a path of destruction in Puerto Rico nearly beyond the scope of living memory, a week that passed before Trump made any remarks at all. It was a week filled by hysterics over kneeling, Russia and North Korea, a week of forgetting that Puerto Rico even existed.

American colonialism is not just confined to its territories or its Native American population. A successful empire can choose to either exalt itself to its population, thereby becoming an object of national pride, or hide itself by dulling that population’s senses and intelligence, negating that it has an empire in the first place. The United States pursued the second path. Successfully, I might add. Puerto Rico’s imperial masters also relied on their own profoundly ignorant population on the mainland that, fueled by the systemic racism on which the United States is built on, and a blinding allegiance to patriotism, considered Puerto Ricans to be just another group of Hispanic vermin. To this day nearly half of Americans do not even know that Puerto Ricans are “fellow citizens”, at least in name. And make no mistake. The white supremacist regime that attacks NFL players and Black Lives Matter activists for having the nerve to protest is the same regime that established the fiscal control board, the biggest killer in Hurricane María’s wake. These things are directly related, and the fiscal control board’s austerity measures ensured that it has blood on its hands.

The United States has perfected its colonialism on the island of Puerto Rico to such a degree that when it decided to take away the island’s limited self-rule, the vaunted “commonwealth”, and instead installed a fiscal control board, it did so with the applause of many islanders. Many Puerto Ricans, conditioned by school, church, political party, and kin to accept their inferiority to the gringo as natural law, felt unfit to govern themselves. We so desired to be our masters that we welcomed punishment for engineered transgressions tailor-made by vulture capitalists in the metropole and on the island itself.

And then came María. The other killer phenomenon to approximate María’s devastation and raw power was Hurricane San Felipe II, in 1928. Yet María’s devastation attacked an island that, in many ways, was in worse shape than the relatively pre-industrial Puerto Rico of the 1920’s. Hurricane San Felipe was nature’s killer. Hurricane María, however, has only exposed colonialism’s murderous true self. There is nothing natural about this killer.

María found the perfect target: an island whose infrastructure was crippled by decades of colonial neglect, the product of an idled and corrupt political class that blindly follows orders from Wall Street and Washington. These quisling parasites, like the island’s cravenly telegenic current governor Ricardo Rosselló, coasted to power on the artificiality of petty political partisanship fostered by the main political parties on the people for decades in order to divide and lord over a population lulled by consumerism, Christian conservatism, and Cold War-era paranoia.

Now that same political apparatus has fallen apart. Long lines await supplies and fuel that are not being delivered. Two deaths were reported at an ICU when its generator failed, drained bone-dry as its diesel fuel never arrived. Governor Rosselló has been busy with a nonstop photo op tour since the hurricane passed. His Facebook page and Twitter account are filled with photos of his smiling face. But it is all smoke and mirrors. More and more mayors are voicing their rage at the lack of supplies. Whole shipments of supplies and fuel await distribution.

The situation has laid bare the reality that there was never a plan put into place. It has also revealed that FEMA has utterly failed in its role. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, acting in every way much more responsibly than our delusional governor, has denounced that FEMA has done the impossible to tie up any aid effort with red tape, asking for interminable memos and paralyzing aid distribution. It is quite telling that at one point in an interview journalist David Begnaud, who’s done a commendable job covering Puerto Rico, briefly mistakenly calls Mayor Yulín “governor”. Deep down, though, I’m sure that when he caught his slip and corrected himself he wished that his momentary lapse would have indeed been fact.

This official paralysis and complete disregard for reality often leaves first responders and National Guardsmen mobilized to help with distribution literally empty-handed. And this crass stupidity is not limited to help on the national level. Cuba has offered help in the form of doctors and a brigade of electrical workers to help shore up and rebuild the island’s ravaged infrastructure. Cuba! Yet cruelly, but predictably, the American government denied them entry on political grounds.

FEMA’s (in)actions border on being criminally negligent, even going as far as kicking roughly 400 refugees out of the San Juan Convention Center in order to conveniently take it over as their center of operations alongside the Puerto Rican central government. Federal and local agencies have become shining examples of feckless inaction, fetid bureaucracy, and unfettered bullshit. In typical Trumpist fashion, FEMA’s response has been to accuse the media of biased reporting, but the true bias is self-evident.

Puerto Rico is dying, yes. It is a victim of the stupidity of its political class and the racist vindictiveness of its colonial masters. Colonialism will always be a humanitarian crisis.

But Puerto Rico isn’t dead yet.

In fact, something seems to be happening. The lack of governmental aid, the realization that American aid is essentially a fantasy, the uncalled-for curfew that’s tailor made to pacify anxious shareholders stateside and not help the citizenry, and the need to rediscover communal bonds of mutual aid have done something to Puerto Ricans. I confess to standing in awe of the newly found resilience, the furious indignation turned into action, and the unbreakable bonds of basic humanity that have returned with a vengeance. And with it comes a growing sense of indignation, of anger towards our colonial masters. Anger, blessed anger, the engine of political and social change par excellence.

Puerto Rico is dying, but if it survives this and rises once again, it may do so inoculated from the diseased colonial mentality that has crushed its collective spirit for so long. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth thinking about now more than ever. This national tragedy has made Boricuas remember that they can, in fact, do things on their own together. That the often-remarked bravery of Puerto Ricans that many feared lost by colonialism’s savage indoctrination (I confess to being amongst those that felt this way) was always there. That fury and indignation lead to freedom. Like many fellow Puerto Ricans that live in exile, we have come forward to join that life-and-death struggle for our homeland, and we do so together, always loyal.

As the white imperialist invader revels in his pettiness and apathy it becomes clear that the Puerto Rican people must resist and fight back in the best way possible: by surviving and thriving together. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll rid Puerto Rico of the American flag’s stagnating shadow over our island and reduce it to a simple funerary shroud wrapped around the corpse of American colonialism, breaking away from that dying empire once and for all.

Miguel A. Cruz-Díaz is a fifth-year graduate student and doctoral candidate in British and world history at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he specializes in anarchist history. A native son of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, he currently resides in Bloomington. He has published in CounterPunch and in the Spanish-language publication Revista Cruce.

Featured image is from Chief National Guard Bure | CC BY 2.0.

Trump isn’t yet personally named by any of the reader-comments, but the sheer frustration shown with his continuing Obama’s policies in Syria is clear. 

The issue of whether or not the person who is shown in that video is staged, is not addressed in any of the reader-comments thus far, perhaps because Almasdar News has developed a reputation for the honesty of its reporting, and for its careful vetting of sources that it relies upon. If this video is a fake (a staged acted statement instead of an authentic statement by a disenchanted ISIS jihadist who is furious at ISIS’s cooperation with U.S.-backed Kurds who are protecting “the Conoco Gas Fields”), then it would be the first time that a staged fake has appeared at Almasdar as being anything authentic, instead of as being exposed there as being a fake. However, the possibility does exist that it could be a fake.

However, U.S. major ‘news’media continue to allege that the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, the “Syrian Democratic Forces” or SDF, are throwing ISIS out of that area, instead of working with ISIS there to block Syria’s Government from retaking control of that major gas-producing facility — throwing out ISIS, instead of throwing out the Syrian Government.

For example, on September 25th, the Wall Street Journal bannered “U.S.-Backed Forces Seize Syrian Gas Plant From Islamic State” and reported that, “U.S.-backed forces said Sunday they were advancing through eastern Syria after seizing a gas plant there from Islamic State, striking a blow to the terror group’s dwindling finances, which rely heavily on its control of Syria’s oil and gas fields. … ConocoPhillips has had no affiliation with the facility since it was turned over to the Syrian Gas Company in 2005. Its loss is another blow to Islamic State’s already-dwindling revenue sources.” The conflict is presented in U.S. ‘news’media as being SDF versus ISIS, instead of U.S. versus Syria. Also on September 25th, the AP bannered “US-backed SDF says it took Syria’s largest gas field from ISIS” and reported that, “U.S.-backed Syrian fighters captured Saturday the country’s largest gas field from the Islamic State group in an eastern province that borders Iraq as they race with government forces to capture the energy-rich region.”

Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal’s report is implicitly acknowledging that the U.S.-backed SDF is focused more on overthrowing the Government, or else breaking up Syria into ethnic enclaves (as the U.S. Government, and Israel, have long wanted), by reporting that, “‘Our goal is to prevent the regime from taking the areas of oil which will enable it to regain control of the country like it was before’ the start of the 2011 anti-government uprising, Delsos Derrik, an SDF commander, said.” Even the WSJ is implicitly acknowledging that Trump continues Obama’s primary goal in Syria to be conquest of Syria, instead of any authentic effort against jihadists such as Al Qaeda or ISIS there. Even the WSJ is implicitly accepting that Trump has been lying.

Consequently: Trump is continuing Obama’s policy regarding Syria, and has been lying to deny it. But even the readers at Almasdar News haven’t yet quite absorbed this apparent fact, and are instead blaming amorphous and more generalized entities, such as “the Zio/Nazi US invasion forces.”

ISIS/Daesh have always been place-setters[1] for the U.S Empire and its Coalition of regime-change criminal cohorts.

Once Daesh is installed in an area, the area is destroyed and depopulated. Syrians flee from terrorist-held areas, to government -secured areas.

Now that the Syrian government and its allies are winning the just war against Western backed, sustained, and integrated terrorists, the West’s strategic use of its terror proxies is becoming more apparent.

Video satellite imagery reveals, for example, Western military installations ensconced in Daesh territory. This is normal, because the West and Daesh are comrades-in-arms.

The fact that the “Kurdish” SDF are transparently aligned with ISIS in Deir ez Zor should be of no surprise either, since the SDF are also aligned with the West and its allies, including of course Israel.

Sometimes the terrorists fight each other, but those who pay the salaries and enable the chaos and destruction of Syria are the overlords.

The dirty war exists because of the West and its allies and their regime-change partners. There is nothing humanitarian about it, and it is not a counter-terrorism operation. It is a pro-terrorism regime change/dirty war.

Syrian refugees, including Christians and minority groups, are flooding back into Syria precisely because the Syrian government is winning. The Syrian government is secular and tolerant. Christians, as an example are not flooding back to Iraq, because the imperial West destroyed that country and the Constitution is no longer secular.

Veteran Middle East War Correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot remarks:

Iraq was super secular until the invasion of 2003. US did divide and rule like never before. Under Saddam every year all religious buildings, e.g., Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Yazidi etc. were granted equally funds from government to do needed repairs. One never heard of the sectarian terms anywhere – until the US invasion…[2]

Similarly, Yousef Issa writes that

The United States contributed to the formation of a new Iraq, doctrinal, sectarian, regional and regional, the foundations of the failed state, Christians were forced to flee and migrate to a more stable and secure world. In Syria, Christians living in areas controlled by the national government did not leave their homes, Along with the rest of the citizens, and in the areas returned by the Syrian Arab Army, the population returned to them, including Christians, despite migrating to more advanced places such as Europe, America claims to help the people, and in fact it seeks to destroy every country that wants to be free from the dominance of puppet system …[3]

Western populations should shed their illusions. Our governments are committing war crimes and imposing an overseas holocaust on non-belligerent countries. The West and its allies are terrorizing and destroying countries and they are falsely projecting their own high crimes onto their victims.

Notes

1 Mark Taliano, “The Islamic State as ‘Place-Setter’ for the American Empire. ISIS is the Product of the US Military-Intelligence Complex.” Global Research, 30 August, 2017.

(https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-islamic-state-as-place-setter-for-u-s-empire-isis-is-the-product-of-the-us-military-intelligence-complex/5606371) Accessed 28 September, 2017.

2 Felicity Arbuthnot, Facebook commentary, 27 September, 2017.

3 Yousef Issa, Facebook comment, 27 September, 2017.

Saudi Arabia arrested between 16-30 people in a broad crackdown across the Kingdom.

According to reports, this is different than the many other times that it happened because the latest incident includes a wide variety of seemingly disparate individuals such as clerics, a journalist, and even a prince, and comes amid a flurry of speculation that King Salman is considering abdicating in favor of the young Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Critics claim that this is being undertaken in order for Salman’s successor to preemptively consolidate power in staving off any unrest that might result from his possibly imminent ascent to the throne, while the government says that it was actually dismantling a foreign intelligence network linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Houthis.

Riyadh’s assertions are a thinly veiled euphemism to suggest that Qatar and Iran are behind this shadowy regime change plot, but it’s very unlikely that either of them is involved, and Riyadh may have just said they were in order to diplomatically deflect attention from the true culprit.

Here’s why.

Iran and Qatar are close with Russia and China, and the latter two Great Powers are actually enjoying a renaissance of relations with Saudi Arabia right now. While one might expect this to make Tehran and Doha jealous, the opposite is true – Moscow and Beijing’s developing high-level strategic partnerships with Riyadh are designed to bring balance to the Mideast by weaning the Kingdom away from Washington and slowly but surely integrating it into the emerging Multipolar World Order, which will never be perfect or without friction, but is still a step in the right direction. In order to appreciate what’s happening, one needs to be reminded of a few things that have happened this past year when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s relations with Russia and China.

Concerning Moscow, Riyadh agreed to an historic OPEC output deal with Russia last year and renewed it a few months ago after it expired. The Saudis are also cooperating with the Russians in encouraging Syria’s so-called “opposition” to merge into a unified entity for facilitating peace talks with Damascus. Foreign Minister Lavrov was just in the Kingdom last week, and King Salman is expected to visit Moscow sometime next month. As for China, Beijing signed a total of over $110 billion of deals with Saudi Arabia in the past six months alone in an effort to assist the Crown Prince’s ambitious Vision 2030 program of economic modernization. It’s that initiative more so than anything else which holds the danger of inadvertently destabilizing the country’s internal affairs because of the opposition that it’s come under from some of Saudi Arabia’s many radical clerics who are against the social consequences of its reforms.

