Global Research

A new report by a retired IT executive at IBM, debunks the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign by hacking Democratic computers and circulating damaging information about Hillary Clinton.  The report, which is titled “The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge“,  provides a rigorous examination of the wobbly allegations upon which the hacking theory is based, as well as a point by point rejection of the primary claims which, in the final analysis, fail to pass the smell test. While the report is worth reading in full, our intention is to zero-in on the parts of the text that disprove the claims that Russia meddled in US elections or hacked the servers at the DNC.

Let’s start with the fact that there are at least two credible witnesses who claim to know who took the DNC emails and transferred them to WikiLeaks. We’re talking about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and WikiLeaks ally, Craig Murray. No one is in a better position to know who actually took the emails than Assange, and yet, Assange has repeatedly said that Russia was not the source. Check out this clip from the report:

Assange …. has been adamant all along that the Russian government was not a source; it was a non-state player. …

ASSANGE: Our source is not a state party

HANNITY (Conservative talk show host): Can you say to the American people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails — can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia…

ASSANGE: Yes.

HANNITY: … or anybody associated with Russia?

ASSANGE: We — we can say and we have said repeatedly… over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party…

(“The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge”, Skip Folden)

Can you think of a more credible witness than Julian Assange? The man has devoted his entire adult life to exposing the truth about government despite the risks his actions pose to his own personal safety. In fact, he is currently holed up at the Ecuador embassy in London for defending the public’s right to know what their government is up to. Does anyone seriously think that a man like that would deliberately lie just to protect Russia’s reputation?

No, of course not, and the new report backs him up on this matter. It states:

“No where in the Intelligence Community’s Assessment (ICA) was there any evidence of any connection between Russia and WikiLeaks.”

The reason Assange keeps saying that Russia wasn’t involved is because Russia wasn’t involved. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Craig Murray

As for the other eyewitness, Craig Murray, he has also flatly denied that Russia provided WikiLeaks with the DNC emails. Check out this except from an article at The Daily Mail:

(Murray) “flew to Washington, D.C. for emails….He claims he had a clandestine hand-off … near American University with one of the email sources. Murray said the leakers’ motivation was ‘disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders’…

Murray says: ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks’. ‘Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,’ Murray insists.” ….

Murray said he was speaking out due to claims from intelligence officials that Wikileaks was given the documents by Russian hackers as part of an effort to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election.

‘I don’t understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn’t true,’ he said. ‘Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that.”

(EXCLUSIVE: Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails“, Daily Mail)

Is Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and human rights activist, a credible witness?

There’s one way to find out, isn’t there? The FBI should interview Murray so they can establish whether he’s telling the truth or not. And, naturally, one would assume that the FBI has already done that since the Russia hacking story has been splashed across the headlines for more than a year now.

But that’s not the case at all. The FBI has never questioned Assange or Murray, in fact, the FBI has never even tried to get in touch with either of them. Never. Not even a lousy phone call. It’s like they don’t exist.

Why? Why hasn’t the FBI contacted or questioned the only two witnesses in the case?

Could it be because Assange and Murray’s knowledge of the facts doesn’t coincide with the skewed political narrative the Intel agencies and their co-collaborators at the DNC what to propagate?  Isn’t that what’s really going on?  Isn’t Russia-gate really just a stick for beating Russia and Trump?  How else would one explain this stubborn unwillingness of the FBI to investigate what one senator called “The crime of the century”?

Here’s something else from the report that’s worth mulling over:

“It is no secret that NSA has the technology to trace a web event, e.g., a cyber attack, back to its source.   There has been no public claim, nor is it implied in either Grizzly Steppe or the ICA that the NSA has trace routing to Russia on any of these purported Russian hacks.” (“The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge”, Skip Folden)

This is a crucial point, so let’s rephrase that in simple English. What the author is saying is that: If Russia hacked the DNC computers, the NSA would know about it. It’s that simple.

But no one at the NSA  has ever verified the claims or produced one scintilla of evidence that connects Russia to the emails. In fact, the NSA has never even suggested that such evidence exists. Nor has anyone in the media asked Director Michael Rogers point blank whether the NSA has hard evidence that Russia hacked the DNC servers?

Why? Why this conspiracy of silence on a matter that is so fundamental to the case that the NSA and the other Intel agencies are trying to make?

The only logical explanation is that there’s no proof that Russia was actually involved. Why else would the NSA withhold evidence on a matter this serious? It makes no sense.

According to the media, Intelligence agents familiar with the matter have “high confidence” that Russia was involved.

Okay, but where’s the proof? You can’t expect to build a case against a foreign government and a sitting president with just “high confidence”. You need facts, evidence, proof. Where’s the beef?

We already mentioned how the FBI never bothered to question the only eyewitnesses in the case. That’s odd enough, but what’s even stranger  is the fact that the FBI never seized the DNC’s servers so they could conduct a forensic examination of them. What’s that all about? Here’s an excerpt from the report:

“The FBI, having asked multiple times at different levels, was refused access to the DNC server(s). It is not apparent that any law enforcement agency had access.

The apparent single source of information on the purported DNC intrusion(s) was from Crowdstrike.

3.  Crowdstrike is a cyber security firm hired by the Democratic Party.

4.   Not the FBI, CIA, nor NSA organizations analyzed the information from Crowdstrike.  Only picked analysts of these agencies were chosen to see this data and write the ICA….”

( “The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge)

Have you ever read anything more ridiculous in your life? The FBI’s negligence in this case goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen before.  Imagine if a murder was committed in the apartment next to you and the FBI was called in to investigate.  But when they arrive at the scene of the crime,  they’re  blocked at the door by the victim’s roommate who refuses to let them in.  Speaking through the door, the roommate assures the agents that the victim was shot dead with a single bullet to the head, and that the smoking gun that was used in the murder is still on the floor. But “don’t worry”, says the obstructing roommate, “I’ve already photographed the whole thing and I’ll send you the pictures as soon as I get the chance.”

Do you really think the agents would put up with such nonsense?

Never! They’d kick down the door, slap the roommate in handcuffs, cordon-off the murder scene, and start digging-around for clues.  That’s what they’d do. And yet we are supposed to believe that in the biggest case of the decade, a case that that allegedly involves foreign espionage and presidential treason, that the FBI has made no serious effort to secure  the servers that were allegedly hacked by Russia?

The DNC computers are Exhibit A. The FBI has to have those computers,  and they are certainly within their rights to seize them by any means necessary. So why haven’t they?  Does the FBI think they can trust the second-hand analysis from some flunkey organization whose dubious background casts serious doubt on their conclusions?

It’s a joke! The only rational explanation for the FBI’s behavior, is that they’ve been told to “stand down” so they don’t unwittingly expose the truth about what’s really going on, that the whole Russia hacking fiction is a complete and utter fraud, and that the DNC, the CIA and the media are all having a good laugh at the expense of the clueless American people.

Here’s another interesting clip from the report:

“Adam Carter: …the FBI do not have disk images from any point during or following the alleged email hack. …  CrowdStrike’s failure to produce evidence. – With Falcon installed between April and May (early May), they should have had evidence on when files/emails/etc were copied or sent. – That information has never been disclosed.”

(“The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge”, Skip Folden)

Read that excerpt over again. It’s mind boggling. What Carter is saying is that, they have nothing, no evidence, no proof, no nothing. If you don’t have a disk image, then what do you have?

You have nothing, that’s what. Which means that everything we’ve read is 100 percent conjecture, not a shred of evidence anywhere. Which is why the focus has shifted to Manafort, Flynn, Trump Jr and the goofy Russian lawyer?

Who gives a rip about Manafort? Seriously?

The investigation started off with grave allegations of foreign espionage and presidential collusion (treason?) and quickly downshifted to the illicit financial dealings of someone the American people could care less about. Talk about mission creep!

What people want is proof that Russia hacked the DNC servers or that Trump cozied up to Russia to win the election. Nothing else matters. All these diversions prove is that, after one full year of nonstop, headline sensationalism,  the investigation has produced nothing; a big, fat goose-egg.

A few words about the ICA Report

Remember the January 6, Intelligence Community Assessment? The ICA report was supposed to provide iron-clad proof that Russia hacked Democratic emails and published them at WikiLeaks. The media endlessly reiterated the claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment and that it’s conclusions represented the collective, objective analysis of America’s finest.

Right. The whole thing was a fraud. As it happens, only four of the agencies participated in the project (the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.) and the agents who provided the analysis were hand-picked for the task. Naturally, when a director hand-picks particular analysts for a given assignment, one assumes that they want a particular outcome. Which they did. Clearly, in this case, the intelligence was tailored to fit the policy. The intention was to vilify Russia in order to further isolate a country that was gradually emerging as a global rival.  And the report was moderately successful in that regard too, except for one paradoxical disclaimer that appeared on page 13. Here it is:

“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. … Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.” …

What the authors are saying is that, ‘Everything you read in this report could be complete baloney because it’s all based on conjecture, speculation and guesswork.’

Isn’t that what they’re saying? Why would anyone waste their time reading a report when the authors openly admit that their grasp of what happened is  “incomplete or fragmentary” and they have no “proof” of anything?

Gregory Copley, President, International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) summed it up best when he said:

“This is a highly politically motivated and a subjective report which was issued by the intelligence community. … does not present evidence of successful or even an attempt to actually actively manipulate the election process.”

Like we said, it’s all baloney.

Lastly, Folden’s report sheds light on the technical inconsistencies of the hacking allegations. Cyber-forensic experts have now shown that “The alleged “hack” was effectively impossible in mid-2016.  The required download speed of the “hack” precludes an internet transfer of any significant distance.” In other words, the speed at which the emails were transferred could only have taken place if they were “Downloaded onto external storage, e.g., 2.0 thumb drive.” (The report also provides evidence that the transfers took place in the Eastern time zone, which refutes the theory that the servers were hacked from Romania.)

The Nation summed it up perfectly in this brief paragraph:

“There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.” (“A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack”, Patrick Lawrence, The Nation)

Bingo.

Bottom line: A dedicated group of independent researchers and former Intel agents joined forces and produced the first hard evidence that “the official narrative implicating Russia” is wrong. This is a stunning development that will, in time, cut through the fog of government propaganda and reveal the truth. Skip Folden’s report is an important contribution to that same effort.

Note: Skip Folden is a Private Intelligence analyst and a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology. His report has been submitted to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the Office of Special Council (Robert Mueller), and the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. The report was released on September 13, 2017

Read the whole report here:  “Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge“, Skip Folden, Word Press.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from sime simon | CC BY 2.0.

The US government is blatantly violating the most basic tenets of its purportedly “sacred” ideology of “human rights” and “free speech” by egregiously overstepping the bounds of FARA to engage in the same type of state-sponsored intimidation that it regularly accuses its geopolitical opponents of for far less.

Yahoo broke the story earlier on Monday that the FBI questioned former Sputnik employee Andrew Feinburg following his public complaints to the media about how the company is supposedly being run, and this reportedly came after another former employee, Joseph John Fionda, allegedly contacted the FBI on his own initiative to share “a big packet” of information accusing Sputnik of breaking the law. The legislation at the center of this scandal is the “Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA), a 1938 law originally passed to expose Nazi influence operations inside of the US. It’s since been used for registering anyone who works as a “foreign agent”, which stereotypically refers to Congressional lobbyists hired by foreign governments but is nowadays being proposed by some US voices to apply to Sputnik and RT as well.

The basis for this move is that both companies are publicly funded by the Russian government, and that this therefore supposedly makes them “propaganda” because it’s assumed by the American authorities that all of their employees lack “editorial independence” from the Kremlin. As could have been expected, the same forces pushing for Sputnik and RT to register as “foreign agents” under FARA aren’t interested in equally applying these expanded “standards” to other publicly financed international media outlets such as Al Jazeera and the BBC.

Using the same criteria as is being applied against these two companies, one could rhetorically question the “independence” of US Congressmen and American government-connected “think tanks” to the “deep state”, which is another word for its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies that hold disproportionate influence over policymaking decisions.