Bearing all of this in mind, it’s worthwhile to revisit the question of who has an interest in destabilizing Saudi Arabia right at the moment that it’s turning away from the US and towards Russia and China, timing their subversive efforts to coincide with a prolonged leadership change and an economic transition. By all indicators, those aren’t the hallmarks of an Iranian or Qatari operation, but the red flag for an American one.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Sep 22, 2017:

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

On September 26, 2 Afghan policemen died and 3 were injured in a roadside bombing in Herat province. At the same day, 3 others died when a bombing targeted their checkpoint in Farah province.

On September 28, 12 policemen were killed in a Taliban suicide attack on a base of the Afghan Police in Maroof district of Kandahar province.

On September 29, an ISIS suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Qala-e-Fathullah area in Kabul city. 6 civilians were killed and 30 others injured, according to the government. ISIS claimed that 50 civilians were killed.

Meanwhile, the Taliban continued its attacks against the army and police across the country. Taliban members attacked an army checkpoint in in Kunsak area of Bala Baluk district in Farah province. 9 soldiers were killed and 3 were captured.

The Taliban captured district in Kandahar Province and reportedly killed 46 army troops in the attack.

An intense fighting also erupted in Jani Khel district of Paktia province where the army backed up by NATO forces launched an advance against the Taliban.

Government forces claimed that they have regained 32 villages from the Taliban in Logar province. However, the situation in the area remains complicated.

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To many mainstream pundits, the solution to the crisis in Korea is for U.S. officials to sit down and “talk” to North Korea in the hopes of negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement. While it won’t guarantee that a deal will be worked out, they say, “talking” is the only chance there is to resolve the crisis.

They ignore an important point: Any deal that would be reached would involve trusting the U.S.  government to keep its end of the bargain. And trusting the U.S. government would be the stupidest thing North Korea could ever do. That’s because as soon as U.S. officials found it advantageous, they would break the deal and pounce on North Korea, with the aim of achieving the regime change they have sought ever since the dawn of the Cold War more than 70 years ago.

Look at what U.S. officials did to Libya.  Muammar Qaddafi, agreed to give up his nuclear-weapons program in return for regime security. That turned out to be a stupid move. As soon as U.S. officials saw an opening, they pounced with a regime-change operation. Today, Qaddafi is dead and Libya is in perpetual crisis and turmoil. That wouldn’t have happened if Qaddafi had a nuclear deterrent to a U.S. regime-change operation.

Look at what U.S. officials are doing to Iran. They entered into a deal in which the U.S. government agreed to lift its brutal system of sanctions, which has brought untold suffering to the Iranian people, in return for Iran’s abandoning its nuclear-weapons program. After the deal was reached and Iran had complied, U.S. officials broke their side of the deal by refusing to lift their brutal system of sanctions and even imposing more sanctions. U.S. officials also now looking for any excuse or justification for getting out of the deal to which they agreed.

Even longtime partners and allies of the U.S. government can never be certain that the Empire won’t suddenly turn against them.

Look at what happened to the U.S. government’s loyal partner and ally Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials worked closely with him during the 1980s to kill Iranians. But when Saddam invaded Kuwait to settle a oil-drilling dispute, U.S. officials went after him with a vengeance, and notwithstanding the fact that, prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, they had falsely indicated to Saddam their indifference to his dispute with Kuwait. Result? Today Saddam is dead, and the U.S. government succeeded in achieving regime change in Iraq.

Look at Syria, which for a time served as a loyal partner and ally of the U.S. government, as reflected by the secret agreement to torture Canadian citizen Mahar Arar on behalf of U.S. officials and report their findings back to the CIA. Later, U.S. officials turned on Assad’s ruler, Bashar al-Assad, in a regime-change operation.

Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. Recall the countless agreements that U.S. officials made in the 1800s with Native Americans. U.S. officials were notorious for breaking them once it became advantageous to do so. Native Americans were entirely justified in accusing U.S. officials of speaking with a “forked tongue.”

If you were a North Korean, would you trust U.S. officials? Would you give up the one thing that is deterring a U.S. regime-change operation in return for a promise from U.S. officials that they would not initiate a regime-change operation? That would really be a really stupid thing to do, from the standpoint of North Korea. As soon as the U.S. government found it advantageous to break the deal and invade North Korea, engage in another state-sponsored assassination, or impose a new round of regime-change sanctions, they would do it.

“Talking” to North Korea will do no good because North Korea will never trust the United States to fulfill its part of any deal that is worked out. There is but one solution to the crisis in Korea: withdraw all U.S. forces from that part of the world immediately and bring them home. Anything less will only continue the crisis or, even worse, result in a very deadly and destructive war.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. Send him email.

The state-corporate media must be in trouble if a BBC veteran like Nick Robinson is getting dirty in the trenches, taking up arms against the “guerrilla war” he claims people like me are waging. In a new commentary piece for the Guardian, he argues that media critics – from the right and the left – are taking to social media in an organised campaign to discredit what Robinson calls the “mainstream media”. Predictably, his article strikes the self-satisfied tone of those who claim to be right because they have come under attack from both sides.

Let me delay briefly to point out that critics of the BBC, including myself, are not suggesting – as Robinson claims – either of the following:

“that we reporters and presenters are at best craven, obeying some diktat from our bosses or the government, or at worst nakedly biased.”

Robinson, like his colleagues in the corporate media, seems either averse to or incapable of understanding that serious criticism of the corporate media is based on the Propaganda Model, set out in great detail in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky.

According to that model, structural constraints – what Herman and Chomsky call “filters” – ensure journalists conform ideologically to their role in a media system that is incapable of questioning the foundations of the capitalist system of which the media is an integral part.

Put at its simplest, journalists like Robinson succeed in the state-corporate media because they are supremely good at promoting the official line. They rise through the ranks while journalists who are too critical fall by the wayside, weeded out in the long selection procedures journalists undergo before they reach the top.

In other words, journalists aren’t “cravenly taking orders from bosses”. Journalists like Robinson are selected for their highly partisan assumptions, because they proudly believe in and promote orthodoxy – in this case, the legitimacy of the neoliberal system. They manufacture consent for the present economic, political and social conditions, not because they are told to do so but because they fervently believe those conditions are for the benefit of all. If they did otherwise, as Chomsky once famously pointed out to Robinson’s colleague Andrew Marr, they would not be sitting where they are – in the interviewer’s chair.

Anyone who threatens the legitimacy of this system is treated as a menace, whether it be a progressive like Jeremy Corbyn or a too-nakedly brutal neoliberal capitalist like Donald Trump.

And this brings us to the second point. Robinson suggests that the new social media “guerrillas” plotting against the “mainstream media” are somehow indistinguishable from each other in their methods. Those on the right, the Trumpists, are no different from those on the left. In fact, he goes further and argues that progressive-left critics of the BBC are actually learning from Trump’s attacks on the media.

Campaigners on left and right have been looking at and learning from the method behind what some regard as the madness of Donald Trump’s attacks on the “failing” press as purveyors of “fake news”. Italy’s leftwing populist Beppe Grillo has described the Italian media as “the opium of the people – they hide the truth to reassure you, while you slowly die”. In Germany the rightwing Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) has revived the Nazi insult “lugenpresse”, meaning “lying press”.

But this is to invert reality. It is an example of the very “fake news” Robinson claims to be worried about. Trump isn’t teaching us about “fake news”. He’s exploiting popular disillusionment with the corporate media – the understanding that it has a corporate agenda that benefits a tiny elite – for his own political ends.

It is not that Trump rejects that corporate agenda, as progressives do; it’s that he is reckless in regard to the image carefully crafted for it by its guardians, the traditional political and media elite. He is not interested in advancing the broader interests of the corporate system, of maintaining its legitimacy; instead, he wants to advance his own personal interests within that system. He is a prime example of the self-destructiveness at the heart of neoliberal capitalism.

What Trump and his followers have done is appropriate the linguistic veneer of media criticism, without its intellectual substance, to justify their hyper-selfish agenda. By “fake news”, Trump means those who disagree with him and his political programme. That is not what the progressive left means. Their goal is to identify when and how the news is misrepresented by the corporate media, and whose interests are being served.

Worse for the progressive left, Trump has given ammunition to the enforcers of orthodoxy, like Robinson. The Trumpists’ often-empty claims of “fake news” serve to obscure or discredit the reality that the corporate media daily promotes fake news to further its agenda, whether it’s in Iraq or Venezuela, or whether it’s articles about a comic-book super-villian Putin taking over the US, or another moral panic about supposed rampant anti-semitism in the Labour party.

In reality, Trump’s scatter-shot claims of fake news are being exploited to shore up the corporate system. There is already a backlash, one being used to justify ever tighter controls over the internet and access to websites offering real critical news. Robinson’s claims that the left and right are the peddlers of the same “fakery” in attacking the media is part of that campaign to ensure normal service is resumed as soon as possible.

As the saying goes, the corporate media would have had to invent Donald Trump if he didn’t already exist. He has become the perfect foil to allow the system to relegitimise itself.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

In response to Health and Human Services Secretary Price spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at taxpayers’ expense on at least 24 private charter plane flights, Trump expressed outrage, saying he’s “very very unhappy” about it.

Asked if he’d fire Price, he sternly said

“we’ll see,” adding “I am not happy about it. I’m going to look at it. I’ll let him know it.”

On Friday, the hammer fell. Trump asked Price to resign, a polite way of sacking him, a White House statement saying HHS Secretary “Thomas Price offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted.”

In 2009 as a House member, he called a proposal to spend $550 million on government planes for federal officials and congressional members “fiscal irresponsibility” – except for his own luxury travel, as things turned out.

Trump intends naming Assistant HHS Secretary Don Wright to replace him. He’s a physician/former Bush administration director of the Office of Occupational Medicine for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and Principal Deputy Assistant HHS Secretary, along with other HHS positions. He strongly supports marketplace medicine extremism like his former boss.

Price is a physician, former congressman, and Georgia state senator.

He’s deplorably hard-right, a Tea Party caucus member, a marketplace medicine extremist, contemptuous of Medicare and Medicaid, wanting both programs dismantled – committed to ending government involvement in healthcare.

He’s pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-corporatism, anti-abortion, and anti-government of, for and by everyone equitably.

He’s a gun lobby favorite, co-sponsored legislation to make same-sex marriages illegal, and another bill forbidding employers from discriminating against gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.

He supported the Empowering Patients First Act, a scheme to repeal Obamacare and accelerate the dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid, wanting both programs privatized, putting healthcare industry profiteers exclusively in charge.

He voted against the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act – for the first time empowering the FDA to regulate tobacco as a drug.

He supported Protect Life Act legislation. If enacted, it would have denied ACA funding to healthcare plans including abortion as a benefit, along with letting hospitals decline to provide them.

He co-sponsored other pro-life legislation. He claimed ACA’s birth-control coverage mandate violated religious freedoms. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America rated him zero. The gay rights Human Rights Campaign also rated him zero.

He’s strongly anti-social justice, supporting legislation to reduce non-security spending, intended to help ordinary Americans.

Last February, he was narrowly confirmed as HHS secretary, all Republicans supporting him, all undemocratic Dems but one against – the vote 52 – 47.

He’s been Trump’s point man to repeal and replace Obamacare with alternatives more deplorable than ACA – so far not achieved.

Though gone, his successor will continue the pro-business extremist agenda he supports.

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

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Featured image is from slate.com.

Palestinian Christians and Muslims constituted 90% of the population of Palestine in 1920, prior to the 3rd wave of Jewish Immigration, under the post-first World War, British Mandate. This, in a region where the Palestinian Arab had been the majority indigenous people, and where there had been only a minority Jewish presence, for over a thousand years.

There are now 4.75 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip together with 1.75 in Israel itself i.e. a total population of 6.5m indigenous people. However, there are now also 600,000 Israeli settlers illegally living in the Occupied Territories in defiance of UN Resolution 2334 and in clear defiance of international law.

Astonishingly, both the US Trump administration and the UK Conservative government continue to arm and support the extremist Right-wing, Netanyahu Likud coalition that authorises and subsidises the illegal settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

This unholy alliance between Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Theresa May flies in the face of international law, justice, human rights and the tenets of democracy, and in violation of the will of the United Nations General Assembly.

The question is: why support an anti-democratic regime that has maintained an blockade of essential goods against 500,000 civilian families in Gaza, for now 10 years, and which continues its illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories in deliberate violation of the Geneva Conventions on Human Rights? 

Is the fact that Israel is an undeclared nuclear-weapons state that is uniquely not bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty or subject to IAEA inspection, the influencing factor?  And is this contempt for international law and the United Nations not of specific detriment to that majority who live, not in Israel, but in the worldwide Diaspora?

Featured image is from The Ugly Truth.

The word-war between Washington and Pyongyang advanced from grandiose insults to concrete threats on Monday, seeming to march eerily in line with warnings that rhetoric-mongering among US and North Korean leaders could, over time, lead to war. In response to recent tweets by President Trump and bomber patrols by US aircraft, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yoon Ho announced that the United States had essentially declared war on his country, and so the North now has the right to shoot down US military aircraft “even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.” This drew a factually correct but poorly contextualized comment from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

“We have not declared war on North Korea and, frankly, the suggestion of that is absurd.”