In any case, what’s important to focus on is the difference between publicly financed institutions and those which are “government-run”. The first one simply means that taxpayers are paying the bills, whereas the second refers to government employees being the final decision makers on all matters. All government employees work for publicly financed institutions, but not all employees at publicly financed institutions are government employees. Sputnik, for example, is a publicly financed media platform where the editors always have the final say as decision makers in what is a globally recognized industry-wide hierarchical standard. This doesn’t indicate “censorship” or a “cover-up” – it’s just plain journalism.

If Washington-funded media platforms happen to accuse Sputnik and RT of being “government-run”, then it might possibly be that they’re falsely projecting their own unstated but widely assumed internal arrangements onto their Russian counterparts.

Moreover, just because two disgruntled employees seem to have experienced communication issues with their superiors and failed to resolve – or in some cases, even address – them prior to continuing with their given assignments doesn’t mean that there’s a “Kremlin conspiracy” because their bosses were displeased with their overall work at the company as a result. Outcomes like that happen in those situations. It’s life – nothing more, nothing less – and should be used as a personal learning experience, not as someone’s “15 minutes of fame” driven by their desire to more easily land a new job elsewhere, whether in the same industry or the “think tank” one. It’s natural for people to have divergent views on any given subject, especially when it’s related to politics, but editors always have the final say when it comes to the journalism industry, and employees are supposed to respect that.

One of the more popular fake news claims going around about Sputnik and RT is that the two outlets were heavily biased in favor of Trump during the 2016 election, but that’s frankly not true, as anyone would know by listening to Sputnik’s radio programs from that time, watching RT’s shows, or reading both of their websites’ archives. Both platforms lean closer to the liberal-progressive side of things as opposed to the conservative one. Simply reporting on the many unfavorable stories surrounding Hillary Clinton and not blindly fawning over her candidacy doesn’t qualify as “institutional bias”, though in largely controlled systems such as the American one where most of the media openly back the Democrats, then the Overton window concept would suggest that Sputnik and RT’s balanced reporting and analyses would understandably stand out as attention-grabbing and exemplary.

In addition, it should never be forgotten that it was the on-the-fence population of the Rust Belt who surprisingly turned the election in Trump’s favor. One would presume that the liberal-progressive masses in the solidly Democratic states on each coast would be Sputnik and RT’s core audiences given how these two outlets’ more leftist-leaning stance on many matters overlap with the prevailing preferences there, so it’s ridiculous to believe that these Russian companies somehow convinced voters to want to “Make America Great Again” in the more stereotypically nationalistic heartland with their liberal-progressive messaging. In fact, it’s uncertain how many people in that part of the US listen to, watch, or read Sputnik and RT in the first place when Fox News, CNN, and Rush Limbaugh dominate those media markets, and whether these Russian companies are even capable of making any difference at all in those swing states.

Another point that’s often brought up in the course of this conversation is that individual writers, analysts, and presenters might be “biased”, but human beings are unique and have their own way of understanding and relaying information, which in the media field leads to them expressing their individual viewpoints and perspectives in their work. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it should be celebrated that people feel comfortable enough in their professional environment to express themselves as they see fit, though provided that they’re not obnoxiously – and perhaps even deliberately – doing something to cross the line of the editorial standards which vary according to the media outlet. The Sputnik and RT employees that are in the public limelight sometimes have opinions that are just as passionate as their counterparts in The Washington Post and The New York Times, though the latter two are rarely – if ever – condemned for their zeal by the US government.

The double standard that’s being applied when it comes to Sputnik and RT should be clear for all to see, and it’s that the American “deep state” doesn’t tolerate foreigners having an opinion about the US unless they present it on a US-based media platform or on one of Washington’s allies’. Otherwise, as the witch-hunting “logic” now goes, they’re “foreign agents” possibly “spreading propaganda”, and their outlets need to be registered as such with the intimidating “scarlet letter(s)” of FARA if they’re foreign-funded. Even worse, the hysterical zeitgeist has now peaked at such a point that Americans are unable to talk about American-related issues (whether domestic or foreign) on non-American international media outlets publicly funded by a foreign government without potentially having to register as a “foreign agent” in their homelands, whether they still live there or emigrated already.

This is nothing less than state-sponsored intimidation, since Washington is implying that the Americans who work for and comment on these platforms might be “national security threats” because of their supposedly undeclared “foreign agent” status.

If Russia implemented the same media version of FARA that the US is seriously considering and decided to decree that its citizens working for publicly funded American information outlets both in the country and abroad are “foreign agents” that are forced to register with the Kremlin, then the US government would instantly condemn it as state-sponsored intimidation and political oppression, possibly even extending political asylum and an expedited path to citizenship for those said nationals who might be working in the US and are too afraid to ever go home again. Frighteningly, however, it’s not Russians who have to fear the long arm of their government in this respect, but Americans, though it’s “politically incorrect” for anyone to say so.

In the Twilight Zone of the New Cold War, Russia could plausibly – and with full ethical and legal backing behind it –contemplate granting its Russian-based American employees political asylum and potential citizenship because of the state-sponsored intimidation that they might become reasonably subjected to back home just because they decided to “Tell The Untold” and “Question More”. If the US government demands that Sputnik and RT employees register as “foreign agents” under FARA but selectively ignores enforcing this new “standard” against other publicly financed international media companies and their employees, then it’s not unrealistic to imagine that Edward Snowden might end up sharing a toast with some fellow American political refugees in Moscow before too long.

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.

When it comes to the “world’s greatest military,” the news has been shocking. Two fast U.S. Navy ships colliding with slow-moving commercial vessels with tragic loss of life. An Air Force that has been in the air continuously for years and yet doesn’t have enough pilots to fly its combat jets. Ground troops who find themselves fighting “rebels” in Syria previously armed and trained by the CIA. Already overstretched Special Operations forces facing growing demands as their rates of mental distress and suicide rise. Proxy armies in Iraq and Afghanistan that are unreliable, often delivering American-provided weaponry to black markets and into the hands of various enemies. All of this and more coming at a time when defense spending is once again soaring and the national security state is awash in funds to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars a year.

What gives? Why are highly maneuverable and sophisticated naval ships colliding with lumbering cargo vessels? Why is an Air Force that exists to fly and fight short 1,200 pilots? Why are U.S. Special Operations forces deployed everywhere and winning nowhere? Why, in short, is the U.S. military fighting itself — and losing?

It’s the Ops Tempo, Stupid

After 16 years of a never-ending, ever-spreading global war on terror, alarms are going off in Asia from the Koreas and Afghanistan to the Philippines, while across the Greater Middle East and Africa the globe’s “last superpower” is in a never-ending set of conflicts with a range of minor enemies few can even keep straight. As a result, America’s can-do military, committed piecemeal to a bewildering array of missions, has increasingly become a can’t-do one.

Too few ships are being deployed for too long. Too few pilots are being worn out by incessant patrols and mushrooming drone and bombing missions. Special Operations forces (the “commandos of everywhere,” as Nick Turse calls them) are being deployed to far too many countries — more than two-thirds of the nations on the planet already this year — and are involved in conflicts that hold little promise of ending on terms favorable to Washington.  Meanwhile, insiders like retired General David Petraeus speak calmly about “generational struggles” that will essentially never end. To paraphrase an old slogan from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” as the U.S. military spans the globe, it’s regularly experiencing the agony of defeat rather than the thrill of victory.

Source: Flickr/ Morning Calm Weekly Newspaper Installation

To President Donald Trump (and so many other politicians in Washington), this unsavory reality suggests an obvious solution: boost military funding; build more navy ships; train more pilots and give them more incentive pay to stay in the military; rely more on drones and other technological “force multipliers” to compensate for tired troops; cajole allies like the Germans and Japanese to spend more on their militaries; and pressure proxy armies like the Iraqi and Afghan security forces to cut corruption and improve combat performance.

One option — the most logical — is never seriously considered in Washington: to make deep cuts in the military’s operational tempo by decreasing defense spending and downsizing the global mission, by bringing troops home and keeping them there. This is not an isolationist plea. The United States certainly faces challenges, notably from Russia (still a major nuclear power) and China (a global economic power bolstering its regional militarily strength). North Korea is, as ever, posturing with missile and nuclear tests in provocative ways. Terrorist organizations strive to destabilize American allies and cause trouble even in “the homeland.”

Such challenges require vigilance. What they don’t require is more ships in the sea-lanes, pilots in the air, and boots on the ground. Indeed, 16 years after the 9/11 attacks it should be obvious that more of the same is likely to produce yet more of what we’ve grown all too accustomed to: increasing instability across significant swaths of the planet, as well as the rise of new terror groups or new iterations of older ones, which means yet more opportunities for failed U.S. military interventions.

Once upon a time, when there were still two superpowers on Planet Earth, Washington’s worldwide military posture had a clear rationale: the containment of communism. Soon after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 to much triumphalist self-congratulation in Washington, the scholar and former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson had an epiphany. What he would come to call “the American Raj,” a global imperial structure ostensibly built to corral the menace of communism, wasn’t going away just because that menace had evaporated, leaving not a superpower nor even a major power as an opponent anywhere on the horizon. Quite the opposite, Washington — and its globe-spanning “empire” of military bases — was only digging in deeper and for the long haul. At that moment, with a certain shock, Johnson realized that the U.S. was itself an empire and, with its mirror-image-enemy gone, risked turning on itself and becoming its own nemesis.

The U.S., it turned out, hadn’t just contained the Soviets; they had contained us, too.  Once their empire collapsed, our leaders imbibed the old dream of Woodrow Wilson, even if in a newly militarized fashion: to remake the world in one’s own image (if need be at the point of a sword).

Since the early 1990s, largely unconstrained by peer rivals, America’s leaders have acted as if there were nothing to stop them from doing as they pleased on the planet, which, as it turned out, meant there was nothing to stop them from their own folly. We witness the results today. Prolonged and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interventions throughout the Greater Middle East (Libya, Syria, Yemen, and beyond) that spread chaos and destruction. Attacks against terrorism that have given new impetus to jihadists everywhere. And recently calls to arm Ukraine against Russia. All of this is consistent with a hubristic strategic vision that, in these years, has spoken in an all-encompassing fashion and without irony of global reach, global power, and full-spectrum dominance.

In this context, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the full scope of America’s military power. All the world is a stage — or a staging area — for U.S. troops. There are still approximately 800 U.S. military bases in foreign lands. America’s commandos deploy to more than 130 countries yearly. And even the world is not enough for the Pentagon as it seeks to dominate not just land, sea, and air but outer space, cyberspace, and even inner space, if you count efforts to achieve “total information awareness” through 17 intelligence agencies dedicated — at a cost of $80 billion a year — to sweeping up all data on Planet Earth.

In short, America’s troops are out everywhere and winning nowhere, a problem America’s “winningest” president, Donald Trump, is only exacerbating. Surrounded by “his” generals, Trump has — against his own instincts, he claimed recently — recommitted American troops and prestige to the Afghan War. He’s also significantly expanded U.S. drone strikes and bombing throughout the Greater Middle East, and threatened to bring fire and fury to North Korea, while pushing a program to boost military spending.

At a Pentagon awash in money, with promises of more to come, missions are rarely downsized. Meanwhile, what passes for original thinking in the Trump White House is the suggestion of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, to privatize America’s war in Afghanistan (and possibly elsewhere). Mercenaries are the answer to Washington’s military problems, suggests Prince. And mercs, of course, have the added benefit of not being constrained by the rules of engagement that apply to America’s uniformed service members.

Indeed, Prince’s idea, though opposed by Trump’s generals, is compelling in one sense: If you accept the notion that America’s wars in these years have been fought largely for the corporate agendas of the military-industrial complex, why not turn warfighting itself over to the warrior corporations that now regularly accompany the military into battle, cutting out the middleman, that very military?