If it does not constitute an official war declaration (and it doesn’t), Trump’s recent rhetoric—which includes a threat to “totally destroy” North Korea and the observation that its leader, Kim Jong-un, and his foreign minister “won’t be around much longer” if they keep threatening the United States—does have experts in and out of government nervous, the New York Times reports. Some of those experts are gaming out war scenarios for the Korean Peninsula, and shaking their heads at the potential carnage. The Los Angeles Times quoted James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, as putting

“the chances of conventional conflict with North Korea at 50-50 and the chances of nuclear war at 10 percent.”

“The Pentagon has estimated the potential number of dead in South Korea at 20,000 each day,” Rob Givens, a retired Air Force brigadier general who spent years in South Korea told the Los Angeles newspaper. “And that is before the North Koreans turn to nuclear weapons.”

If North Korea were to detonate a 150-kiloton nuclear warhead (the approximate size of the device it most recently tested underground) in Seoul, about 417,000 people would die and 1.89 million would be injured, according to the Nukemap simulator created by Stevens Institute of Technology professor Alex Wellerstein. Those figures ignore the effects of radioactive fallout.

Iraqi army and popular forces have discovered a number of US-made missiles from a military position of the ISIS(ISIL, IS, Daesh) in the Southern part of Mosul, informed local sources disclosed after the first group of pro-government troops opened their way into Southern Mosul on Monday.

“Several US-made missiles were found in al-Shoura region to the South of Mosul,” a local source said on Monday.

The Iraqi army and popular forces had found US-made missiles in Anbar province several times before.

Provincial officials confirmed that the US-made weapons were sent by the US-led anti-ISIL coalition airplane for the ISIL terrorists in Anbar province.

Meantime, Iraqi security officials announced that the ISIL has sent US-made military equipment to Tal Afar region in the last two days to stand strong against Iraqi popular forces’ impending attack to capture the region.

“The ISIL terrorists have sent US-made TOW anti-tank missiles to Tal Afar and it is quite evident that they are preparing for a long-term war,” the Arabic-language media quoted an Iraqi security official as saying on Monday.

In late August 2015, a senior Iraqi intelligence official revealed that the US helicopters drop weapons and other aids for the ISIL terrorists in the Western province of al-Anbar.

“The fighters present at the forefront of fighting against the ISIL always see US helicopters flying over the ISIL-controlled areas and dropping weapons and urgent aids for them,” the official who called for anonymity told FNA.

Yet, he said the helicopters could have also been sent from Turkey or Israel.

He added that in addition to dropping aids, the helicopters transfer the ISIL ringleaders and wounded members from the battleground to some hospitals in Syria or other countries which support the terrorist group.

The official cautioned that such assistance further prolongs the conflicts in Anbar, adding that when the Iraqi army and popular forces purge the terrorists from Anbar province, the US helicopters will transfer the ISIL ringleaders to other regions to prevent the Iraqi forces’ access to ISIL secrets.

Also in March 2015, a group of Iraqi popular forces known as Al-Hashad Al-Shabi shot down the US Army helicopter that was carrying weapons for the ISIL in the Western parts of Al-Baghdadi region in Al-Anbar province.

Meantime in February 2015, a senior lawmaker disclosed that Iraq’s army had shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province.

“The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said.

Image is from the author.

“Puerto Rico is Trump’s Katrina, times 1,000,” says Rosa Clemente, comparing the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to the humanitarian crisis in New Orleans in 2005.

Clemente is a community organizer active with Black Lives Matter and a doctoral candidate in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, although she is best known for her 2008 Green Party vice presidential candidacy.

With family members in Puerto Rico, Clemente knows through direct testimony how desperate circumstances are in the U.S. territory right now.

“This is 3.5 million human beings that, in a couple of days, if relief is not provided, we’re going to see massive amounts of deaths,” she explained to me in an interview earlier this week.

When the storm made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, President Trump issued a single brief tweet to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló:

“We are with you and the people of Puerto Rico. Stay safe!”

He then spent his weekend manufacturing a controversy over NFL players who were protesting racism by refusing to stand during the national anthem. He first raised the issue at a campaign speech for a fellow Republican in Alabama on Sept. 22, and went on to engage in a massive tweet storm through Monday, in what some speculated was an attempt to rally his base in the face of flagging poll numbers.

Finally, five days after his initial tweet about the island, Trump published a series of three more tweets that were incredibly callous.

“Much of the island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks, which, sadly, must be dealt with,” the tweets said.

For the president to bring up Puerto Rico’s economic crisis and its debt to corporate America during a time of tremendous suffering is shocking, even for Trump. The fact that he accompanied this statement with very little action to actually help Puerto Ricans intensified the cruelty of his words.

“Everything [Trump] says enrages Puerto Ricans in the diaspora like me. It should be enraging everyone,” Clemente says.

While a majority of Puerto Ricans have been without power, water or cellphone service for nearly a week, Trump’s White House decided to wait until nearly two weeks after the hurricane hit to even consider an aid package. Waiting that long means that “a lot of people are going to die,” Clemente believes.

“What’s going to happen, I think, in the next 48 hours is panic,” she said. “Full-on panic.”

On Tuesday—seven days after the hurricane hit the island—Trump rolled out a public relations effort, supported by heads of government agencies, to convince reporters that his administration is taking action. He then raised the issue at a press conference, where he mostly bragged, saying,

“Everybody has said it’s amazing, the job we’ve done in Puerto Rico.”

He concluded by announcing that he would visit the island a whole week later.

Puerto Rico today is ground zero for American disaster capitalism. The electrical grid, which, Trump lamented, “was in terrible shape,” was neglected because the Republican Gov. Rosselló “for the last two years has been paying the debt as opposed to fixing the electrical grid,” Clemente says. The island’s crumbling infrastructure was apparently less important than its debt repayments. Then, the hurricane hit and Puerto Rico went dark. The governor estimates it could take months to restore power.

On the mainland, Puerto Rico rarely enters into our national consciousness, even though it has a population greater than more than half the states in the nation—roughly the same as Connecticut.

“Because Puerto Ricans have always been relegated to second-class citizenship, I even wonder how many Americans know that Puerto Ricans are American citizens,” Clemente says.

A new poll answers her question: Only 54 percent of Americans realize that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.

What Puerto Rico needs immediately is action from the executive branch. If Trump cared even slightly about Puerto Ricans, not only would he expedite the aid package, he would have immediately suspended the Jones Act, a shipping restriction that prevents nations from docking at Puerto Rico’s ports and directly delivering aid. The Trump administration’s initial refusal to grant a waiver for the rule invited harsh criticism from his fellow Republican, Arizona’s Sen. John McCain, who called it “unacceptable” in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security.

But Trump cited economic interests as being more important than actual human beings—he initially justified keeping the restriction in place by saying,

“We have a lot of shippers and a lot of people … who work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.”

Only under massive public pressure did he decide to lift the restrictions on Thursday.

Puerto Ricans had to wait more than a week after the hurricane hit before their colonial master decided to allow supplies to be shipped directly to the island. Just as it is impossible to separate Puerto Rico’s economic crisis from its status as a U.S. territory, it is impossible to disentangle the devastation of the hurricane from the man-made disaster stemming from the island’s subservient relationship with the U.S.

With Trump in charge, there is a deep irony about the U.S. government’s inaction. First, as Clemente points out,

“Because we’re a colony, we can’t even file for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the president was able to file for personal bankruptcy four times in his life to start over.”

Second, Trump himself is part of the problem in Puerto Rico’s economy. His business made money from taking over a failing golf course on the island. After promising to turn it around, Trump International called it quits. Snopes.com explains:

“His role in the bankruptcy of the company, which ended up costing Puerto Rican taxpayers $32.6 million, was significant but limited.”

Corporations similar to Trump’s have taken advantage of subsidies and handouts in Puerto Rico, leaving islanders saddled with more problems and more debt.

More than 10 years ago, musician Kanye West remarked that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during a fundraising telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Clemente expressed similar sentiments about Trump this week.

“He is a soulless human being. He has no empathy. He does not care,” she says.

Although so far Hurricane Maria has caused fewer deaths in Puerto Rico than Hurricane Katrina caused on the U.S. mainland, in Clemente’s eyes the scale of the catastrophe facing Puerto Ricans potentially eclipses that of Katrina and its aftermath.

“When I went down to New Orleans and to the areas affected by the levee breach, we weren’t talking about millions of people [as we are with Puerto Rico],” she said. “Look at what that slow response did, how many people died, how many people were never able to come back.”

The government’s botched response to hurricane damage in New Orleans caused devastation that the city never fully recovered from. Today, Puerto Rico faces a proportionately larger dilemma. Clemente warns:

“It’s a crisis of epic proportions that we’ve probably never seen in this country.”

Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV, Roku) and Pacifica stations KPFK, KPFA, and affiliates. She is the former founder, host and producer of KPFK Pacifica’s popular morning drive-time program “Uprising.” She is also the co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S.-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the social, political, and humanitarian projects of RAWA. 

Just days away from the referendum promoted by secessionist forces, Spanish police arrested over a dozen senior officials from the Generalitat and carried out over forty raids in the Catalan government’s headquarters. Social and political tensions have reached a new height as the unified state’s repressive machinery has been set in motion. Protests are being stepped up and political rhetoric is ever more aggressive. If the irresponsible actions of the political class that led to this institutional breakdown continues, deep social conflict will follow.

This extreme situation was unthinkable less than a decade ago. According to the Catalan public polling body, only 15% of Catalans wanted an independent state when the economic crisis broke out in September 2008. Six years later, that number was up to 48%. Given the entire population of Catalonia (7.5m), this would mean that close to 2.5 million Catalans switched in favor of independence in over just six years. Why?

The escalation

At least two major events have contributed to the tense relations between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. First, the Statute of Autonomy approved by Catalans in 2006 underwent several amendments by the Spanish constitutional court in 2010. While the real changes are often exaggerated by secessionists, the reckless attitude of the central government dynamited any possibilities for agreement.

Second, the economic crisis triggered widespread political dissatisfaction with the functioning of Spanish democracy. The dire economic situation, unpopular austerity measures, and a series of large-scale corruption scandals affecting political elites, nourished the breeding ground for new movements and parties with a clear-cut enemy to blame. Some pointed to the banking and political elites. In Catalonia, the scapegoat became Spain itself.

Following the victory of the centre-right Popular Party (PP) in the Spanish general election of November 2011, many turned to independence as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Spanish government. It did not take long for the Catalan Right to embrace secessionism for the first time in an attempt to capitalise on this growing sentiment. At the time, the nationalist coalition Convergencia i Unió (CiU) faced several corruption scandals and the political burden of managing the economic crisis.

Conflict was served. A coalition of strange bedfellows from the left and right united by their vision of a new Catalan state initiated the so-called procés (process) to independence. Claiming to represent the will of the Catalan people (as a homogeneous group) against corrupt and unreformable Spain in an unmistakably populist manner, they promised to dedicate all efforts to the creation of the newest state in Europe. It has proved to be a complicated task.

The case for independence

While the right to self-determination is a powerful moral tool, the international community reserves it for cases bolstered by human rights abuses. For a rich region with very high levels of self-government in one of Europe’s advanced democracies, building a case for independence is a tough enterprise. Especially so when the country in question ranks highly on all democracy and political and civil rights indexes.

In spite of an adverse international scenario, the campaigning efforts in favour of independence have been persistent. Often, also manipulative. The main line of argument has been that of portraying Spain as an authoritarian state, hostile to Catalonia. While the Spanish state is far from perfect and the model of territorial administration (the State of Autonomies) is in serious need of revisiting, equating Spain to a dictatorship as if nothing had changed since Franco’s regime is straying from the truth, to put it mildly.

Other arguments in favour of independence have revolved around a –rather questionable– fiscal plundering or historical reinterpretations dating back to 18^th century monarchy wars. The debate, at times similar to the Brexit campaign, has been everything but a reasonable and informed discussion on the benefits and consequences of independence. For instance, the reiterated position expressed by EU officials about the potential exit of Catalonia from the EU in case of unilateral independence has been largely ignored if not deliberately misinterpreted.

Paradoxically, the greatest ally of secessionism has been the Spanish premier and his cabinet. Hiding behind a legalist banner, the PP have been pursuing an ostrich strategy for years. Not only have they refused to engage in finding any political solution to a growing political problem, but they have also undertaken dubious subterranean operations to weaken secessionist forces. The growing shift to independence, not surprisingly, comprises a large dose of protest against an immobile national government.

The road to October 1^st

Regional elections were held in September 2015, nearly a year after the failed referendum attempt in 2014 (only participated in by pro-independence supporters). The results reflected a rather new stable equilibrium of preferences over the state’s territorial disposition. Half favoured independence. The other half, either a federal state (more regional autonomy without independence), or remaining an autonomous community (maintaining the status quo).

The results did not grant the degree of legitimacy expected by the secessionist coalition to pursue their ambitions. Despite having a parliamentary majority, they failed to reach the 50% threshold. They were now trapped by the promise of staging a referendum on independence with no legitimacy to do so. Only through provoking a disproportionate reaction from the state to expose its repressive nature could they hope to win the necessary support for unilateral action. And that’s what they did.

On September 6 and 7 the strategy materialised. Despite a majority of citizens rejecting unilateral action and with a minimal parliamentary majority, the secessionist coalition threw caution to the wind. In an irregular and speedy parliamentary procedure that by-passed the opposition, they approved illicit laws to hold a referendum and make its result binding. These laws were not only clearly at odds with the Spanish constitution, but also with the Catalan statute of autonomy approved in 2006. Unsurprisingly, the constitutional court declared such laws illegal within hours and the battle for the October 1 referendum that we are now witnessing commenced.

What next?

Nobody knows what will happen on October 1. The state’s repressive machinery is in full motion, and Catalonia’s treasury and regional police have been seized. Not only have senior Catalan officials been arrested but the police have raided and confiscated all material concerning the referendum. More recently, Catalan police have received orders to seal off all polling stations.

This full-scale intervention has provoked a large-scale public reaction against repression. The debate is now shifting from the right to secession and self-determination to the defence of freedom of expression. As it turns out, the Spanish government’s toughness-without-solution approach might push many Catalans to vote on Sunday. If there is anywhere to vote, that is.

Whatever happens, the problem will not go away the day after. And it will be ever more complex. Between a central government that refuses to acknowledge an obvious political problem and a secessionist coalition that has proved reckless enough to operate outside the law to achieve its political objectives, the road to resolution will be long.

Any solution will inevitably pass through dialogue, but dialogue is useless if neither side is willing to compromise. The enforcement of the law will solve nothing without addressing the peaceful mobilisation of the pro-independence Catalans.. Yet, operating outside of the law must meet a decisive judiciary response. So far, the irresponsibility of both sides has led to a political deadlock and social tensions. It is time to sit and talk before it is too late.

Monsanto lobbyists were officially barred by the European Parliament on Thursday after refusing requests to participate in hearings about the U.S. corporation’s efforts to influence regulations of its controversial glyphosate within the 28-nation bloc.

The ban was announced by the parliament’s presidential council under rules designed to combat misbehavior by those lobbying the EU’s lawmaking body. It is the first time, the Guardian notes, that

“MEPs have used new rules to withdraw parliamentary access for firms that ignore a summons to attend parliamentary inquiries or hearings.”

The Greens/EFA Group in the parliament, which had requested Monsanto’s removal after the biotech giant’s refusal, welcomed the decision.

“This is strong democracy. Those who escape democratic accountability must be excluded from access to lobbying,” said MEP Sven Giegold, financial and economic policy spokesperson for the Greens/EFA and parliament’s rapporteur for Transparency, Accountability and Integrity. “If Monsanto does business in Europe, it must also face up to its responsibilities before the European Parliament.”

The Guardian reports:

The lobby ban will be a bitter blow to Monsanto’s advocacy campaign ahead of a decision later this year about the relicensing of glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer by one expert WHO panel.

Another deemed it safe for public use, but Monsanto’s outreach to regulatory agencies in the US and Europe sparked controversy and prompted the parliamentary hearing.

Philippe Lamberts, president of the Greens/EFA, added,

“Those who ignore the rules of democracy also lose their rights as a lobbyist in the European Parliament. US corporations must also accept the democratic control function of the parliament. Monsanto cannot escape this. There remain many uncertainties in the assessment of the pesticide glyphosate. Monsanto has to face the questions of parliamentarians and should not hinder the clarification process.”

In response to the decision in Brussels, critics of the powerful company wondered if the U.S. would ever take such measures:

When will this happen in the US? EU Group Presidents to withdraw access to Monsanto lobbyists https://t.co/ODfOhtxRSi

— Non-GMO Report (@nongmoreport) September 28, 2017

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

There had been a general public opinion poll conducted by independent sociologists and political scientists from all around the world in war-torn Syria. The citizens of the state shared their views on the main events and situation now taking place in the country, their attitude towards other countries acting actively on the fate of the country and also called the main problems of the state.

This analysis led to the identification of the population of Syria’s relationship to the conflict with the participation of various parties, as well as to find out at last where the truth that the media usually publish lies and how big is the falsehood.

It is noticed that the survey was conducted in all the Syrian provinces including those under pressure of war.

According to preliminary data, 97% of respondents believe that the country is currently suffering from the crisis caused by corruption, internal weakness of the state and the collusion of other countries against Syria, consequences of which fuel and enhance a humanitarian catastrophe in the entire Middle East.

An interesting fact is that more than 70 percent of the voters support the policy of the head of state, do not believe in the inhumanity of Syrian President Bashar Assad and called the U.S. the main conspirator. The outskirts of Damascus were characterized by only 6 phrases: no housing, no work, monstrously high prices, a lot of street children, poverty, uncontrolled and mindless violence by the militants captured the villages. The residents of the main largest cities in Syria also complained about the destroyed infrastructure of the region, the lack of electricity and water, as well as non-working schools.

The opinion-poll experts pointed out that the overwhelming number of respondents cited themselves patriots of the country. The Syrians stressed that they would not have left their country, even if they had such an opportunity.

People are exhausted by the war, so often they expressed the desire to live in a strong state with functioning public institutions.

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

The Kurdish region in Iraq held a “referendum” about splitting off from Iraq to form an independent state. The referendum was highly irregular and the outcome was assured. That such a referendum was held now had more to do with the beleaguered situation of the illegitimate regional president Barzani than with a genuine opportunity to achieve independence. The referendum was non-binding. It is now onto Barzani to declare independence or to set the issue aside in exchange for, essentially, more money.

We first wrote about the Kurdish problem and Kurdish ambitions in Iraqi back in December 2005(!). The problems of an independent Kurdish region we then pointed out are still the same:

A landlocked Kurdish state of some kind could produce a lot of oil, but how would this oil reach the markets, especially Israel? The neighbors Turkey, Iran and Syria all have Kurdish minorities and have no reason to help a Kurdish state to enrich itself and see that money funneled to their unruly minorities. After [Kurdish] grabbing [of] Kirkuk, the Arab rest of Iraq will also not support pipelines for then Kurdish oil.

Arabs, Turks, and Persians see the Kurds as a recalcitrant nomadic mountain tribe and stooge of Israeli interests.

In the mid 1960s and 70s Israel cooperated with Iran, then a U.S. ally under the Shah, to fight against its Arab enemies – Iraq, Syria and Egypt. As part of the cooperation the Mossad sent Lt. Colonel Tzuri Sagi to develop plans for and build up a Kurdish army to fight Iraqi troops in northern Iraq. Tzuri Sagi was also responsible for the Israeli assassination attempts against Saddam Hussein. His Kurdish cooperation partner was the leader of the Barzani clan, Mullah Mustafa Barzani. The Kurdish army the Israelis created is now known as Peshmerga. The son of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, Masoud Barzani, is now the illegitimate president of the Kurdish region of Iraq.

 

Lt. Colonel Sagi with Mustafa Barazani. Photo reproduction: Yossi Zeliger (Source)

Sagi with Kurdish commanders

Barazani with then-head of the Mossad, Meir Amit 

The Barzani’s are part of a major Kurdish tribe and a leading clan in the Kurdish region of Iraq. (The other major clan are the Talabani, currently with much less power.) In 2005 Masoud Barzani, the son of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, was elected President of the Kurdish region in Iraq. His eight year term ended in 2013. The regional parliament extended his presidency by two years. But since 2015 he has ruled without any legal basis. He prevented the parliament from convening and formally ousting him. Masoud Barzani’s son Mazrour Barzani is chancellor of the region’s security council. He controls all military and civilian intelligence. Nechirvan Barzani, a nephew of Masoud Barzani, is prime minister of the Kurdish region.

U.S. oil interests helped to build the Barzani’s power. The Kurds pumped and sold oil without the consent of Baghdad. Oil is exported through Turkish pipelines and sold mostly to Israel. The family of the Turkish president Erdogan is intimately involved in the business. But despite billions of income from (illegal) oil sales the Kurdish region is heavily indebted. Corruption rules in Kurdistan and the regional government had to rob local banks to find fresh money. That still wasn’t enough to pay salaries. The Barzani family mafia has robbed the region blind. To keep going, the local government needs to annex more riches and widen its business base.

The Barzani family has deep religious-historic ties with a Sunni spiritual order of Sufis, the Naqshbandi. The Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order was one of the Sunni-Baathist resistance group of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In 2014 it helped (or didn’t help?) the Islamic State in the takeover of Mosul before being shunned and defeated by it.

The Iraqi Kurds, under Masoud Barzani, were complicit in the mid 2014 Islamic State takeover of Mosul and the Sinjar region inhabited by Kurdish speaking Yezidis. They saw it as an opportunity to take more oil and declare their own independence from Baghdad. Only after the Islamic State marched towards the Kurdish “capital” Erbil, where U.S. and Israeli intelligence as well as western oil companies have their regional headquarters, did the Barzani Kurds start to oppose the Islamic State.

They then used the fight against the Islamic State to widen the area they controlled by 40%. Minorities like the Yezidi and Assyrians, which were driven away from their homes by the Islamic State, are now denied to return to their areas by Kurdish occupiers. As NYT correspondent Rukmini Callimachi reports from the ground:

A common refrain I hear is that the Iraqi army ran when ISIS overran Mosul, whereas the Kurds stood their ground. Sadly that’s not true. One of the areas that was under the control of Kurdish troops was Mt Sinjar, home to a large share of the 500,000 Yazidis living in Iraq. According to the dozens of interviews I’ve done with Yazidi survivors of ISIS’ ensuing genocide, Kurdish troops cut and ran when ISIS came. Adding insult to injury, say community leaders, Kurdish troops disarmed Yazidis. And did not warn them of ISIS’ advance. The result: Thousands of Yazidi women were kidnapped by ISIS and systematically raped. Many I spoke to partially blamed Kurdish troops for their fate.

Callimachi further reports that Kurdish troops now prevent Yezidis from returning to their homes. Barzani has unilaterally annexed their land and unilaterally declared it to be part of the Kurdish region. The Kurds also occupy land and villages, already mentioned in the bible, that belong to Assyrian Christians.

Another hotspot is Kirkuk. The oil rich city is an original Turkman and Arab areas. The Kurds snatched it in 2014 while the Islamic State marched onto Baghdad. The  move on Kirkuk was, allegedly, coordinated with the Islamic State. They now want to annex it. The Iraqi state is naturally vehemently against this and is now sending its army. The Turkish government, which sees itself as defender of all Turkmen, also threatens to intervene.

After the Kurdish independence referendum the Iraqi government declared a partial blockade of their region. Iraq is a sovereign state, the Kurdish region has no independent legal status. This gives Baghdad many ways to strangle Kurdish ambitions. Starting Friday all international (civil) flights to Erbil are by order of Baghdad prohibited. A land blockade and stoppage of all trade and monetary transfers are likely to follow.

Syria, Iran and Turkey have all spoken out against Kurdish independence and threatened retribution. Officially the U.S. is also against an independent Kurdish state. Israel was the only state that supported the referendum. That sympathy (or politically convenience) runs both ways: In Kurdistan’s Erbil, the Polling Station Head Shouted Out: ‘We Are the Second Israel!’

Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senate leader and a reliable Zionist tool, called on the Trump administration to recognizing an independent Kurdistan. Trump can not do so because it would put the U.S. in opposition to its “allies” in the Turkish and the Iraqi government. But the official position is different from what the U.S. does on the ground. U.S. arms still flow to Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria.

Likewise Turkey is officially very concerned about the independence move of Kurdish Iraq but it also has commercial interests in it. Long term it fears the independence movements in its own large Kurdish population and sees the referendum in Iraq as a U.S. move against Turkish security interests:

[Turks] believe the referendum is actually part of Washington’s supposed long-standing desire to establish “a second Israel” in the region. Israel’s support for the KRG referendum has fed into this perception.

According to the Iraqi prime minister Turkey agreed to isolate the Kurdish region. But Turkish companies, and Erdogan’s immediate family, have commercial interest in oil from the Kurdish region. Turkey exports some $8 billion per year in food and consumer goods to the Kurdish region. While Ankara is anxious that its own Kurdish population will follow the Iraqi Kurdish example, near term greed may well prevail over long term national interests.

Without Turkish agreement an “independent” Kurdish region in Iraq can not survive. Such independence  would totally depend on Ankara’s whims.

Should Masoud Barzani gain enough external support and prevail with his independence gimmick, the situation in Syria would also change. The Kurds in Syria are currently led by the PKK/YPG, a political cult and militia which follows Abdullah Öcalan‘s crude philosophies. Politically they are opposed to Barzani but they have similar interests and attitudes. Though only 8% of the population, they have now occupied some 20% of Syria’s land and control 40% of its oil reserves. Continued U.S. support for Syrian Kurds and the example in Iraqi could incited them to split from Syria. Damascus would never agree to that.

Kurdish independence, as Barzanistan in Iraq and/or as anarcho-marxists Öcalan cult in Syria, would be the start of another decade of war – either between the Kurdish entities and the nations around them, or within the ever disunited Kurdish tribes themselves.

All images in this article are from Moon of Alabama unless otherwise stated.

Do the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editors read their own newspaper?  

The front page headline story for the Labor Day weekend was “Low Wage Growth Challenges Fed.” Despite an alleged 4.4% unemployment rate, which is full employment, there is no real growth in wages. The front page story pointed out correctly that an economy alleged to be expanding at full employment, but absent any wage growth or inflation, is “a puzzle that complicates Federal Reserve policy decisions.”

On the editorial page itself, under “letters to the editor,” Professor Tony Lima of California State University points out what I have stressed for years:

“The labor-force participation rate remains at historic lows. Much of the decrease is in the 18-34 age group, while participation rates have increased for those 55 and older.” 

Professor Lima points out that more evidence that the American worker is not in good shape comes from the rising number of Americans who can only find part-time work, which leaves them with truncated incomes and no fringe benefits, such as health care.

Positioned right next to this factual letter is the lead editorial written by someone who read neither the front page story or the professor’s letter. The lead editorial declares:

“The biggest labor story this Labor Day is the trouble that employers are having finding workers across the country.”

The Journal’s editorial page editors believe the solution to the alleged labor shortage is Senator Ron Johnson’s (R.Wis.) bill to permit the states to give 500,000 work visas to foreigners.