Hammering a Cloud of Gnats

Erik Prince’s mercenaries will, however, have to bide their time as the military high command continues to launch kinetic strikes against elusive foes around the globe. By its own admission, the force recent U.S. presidents have touted as the “finest” in history faces remarkably “asymmetrical” and protean enemies, including the roughly 20 terrorist organizations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations. In striking at such relatively puny foes, the U.S. reminds me of the mighty Thor of superhero fame swinging his hammer violently against a cloud of gnats. In the process, some of those gnats will naturally die, but the result will still be an exhausted superhero and ever more gnats attracted by the heat and commotion of battle.

I first came across the phrase “using a sledgehammer to kill gnats” while looking at the history of U.S. airpower during the Vietnam War.  B-52 “Arc Light” raids dropped record tons of bombs on parts of South Vietnam and Laos in largely failed efforts to kill dispersed guerrillas and interdict supply routes from North Vietnam. Half a century later, with its laser- and GPS-guided bombs, the Air Force regularly touts the far greater precision of American airpower. Yet in one country after another, using just that weaponry, the U.S. has engaged in serial acts of overkill. In Afghanistan, it was the recent use of MOAB, the “mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon the U.S. has ever used in combat, against a small concentration of ISIS fighters. In similar fashion, the U.S. air war in Syria has outpaced the Russians and even the Assad regime in its murderous effects on civilians, especially around Raqqa, the “capital” of the Islamic State. Such overkill is evident on the ground as well where special ops raids have, this year, left civilians dead from Yemen to Somalia. In other words, across the Greater Middle East, Washington’s profligate killing machine is also creating a desire for vengeance among civilian populations, staggering numbers of whom, when not killed, have been displaced or sent fleeing across borders as refugees in these wars. It has played a significant role in unsettling whole regions, creating failed states, and providing yet more recruits for terror groups.

Leaving aside technological advances, little has changed since Vietnam. The U.S. military is still relying on enormous firepower to kill elusive enemies as a way of limiting (American) casualties. As an instrument of victory, it didn’t work in Vietnam, nor has it worked in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But never mind the history lessons. President Trump asserts that his “new” Afghan strategy — the details of which, according to a military spokesman, are “not there yet” — will lead to more terrorists (that is, gnats) being killed.

Since 9/11, America’s leaders, Trump included, have rarely sought ways to avoid those gnats, while efforts to “drain the swamp” in which the gnats thrive have served mainly to enlarge their breeding grounds.  At the same time, efforts to enlist indigenous “gnats” — local proxy armies — to take over the fight have gone poorly indeed.  As in Vietnam, the main U.S. focus has invariably been on developing better, more technologically advanced (which means more expensive) sledgehammers, while continuing to whale away at that cloud of gnats — a process as hopeless as it is counterproductive.

The Greatest Self-Defeating Force in History?

Incessant warfare represents the end of democracy. I didn’t say that, James Madison did.

I firmly believe, though, in words borrowed from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that “only Americans can hurt America.” So how can we lessen the hurt? By beginning to rein in the military. A standing military exists — or rather should exist — to support and defend the Constitution and our country against immediate threats to our survival. Endless attacks against inchoate foes in the backlands of the planet hardly promote that mission. Indeed, the more such attacks wear on the military, the more they imperil national security.

A friend of mine, a captain in the Air Force, once quipped to me: you study long, you study wrong. It’s a sentiment that’s especially cutting when applied to war: you wage war long, you wage it wrong. Yet as debilitating as they may be to militaries, long wars are even more devastating to democracies. The longer our military wages war, the more our country is militarized, shedding its democratic values and ideals.

Back in the Cold War era, the regions in which the U.S. military is now slogging it out were once largely considered “the shadows” where John le Carré-style secret agents from the two superpowers matched wits in a set of shadowy conflicts. Post-9/11, “taking the gloves off” and seeking knockout blows, the U.S. military entered those same shadows in a big way and there, not surprisingly, it often couldn’t sort friend from foe.

A new strategy for America should involve getting out of those shadowy regions of no-win war. Instead, an expanding U.S. military establishment continues to compound the strategic mistakes of the last 16 years. Seeking to dominate everywhere but winning decisively nowhere, it may yet go down as the greatest self-defeating force in history.

A TomDispatch regular, William Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor.  His personal blog is Bracing Views.

Featured image: Dr. Ruchama Marton in her home in Tel Aviv. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Ruchama Marton belongs to what you might call Generation 1.5 of Israel’s anti-occupation activists. She was slightly too young to belong to the small and avant-garde group that established the revolutionary socialist organization Matzpen in the 1960s, but old enough to have taken classes with firebrand Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz in Jerusalem. There, while at medical school, she revolutionized the admissions process for female students, leading to the abolishing of admissions quotas. And when she discovered there as ban on women wearing trousers at the medical faculty, she revolted against that as well.

Marton founded Physicians for Human Rights-Israel during the First Intifada, bringing the term “human rights” into the Israeli political discourse. Born in Israel, where she has lived her whole life, she has been an active psychiatrist for more than 40 years. Her relationship with this place is complicated and painful, almost impossible.

Marton minces no words when it comes to the leftist and peace organizations, which she sees as a kind of “humane society,” seeing little point in activism that does not directly confront the violation of human rights, the core of which are political rights.

She has been outraged by injustice and segregation her whole life. Between fighting chauvinism and patriarchy, and the lifelong struggle against the occupation, she refuses to be silent.

I met Marton for a talk in her Tel Aviv home in honor of her 80th birthday. I assumed she wouldn’t make it easy for me. I was right.

As a psychiatrist with years of experience, I want to start with what I think is the big question. Why are we so obsessively attached to dehumanizing Arabs? Why does it seem as if the greatest desire of this place is to deny the Palestinians any kind of recognition and legitimacy? After all there is no practical purpose for that at this point, we’ve already won.

“What do you mean it doesn’t serve a practical purpose? That’s nonsense. It serves all of the Zionist interests. Each and every one.”

Explain.

“First of all, we are colonialists. Zionism is colonialist. And the first thing a good colonialist does is dispossess. Dispossess of what? Of anything he can. Of what is important, of what serves him. Of land. Of natural resources. And, of course, of humanity. After all, it is obvious that in order to control someone else you have to take away their humanity.”

But hasn’t that project ended? It’s not as if we are in a war now and are about to conquer new territory. The War of Independence ended long ago. We won. We have already drawn borders. Why do we still need that mentality? 

“What borders? There are no borders, there will be no borders, and I don’t see that there is any intention to draw them now. But beyond that, dispossession is an unending task. Those occupied people, those dispossessed people, whether they are inside the Green Line or outside of it, they do not agree. They do not give up. They don’t agree to be dispossessed of their land, of their water, of their humanity. As Hannah Arendt said: without political rights there is no human being. Political rights come before everything else. Before the right to property, movement, assembly. Those are all very nice but they are secondary. Without political rights, everything you do is charity. Without political rights, there is nothing.”

Physicians for Human Rights volunteers provide first aid on the Israel-Egypt border. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Ruchama’s family came to Israel from a rural region in Poland. Both of her parents grew up in religious homes, like most Jews at that time, certainly the ones who lived outside of the big cities. Her father was so enthralled by communist ideas, she says, that for months he secretly saved money to be able to go to Russia in the 1920s.

“The night before he was about to leave,” she says, “his father walked into his room and said: ‘I know you have been saving money and I know what for. I want to ask you to promise me one thing: do you want to go? Go. Go to America, go to Palestine. Just promise me that you will not go to Russia. They’ll kill you.’ My dad promised and kept his promise.”

Your parents settled in the Geula neighborhood of Jerusalem. You were born in 1937. Do you remember the British Mandate in Jerusalem? 

“Of course. I remember the Australian soldiers patrolling the streets, and walking to the Western Wall with my grandmother. We would walk through the Old City past the Arab merchants; there was no fear. There was no great friendship either, but there was no fear.

“In Jerusalem there was a curfew every night. I remember one night when I stayed over at a girlfriend’s house until after curfew, and I went out into the street and started walking home. An Australian soldier called to me, but I didn’t understand what he was saying, since I didn’t speak English. He caught up with me and tried to understand what I was doing there, where I was going.

“He was a giant, probably six ft. tall. I don’t know how it happened, but he took my hand and walked me home. A little girl with a giant Australian soldier.

“The grandmother who used to take me with her to the Western Wall was killed by a shell in the beginning of the War of Independence. She went out to bring water in a bucket to a neighbor who had small children and was hit by a shell fired by the Arabs a shell fired by the Arabs. A little later we moved to Tel Aviv, which was a completely different world.

“Tel Aviv was much different from Jerusalem. It had a feeling of strangeness and wildness. We lived in an area on the outskirts of town; there were hardly any houses there. It was surrounded by Arab orchards, gardens, and fields of sugarcane growing toward the Yarkon River. It was another world.”

Did you have any friends in Tel Aviv? It must not have been easy.

“I didn’t know anybody here, of course. And in that generation parents and children hardly spoke to one another. But in the house across from us, the only house close by, there was an Arab family. They had an orchard, a garden, and a small herd of sheep and goats.

“They had two children, Zeidin, who was about a year younger than me, and Fatima, who was a bit older than me. They were my best friends. We used to play together, spend our days together in the orchards and in nature. I loved them.

“At the end of 1947 soldiers came and evicted the family. I remember standing and watching that scene unfold. They loaded what little belongings they had and their old grandmother on a donkey and set off for the east. Their house still exists to this day — it was turned into a synagogue.”

In the 1956 Sinai War you also saw things that left a deep mark on you.

“The murder of prisoners by the soldiers in my unit, Givati.”

What happened there? 

“In the days following the Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian soldiers continued to surrender. They would come out of the sand dunes, sometimes barefoot, black from the desert sun, dirt, and sweat, with their hands up.

“Our soldiers shot them. Dozens of them, maybe more. That’s just what I saw. They would come down from the dunes and the soldiers lifted their guns and killed them.”

And what did they do with them? Did they just leave them on the sand?

“Yes. It left me sick. Physically sick. I vomited and was in a terrible state. I went to my commander and asked for a leave. I told him it was because of what happened. Needless to say, he completely ‘did not know’ what I was talking about. But he approved my leave and I hitchhiked home.

“I wanted to talk about what happened. I wanted to publish it, but nobody agreed. They told me to leave it alone. I had friends who worked at newspapers, and I thought, naïvely, that they might want to publish it. Nobody agreed to touch it. When I was 19 I already knew that what they told me about Zionism and the army was a pile of lies.”

An Internet search about the killing of prisoners during the Sinai War led to several links, including an interview with Brig. Gen. Arieh Biro, who admitted that he and his soldiers murdered Egyptian prisoners during that war. I can only assume that the murders that took place were far more common and serious than the ones found in the “inquiry” ordered by Shimon Peres in 1995.

After the army you went to medical school. At the time there were quotas for women. 

“Yes. There was a quota and they didn’t want a lot of women to become doctors. So they limited them to a 10 percent quota. I waged a struggle against that along with other students and faculty members, leading to the cancellation of the quota. Since then women are admitted to medical school in Israel based on their qualifications, just like men.”

After all of your years working with human psychology and the conflict, do you see any change? f I understand you correctly, despite the tremendous propaganda skills Israel has developed, despite the ongoing brainwashing, from what you’re saying it seems that it was the same in the 1950s.  

“First of all, Zionism and what a human being is are two things that don’t intersect. But there has been no essential change here. It’s more of the same. It’s true that the Zionist propaganda machine would make the Soviets proud, but the essence of the beliefs about basic things, about the treatment of the Arabs and their place — those beliefs have not changed.”

A mental health revolutionary

At 80, Marton is still an active psychiatrist. In her many years in the profession, she has advocated and campaigned to take mental health care out of the psychiatric hospitals and bring it into the community.

I was very surprised that there was someone in Israel talking about psychiatric care as part of the community. It actually means normalizing mental health. 