In my day as a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, questions would have been asked that would have nixed the editorial. For example, how is there a labor shortage when there is no upward pressure on wages? In tight labor markets wages are bid up as employers compete for workers. For example, how is the labor market tight when the labor force participation rate is at historical lows. When jobs are available, the participation rate rises as people enter the work force to take the jobs.

I have reported on a number of occasions that according to Federal Reserve studies, more Americans in the 24-34 age group live at home with parents than independently, and that it is those 55 and older who are taking the part time jobs. Why is this? The answer is that part time jobs do not pay enough to support an independent existence, and the Federal Reserve’s decade long zero interest rate policy forces retirees to enter the work force as their retirement savings produce no income.  It is not only the manufacturing jobs of the middle class blue collar workers that have been given to foreigners in order to cut labor costs and thus maximize payouts to executives and shareholders, but also tradeable professional skill jobs such as software engineering, design, accounting, and IT—jobs that Americans expected to get in order to pay off their student loans.   

The Wall Street Journal editorial asserts that the young are not in the work force because they are on drugs, or on disability, or because of their poor education. However, all over the country there are college graduates with good educations who cannot find jobs because the jobs have been offshored. To worsen the crisis, a Republican Senator from Wisconsin wants to bring in more foreigners on work permits to drive US wages down lower so that no American can survive on the wage, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page editors endorse this travesty!  

The foreigners on work visas are paid one-third less than the going US wage. They live together in groups in cramped quarters. They have no employee rights.  They are exploited in order to raise executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains. I have exposed this scheme at length in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism (Clarity Press, 2013).

When Trump said he was going to bring the jobs home, he resonated, but, of course, he will not be permitted to bring them home, any more than he has been permitted to normalize relations with Russia.

In America Government is not in the hands of its people.  Government is in the hands of a ruling oligarchy.  Oligarchic rule prevails regardless of electoral outcomes. The American people are entering a world of slavery more severe than anything that previously existed. Without jobs, dependent on their masters for trickle-down benefits that are always subject to being cut, and without voice or representation, Americans, except for the One Percent, are becoming the most enslaved people in history.

Americans carry on by accumulating debt and becoming debt slaves. Many can only make the minimum payment on their credit card and thus accumulate debt.  The Federal Reserve’s policy has exploded the prices of financial assets. The result is that the bulk of the population lacks discretionary income, and those with financial assets are wealthy until values adjust to reality.  

As an economist I cannot identify in history any economy whose affairs have been so badly managed and prospects so severely damaged as the economy of the United States of America.  In the short/intermediate run policies that damage the prospects for the American work force benefit what is called the One Percent as jobs offshoring reduces corporate costs and financialization transfers remaining discretionary income in interest and fees to the financial sector.  But as consumer discretionary incomes disappear and debt burdens rise, aggregate demand falters, and there is nothing left to drive the economy. 

What we are witnessing in the United States is the first country to reverse the development process and to go backward by giving up industry, manufacturing, and tradeable professional skill jobs.  The labor force is becoming Third World with lowly paid domestic service jobs taking the place of high-productivity, high-value added jobs.  

The initial response was to put wives and mothers into the work force, but now even many two-earner families experience stagnant or falling material living standards. New university graduates are faced with substantial debts without jobs capable of producing sufficient income to pay off the debts.

Now the US is on a course of travelling backward at a faster rate. Robots are to take over more and more jobs, displacing more people.  Robots don’t buy houses, furniture, appliances, cars, clothes, food, entertainment, medical services, etc.  Unless Robots pay payroll taxes, the financing for Social Security and Medicare will collapse.  And it goes on down from there.  Consumer spending simply dries up, so who purchases the goods and services supplied by robots?

To find such important considerations absent in public debate suggests that the United States will continue on the country’s de-industrialization, de-manufacturing trajectory.  

Earlier this month, Donald Trump stood before the U.N. and called for the restoration of “political freedoms” to a South American nation in the throes of an economic crisis. The country in question was Venezuela, but he could have just as easily been describing Argentina, whose right-wing government imprisoned indigenous politician Milagro Sala, has run inflation into the double digits and is in the process of re-imposing the sort of austerity policies that triggered a popular revolt and debt default in 2001.

The description also fits Brazil, where President Michel Temer has been caught on tape discussing bribes, his former cabinet member’s apartment recently raided to the tune of 51 million reais ($16 million). Temer, who assumed office only after leading the impeachment of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, has also run an aggressive program of austerity, dissolving the programs that lifted tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty and into the middle class.

In both countries, right-wing forces have taken power and undermined fragile democratic norms with the objective of reversing the modest redistribution of wealth achieved under left-wing administrations over the past 15 years. Backed by a United States government with a long history of subverting leftist movements in the region, and a mainstream media that’s all too eager to carry its water, the right is now attempting the same feat in Venezuela.

How the opposition fights a popular government

Unlike Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela has been victimized by a number of factors outside of its control, but especially a precipitous drop in the price of oil, the country’s main source of revenue.

The oil price drop of 2015 was a global phenomenon. Since the formation of OPEC in the 1970s, the Saudi Kingdom has been able to use its immense reserves to undermine other oil-producing countries’ attempts to maintain a high and stable price for petroleum. Even if all these nations were to ally, the Saudi Kingdom can turn the tap up or down and change the entire global economy to benefit its own geopolitical agenda and that of its U.S. patron. It did so in the late 1970s to offset lowered production in Iran after the 1979 revolution. And it did so again in 2015, partly in response to the success of the Iran-U.S. nuclear deal. It’s not a perfect mechanism; the price drop hurt the Saudi economy before prices slowly climbed anew. But the most severe effects were felt by the United States’ designated enemies: Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

Since 1999, the Venezuelan government has experimented with a process of social and economic reform using constitutional and electoral means. The president who initiated the experiment, Hugo Chavez, called it the “Bolivarian Revolution,” but for the most part it is now simply called Chavismo.

Chavez held power from 1999 until his death in 2013, interrupted by a three-day coup in 2002. During his presidency, the country saw a referendum on a constitutional assembly, the election of that assembly, a referendum to ratify the new constitution, a new election under that constitution, an attempt to use a provision in the constitution to recall Chavez, and two additional presidential elections, all of which were won by Chavez’s government. To say that Chavismo’s popularity and that of Chavez himself has been tested at the polls is an understatement.

While Chavez was alive, no politician could rival him for the presidency. This was true despite the 24-hour demonization of him in the country’s private media and the systematically negative coverage of his government across Western news outlets. As often occurs whenever a country runs afoul of the U.S., Chavez was presented as a dictator, despite his numerous electoral victories. So popular was he that when opposition leaders seized power for 72 hours in 2002, one of their first orders of business was to shut down the government’s TV channel. As the 2003 documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, reveals, the coup was ultimately defeated when officials managed to get back onto the airwaves.

Phases of economic warfare

When coup and media campaigns failed to upend the government or silence its mouthpiece, the opposition resorted to economic warfare. This war has had several phases: a national strike in 2002-2003 brought Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, to a halt, denying the government its main source of revenue. But despite their personal suffering, the company’s lower-ranking officials remained loyal to Chavez (as did many of the middle ranks), stepping up to replace the striking managers and engineers in order to get the oil flowing again.

A more recent phase around 2014 saw smugglers take huge quantities of subsidized fuel, food and staples across the border to Colombia to sell or simply dump, denying poor Venezuelans essential goods as a means of exerting pressure on the federal government. The Maduro administration has been able to mitigate some of these losses by carefully controlling the distribution of subsidized staples.

Ultimately, the greatest source of Venezuela’s economic woes has been its own currency, the bolívar. Global markets can wreak havoc on governments by making runs on their currency, and Venezuela has attempted to immunize itself against this by imposing a fixed exchange rate. Any fixed exchange rate invites a black market, but the fixed rate in Venezuela is so far off the black market rate that anyone who obtains U.S. dollars stands to profit handsomely. Dollars can only legally be obtained through the sale of oil, so the black marketeers’ gains are the government’s losses.

Two decades of relentless critcism from the right has created an unforgiving environment for mistakes. And mistakes have been made. Over the long term, the Venezuelan revolution has not been able to surmount the country’s dependency on the extractive industry generally or petroleum specifically, which had always been one of its goals. Nor has it been able to dislodge entrenched bureaucracies or elite corruption, persistent problems that would be faced by any progressive government or movement. More recently, sensible economic proposals like those of UNASUR have been ignored, or even dismissed as capitulations to neoliberalism, when they likely would have strengthened the Chavista project. Without real changes to its economic policy, Venezuela will continue to lurch from one crisis to another.

The opposition’s politics of rejection and the threat of U.S. military intervention

If the opposition has succeeded in sabotaging the economy over the past couple of years, it has also benefited from Chavez’s death. The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) may have lost the presidential election to Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, but it captured the National Assembly.

No sooner did MUD assume its new seat of power than it immediately declared it would not work with Maduro. Rather than help solve the country’s economic crisis, it has celebrated it, hoping it will finally topple the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Its aims are entirely negative: MUD has no positive economic or political program of which to speak. It wants only regime change, if necessary through another military coup or a U.S. intervention, which some officials have openly pined for.

If the opposition does ultimately capture the presidency, the best-case scenario is that Venezuela adopts the ruinous austerity policies of Macri’s Argentina or Temer’s Brazil. The worst-case scenario could look something like the U.S.-led occupation of Haiti, with the country’s oil industry turned over to the multinationals, like Iraq’s was more than a decade ago.

How the opposition might rule is a matter of less speculation. During its three-day coup in 2002, it annulled the constitution and immediately began persecuting Chavistas. Older Venezuelans remember the years before 1999, when austerity policies were enforced with torture, disappearances and even massacres like the Caracazo of 1989.

Violent threats have always been leveled against Chavismo, mainly through paramilitary incursions from Colombia. From April through July, the Venezuelan opposition was engaged in a small-scale urban insurgency against the government. Abby Martin’s July program on TeleSUR, “Empire Files,” offers a flavor of what this looks like: the assassination of Chavistas, the intimidation of Chavista voters and the destruction of government buildings and warehouses (including those for subsidized food).

The insurgency put the government in an impossible position: If it represses these protests, it risks providing a pretext for a U.S. intervention or another coup. If it does not, a relatively small and unpopular opposition could impose minority rule. Meanwhile, the opposition adds fuel to the flames by refusing the government’s attempts at dialogue (which the Pope has offered to mediate).

The Venezuelan government recently tried to bring its opponents back into the fold by calling for a new constitutional assembly, whose members were elected in July 2017 and which is currently in session. Its reward? Another boycott, and the rejection of all constitutional changes the elected assembly makes as illegitimate.

The coup playbook

These methods—foreign incursions, sabotage and violent demonstrations, combined with a refusal to negotiate—were part of the Haitian opposition’s playbook in the years preceding the 2004 overthrow of Haiti’s elected government. Despite the mass anti-war protests of that period, the Haitian coup was met with surprisingly little international resistance, which helps explain why Venezuela finds itself in such a precarious position. What in the early aughts looked like the birth of a new Latin American sovereignty has been rolled back: coups have overthrown governments in Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012) and arguably Brazil (2016).

As the U.S. steps up its regime change efforts in Caracas, many leftists in progressive and social media have expressed confusion or equivocation. Their difficulty in distinguishing between an embattled social democracy and a violent, right-wing rejectionist opposition is a testament to the weakness of anti-imperialism in Western politics at the moment. Progressives should have no such difficulty. Chavismo is an incomplete, flawed, ongoing democratic experiment. The alternatives on display are clear: terror, occupation and austerity.

On September 28, ISIS assault groups, supported by battle tanks and technicals armed with heavy guns, attacked government forces in few points at the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway, the key government supply line to Deir Ezzor city.

ISIS attacks took place at Ash-Shula, Bir-Ghabaghib and Sukhnah as well as at other points along the highway. Using the surprise effect, ISIS entered Ash-Shula and Bir-Ghabaghib cutting off the highway.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq claimed that in total 100 Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers were killed. Amaq added that ISIS members killed a Russian soldier and captured 2 others. These claims were rejected by the Russian Defense Ministry.

ISIS had been able to concentrate enough forces for this move thanks to the ongoing Arab-Kurdish tensions in Iraq that resulted in halting of Iraqi anti-ISIS operations near the  border with Syria. On September 25, the Iraqi Kurdistan Region Government held an independence referendum in the area controlled by its forces, including multiple areas that have never formally been a part of the Kurdish autonomy. This led to a large-scale political crisis in Iraq and a diplomatic crisis in the region that could led to a new round of the war in Iraq.

By September 29, the SAA and its allies re-grouped and started a counter-attack in an attempt to regain points that they had lost at the highway. A fighting continued in Ash-Shula and Bir-Ghabaghib. Even when government troops restore the control over the highway, they will not be able to recover the time that they had lost combating ISIS in the area.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) officially announced that it has seized al-Suwar town northwest of Deir Ezzor and started another operation in order to reach and to capture Markada town in southern Hasakah.

The SDF is actively exploiting the fact that ISIS is mainly focused on combating government forces in central Syria.

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The Listva, a remotely operated mine clearance vehicle capable of detecting and blowing up mines up to 100 meters away, is one such weapon.

An armored vehicle equipped with a UHF emitter moves in front of a mobile missile system. It detects radio-controlled landmines planted along and away from the road using ground-penetrating radar and then uses ultra-high-frequency rays to neutralize them.

This is a novel technique, which had never been used before.

During a drill on Wednesday, some 20 real cellphone-controlled explosive devices were planted along the route of a column of Yars mobile ballistic missile systems. A single Listva vehicle spotted all of them and blew them up long before the missiles reached the area.

In the next two years Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces will receive over 150 Listva robotic mine clearing vehicles.

Future Weapons

The unique radio-electronic weapons based on new physical principles, which were successfully tested in Russia last fall use mobile electromagnetic emitters to disable missile warheads and onboard aircraft electronics many miles away.

The electromagnetic bombs developed by Russia can be more effective than nuclear weapons because they are able to neutralize entire armies with just one short electromagnetic impulse.

Moreover, unlike already exiting electronic jammers, they can completely take out or seriously damage even off-line weapons like tanks, grounded planes and missiles in silos.

Earlier, media reports said that Russia’s defense industry had come up with the Alabuga, a new electro-magnetic missile, which uses a powerful UHF emitter to disable all enemy electronics within a radius of 3.5 kilometers (2.3 miles), turning it into “a heap of scrap metal.”

A directed beam of waves of a particular frequency has a sledgehammer effect on electronic equipment knocking out computers and navigation systems by physically destroying their motherboards.

Russia plans to install such weapons on its sixth-generation fighter drones because powerful UHF radiation can kill pilots.

Radio-electronic weapons are able to jam a tank’s loading mechanism, blow up artillery shells inside a turret and destroy enemy soldiers hiding inside a bunker or taking cover up to 100 meters underground.

Foreign Designs

The US, Israel and China are equally busy developing their own types of electromagnetic weapons. During Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991, the Americans used a relatively primitive electronic bomb by fitting the warheads of their Tomahawk cruise missiles with carbon fiber.

As a result, the missiles short-circuited the electrical lines of Iraqi power stations and power lines severely degrading the country’s vital infrastructure and air defenses.

The Pentagon used more advanced electromagnetic weapons during NATO’s 1999 aggression against Yugoslavia. In the first two week alone, the US Air Force dropped over 400 super-heavy JDAM gliding bombs packed with graphite and metallic fibers and particles knocking out the country’s entire air defense control system.

Since electromagnetic weapons are capable of pushing a nation back centuries, countries are now developing ever ever-new means of defending themselves again these fearsome weapons.

Featured image is from Sputnik.

Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 19. That threat violates the UN Charter, and indicates an intent to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, the war crime of collective punishment and international humanitarian law. Moreover, a first-strike use of nuclear weapons would violate international law.

By threatening to attack North Korea, Trump is endangering the lives of countless people. In the past, he has indicated his willingness to use nuclear weapons and Kim Jong-un has threatened to retaliate. The rapidly escalating rhetoric and provocative maneuvers on both sides has taken us to the brink of war.

Trump’s threat prompted North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho to state,

“Given the fact that this [threat] came from someone who holds the seat of the US presidency, this is clearly a declaration of war.”

Ri added,

“Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make counter-measures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.”

Such a move by North Korea would violate international law. But that does not justify US law-breaking. Two wrongs do not make a right. Moreover, the use of military force by either country would prove disastrous.

The UN Charter Requires Peaceful Dispute Resolution

After two world wars claimed millions of lives, the UN Charter was adopted in 1945 “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The Charter mandates the peaceful resolution of international disputes and forbids the use of force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization.

Article 2 requires that UN members “settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.” Peaceful means are spelled out in Article 33: Parties to a dispute likely to endanger international peace and security must “first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.”

In 1953, after one-third of North Korea’s population was decimated, the United States and North Korea signed an armistice agreement. But the US never allowed a peace treaty to be adopted. North Korea has repeatedly advocated the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. To this day, 30,000 US troops continue to occupy South Korea.

The US has also refused to pursue the “freeze-for-freeze” strategy suggested by China and Russia. Under this plan, North Korea would freeze its nuclear and missile testing, and the US and South Korea would end their annual, provocative joint military exercises. Vassily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, said this path would offer “a way out” of the current situation.

Instead, the US has engineered punitive sanctions against North Korea, which have only strengthened the latter’s resolve to develop usable nuclear weapons. Since 1953, North Koreans have lived in fear of annihilation by the United States.

In his speech to the General Assembly, on top of his threats toward North Korea, Trump also issued a veiled threat to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. That sends a dangerous message to North Korea that the US cannot be trusted to abide by its agreements.

The UN Charter Prohibits Threats and Preemptive Use of Force

Article 2 of the Charter states that all members “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Trump’s threat to totally destroy North Korea violates that mandate. In addition, the preemptive use of force violates the Charter.

The only exceptions to the Charter’s prohibition of the use of force are self-defense or approval by the Security Council.

Self-defense, under Article 51 of the Charter, is a narrow exception to the Charter’s prohibition of the use of force. Countries may engage in individual or collective self-defense only in the face of an armed attack. In order to act in lawful self-defense, there must exist “a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” under the well-established Caroline Case.

North Korea has not attacked the United States or another UN member country, nor is such an attack imminent.

Moreover, the Security Council has not authorized any country to use military force against North Korea. The council resolutions that establish sanctions against North Korea end by stating the Council “decides to remain seized of the matter.” That means that the Council, and only the Council, has the authority to approve military action.

Both Trump’s threat to use military force against North Korea and the mounting of a preemptive strike would violate the Charter.

The Crime of Genocide

By stating the intention to totally destroy North Korea, Trump has threatened genocide.

The crime of “genocide,” as defined in the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, is committed when, with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, any of the following acts are committed: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.

Trump’s threat to totally destroy North Korea, if carried out, would destroy, in whole, the national group of North Koreans. That would amount to genocide.

Crimes Against Humanity

Under the Rome Statute, “crimes against humanity” include: the commission of murder as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population; or persecution against a group or collectivity based on its political, racial, national, ethnic or religious character, as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population.

Trump’s threat to totally destroy North Korea, if realized, would constitute a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of North Korea, which would amount to a crime against humanity.

The War Crime of Collective Punishment

The crime of “collective punishment” is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is considered a war crime. Collective punishment means punishing a civilian for an offense he or she has not personally committed.

If Trump were to make good on his threat to totally destroy North Korea, he would be punishing the civilian population for offenses committed by the North Korean government. This would constitute the war crime of collective punishment.

Destroying North Korea Would Violate Distinction and Proportionality

The United States has a legal obligation to comply with the requirements of proportionality and distinction, two bedrock principles of international humanitarian law, as delineated in the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions.

“Proportionality” means an attack cannot be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage sought. “Distinction” requires that the attack be directed only at a legitimate military target.

The total destruction of North Korea would violate the principles of proportionality and distinction.

First-Strike Use of Nuclear Weapons Violates International Law

In its 1996 advisory opinion, “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons,” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.”

The ICJ went on to say,

“However … the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

That means that while the use of nuclear weapons might be lawful when used in self-defense if the survival of the nation were at stake, a first-strike use would not be.

Donald Trump’s apocalyptic threat against North Korea violates international law. It also imperils the lives of untold numbers of people. We must urge Congress to prevent Trump from launching a catastrophic war.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse; Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Visit her website: MarjorieCohn.com. Follow her on Twitter: @MarjorieCohn.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Featured image is from Top Right News.

On September 24, the Russian Ministry of Defense may have corroborated what many researchers and journalists familiar with the Syrian crisis have been exposing all along; that the United States is working directly with ISIS on the ground and that its SDF forces are doing so as well.

The Russian MOD has released photos allegedly depicting U.S. forces and ISIS working alongside one another against Russian and Syrian forces in Deir ez-Zour.

The photos, which were released on Twitter, depict the SDF and American Special Forces working together in ISIS-controlled territory. What is notable is that neither forces have faced resistance from ISIS nor have they come under attack by the terror organization. In addition, neither the SDF nor the U.S. forces appeared to have maintained defensive positions, perimeters, or patrols, indicating that they are quite confident that the jihadists in the surrounding areas will not attack them. The latter aspect seems to lend credence to the idea that both forces are working with ISIS, not simply having entered into a truce with them since a truce would still necessitate the construction of a defensive perimeter. They are, in effect, moving amongst one another as allies tend to do.

Along with the photos, the Russian Ministry of Defense released a statement which read,

#US Special Operations Forces (#SOF) units enable US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (#SDF) units to smoothly advance through the ISIS formations.

Facing no resistance of the ISIS militants, the #SDF units are advancing along the left shore of the #Euphrates towards #Deir_ez_Zor.

The aerial photos made on September 8-12 over the ISIS locations recorded a large number of American #Hummer vehicles, which are in service with the #America’s #SOF.

The shots clearly show the US SOF units located at strongholds that had been equipped by the ISIS terrorists. Though there is no evidence of assault, struggle or any US-led coalition airstrikes to drive out the militants.

Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them. This suggests that the#US_troops feel safe in terrorist controlled regions”.

Previously, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov stated that

“SDF militants work to the same objectives as Daesh terrorists. Russian drones and intelligence have not recorded any confrontations between Daesh and the ‘third force’, SDF”.

With this in mind, although some headway has been made in Syria with the Trump administration seeming to back off on the goal of total destruction of both the country and the government in favor of breaking Syria up into several petty states, it is clear that the agenda is still moving forward. Despite campaign rhetoric, the Trump administration is merely committing to the Obama administration’s Plan B. Both, however, involved collusion with ISIS since it was the United States, NATO, and the GCC, that created, funded, organized, and directed the terrorist organization to begin with. With Russia apparently realizing that the Trump administration is simply continuing the insanity initiated under Obama, it seems Russia is more willing to release information documenting the American support for terrorism in Syria.

In the end, the Russian photos serve to confirm what many researchers and independent journalists have known and written about for some time – that the United States is not launching a war against ISIS, it is directing it and working alongside ISIS in an attempt to weaken and destroy the secular Syrian government.

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. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: A female trainee with the Syrian Democratic Forces at her graduation ceremony in northern Syria on August 9, 2017. (Source: Sgt. Mitchell Ryan for US Army)

The Pentagon has relied on an army of contractors and sub-contractors – from blue-chip military giants to firms linked to organized crime – to supply up to US$ 2.2 billion worth of Soviet-style arms and ammunition to Syrian rebels fighting a sprawling war against the Islamic State (ISIS).

Arms factories across the Balkans and Eastern Europe – already working at capacity to supply the Syrian war – are unable to meet the demand. In response, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has turned to new suppliers like Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Ukraine for additional munitions while relaxing standards on the material it’s willing to accept, according to an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Reporters have pieced together the Pentagon’s complex supply line to Syria using procurement records, ship-tracking data, official reports, leaked emails, and interviews with insiders. This program is separate from a now-defunct CIA effort to arm rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

The Pentagon is buying the arms through two channels: the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which oversees special operations across all services of the US military, and the Picatinny Arsenal, a little-known US Army weapons facility in New Jersey.

The munitions are being transported by both sea and air from Europe to Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait. They are then distributed to US allies in northern and southern Syria by plane and truck. (See: Black Sea Route)

Reporters discovered that the US is using vaguely worded legal documents which obscure Syria as the weapons’ final destination – a practice experts say threatens global efforts to combat arms trafficking and puts the Eastern European governments who sell the weapons and ammunition at risk of breaching international law. Others raise the issue of who, exactly, is using the arms and what will happen to them once ISIS has been defeated.

The Pentagon started the major buy-up in September 2015 under President Obama. By May this year, it had already spent more than $700 million on AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, mortars, and other weapons and ammunition.

More than $900 million has been contracted to be spent by 2022, and nearly $600 million more has been budgeted or requested by the Trump administration. This brings the grand total of the Pentagon’s intended spending on its Syrian allies to $2.2 billion.

This US-financed supply line is similar to a Saudi-backed €1.2 billion arms pipeline to Syria uncovered last year by BIRN and OCCRP.

Asked about the unprecedented purchase of Soviet-style arms for Syrian rebels, the Pentagon said that it had carefully vetted the recipients, adding that the equipment was provided “incrementally” and is the “minimum needed for the immediate mission.”

Syria Train and Equip: A Major Shift in Strategy

As ISIS swept across Syria in 2014, the Pentagon hastily launched a $500 million Syria Train and Equip program to build up a new force of rebels, armed with modern US weapons, in an attempt to allegedly counter the threat. SOCOM – the elite unit allegedly responsible for killing Osama Bin Laden – was tasked with buying the arms.

But nine months later, the program had collapsed, with only a few dozen recruits having made it onto the battlefield.

Amid a flurry of negative headlines, the Pentagon needed a new plan. Starting in September 2015, the US would focus not on building a new anti-ISIS army, but on arming rebels already on the ground.

While the Pentagon did not reveal the details of its new plan, a previously unreported spending request from February 2016 made clear that it would stop training new units and supplying them with modern weapons. Instead, it would select “vetted” opposition forces already on the ground and send them Soviet-style weapons and ammunition they were already using and familiar with.

The first delivery, which included 50 tons of ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades, arrived in October 2015, just a month after the shift in policy. The munitions were airdropped to the Kurdish-dominated coalition within the Syrian Democratic Forces currently spearheading the fight to reclaim Raqqa.

Many more shipments followed.

By May 2017 – the latest date for which data is available – SOCOM would purchase $238.5 million in weapons and ammunition from Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine, according to an analysis of thousands of procurement records by BIRN and OCCRP. Prior to the start of the program, its spending on Eastern Bloc weaponry had been negligible.

SOCOM will buy an additional $172 million in arms this fiscal year. The shopping list includes tens of thousands of AK-47s and RPGs and hundreds of millions of pieces of ammunition, according to requests made by the Pentagon. An additional $412 million has been requested by the Trump administration or budgeted for 2018.

SOCOM has not previously acknowledged its role in the Syria Train and Equip program. In a written statement to BIRN and OCCRP, the Pentagon confirmed that the secretive unit was charged with procuring weapons and ammunition for Syrian rebels. SOCOM is also known to covertly supply US partners in other conflicts.