“Why shouldn’t there be a psychiatric clinic inside the neighborhood health clinic? There should be an optometrist, an ENT, and a psychiatrist. In exactly the same place, at the same level, in the same corridor, with the same concept.”

You believed in this very early in your career, and you took concrete steps to make it happen.

“I was the first person in Israel who brought a proposal to the medical establishment – I went all the way to Shimon Peres and others, I told them that mental health clinics do not need to be in psychiatric hospitals. It’s a disaster, no less. People have that terrible stigma that deters them from entering a psychiatric hospital.

“There was one director, Davidson (Prof. Shamai Davidson, Director of the Shalvata Hospital from 1973-1986. He moved to Israel from Dublin in 1955 – A.M.), he really was a saint; he really understood and supported the idea of community-based psychiatric care. The concept of community is something he brought with him from the diaspora. He listened to me with an open heart and was the one who carried out that revolution and led to the opening of a psychiatric treatment clinic at a clinic in Morasha, and then in Ramat Hasharon, and from there it just spread.

To this day the project has not been completed. But we did break that initial wall.

Do you know how many people don’t ask for help because the clinic is located inside a psychiatric hospital? And then what happens? They break down and get hospitalized. Great! We got what we wanted.”

I’m listening to what you’re saying and thinking: there is something justified about people’s fear of the psychiatric system. Something about the system’s perception of itself and of the patient — it’s sick.

“That’s very true. That was what I was fighting for. But today my fighting days are behind me. After 30 or 40 years, I’ve had enough. Maybe I didn’t succeed in everything, but I did in some things. I’m very proud of it.”

Do you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or about the Zionist story, in psychological terms? The story of murdering prisoners, for example, the likes of which I heard from people close to me, fills me with deep shame. 

“I am fascinated by the subject of shame. It is the emotion I have worked with most for years. I believe that without shame there is no hope for the world — there is no human being. Without shame a person can do anything. One of the things that has happened to us is that we have lost all shame. The soldiers who shot the prisoners were not ashamed. That is why they did what they did.”

Where else do you see examples of such shamelessness? 

Marton seen with Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, founder of the Gaza Mental Health Foundation in the early days of Physicians for Human Rights. (Physicians for Human Rights)

“In my profession. Palestinians who were involved in terrorism, or at least accused of it, are sent to psychiatric evaluation. You might be surprised to hear this, but there are simply no Palestinians with mental illnesses — at least not the kinds that prevent them from being tried by Israel. Palestinians do not have the right to be crazy.”

Israeli psychiatrists examine Palestinian defendants and know that they suffer from various psychiatric conditions, yet they still declare them competent to stand trial?

“Of course they know. And how do I know that they know? Because after they are tried and sent to prison, they receive medication for schizophrenia. And these are not errors of ignorance. I’m talking about good doctors. Yet still they give ridiculous and erroneous diagnoses.

“I went there and saw for myself. I spoke to prisoners. I wrote about it in the newspaper at the time. I was disciplined by the Israel Medical Association for naming doctors who were involved in such diagnoses. They intended to sue me but they decided to let it go so as not to expose the public to all of the dirty tricks that go on behind closed doors. I was then forced to write a letter of apology. I wrote the letter, which included two lines of apology followed by a full account of the things I knew, including the mistaken diagnoses and what was behind them. That letter has not been published to this day.”

That was not the end of Marton’s and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel’s trouble with the Israeli Medical Association and the Israeli establishment. In 2009 the Association announced it was cutting ties with PHRI, after the organization accused Israeli doctors of taking part in torture. Furthermore, the Tax Authority has refused to renew the organization’s status as a public institution for tax purposes, ever since it published a statement according to which the occupation is a violation of human rights — including the right to health. According to the Tax Authority, such statements are deemed “political.”

Medicine is a political issue 

How did Physicians for Human Rights-Israel begin? 

“When I wanted to do something practical, something political, I used that which was most available to me: medicine. I contacted a Palestinian medical organization. Palestinian volunteers used to go out to treat people in the field, and I joined them.

Marton rides along with and volunteers on the way a Physicians for Human Rights trip to the West Bank. (Physicians for Human Rights)

“After a while I began organizing volunteers from Israel. I had to beg people to go out with me on Saturday mornings. At first I managed to get two people, which felt like a huge achievement. Now around 30 volunteers go out [to the West Bank] with the mobile clinic.

“I made the organization’s rules: it is always us and the Palestinians together. It is never a delegation of white colonialists going out to rescue the natives. We work together in full agreement with our Palestinian partners; they say where they need us, and in the absolute majority of cases that is where we go.”

And where do you work? It’s not as if they have organized clinics.

“Clinics? There are hardly any clinics in those villages, and the ones that exist are small and unsuitable for big teams like ours. We use schools and offices of local councils. And you don’t need to make some big announcement — word gets around in the village and in the nearby villages. First thing on Saturday morning, there are already too many people.”

What treatments do you provide?

“Anything that one can do in the field, including relatively simple surgeries. We bring donated medications with us, and write prescriptions for medications we don’t have. When there is a need for complicated exams we refer to different hospitals in the Palestinian Authority and Israel. That also involved many years of struggle.”

The State of Israel never considered itself responsible for the health of those it occupied.

“Right. But until Oslo, or until the First Intifada, there were Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which became Israeli government hospitals after 1967. There was a very limited medical budget, nothing like in a normal country. But, for example, there was a vaccination budget. Paradoxically, in the refugee camps, the situation was much better, since they were under the responsibility of UNRWA.

When the First Intifada broke out, one of the decisions made by then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was to stop the budget for Palestinian medical services. When I heard about this I flew to London and showed up at the offices of the BBC. I told them about the situation in the occupied territories, and they sent a team to do a brief item about that decision and its outcome, namely people dying in their homes because of the lack of medical care. The uproar convinced Rabin to restore at least part of the budget.”

Go home, get dressed

A few days ago there was a photo in the newspaper of the head of the Mossad visiting the home of the U.S. national security advisor. All the people in the photo were men. I’m really happy to say that such a photo looks strange to me today. 

“That brings me back again to the subject of segregation. That is how people are taught to think about themselves. That separation, the fact that there is a women’s gallery [in synagogue], and now they want separation in the army and the universities too. Segregation is the root of all evil.

“My first wars were not over the Palestinian issue. They were feminist, even though I didn’t call it that at the time.”

You are a proud woman.

“Not enough. I mean I’m too proud to ask for credit, and sometimes I’m full of resentment that I don’t get it. For example, I was the first one to introduce the concept of “human rights” into the Israeli discourse. Before that there were “civil rights,” but human rights as a political concept is my work.”

Yet you still don’t feel comfortable demanding recognition.

“That’s right. Maybe it’s the result of my feminine education. Not feminist, feminine. The kind that teaches women not to stand out. To be nice, smile, not to get angry. To never start a sentence with the word ‘I.’ That’s how women are raised.”

You are outraged by chauvinism. It’s not that different from your outrage at the occupation.

“My whole life I had to contend with stigmas and separate rules for women. With the fact that women were not allowed to wear pants in medical school in the Jerusalem cold. When I showed up with pants one female lecturer said to me: “Young lady, go home, get dressed properly and come back.” I went home and I didn’t come back. I raised hell, ad in the end I won.”

Criticism of all sides

 You are very critical of the Israeli Left and the way it confronts the occupation.

“There is no Israeli Left. What we need to do is start Israel’s human rights organizations from scratch so that they are willing to fight to end apartheid. Apartheid that distinguishes between those who have everything and those who have nothing. Those who are allowed everything and those who are forbidden everything. If they are unwilling to undertake that fight, what are they fighting for? For their own self image.

“You can’t fight colonialism, occupation, apartheid — call it what you want — by playing in the government’s court, according to the government’s agenda. You must breach those boundaries.”

The Labor Party actually maintained the occupation for 10 whole years and didn’t do anything about it.

“Don’t say Mapai didn’t do anything. They were the ones who established the settlements. Begin was the only righteous leader we have had. I mean it. Under his rule torture was completely forbidden. When the head of the Shin Bet came to him and asked ‘Sir, not even a slap?’ He said: ‘No. Not even a slap.’

“Begin forbade demolishing houses, he forbade expulsion. He was the only righteous man in Sodom. There was not a single righteous man either before him or after him.”

I always thought, and still think, that the normal moderate Revisionist Right is the camp with the best chances of treating the Arabs humanely. 

“I don’t want humane treatment of the Arabs. I want political rights. After that you can be humane or whatever you want. Without political you continue to be a colonialist, an occupier, an apartheidist.

“A human rights organization that is not willing to fight for that is howling at the moon. It is meaningless.”

In a sense you are also talking about yourself. This is also a personal reckoning.

“That’s right. I’m talking to you after 30 or maybe 50 years of fighting the occupation. We need outside help. And I’m talking mainly about one thing: BDS.”

Working in Israel for that cause is not easy.

She laughs. “It’s a matter for traitors, and today’s traitors are tomorrow’s heroes. Anyone who is not willing to pay that price does not know how to fight. If you don’t pay a price you are fighting only for your own beautiful image. As long as the occupation continues, as long as apartheid continues, it doesn’t matter if you are a little more or less beautiful.”

Physician for Human Rights volunteers hand out medication from a mobile clinic in the West Bank. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

She stops to think for a moment.

“We have to fight the idea of segregation, because it separates between me and the political, between the Arab and his land, between the Arab and his human dignity. Segregation is the wound. It is the axis around which things revolve.”

Even though Jews brought the idea of segregation here with them. After all, there are all kinds of segregation among the Jews themselves, along ethnic, religious, and political lines. 

“There surely is segregation here on all levels. After all, we are divided here into first-class and second-class Jews, and beneath them are Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the Palestinians in the West Bank are even lower. At the very bottom of the ladder are the asylum seekers and the refugees (Physicians for Human Rights holds an “Open Clinic” that provides medical care to refugees and asylum seekers, A.M.).

“Segregation exists within our society as a central political principal. If we cancel segregation, then what? It will be a political disaster for the regime — not just for the Right.

“When I think about what my organization has done — about the trips to Gaza, about handing out medicine out of solidarity, about managing to shatter segregation — that has our biggest achievement.”

It should not come as a shock that Equifax, one of the three big agencies that track credit status, has failed to protect the data it has on 143 million people. Nor should it be surprising that the company didn’t inform its affected customers for six weeks after discovering that hackers had gained access to their private information. Collecting, selling and sometimes misusing mountains of sensitive data for decades, Equifax has evidently become too big to care.

Instead, three executives sold $1.8 million of their company shares days after the company discovered the problem, more than a month before it was made public.

“If that happened, somebody needs to go to jail,” threatened Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

In the days following the breach announcement Equifax shares dropped 20 percent.

At first, the company wanted customers to pay for a freeze to their accounts. That would protect their personal data. But after a deluge of complaints, the offer changed, with Equifax opting instead to waive fees for customers who want to freeze their credit files — but only until November 21. Going forward, it could face the largest class action lawsuit in history, with the potential to bankrupt the company.

When I first looked into Equifax in 1978, it was already a corporate force, with 1,800 offices, 14,000 employees, and a nationwide investigative system maintaining dossiers on 46 million people. The oldest of the three largest US credit agencies, it had revenues of $275 million a year. Equifax’s services at the time ranged from credit reporting, insurance investigations and underwriting to motor vehicle data tracking and assorted “management system services” – aka private investigations.

Today Equifax holds information on more than 800 million consumers and almost 90 million businesses. Operating in 14 countries it produces annual revenues of more than $3 billion. On the other hand, the employee roster is down to about 9,000.

Founded in 1899, Equifax had not fully committed to computers by the late 1970s. But an industry transition was underway. In Vermont, the Credit Bureau of Burlington had taken an early lead, working with Trans-Union Systems, a national computer network used by retailers and credit card companies. Data flowed in multiple directions, with stores seeking information on potential customers and other clients using the data those businesses amassed.

1978 investigative feature

Before the digital age, collecting information and creating a customer profile — to establish what was known as “creditworthiness” — involved a larger staff and considerable legwork. For Equifax “field investigators” it meant conducting interviews, with the subject as well as friends and neighbors. From courts and police departments they gathered any criminal information, while desk-bound staffers clipped newspapers and gathered reports. To complete a dossier, an investigator might talk to your employers, hunt down old government records, or even strike up conversations with local shop keepers.

But mass producing customer dossiers (investigators worked on up to 40 a day), particularly profiles that included not just hard data but also tidbits of gossip, could lead to mistakes and abuses. Creditworthiness was a slippery concept, an imprecise composite of job patterns, credit and bank accounts, character, habits, family status and morals. As a result, Equifax was hit with a batch of lawsuits during the 1970s, losing some and quietly settling others.

One Michigan woman collected $321,000 when the company falsely reported that she was an excessive drinker. Another woman from South Dakota won a settlement when Equifax said that the money for her new Chevy had come from prostitution — also proven false.

There was also the California insurance broker who won $250,000 when Equifax investigators alleged she was dishonest. In New Jersey there was trouble when State Farm refused coverage to a Princeton faculty member after Equifax reported (accurately but irrelevantly) that she was living with a man “without the benefit of wedlock.”

At times, Equifax operated like a private detective agency. In at least one case, it was caught helping a corporation to obtain gossip about a critic. An executive at American Home Products, a major drug manufacturer, had hired the company to dig into the personal affairs of Jay Constantine, a congressional staffer who was helping to write legislation opposed by Big Pharma.

This was before the Retail Credit Company of Atlanta, Georgia changed its name to Equifax. After 77 years in business, the 1976 rebranding was prompted by all the bad press, including a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed in 1975. The charges, as outlined for me by an FTC staffer, included illicit use of consumer information, failure to disclosure terms, and false and misleading advertising.

The technology of data gathering has changed since then, but the shabby tactics have survived. In 2000, Equifax, along with Experian and TransUnion, was fined $2.5 million for blocking and delaying phone calls from consumers trying to obtain information about their credit. In 2013, a federal jury in Oregon awarded $18.6 million to Julie Miller against Equifax for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

In contrast, Equifax has had no problem sharing files and data with the FBI and other government agencies, according to George O’Toole, a former CIA agent. While reporting on Vermont’s private intelligence industry, I was told that Equifax tended to hire ex-State Police officers, possibly because they might have access to government information that was off limits to the public.

Another ex-CIA operative, Harry Murphy, claimed that Equifax was especially useful to federal agencies. The draw was its enormous files of auto and life insurance applicants. Even back in the 1970s, however, big data transfers between public and private entities were difficult to control, and law enforcement and intelligence officers often moved into the private sector after retirement, or for the paycheck.

The emerging private dossier industry was run largely by law enforcement and intelligence alumni, an Old Boy Network that closely linked it with government operations. The data moved freely, but the potential for mischief was not widely recognized.

During my research into the activities of Equifax and other big data agencies, I also heard about an odd encounter with Earl Hanson, a Barre resident who applied for insurance with Colonial Penn Mutual. In return he received a letter from Equifax asking for more information about an auto accident he had forgotten to report. Hanson was cooperative, explaining all about hitting a deer. But the exchange made him curious to know what else they had discovered about him, from the Motor Vehicles Department or anywhere else.

After writing to the company’s Dataflo center and to the New Hampshire branch office, however, Hanson was told that Equifax actually had no file on him. Unsatisfied with that response, he filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s office. But the State lost interest, eventually closing the case, and Equifax didn’t share any further information. As usual, it was too big to care.

Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of “Dons of Time,” “Uneasy Empire,” “Spirits of Desire,” “Big Lies,” and “The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution.” His latest book is “Green Mountain Politics: Restless Spirits, Popular Movements.”

This article was originally published by Greg Guma / For Preservation & Change.

Recently I was asked whether, if Trump succeeded in undermining the Joint Plan of Collective Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal, whether Iran would reply by going for broke to create a nuclear weapon. A related question is whether a collapse of the JCPOA would strengthen Iran’s hard liners.

Here is what I said.

Iran’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will not allow development of a nuclear weapon. He has repeatedly given fatwas or considered legal opinions that making, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons contravenes Islamic law. In formal Islamic law, you cannot target civilians. The Qur’an says, “Fight those who fight you.” In Iran’s Shiite Islam, by the way, only defensive jihad or holy war is allowed. An atomic bomb, as the US demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, kills very large numbers of innocent civilians. Khamenei can’t climb down from decades of such fatwas without undermining his clerical authority and hence the foundations of his entire regime. Saying he secretly wants a bomb is like asserting that Pope Francis has a covert condom factory in the Vatican basement.

Ali Hosseini Khamenei (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Iran has never had the aim of creating a bomb or it would have one by now.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and hard line scientists and engineers tried to finesse Khamenei. They seem to have convinced him to allow them to developing facilities and experiments leading to expertise and capabilities with regard to nuclear weapon production. This capability amounts to what specialists call nuclear latency or the “Japan option.” That is, if the world knows you could slap together a nuclear bomb tout de suite, they are less likely to invade you. Everyone knows Japan has stockpiles of plutonium and technical know-how, and that they could produce a nuclear weapon in short order if they felt really threatened. Trump even encouraged them to go this route.

The Iranian hard liners likewise wanted a deterrence effect via a short time-line to a break-out capacity, i.e. potential bomb production, especially after the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. As long as they didn’t actually make a bomb, they could escape the ayatollah’s wrath.

Because of Obama’s severe sanctions from 2012, a short time-like to break-out incurred unacceptable costs for nuclear doves like Rouhani, who got Khamenei’s ear and warned him of civil unrest a la 2009 if sanctions continued. Iran was kicked off currency exchanges and had trouble selling its oil, being forced to reduce exports by 1 mn. barrels per day, from 2.5 mn. b/d down to 1.5. (It is back up to exporting 2.6 million barrels per day of petroleum and condensates, but the price has collapsed).

The compromise reached in the JCPOA by the UN Security Council plus Germany was that Iran could keep latency, i.e. the expertise for a Japan option, but had to lengthen its time-line to break-out. It bricked in and abandoned its planned heavy water reactor at Arak. It limited the number of its centrifuges. It destroyed stockpiles of uranium enriched to 19.5% for its medical isotopes reactor. It consented to regular inspections of its facilities by the UN. (Plutonium signatures can be detected months later and no matter how you try to vacuum up the particles, so Iran really can’t cheat as long as it is inspected).

Iran retained latency capabilities and nothing in JCPOA forbade them. What JCPOA insisted on was a long production time-line rather than a short one, i.e. 6 to 8 months rather than a few weeks.

As long as Iran does not ramp up production capabilities to shorten the break-out time-line, it is in compliance.

The cult, the Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK, i.e the People’s Jihadis, is now pushing a line that something sinister is going on at the Parchin military base. The UN inspectors visited it in 2015 and are not interested in going there again. The Non-Proliferation Treaty excluded inspections of military facilities at US and USSR insistence, and the JCPOA followed that legal tradition. The MEK, which is a small terrorist organization that wants to overthrow the Iranian government in favor of its mixture of Shiite fundamentalism and Marxism, has some sort of shadowy and creepy relationship with AIPAC and the Israel lobbies. Giuliani regularly speaks for big bucks at their meetings. This sort of thing is much more suspicious than the Russian connection.

If, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the agency charged with inspecting Iran, wanted to visit Parchin again, centrist President Hassan Rouhani would allow it. Transparency benefits him.

The IAEA does not want to visit Parchin because they think the optics of such a request at this time would aid Trump hawks in undermining JCPOA.

By signing the deal, Iran gave up substantial deterrence effects of nuclear latency for the sake of ending sanctions and reducing tensions, by accepting a long break-out time-line. That is, its leaders accepted a situation where the country was somewhat more likely to be invaded or the government overthrown by hostile great powers like the US.

Iran has received almost nothing in return. The GOP Congress, taking its cue from the Israel lobby, has actually ratcheted up US sanctions on Iran, which is a violation of the JCPOA. Moreover, the Trump people have rattled sabers and spooked European investors. Nobody wants to be sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury, which has in the past fined European firms billions of dollars for doing business with Iran. There has been a small uptick of Iranian trade with Europe and Asia, but the hard liners are slamming Rouhani for giving away the country’s security and returning empty-handed.

Now Trump is inventing some special US certification procedure for Iran compliance, which is not in the JCPOA, and is aimed at undermining it. I doubt Europe will go along with this scam. Maybe someone should inspect the unsafe thousands of US nuclear warheads. Iran does not have any.

Nuclear Israel is threatening to bomb Damascus over Iran’s Syria presence, and is pressuring Russia to expel Iran. The JCPOA weakened Iran vis-a-vis Israel by reducing the deterrence effects of latency. The world community, which tried to reduce Iran to a fourth world country for merely doing some nuclear experiments, has actively rewarded Israel for flouting the Non-Proliferation Treaty and building a stockpile of some 400 nuclear warheads, with which it occasionally menaces its neighbors.

So yes, all this strengthens hard liners and weakens Rouhani.

But China and Russia want the JCPOA and Iran is unlikely to try to get a bomb both for this reason and because of Khomeinist commitments (Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, called nukes the tools of the devil, and his successor, Ali Khamenei, agrees).

However, hard liners could try to shorten the break-out window again if they felt the West had severely violated the terms of the deal.

Featured image: Rebel Wilson (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

There is very little to be gained pondering whether celebrity journalism should be protected with the zeal that some of its advocates do. A person with the dirt-directed fanaticism of a Piers Morgan is not to be treasured and his court losses in defamation actions have, at times, warranted jubilation. But nor do the victors – in one notable case, Naomi Campbell – warrant our cheers either. Both, in one sense, are made for each other.

The problem, as with anything to do with areas of expression, is how far celebrity acts as a veil to draw upon criticism and comment. Orgies, proclivities and perversions, while interesting to some members of the public, are hardly in the public interest. What a clueless celebrity does with her money or sense is hardly of interest to the finer interests of a deliberating public. The only thing left in all of this is pure, unalloyed malice.

The Australian actress Rebel Wilson has had a stroke of astonishing judicial luck. In June this year, a jury of six examined a series of eight articles published in Woman’s Day and Australian Women’s Weekly suggesting, in no uncertain terms, that Wilson was a “serial liar” on matters touching on age, name and other aspects of her background.

Bauer Media, the umbrella company owning both publications, were also told that they had published the articles knowing the assertions to be untrue, yet still maximising the print and online run to catch website traffic with the release of Pitch Perfect 2 in May 2015.

Justice Dixon was sympathetic to Wilson, suggesting that the dizzyingly large award of $4.56 million was necessary “to convince the public that Ms Wilson is not a dishonest person and bestow vindication in accordance with the jury’s verdict.”[1]

Not that Bauer Media had a confident legal foot to stand on. Australian jurisdictions tend to be happy hunting grounds for defamation actions. Even if Bauer Media could show that qualified privilege applied (effectively a duty to publish defamatory information), it would still fail for having been published for a large audience. It would also have to be “reasonable”.

What strikes a chord of unintended humour in the verdict is the very assertion that a thespian could possibly have a complaint about being accused of lying, averse, as it were, to the verity of things. The very basis of acting, it might be argued, is the grand lie, the illusion, artful dissimulation. To suffer damages for being accused of engaging in exactly what one excels at is an odd measure by any stretch.

This makes Justice Dixon’s ruling on marketability even more peculiar.

“Ms Wilson’s reputation as an actress of integrity was wrongly damaged in a manner that affected her marketability in a huge, worldwide marketplace.”

This entailed accepting the tenuous argument that the articles had a direct, causal relationship with a supposed career dive. (Wilson, before taking a different angle, initially insisted that missing out on roles in such wonders as Kung Fu Panda and Trolls was directly attributable to the articles.)

The good judge also decided to engage in something that would have even made a reader of tarot cards blush. Wilson, the judge was swayed, could have ended up with anywhere from up to four roles after Pitch Perfect 2.