Picatinny: A New Supply Line Revealed

SOCOM is not the only Pentagon unit which has been procuring arms and ammunition for the Syria Train and Equip program.

The rest of the procurement is being handled by the Picatinny Arsenal, a US Army facility in New Jersey. Picatinny already has experience buying large quantities of Soviet-style arms (referred to in procurement documents as “non-standard weapons and ammunition”) for partner forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These purchases are always clearly labelled with the end destination.

But one mysterious set of purchases – totaling $479.6 million – contains no end destination at all. An analysis of these procurement documents by BIRN and OCCRP reveals it is likely that much, if not all, of the arms in question are headed for Syria.

An important clue lay in seven of the contracts, signed in September 2016 and worth $71.6 million, which did initially cite Syria either by name or by the Pentagon’s internal code – V7 – for the Syria Train and Equip program. These references were deleted from the public record after BIRN and OCCRP asked the Pentagon about these deliveries this March.

Reporters made copies of the documents before they were deleted. The Pentagon has declined to explain the alterations.

Picatinny is circumspect about its role supplying Syrian rebels given the sensitive nature of the conflict. In addition to pitting an array of militias against Syrian government forces, the fighting is described by experts as a complex proxy war involving Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Russia.

There is other evidence of Picatinny’s growing role in the Syria Train and Equip program.

A promotional story published on its website in December 2016 celebrated an internal Pentagon award for, among other successes, buying “significant quantities” of non-standard ammunition for Syria, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Picatinny presentation from March 2017 reveals that it will take over from SOCOM the role of procuring ammunition for the Syrian program. SOCOM will continue to buy weapons.

More than half of the $2.2 billion identified by BIRN and OCCRP has not yet been spent.

In March 2016, Picatinny tasked two military giants – Chemring, a British firm, and US-based Alliant Techsystems Operations (now part of Orbital ATK) – with procuring $750 million worth of ammunition on its behalf over the following five years, of which $372 million has yet to be spent. Another $500 million contract was awarded to Chemring, Alliant, and two other companies in August. On Picatinny’s website, the latter contract is specifically described as being intended to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

With at least 50,000 US-supported rebels engaged in active combat, Syria is likely to absorb much of the contracted ammunition in the coming years, but some may be spent on other conflict zones where Soviet-style weapons are in use.

Before and after images from a Pentagon procurement database show how the end destinations, “Syria and Iraq,” were removed from the procurement records. (Click to enlarge.) Credit: BIRN

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

The newly revealed $2.2 billion pipeline financed by the US, as well as the earlier €1.2 billion pipeline financed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have meant boom times for arms producers in Central and Eastern Europe.

VMZ Sopot, a Bulgarian state-owned ammunitions factory and one of Picatinny’s main suppliers, announced in early 2016 that it planned to add 1,000 employees to its workforce that year. During the three months prior, it had already hired 500 new staff.

Factories in Serbia, such as Krusik, a missile manufacturer, have also drastically increased production. Aleksandar Vucic, then Serbia’s Prime Minister, boasted last year that Serbia could increase its output five times and still not meet demand.

As the thirst for Soviet-style weapons grows, the competition is becoming fiercer.

The US had traditionally turned to Romania and Bulgaria for non-standard armaments, but the surge in demand has forced contractors to look to the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and now Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Croatia, according to US procurement records.

Scarce supplies have also forced the Pentagon to lower its standards for weapons and ammunition. Previously it had required suppliers to provide equipment less than five years old, but in February it dropped this requirement for some types of weapons and ammunition, according to official documents obtained by BIRN and OCCRP.

Munitions stored in poor conditions degrade, sometimes becoming unusable or even dangerous. A Pentagon contractor due to train Syrian rebels died in June 2015 when the decades-old RPG he was handling exploded at a firing range in Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has continued to use the contractor that supplied the faulty weapons.

There are other problems, too. Reporters have found that directors of three contractors it uses, and the president of a critical sub-contractor, have faced serious questions about their integrity, including one who bragged about paying “commissions” to foreign agents to secure deals. Another subcontractor employed a firm with links to organized crime.

A ship carrying ammunition bound for Turkey and Jordan was observed by reporters in Burgas, Bulgaria in September 2016. Credit: Ivan Kolev, BIRN

Undermining the Arms Control System

In supplying the Syrian rebels, the Pentagon has used highly unusual and misleading legal documentation that exploits a loophole in the system designed to prevent diversions of arms to terrorists, embargoed groups, or war criminals.

To secure an arms export license, buyers must provide a valid end-user certificate guaranteeing the weapons’ final destination.

But a certificate issued by SOCOM under the Syria program and seen by reporters does not mention Syria as the final destination. Instead, it lists SOCOM as the final user.

The document states that

“the material will be used for defense purposes in direct use by US government, transferred by means of grants as military education or training program or security assistance.”

The statement allows SOCOM to divert the equipment to any army or militia to whom it is providing security assistance, including Syrian rebels, according to arms control experts who have reviewed the evidence.

In a detailed written response, the Pentagon did not dispute its designation of the US Army as the end user, but explained that the certificates citing “security assistance” cover transfers to foreign fighters.

“We expect any partnered force or security assistance recipient to use the materiel as intended, i.e. for the counter-ISIS fight, and we monitor their usage to ensure they comply,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

But arms experts criticized this practice, describing it as a danger to the global arms control system.

Roy Isbister, an expert on arms transfers at Saferworld, a non-governmental organization that works to prevent violent conflict, said,

“The [end-user] system relies on clarity and diligence. If the US is manipulating the process and providing cover for others to claim ignorance of the end users of the weapons in question, the whole control system is at risk.”

Patrick Wilcken, a researcher on arms control and human rights at Amnesty International, described SOCOM’s end-user certificate as “very misleading.”

“An end user certificate that did not contain [the final destination] would be self-defeating and highly unusual,” he said. “The US is undermining the object and purpose of the ATT (United Nations Arms Trade Treaty).”

Wilcken explained that, while Washington has not yet ratified the agreement, and is therefore not legally bound by it, as a signatory it is expected not to undermine it.

A side-by-side comparison of a “typical” end-user certificate, showing a clear end destination, and a misleading SOCOM certificate that allows the US to transfer weapons to any of its partners. (Click to enlarge.) (Credit: BIRN)

As a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Washington has signed a series of measures to prevent weapons trafficking – including a binding decision that end-user certificates include the final destination country.

European exporter states have ratified the ATT and are also bound both by the OSCE’s decisions and the EU’s even stricter rules, known as the Common Position on Arms Exports. Most prospective members have already adopted these rules.

The Romanian, Czech, Bosnian, and Serbian governments confirmed that they had granted export licenses with the US – not Syria – listed as the final destination.

Georgia’s Ministry of Defense said that an export deal was under negotiation but it had not yet received an end-user certificate from the Pentagon and no contract had been signed.

Poland and Croatia said it had not approved any exports to Syrian rebels.

Credit: Edin Pasovic

Officials from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan did not respond to requests for comment.

Under the ATT and the EU Common Position, exporters must take action to prevent arms and ammunition from being diverted and used to commit war crimes or “undermine peace and security.”

Without knowing the final destination, such an assessment is impossible.

Wilcken said that Amnesty International was especially concerned that the US is supplying the Syrian Democratic Forces, given evidence that one of its largest component forces, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), had “razed villages,” an act Amnesty described as a war crime.

Wilcken said that such a vast inflow of weaponry raised fears about the future of the Middle East.

“Given the very complex, fluid situation in Syria … and the existence of many armed groups accused of serious abuses,” he said, “it is difficult to see how the US could ensure arms sent to the region would not be misused.”

Additional reporting from Anna Babinets, Nino Bakradze, Aubrey Belford, David Bloss, Roberto Capocelli, Maria Cheresheva, Pavla Holcova, Roxana Jipa, Frederik Obermaier and Atanas Tchobanov.

First published in March 2017

Foreign capital is dictating the prevailing development agenda in India. There is a deliberate strategy to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose a World Bank sanctioned model of food production. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial (GM) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns.

The aim here is not to repeat what has been previously written on this. Suffice to say that the long-term plan is for an overwhelmingly urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Walmart-type supermarkets that, going on current evidence (see 4th paragraph from the end here), will offer a largely monoculture diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security.

Thanks to its political influence, Monsanto already illegally dominates the cotton industry in India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agricultural policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company‘ and regulatory bodies are now compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest.

Monsanto is hard at work with its propaganda campaign to convince us all that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is easily torn away to expose the self-interest that lies beneath.

With an obligation to maximise profits for shareholders, Monsanto seems less concerned with the impacts of its products on public health (whether in Argentina or the US) or the conditions of Indian farmers due to its failed GM cotton and more concerned with roll-outs of its highly profitable disease-associated weed-killer (Roundup) and its GM seeds.

To ensure it remains ‘business as usual’, part of the relentless message is that there is no alternative to the chemical-intensive/GMO treadmill model of farming (which by now, any informed person should know is nothing but a lie). Monsanto has done every foul thing possible (including bribery and fakery) to ensure its business model dominates and that critics are smeared or crushed. As a result, we have an increasingly dominant model of unsustainable industrialised food and agriculture dominated by green revolution ideology and technologies (and wedded to and fuelled and driven by powerful commercial and geopolitical interests), which involves massive social, environmental and health costs.

Rejecting Monsanto’s neocolonialism

In 2015, trade and agricultural policy analyst Devinder Sharma asked the following questions during a debate on Indian TV about rural population displacement and farming:

“Why do you want to move the population just because Western economists told us we should follow them? Why? Why can’t India have its own thinking? Why do we have to go with Harvard or Oxford economists who tell us this?”

His series of questions strike at the heart of the prevailing development paradigm in India. It is a model of development being dictated by the World Bank and powerful transnational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and Cargill.

Monsanto’s mindset is based on the conquering and control of nature.

Let us turn briefly to Raj Patel:

“Modern farming turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls; herbicides nuke anything green and unwanted—all to create an assembly line that spits out a single crop… .”

Contrast this with the ethos and principles of agroecological approaches to farming, which works with nature, as set out here.

Monsanto’s business model thrives within a system of capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India) whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable its model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill it seeks to impose.

Devinder Sharma is thus right to ask why can’t India have its own thinking.

And India does have its own thinking. Environmental scientist Viva Kermani:

“It can quite easily be said that Hinduism is the world’s largest nature-based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. It views the earth as our Mother, and hence, advocates that it should not be exploited. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources.”

Kermani notes that centuries before the appearance of the modern-day environmental movement and Greenpeace, the shruti (Vedas, Upanishads) and smruti (Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, other scriptures) instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred; that like humans, our fellow creatures, including plants have consciousness; and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered. She adds that this understanding of and reverence towards the environment is common to all Indic religious and spiritual systems: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

According to Kermani, the Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes. So much importance was given to trees, that there was also Vrikshayurveda – an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees. It contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

On the other hand, Kermani notes that the Western religions, especially Christianity, viewed this nature worship as paganism, failing to recognise the scientific and spiritual basis of the relationship between man and nature and how this is the only way to sustain ecological balance. Christians were made to turn all their love and adoration for nature towards their one and only god, who was a jealous god. The elements of nature then became devoid of all divinity and were left to be conquered by man.

Whereas the Christian belief is that nature is destructive and therefore has to be conquered, according to Kermani, the Dharmic view propagates conservation of the nature and advices man to live in harmony with nature without indulging in exploitation. Hindus strongly believe that the world is one family and thus the divine is also seen in animals and are protected. The deification of animals, therefore, has led to the protection of many species of animal. The recognition that every animal played a role in creating an ecological balance, allowed people to live in harmony with animals.

Kermani concludes by saying:

“Today’s environmental crisis demands a response. The world is grappling to find solutions to multiple crises of the environment. Technology is considered the panacea. For Hindus, the environment is not protected because of the selfish urgency to save biodiversity and hence save human future, but because it is the Dharmic way of life and hence a righteous duty that all humans are obliged to perform.”

Playing god

Similar processes that destroyed the essential link between humans and nature played out in the West long ago. Many of the ancient pagan rituals and celebrations (that early Christianity incorporated and co-opted) helped humans come to terms with some of the most basic issues of existence (death, fertility, good, evil, love, hate, etc.) and served to sanctify their practical relationship with the natural environment and its role in sustaining human life. The planting and harvesting of crops and various other seasonal activities associated with food production thus became central to various beliefs and customs.

For example, Freyfaxi marks the beginning of the harvest in Norse paganism, while Lammas or Lughnasadh is the celebration of the first harvest/grain harvest in Paganism and Wicca and by the ancient Celts.

Humans celebrated nature and the life it gave birth to. Ancient beliefs and rituals were imbued with hope and renewal, and people had a necessary and immediate relationship the sun, seeds, animals wind, soil and rain and the changing seasons that nourished and brought life.

Discussing Britain, Robert W Nicholls explains:

“The cults of Woden and Thor were superimposed on far older and better-rooted beliefs related to the sun and the earth, the crops and the animals, and the rotation of the seasons between the light and warmth of summer and the cold and dark of winter. These ancient beliefs were so well established that whatever the name of the great god who for the moment was favored by the state rulers, whether Mithras or Woden – or Christ – the old practices, so essential for the fertility of the crops and for good luck in life, were maintained in farming communities until Christian decrees and the feudal system led to their final attrition.”