Each could garner up to $USD5 million each, or so the astrologists of the celebrity scene suggested. Justice Dixon, after chewing over the issue of roles, went for three (oh, why not?), discounted the value accounting for agent fees, tax and Wilson’s relationship with her company, yielding a handsome fee of just under $USD3 million (a tickle under $4 million in Australian currency). General damages, comprising aggravated damages, were added to the ledger, topping $650,000, making the payout a truly renting one for Bauer Media and the largest in Australian defamation history.

The media company evidently did itself few favours. It had refused an offer of settlement with Wilson for a distinctly more modest $200,000. It had refused to provide a right of reply, or apologise, and bore a good set of fangs against her during the 20 days of legal proceedings. It was certainly personal for Wilson, who claimed that Bauer Media had “viciously tried to take me down with a series of false articles.”[2]

Plato expended some effort to explain why the performing poet or thespian would have no place in his ideal Republic, largely because anyone who fabricates a role, a sort of homo faber of identity, must be treated with due suspicion:

“It seems, then, that if a man, who through clever training can become anything and imitate anything, should arrive in our city, wanting to give a performance of his poems, we should bow down before him as someone holy, wonderful, and pleasing, but we should tell him that there is no one like him in our city and that it isn’t lawful for there to be. We should pour myrrh on his head, crown him with wreaths, and send him way to another city” (The Republic, Book III, 398a).

Admittedly, Plato left room for a concession: that

“we ourselves should employ a more austere and less pleasure-giving poet and story-teller, one who would imitate the speech of a more decent person and who would tell his stories in accordance with the patterns we laid down when we first undertook the education of our soldiers.”

In Wilson’s case, she has received myrrh on her head, crowned and duly congratulated in pursuing the press jackals with such enthusiasm. Not sending her on her way or perhaps admitting her as one of the approved story tellers of her age, may well curtail an already uninteresting area of journalistic snark – but it would be foolish to wholeheartedly rejoice in the demise of the errant gossip scribblers.

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

Notes

[1] http://assets.justice.vic.gov.au/supreme/resources/f4da7c3c-b502-40db-8773 e3af8b4760f4/rebelwilsonvbauermediafinaljudgment130917.pdf

[2] http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/rebel-wilsons-abysmal-pay-for-early-hollywood-roles/news-story/8bcb33af5e5c11d8900676590bf9e88a

“Today, we talk a lot about terrorism, but we rarely talk about state terrorism.” – Bianca Jagger

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) advance on Deir Ezzor will go down as a modern example of a combined operations success against ISIS, the best armed and trained proxy terrorist force that we have seen yet. The ISIS has put up a tough fight against both Russian and Syrian airpower when it had none itself, other than the occasional favor supplied by the US coalition to bomb SAA forces “by mistake”, and then supplying the magical helicopters to extract its ISIS proxy terror commanders.

All the modern combat tools were needed to keep Syrian casualties as low as possible to maintain morale, which has been critical to sustaining this six plus years long war. Signals intelligence has played a key role in not only identifying commander centers, but also when they would have the most high value targets in them to take out.

When the big push to break the ISIS siege line came, we saw the Russian submarines used to fire Kaliber missiles for the initial overnight strikes where dawn revealed the attacked ISIS positions as abandoned but equipment abandoned. Daylight found that planes and helicopters were brought in to strike all ISIS defensive points prior to their being stormed.

Both surrounded Syrian Army pockets have been relieved, and the Palmyra road fully secured to maintain the supplies needed to feed the hungry hostage population of Deir Ezzor and continue the offensive so that ISIS has no time to regroup.

The SAA strategy appears to be an encirclement one, so that fewer ISIS fighters can retreat to new defensive positions. We have reports of ISIS pulling back, retreating down the Euphrates, where we still do not know if the Iraqis will have the back door closed at Al-Bakumal.

We also have photographs of pontoon bridging at the front for an anticipated Euphrates river crossing with two possible goals – to get into the rear of ISIS on the East side of Deir-Ezzor, and to block the American-backed Kurds from grabbing the rich oil fields on that side. That woule be a stab in the Syria’s back if the Kurds have that intention, and something that could bring the SAA and SDF into conflict.

If the US were to provide the Kurdish SDF forces air support in such a conflict, what would the Russians then do to support the SAA? Conflict with the US has been carefully avoided up until this point, but one big mistake could send the air balance of power spiraling out of control to spoil the Syrian victory.

The Western and Gulf States attempt to Balkanize Syria has boomeranged on them, as a new, stronger Syria has emerged from the ashes, including a military with a huge amount of combined-operation combat experience.

The morale of the Syrian military is now sky high with the recent string of victories it has won over ISIS, while doing what any soldier’s dream would be – ridding one’s country from a foreign invader, which in this case should be called “invaders”.

I was able to meet the Speaker of the Syrian Parliament, Jihad Lahan, as part of the ten-person US monitoring group for the June 4th, 2014 elections. He told us at that time that Syria was holding jihadi prisoners from over 65 countries.

All of us were shocked, as we instantly realized that a World War being fought against Syria. We could not see then that Iran’s and Russia’s assistance would turn what appeared to be a hopeless struggle completely around. The real anti-terrorism coalition, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, has been forged in fire and brimstone, and is now the template for others to follow if set upon by state-sponsored terrorist proxies.

First, you need an army structure that will resist the foreign offers to overthrow your own government in a coup and have secure positions in the new puppet government as the reward. You need allies to support you, not just verbally but with bayonets and bullets, and the proper anatomy to stand up to the major world power.

Such friends do not grow on trees, and neither do their motives have to be completely altruistic. Putin quite frankly borrowed an old American PR phrase from WWI, “Better to fight them over there”. The last figure I saw, the Russian command had killed 6000 jihadis from the former Soviet Union States that would not be returning to form new terror cadres in their home countries.

You also need modern weapons and all the technology both for offense and defense. A retired American general advising the insurgents was pulled out of Syria a few years ago by a SEAL team because the Syrians had picked up Intel in a captured convoy regarding who and where he was. The SEALs extracted him before the Syrian commando team preparing to capture him could act. Veterans Today got this information via parties who knew we would publish it, and we did.

So the Syrian victory is not solely theirs, as we all should benefit from the hard lessons they have learned and paid for dearly in blood and treasure. And one of those lessons is to not let the state-sponsors of the terror campaign against Syria get away unpunished, or they will just move their terror game to a new location.

What do I mean by that? How about REPARATIONS? At the last press conference at the 2014 Syrian elections, I presented some statistics that no one ever had before. I decided to extrapolate the Syrian casualties onto the US population, as that number, a huge one, would register on American brains more. The 400,000 number of Syrian dead would be 6 million Americans out of a 310 million population. And adding in just 5 wounded for every one killed would add another 30 million casualties to the KIAs.

What would America do if someone had inflicted a proxy terror war carnage on us encompassing 36 million killed and wounded. Would we nuke them? Sure we would, with no hesitation or dissent. So I ask you next, how many terror attacks did Syria launch here in the US for payback? The answer is zero.

One of our tasks in independent media is to help our audience wrap their minds around horrible things going on in the world, when the natural inclination for many is do exactly the opposite, especially when your own country is running with the bad guys. If you acknowledge it, then you would put yourself on the spot as to what you should do to stop it.

Jim W. Dean is managing editor for Veterans Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from the author.

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

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

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

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The 1944 Bretton Woods international monetary system as it has developed to the present is become, honestly said, the greatest hindrance to world peace and prosperity. Now China, increasingly backed by Russia—the two great Eurasian nations—are taking decisive steps to create a very viable alternative to the tyranny of the US dollar over the world trade and finance. Wall Street and Washington are not amused, but they are powerless to stop it.

Shortly before the end of the Second World War, the US Government, advised by the major international banks of Wall Street, drafted what many mistakenly believe was a new gold standard. In truth, it was a dollar standard in which every other member currency of the International Monetary Fund countries fixed the value of their currency to the dollar. In turn, the US dollar was fixed then to gold at a value equal to 1/35th of an ounce of gold. At the time Washington and Wall Street could impose such a system as the Federal Reserve held some 75% of all world monetary gold as a consequence of the war and related developments. Bretton Woods established the dollar which then became the reserve currency of world trade held by central banks.

Death Agony of a Defective Dollar Standard

By the end of the 1960’s with soaring US Federal budget deficits from costs of the Vietnam War and other foolish spending, the dollar standard began to show its deep structural flaws. A recovered Western Europe and Japan no longer needed billions of US dollars for financing reconstruction. Germany and Japan had become world class export economies with higher efficiency than US manufacturing owing to a growing obsolescence of US basic industry from steel to autos and basic infrastructure. Washington should then have significantly devalued the dollar against gold in order to correct the growing world trade imbalance. Such a dollar devaluation would have boosted US manufacturing export earnings and reduced the trade imbalances. It would have been a huge pus for the real US economy. However for Wall Street banks it spelled huge losses. So instead, the Johnson and then Nixon administrations printed more dollars and in effect exported inflation to the world.

The central banks of especially France and Germany reacted to the deafness in Washington by demanding US Federal Reserve gold for their US dollar reserves at $35 per unce s in the Bretton Woods 1944 agreement. By August 1971 the redemption of gold for inflated US dollars had reached a crisis point where Nixon was advised by a senior Treasury official, Paul Volcker, to rip up the Bretton Woods system.

By 1973 gold was allowed by Washington to trade freely and was no longer the backing of a sound US dollar. Instead, an engineered oil price shock in October 1973 that sent the dollar price of oil higher by 400% in a matter of months, created what Henry Kissinger then called the petrodollar.

The world needed oil for the economy. Washington, in a 1975 deal with the Saudi monarchy, insured that Arab OPEC would refuse to sell one drop of their oil to the world for any currency other than US dollars. The value of the dollar soared against other currencies such as the German Mark or Japanese Yen. Wall Street banks were awash in petrodollar deposits. The dollar casino was open and running, and the rest of the world was being fleeced by it.

In my book, Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, I detail how the major New York international banks such as Chase, Citibank and Bank of America used the petrodollars then to recycle Arab oil profits to oil-importing countries in the developing world during the 1970’s, laying the seeds for the so-called Third World Debt Crisis. Curiously, it was the same Paul Volcker, a protégé of David Rockefeller and Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank, who this time, in October, 1979 as Chairman of the Fed, triggered the 1980s debt crisis by pushing Fed interest rates through the roof. He lied and claimed it was to nip inflation. It was to save the dollar and the Wall Street banks.

Today, the dollar is a strange phenomenon to put it mildly. The United States since 1971 has gone from being a premier industrial nation to a giant debt-bloated casino of speculation.

With Fed Funds interest rates between zero and one percent the past nine years—unprecedented in modern history—the major banks of Wall Street, the ones whose financial malfeasance and murderous greed created the 2007 Subprime crisis and its 2008 global financial Tsunami, set about to build a new speculative bubble. Rather than lend to debt-bloated cities for urgently-needed infrastructure or other productive avenues of the real economy, instead they created another colossal bubble in the stock market. Major companies used cheap credit to buy their own stocks back, thereby spurring the stock prices on Wall Street exchanges, a rise fed by hype and myths about “economic recovery.” The S&P-500 stock index rose by 320% since the end of 2008. I can assure you those paper stock rises are not because the real US economy has grown 320%.

American households earn less in real terms each year over decades. Since 1988 median household income has been stagnant amid steadily rising inflation, a declining real income. They must borrow more than ever in history. Federal Government debt is at an unmanageable $20 trillion with no end in sight. American industry has been closed and production shipped offshore, “outsourced” is the euphemism. Left behind is a high-debt, rotted out “service economy” where millions work two even three part-time jobs just to keep afloat.

The only factor keeping the dollar from total collapse is the US military and Washington’s deployment of deceptive NGOs around the world to facilitate plundering of the world economy.

So long as Washington dirty tricks and Wall Street machinations were able to create a crisis such as they did in the Eurozone in 2010 through Greece, world trading surplus countries like China, Japan and then Russia, had no practical alternative but to buy more US Government debt—Treasury securities—with the bulk of their surplus trade dollars. Washington and Wall Street smiled. They could print endless volumes of dollars backed by nothing more valuable than F-16s and Abrams tanks. China, Russia and other dollar bond holders in truth financed the US wars that were aimed at them, by buying US debt. Then they had few viable alternative options.

Viable Alternative Emerges

Now, ironically, two of the foreign economies that allowed the dollar an artificial life extension beyond 1989—Russia and China—are carefully unveiling that most feared alternative, a viable, gold-backed international currency and potentially, several similar currencies that can displace the unjust hegemonic role of the dollar today.

For several years both the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China have been buying huge volumes of gold, largely to add to their central bank currency reserves which otherwise are typically in dollars or euro currencies. Until recently it was not clear quite why.

For several years it’s been known in gold markets that the largest buyers of physical gold were the central banks of China and of Russia. What was not so clear was how deep a strategy they had beyond simply creating trust in the currencies amid increasing economic sanctions and bellicose words of trade war out of Washington.

Now it’s clear why.

China and Russia, joined most likely by their major trading partner countries in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), as well as by their Eurasian partner countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are about to complete the working architecture of a new monetary alternative to a dollar world.

Currently, in addition to founding members China and Russia, the SCO full members include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and most recently India and Pakistan. This is a population of well over 3 billion people, some 42% of the entire world population, coming together in a coherent, planned, peaceful economic and political cooperation.

If we add to the SCO member countries the official Observer States—Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, states with expressed wish to formally join as full members, a glance at the world map will show the impressive potentials of the emerging SCO. Turkey is a formal Dialogue Partner exploring possible SCO membership application, as are Sri Lanka, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Nepal. This, simply said, is enormous.

BRI and a Gold-Backed Silk Road

Until recently Washington think tanks and the Government have sneered at the emerging Eurasian institutions such as SCO. Unlike BRICS which is not made up of contiguous countries in a vast land-mass, the SCO group forms a geographic entity called Eurasia. When Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the creation of what then was called the New Economic Silk Road at a meeting in Kazakhstan in 2013, few in the West took it seriously. The name officially today is the Belt, Road Initiative (BRI). Today, the world is beginning to take serious note of the scope of the BRI.

It’s clear that the economic diplomacy of China, as of Russia and her Eurasian Economic Union group of countries, is very much about realization of advanced high-speed rail, ports, energy infrastructure weaving together a vast new market that, within less than a decade at present pace, will overshadow any economic potentials in the debt-bloated economically stagnant OECD countries of the EU and North America.

What until now was vitally needed, but not clear, was a strategy to get the nations of Eurasia free from the dollar and from their vulnerability to further US Treasury sanctions and financial warfare based on their dollar dependence. This is now about to happen.

At the September 5 annual BRICS Summit in Xiamen, China, Russian President Putin made a simple and very clear statement of the Russian view of the present economic world. He stated,

“Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.”

To my knowledge he has never been so explicit about currencies. Put this in context of the latest financial architecture unveiled by Beijing, and it becomes clear the world is about to enjoy new degrees of economic freedom.

China Yuan Oil Futures

According to a report in the Japan Nikkei Asian Review, China is about to launch a crude oil futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan that will be convertible into gold. This, when coupled with other moves over the past two years by China to become a viable alternative to London and New York to Shanghai, becomes really interesting.

China is the world’s largest importer of oil, the vast majority of it still paid in US dollars. If the new Yuan oil futures contract gains wide acceptance, it could become the most important Asia-based crude oil benchmark, given that China is the world’s biggest oil importer. That would challenge the two Wall Street-dominated oil benchmark contracts in North Sea Brent and West Texas Intermediate oil futures that until now has given Wall Street huge hidden advantages.

That would be one more huge manipulation lever eliminated by China and its oil partners, including very specially Russia. Introduction of an oil futures contract traded in Shanghai in Yuan, which recently gained membership in the select IMF SDR group of currencies, oil futures especially when convertible into gold, could change the geopolitical balance of power dramatically away from the Atlantic world to Eurasia.

In April 2016 China made a major move to become the new center for gold exchange and the world center of gold trade, physical gold. China today is the world’s largest gold producer, far ahead of fellow BRICS member South Africa, with Russia number two.

China has now established a vast storage center in the Chinese Qianhai Free Trade Zone next to Shenzhen, the city of some 18 million immediately north of Hong Kong on the Pearl River Delta. Now China is completing construction of a permanent gold vault facility, including a bonded warehouse, trading floor and related offices areas. The 105-year-old Hong Kong-based Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society is in a joint project with ICBC, China’s largest state bank and its largest gold importing bank, to create the Qianhai Storage Center. It begins to become clear why Washington deceptive NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy tried, unsuccessfully, to create an anti-Beijing Color Revolution, the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong in late 2014.

Now to add the new oil futures contract traded in China in Yuan with the gold backing will lead to a dramatic shift by key OPEC members, even in the Middle East, to prefer gold-backed Yuan for their oil over inflated US dollars that carry a geopolitical risk as Qatar experienced following the Trump visit to Riyadh some months ago. Notably, Russian state oil giant, Rosneft just announced that Chinese state oil company, CEFC China Energy Company Ltd. Just bought a 14% share of Rosneft from Qatar. It’s all beginning to fit together into a very coherent strategy.

The dollar imperium is in its painful death agony and its patriarchs are in reality denial otherwise known as the Trump presidency. Meanwhile the saner elements of this world are about building constructive, peaceful alternatives. They are even open to admit Washington, under honest rules, to join them. That’s remarkably generous isn’t it?

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.

“Secret” documents, recently declassified by the Reagan presidential library, reveal senior White House officials reengaging a former CIA “proprietary,” The Asia Foundation, in “political action,” an intelligence term of art for influencing the actions of foreign governments.

The documents from 1982 came at a turning-point moment when the Reagan administration was revamping how the U.S. government endeavored to manipulate the internal affairs of governments around the world in the wake of scandals in the 1960s and 1970s involving the Central Intelligence Agency’s global covert operations.

Instead of continuing to rely heavily on the CIA, President Reagan and his national security team began offloading many of those “political action” responsibilities to “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) that operated in a more overt fashion and received funding from other U.S. government agencies.

Partially obscured by President Reagan, Walter Raymond Jr. was the CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist who oversaw “political action” and “psychological operations” projects at the National Security Council in the 1980s. Raymond is seated next to National Security Adviser John Poindexter. (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library)

But secrecy was still required for the involvement of these NGOs in the U.S. government’s strategies to bend the political will of targeted countries. If the “political action” of these NGOs were known, many countries would object to their presence; thus, the “secret” classification of the 1982 White House memos that I recently obtained via a “mandatory declassification review” from the archivists at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California.

In intelligence circles, “political action” refers to a wide range of activities to influence the policies and behaviors of foreign nations, from slanting their media coverage, to organizing and training opposition activists, even to setting the stage for “regime change.”

The newly declassified memos from the latter half of 1982 marked an ad hoc period of transition between the CIA scandals, which peaked in the 1970s, and the creation of more permanent institutions to carry out these semi-secretive functions, particularly the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was created in 1983.

Much of this effort was overseen by a senior CIA official, Walter Raymond Jr., who was moved to Reagan’s National Security Council’s staff where he managed a number of interagency task forces focused on “public diplomacy,” “psychological operations,” and “political action.”

Raymond, who had held top jobs in the CIA’s covert operations shop specializing in propaganda and disinformation, worked from the shadows inside Reagan’s White House, too. Raymond was rarely photographed although his portfolio of responsibilities was expansive. He brought into his orbit emerging “stars,” including Lt. Col. Oliver North (a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal), State Department propagandist (and now a leading neocon) Robert Kagan, and NED President Carl Gershman (who still heads NED with its $100 million budget).

Despite his camera avoidance, Raymond appears to have grasped his true importance. In his NSC files, I found a doodle of an organizational chart that had Raymond at the top holding what looks like the crossed handles used by puppeteers to control the puppets below them. The drawing fit the reality of Raymond as the behind-the-curtains operative who controlled various high-powered inter-agency task forces.

Earlier declassified documents revealed that Raymond also was the conduit between CIA Director William J. Casey and these so-called “pro-democracy” programs that used sophisticated propaganda strategies to influence not only the thinking of foreign populations but the American people, too.

This history is relevant again now amid the hysteria over alleged Russian “meddling” in last year’s U.S. presidential elections. If those allegations are true – and the U.S. government has still not presented any real proof  – the Russian motive would have been, in part, payback for Washington’s long history of playing games with the internal politics of Russia and other countries all across the planet.

A Fight for Money

The newly released memos describe bureaucratic discussions about funding levels for The Asia Foundation (TAF), with the only sensitive topic, to justify the “secret” stamp, being the reference to the U.S. government’s intent to exploit TAF’s programs for “political action” operations inside Asian countries.

Indeed, the opportunity for “political action” under TAF’s cover appeared to be the reason why Reagan’s budget cutters relented and agreed to restore funding to the foundation.

Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)

William Schneider Jr. of the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Sept. 2, 1982 memo that the Budget Review Board (BRB) had axed TAF funding earlier in the year.

“When the BRB last considered this issue on March 29, 1982, it decided not to include funding in the budget for a U.S. Government grant to TAF. The Board’s decision was based on the judgement that given the limited resources available for international affairs programs, funding for the Foundation could not be justified. During that March 29 meeting, the State Department was given the opportunity to fund TAF within its existing budget, but would not agree to do so.”

However, as Schneider noted in the memo to Deputy National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, “I now understand that a proposal to continue U.S. funding for the Asia Foundation is included in the ‘political action’ initiatives being developed by the State Department and several other agencies.

“We will, of course, work with you to reconsider the relative priority of support for the Foundation as part of these initiatives keeping in mind, however, the need for identifying budget offsets.”

A prime mover behind this change of heart appeared to be Walter Raymond, who surely knew TAF’s earlier status as a CIA “proprietary.” In 1966, Ramparts magazine exposed that relationship and led the Johnson administration to terminate the CIA’s money.

According to an April 12, 1967 memo from the State Department’s historical archives, CIA Director Richard Helms, responding to a White House recommendation, “ordered that covert funding of The Asia Foundation (TAF) shall be terminated at the earliest practicable opportunity.”

In coordination with the CIA’s “disassociation,” TAF’s board released what the memo described as “a carefully limited statement of admission of past CIA support. In so doing the Trustees sought to delimit the effects of an anticipated exposure of Agency support by the American press and, if their statement or some future expose does not seriously impair TAF’s acceptability in Asia, to continue operating in Asia with overt private and official support.”

The CIA memo envisioned future funding from “overt U.S. Government grants” and requested guidance from the White House’s covert action oversight panel, the 303 Committee, for designation of someone “to whom TAF management should look for future guidance and direction with respect to United States Government interests.”

In 1982, with TAF’s funding again in jeopardy, the CIA’s Walter Raymond rallied to its defense from his NSC post. In an undated memo to McFarlane, Raymond recalled that “the Department of State underscored that TAF had made significant contributions to U.S. foreign policies through fostering democratic institutions and, as a private organization, had accomplished things which a government organization cannot do.” [Emphasis in original]

Raymond’s bureaucratic intervention worked. By late 1982, the Reagan administration had arranged for TAF’s fiscal 1984 funding to go through the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) budget, which was being used to finance a range of President Reagan’s “democracy initiatives.” Raymond spelled out the arrangements in a Dec. 15, 1982 memo to National Security Advisor William Clark.

“The issue has been somewhat beclouded in the working levels at State since we have opted to fund all FY 84 democracy initiatives via the USIA budgetary submission,” Raymond wrote. “At the same time, it is essential State maintain its operational and management role with TAF.”

Over the ensuing three and half decades, TAF has continued to be  subsidized by U.S. and allied governments. According to its annual report for the year ending Sept. 30, 2016, TAF said it “is funded by an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress, competitively bid awards from governmental and multilateral development agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and by private foundations and corporations,” a sum totaling $94.5 million.