Nicholls reaffirms the importance of agriculture in these beliefs by adding:

“Little is known about the religious beliefs that sustained the rural population of pre-Christian Britain… The range of pagan deities – earth, water, fire, the sun, stone, and wood – supported as they were by agrarian production, suggests a religion that had a sound practical base. Two illusive figures appear as a backdrop to rural beliefs and demonstrate a male-female, winter-summer bipolarity: an ancient Earth Mother, who preceded the rise of later goddesses and grain deities, and a horned god of the hunt, who was the pivotal focus of a totem cult of stag masqueraders.”

In the 1950s, Union Carbide produced a series of images that depicted the company as a ‘hand of god’ coming out of the sky to ‘solve’ some of the issues facing humanity. One of the most famous images is of the hand pouring agrochemicals on Indian soils. As Christianity co-opted traditional pagan beliefs to achieve hegemony, corporations steeped in the Western mindset that Kermani speaks of have also sought to depict themselves in a god-like, all-knowing fashion.

But in more modern times, instead of using spiritual/religious ideology to secure compliance, they have relied on neoliberal economic faith and dogma and have co-opted science and scientists whose appeals to authority (not logic) have turned them into the high priests of modern society.

The same farmers who Viva Kermani says have “legitimate claims to being scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts. Instead, they were reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of the poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry.”

The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge was stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered.

And what is the result of the war on nature, farmers, traditional agriculture and the environment?

We see the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies (linked to palm oil production) to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources.

And we see Monsanto making huge annual profits, and its CEO Hugh Grant and VP Robb Fraley being amply rewarded. Grant brought in just under $12m in 2015. Fraley raked in just under $3.4m. In January 2015, Monsanto reported a profit of $243m (down from $368m the previous year). Greed and ego trump all else. Farmer suicides are little more than collateral damage. And environmental degradation is a price worth paying.

In India today, we have a BJP-led government that espouses politically expedient Hindu nationalist sentiments. And yet it is selling out the nation to foreign interests whose beliefs and actions are opposed to much of what traditional Hinduism stands for in terms of its ecological heritage. Where is the logic?

The logic is fairly easy to decipher: what is happening has little to do with Hinduism or nationalism, however defined, and everything to do with a Wall Street backed Indian political elite suffering a severe bout of Stockholm syndrome, in awe of its captors.

First published in March 2017

Foreign capital is dictating the prevailing development agenda in India. There is a deliberate strategy to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose a World Bank sanctioned model of food production. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial (GM) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns.

The aim here is not to repeat what has been previously written on this. Suffice to say that the long-term plan is for an overwhelmingly urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Walmart-type supermarkets that, going on current evidence (see 4th paragraph from the end here), will offer a largely monoculture diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security.

Thanks to its political influence, Monsanto already illegally dominates the cotton industry in India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agricultural policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company‘ and regulatory bodies are now compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest.

Monsanto is hard at work with its propaganda campaign to convince us all that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is easily torn away to expose the self-interest that lies beneath.

With an obligation to maximise profits for shareholders, Monsanto seems less concerned with the impacts of its products on public health (whether in Argentina or the US) or the conditions of Indian farmers due to its failed GM cotton and more concerned with roll-outs of its highly profitable disease-associated weed-killer (Roundup) and its GM seeds.

To ensure it remains ‘business as usual’, part of the relentless message is that there is no alternative to the chemical-intensive/GMO treadmill model of farming (which by now, any informed person should know is nothing but a lie). Monsanto has done every foul thing possible (including bribery and fakery) to ensure its business model dominates and that critics are smeared or crushed. As a result, we have an increasingly dominant model of unsustainable industrialised food and agriculture dominated by green revolution ideology and technologies (and wedded to and fuelled and driven by powerful commercial and geopolitical interests), which involves massive social, environmental and health costs.

Rejecting Monsanto’s neocolonialism

In 2015, trade and agricultural policy analyst Devinder Sharma asked the following questions during a debate on Indian TV about rural population displacement and farming:

“Why do you want to move the population just because Western economists told us we should follow them? Why? Why can’t India have its own thinking? Why do we have to go with Harvard or Oxford economists who tell us this?”

His series of questions strike at the heart of the prevailing development paradigm in India. It is a model of development being dictated by the World Bank and powerful transnational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and Cargill.

Monsanto’s mindset is based on the conquering and control of nature.

Let us turn briefly to Raj Patel:

“Modern farming turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls; herbicides nuke anything green and unwanted—all to create an assembly line that spits out a single crop… .”

Contrast this with the ethos and principles of agroecological approaches to farming, which works with nature, as set out here.

Monsanto’s business model thrives within a system of capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India) whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable its model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill it seeks to impose.

Devinder Sharma is thus right to ask why can’t India have its own thinking.

And India does have its own thinking. Environmental scientist Viva Kermani:

“It can quite easily be said that Hinduism is the world’s largest nature-based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. It views the earth as our Mother, and hence, advocates that it should not be exploited. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources.”

Kermani notes that centuries before the appearance of the modern-day environmental movement and Greenpeace, the shruti (Vedas, Upanishads) and smruti (Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, other scriptures) instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred; that like humans, our fellow creatures, including plants have consciousness; and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered. She adds that this understanding of and reverence towards the environment is common to all Indic religious and spiritual systems: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

According to Kermani, the Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes. So much importance was given to trees, that there was also Vrikshayurveda – an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees. It contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

On the other hand, Kermani notes that the Western religions, especially Christianity, viewed this nature worship as paganism, failing to recognise the scientific and spiritual basis of the relationship between man and nature and how this is the only way to sustain ecological balance. Christians were made to turn all their love and adoration for nature towards their one and only god, who was a jealous god. The elements of nature then became devoid of all divinity and were left to be conquered by man.

Whereas the Christian belief is that nature is destructive and therefore has to be conquered, according to Kermani, the Dharmic view propagates conservation of the nature and advices man to live in harmony with nature without indulging in exploitation. Hindus strongly believe that the world is one family and thus the divine is also seen in animals and are protected. The deification of animals, therefore, has led to the protection of many species of animal. The recognition that every animal played a role in creating an ecological balance, allowed people to live in harmony with animals.

Kermani concludes by saying:

“Today’s environmental crisis demands a response. The world is grappling to find solutions to multiple crises of the environment. Technology is considered the panacea. For Hindus, the environment is not protected because of the selfish urgency to save biodiversity and hence save human future, but because it is the Dharmic way of life and hence a righteous duty that all humans are obliged to perform.”

Playing god

Similar processes that destroyed the essential link between humans and nature played out in the West long ago. Many of the ancient pagan rituals and celebrations (that early Christianity incorporated and co-opted) helped humans come to terms with some of the most basic issues of existence (death, fertility, good, evil, love, hate, etc.) and served to sanctify their practical relationship with the natural environment and its role in sustaining human life. The planting and harvesting of crops and various other seasonal activities associated with food production thus became central to various beliefs and customs.

For example, Freyfaxi marks the beginning of the harvest in Norse paganism, while Lammas or Lughnasadh is the celebration of the first harvest/grain harvest in Paganism and Wicca and by the ancient Celts.

Humans celebrated nature and the life it gave birth to. Ancient beliefs and rituals were imbued with hope and renewal, and people had a necessary and immediate relationship the sun, seeds, animals wind, soil and rain and the changing seasons that nourished and brought life.

Discussing Britain, Robert W Nicholls explains:

“The cults of Woden and Thor were superimposed on far older and better-rooted beliefs related to the sun and the earth, the crops and the animals, and the rotation of the seasons between the light and warmth of summer and the cold and dark of winter. These ancient beliefs were so well established that whatever the name of the great god who for the moment was favored by the state rulers, whether Mithras or Woden – or Christ – the old practices, so essential for the fertility of the crops and for good luck in life, were maintained in farming communities until Christian decrees and the feudal system led to their final attrition.”

Nicholls reaffirms the importance of agriculture in these beliefs by adding:

“Little is known about the religious beliefs that sustained the rural population of pre-Christian Britain… The range of pagan deities – earth, water, fire, the sun, stone, and wood – supported as they were by agrarian production, suggests a religion that had a sound practical base. Two illusive figures appear as a backdrop to rural beliefs and demonstrate a male-female, winter-summer bipolarity: an ancient Earth Mother, who preceded the rise of later goddesses and grain deities, and a horned god of the hunt, who was the pivotal focus of a totem cult of stag masqueraders.”

In the 1950s, Union Carbide produced a series of images that depicted the company as a ‘hand of god’ coming out of the sky to ‘solve’ some of the issues facing humanity. One of the most famous images is of the hand pouring agrochemicals on Indian soils. As Christianity co-opted traditional pagan beliefs to achieve hegemony, corporations steeped in the Western mindset that Kermani speaks of have also sought to depict themselves in a god-like, all-knowing fashion.

But in more modern times, instead of using spiritual/religious ideology to secure compliance, they have relied on neoliberal economic faith and dogma and have co-opted science and scientists whose appeals to authority (not logic) have turned them into the high priests of modern society.

The same farmers who Viva Kermani says have “legitimate claims to being scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts. Instead, they were reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of the poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry.”

The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge was stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered.

And what is the result of the war on nature, farmers, traditional agriculture and the environment?

We see the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies (linked to palm oil production) to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources.

And we see Monsanto making huge annual profits, and its CEO Hugh Grant and VP Robb Fraley being amply rewarded. Grant brought in just under $12m in 2015. Fraley raked in just under $3.4m. In January 2015, Monsanto reported a profit of $243m (down from $368m the previous year). Greed and ego trump all else. Farmer suicides are little more than collateral damage. And environmental degradation is a price worth paying.

In India today, we have a BJP-led government that espouses politically expedient Hindu nationalist sentiments. And yet it is selling out the nation to foreign interests whose beliefs and actions are opposed to much of what traditional Hinduism stands for in terms of its ecological heritage. Where is the logic?

The logic is fairly easy to decipher: what is happening has little to do with Hinduism or nationalism, however defined, and everything to do with a Wall Street backed Indian political elite suffering a severe bout of Stockholm syndrome, in awe of its captors.

First published in June 2015

From cyberwar to proxy war to covert war, the global long war against humanity threatens to become a full-fledged theatre war and even nuclear war.

Today Michel Chossudovsky joins us to discuss the struggle against this total warfare and the propagandists who enable it.

“The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign state.”

The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. U.S. and NATO forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe including Ukraine. U.S. military intervention under a humanitarian mandate is proceeding in sub-Saharan Africa. The U.S. and its allies are threatening China under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”.

In turn, military maneuvers are being conducted at Russia’s doorstep which could potentially lead to escalation.

The U.S. airstrikes initiated in September 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.

TRANSCRIPT (Excerpt)

CHOSSUDOVSKY: Now all those things, all those dimensions – the economic, the social, the military dimensions – coalesce and are sustained by an extensive apparatus of media propaganda. I’m referring to the mainstream media, the corporate media, which sustains the lies and ultimately controls what people think.

And this I would say is an inquisitorial environment. It’s much more devastating than the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was also based on a Big Lie, and it lasted for three or four hundred years. But we are dealing with a media apparatus which turns realities upside down, presents the western quest, and military adventure, as a peace-making undertaking, which lies with regard to the casualties of war, which presents the war criminals as protagonists of human rights, and so on, so forth.

And that, in itself, is the pinnacle of this system. Without the mainstream media, and war propaganda, this New World Order agenda doesn’t have a leg to stand on. In other words, without these media lies, the military agenda, the economic agenda would collapse like a deck of cards. And that is why it is absolutely fundamental that within the realm of independent media, and alternative media, we wage a war against the mainstream media. In other words, it’s a war of ideas. It is an obligation on our part to support the truth, and to use truth, as a means, as a weapon, to undermine the legitimacy of this global economic and military agenda which is destroying humanity.

It is global war, it is total war, and it is destruction. And it has a logic, and it’s part of global capitalism. But at this stage it is not a struggle against socialism, but it is a struggle against national capitalism. In other words, it is the global capitalist elites, mainly Anglo-American, dominated by Wall Street and the city of London, the large financial centers, against competing capitalist powers, which, we might name them: Russia, China – China’s not a communist country, China is a capitalist country, in fact a very advanced capitalist country, and so is Iran.

So that essentially, what this war involves is world domination, it’s the establishment of a global economic and political system whereby countries worldwide would be subordinated to these global corporations, and where national sovereignty under national capitalism would be undermined. And the trade and investment agreements which are being negotiated behind closed doors are part of this agenda. They’re part of this agenda, and in effect they are the end game of this agenda, whereby global corporations undermine and destroy national and regional corporations – in other words, bankruptcy of the entire landscape – and impose a global economic agenda throughout the world.

CORBETT: Well the battle between oligarchs for global control I think is nothing new to human history but the technologies that are available to actually accomplish that goal really does make this a much more important and decisive battle than it has ever been before. So that is exactly, and precisely, why it is so important that in the alternative media we do battle against these forces, and that’s of course what you’re doing at globalresearch.ca. We will direct people once again to your recent book on the Globalization of War, which of course will be linked up in the show notes for this interview as well.

Michel Chossudovsky, I think we’ll have to continue this conversation by looking at various aspects of this global warfare, but we’ll leave it there for today. Thank you very much for joining us on the program.

CHOSSUDOVSKY: Delighted to be on the program

---

The Globalization of War is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the contemporary global situation produced in recent years. 

In his latest masterpiece, Professor Michel Chossudovsky shows how the various conflicts we are witnessing today in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Palestine are in fact inter-linked and inter-locked through a single-minded agenda in pursuit of global hegemony helmed by the United States and buttressed by its allies in the West and in other regions of the world.   Dr Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

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

Michel Chossudovsky

The Book can be ordered directly from Global Research Publishers. 

click image to order