TAF, which operates in 18 Asian countries, describes its purpose as “improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia.” TAF’s press office had no immediate comment regarding the newly released Reagan-era documents.

Far From Alone

But TAF was far from alone as a private organization that functioned with U.S. government money and collaborated with U.S. officials in achieving Washington’s foreign policy goals.

For instance, other documents from the Reagan library revealed that Freedom House, a prominent human rights organization, sought advice and direction from Casey and Raymond while advertising the group’s need for financial help.

In an Aug. 9, 1982 letter to Raymond, Freedom House executive director Leonard R. Sussman wrote that

“Leo Cherne [another senior Freedom House official] has asked me to send these copies of Freedom Appeals. He has probably told you we have had to cut back this project to meet financial realities. We would, of course, want to expand the project once again when, as and if the funds become available.”

According to the documents, Freedom House remained near the top of Casey’s and Raymond’s thinking when it came to the most effective ways to deliver the CIA’s hardline foreign policy message to the American people and to the international community.

Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy.

On Nov. 4, 1982, Raymond wrote to NSC Advisor Clark about the “Democracy Initiative and Information Programs,” stating that

“Bill Casey asked me to pass on the following thought concerning your meeting with [right-wing billionaire] Dick Scaife, Dave Abshire [then a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board], and Co.

“Casey had lunch with them today and discussed the need to get moving in the general area of supporting our friends around the world. By this definition he is including both ‘building democracy’ and helping invigorate international media programs. The DCI [Casey] is also concerned about strengthening public information organizations in the United States such as Freedom House.

“A critical piece of the puzzle is a serious effort to raise private funds to generate momentum. Casey’s talk with Scaife and Co. suggests they would be very willing to cooperate. Suggest that you note White House interest in private support for the Democracy initiative.”

In a Jan. 25, 1983 memo, Raymond wrote,

“We will move out immediately in our parallel effort to generate private support” for “public diplomacy” operations.

Then, on May 20, 1983, Raymond recounted in another memo that $400,000 had been raised from private donors brought to the White House Situation Room by USIA Director Charles Wick. According to that memo, the money was divided among several organizations, including Freedom House and Accuracy in Media, a right-wing media attack group.

In an Aug. 9, 1983 memo, Raymond outlined plans to arrange private backing for that effort. He said USIA Director Wick “via [Australian publishing magnate Rupert] Murdock [sic], may be able to draw down added funds” to support pro-Reagan initiatives. Raymond recommended “funding via Freedom House or some other structure that has credibility in the political center.”

Questions of Legality

Raymond remained a CIA officer until April 1983 when he resigned so in his words “there would be no question whatsoever of any contamination of this” propaganda operation to woo the American people into supporting Reagan’s policies.

Raymond fretted, too, about the legality of Casey’s role in the effort to influence U.S. public opinion because of the legal prohibition against the CIA influencing U.S. policies and politics. Raymond confided in one memo that it was important “to get [Casey] out of the loop,” but Casey never backed off and Raymond continued to send progress reports to his old boss well into 1986.

It was “the kind of thing which [Casey] had a broad catholic interest in,” Raymond said during his Iran-Contra deposition in 1987. He then offered the excuse that Casey undertook this apparently illegal interference in domestic affairs “not so much in his CIA hat, but in his adviser to the president hat.”

In 1983, Casey and Raymond focused on creating a permanent funding mechanism to support private organizations that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. The idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would be a conduit for this money.

But Casey recognized the need to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. In one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III, Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment,” but added: “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate.”

A document in Raymond’s files offered examples of what would be funded, including “Grenada — 50 K — To the only organized opposition to the Marxist government of Maurice Bishop (The Seaman and Waterfront Workers Union). A supplemental 50 K to support free TV activity outside Grenada” and “Nicaragua — $750 K to support an array of independent trade union activity, agricultural cooperatives.”

The National Endowment for Democracy took shape in late 1983 as Congress decided to also set aside pots of money — within NED — for the Republican and Democratic parties and for organized labor, creating enough bipartisan largesse that passage was assured.

But some in Congress thought it was important to wall the NED off from any association with the CIA, so a provision was included to bar the participation of any current or former CIA official, according to one congressional aide who helped write the legislation.

This aide told me that one night late in the 1983 session, as the bill was about to go to the House floor, the CIA’s congressional liaison came pounding at the door to the office of Rep. Dante Fascell, a senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a chief sponsor of the bill.

The frantic CIA official conveyed a single message from CIA Director Casey: the language barring the participation of CIA personnel must be struck from the bill, the aide recalled, noting that Fascell consented to the demand, not fully recognizing its significance.

The aide said Fascell also consented to the Reagan administration’s choice of Carl Gershman to head the National Endowment for Democracy, again not recognizing how this decision would affect the future of the new entity and American foreign policy.

Gershman, who had followed the classic neoconservative path from youthful socialism to fierce anticommunism, became NED’s first (and, to this day, only) president. Though NED is technically independent of U.S. foreign policy, Gershman in the early years coordinated decisions on grants with Raymond at the NSC.

For instance, on Jan. 2, 1985, Raymond wrote to two NSC Asian experts that

“Carl Gershman has called concerning a possible grant to the Chinese Alliance for Democracy (CAD). I am concerned about the political dimension to this request. We should not find ourselves in a position where we have to respond to pressure, but this request poses a real problem to Carl.”

Besides clearing aside political obstacles for Gershman, Raymond also urged NED to give money to Freedom House in a June 21, 1985 letter obtained by Professor John Nichols of Pennsylvania State University.

What the documents at the Reagan library make clear is that Raymond and Casey stayed active shaping the decisions of the new funding mechanism throughout its early years. (Casey died in 1987; Raymond died in 2003.)

Lots of Money

Since its founding, NED has ladled out hundreds of millions of dollars to NGOs all over the world, focusing on training activists, building media outlets, and supporting civic organizations. In some geopolitical hotspots, NED may have scores of projects running at once, such as in Ukraine before the 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych and touched off the New Cold War with Russia. Via such methods, NED helped achieve the “political action” envisioned by Casey and Raymond.

From the start, NED also became a major benefactor for Freedom House, beginning with a $200,000 grant in 1984 to build “a network of democratic opinion-makers.” In NED’s first four years, from 1984 and 1988, it lavished $2.6 million on Freedom House, accounting for more than one-third of its total income, according to a study by the liberal Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which was entitled “Freedom House: Portrait of a Pass-Through.”

Over the ensuing decades, Freedom House has become almost an NED subsidiary, often joining NED in holding policy conferences and issuing position papers, both organizations pushing primarily a neoconservative agenda, challenging countries deemed insufficiently “free,” including Syria, Ukraine (before the 2014 coup) and Russia.

NED and Freedom House often work as a kind of tag-team with NED financing NGOs inside targeted countries and Freedom House berating those governments if they try to crack down on U.S.-funded NGOs.

For instance, on Nov. 16, 2012, NED and Freedom House joined together to denounce a law passed by the Russian parliament requiring Russian recipients of foreign political money to register with the government. Or, as NED and Freedom House framed the issue: the Russian Duma sought to “restrict human rights and the activities of civil society organizations and their ability to receive support from abroad. Changes to Russia’s NGO legislation will soon require civil society organizations receiving foreign funds to choose between registering as ‘foreign agents’ or facing significant financial penalties and potential criminal charges.”

Of course, the United States has a nearly identical Foreign Agent Registration Act that likewise requires entities that receive foreign funding and seek to influence U.S. government policy to register with the Justice Department or face possible fines or imprisonment.

But the Russian law would impede NED’s efforts to destabilize the Russian government through funding of political activists, journalists and civic organizations, so it was denounced as an infringement of human rights and helped justify Freedom House’s rating of Russia as “not free.”

The Russian government’s concerns were not entirely paranoid. On Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman, in effect, charted the course for the crisis in Ukraine and the greater neocon goal of regime change in Russia. In a Washington Post op-ed, Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

The long history of the U.S. government interfering covertly or semi-covertly in the politics of countries all over the world is the ironic backdrop to the current frenzy over Russia-gate and Russia’s alleged dissemination of emails that undermined Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The allegations are denied by both Putin and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange who published the Democratic emails – and the U.S. government has presented no solid evidence to support the accusations of “Russian meddling” – but if the charges are true, they could be seen as a case of turnabout as fair play.

Except in this case, U.S. officials, who have meddled ceaselessly with their “political action” operations in countries all over the world, don’t like even the chance that they could get a taste of their own medicine.

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

No one wants nuclear war, yet that is the trajectory the US and NATO are on with not just North Korea, but potentially China and Russia too, journalist John Pilger fears. In fact, he says the crisis over North Korea is just “a sideshow to the main game.”

Featured image: Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar

In poker, smart players know that the best thing to do with a weak hand is dump it.

Not so the United Nations. Libya is doubling down on backing the failing Government of National Accord (GNA), hoping that by reopening its UN base in the capital, the previously fortified “Palm City Complex,” things will improve.

They are also sending some sending in Gurkha “Security Guards,” but nowhere near enough to actually make a difference against the Tripoli-based militias. For two hundred years the Gurkhas have been the most feared force in the British Army. If anyone can destroy the Tripoli militias, they can, but what’s the point? Why shore up an unelected five-man government?

The GNA was created by the UN two years ago to unite the country and end the civil war. Instead, the GNA’s cabinet is unable even to unite Tripoli, which is “controlled” by various militias. Hence the need for Gurkhas to stop militias overrunning the ostentatious UN compound, “Palm City,” which is itself a provocation to the Libyan people.

The elected parliament in Tobruk, rival to the GNA, is increasingly calling the shots. Thanks to the increasingly popular Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, Tobruk now controls the majority of the country and its oil infrastructure and ports. The idea that the GNA will ever rule over areas held by Tobruk is laughable. But, having created the GNA, the UN remains determined to back it. Last week Haftar banned GNA personnel from visiting the East — so much for the alleged French July détente efforts.

What makes the UN case so hopeless is that outside powers are split and at odds – in particular France and Italy — over who to support.

One European country is even pondering supporting the son of the late Colonel Gaddafi — that is how desperate the situation has become.

Italy supports the GNA because militias in western Libya are in a position to stop people-smuggling. Italy faces parliamentary elections in 2018 and politicians are aware the electorate will focus on the immigration issue.

Most migrants from Libya end up in Italy, not France, and for Paris migration is less important than combating terrorism. Haftar is already combating Islamist terrorists in Libya, making France a natural ally.

“Serraj leverages off of Italian support,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a doctoral candidate in geopolitics and Libyan commentator, adding “and you can be sure Haftar makes use of the prestige of France’s apparent support for his military campaign. On the ground, the inability of foreign states to coordinate among themselves on Libya has always generated more chaos.”

In July, Fayez Serraj, the UN-designated prime minister from the Government of National Accord, met with Haftar in Paris to sign a peace deal between the two sides. But neither leader actually signed the document. In an interview with France 24, Haftar later stated,

“Serraj is a good man, but he cannot implement what he agrees to.”

Russia showed its support for Haftar by inviting him aboard an aircraft carrier earlier this year. It has since hedged its bets, insisting it is working for reconciliation by talking to all sides, including the Misrata-based Al-Bunyan Al-Marsoos (BMB) militia.

Yesterday the BMB militia surprisingly pledged its support for an unknown multi-millionaire businessman Basit Igtet, a Swiss based Libyan with alleged links to Israel and designs on becoming President of Libya!

One thing must be made clear: The BMB Militia are enemies of Haftar’s LNA.

Lev Dengov, head of the “Russia’s Contact Group for a Libyan settlement,” recently stated,

“Tripoli and Tobruk personnel share the same embassy building in Moscow, engineered by us, to bring them closer to each other.”

Britain is trying to have it both ways. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who presumably facilitated the Gurkhas’ deployment, visited Serraj to show support, flying east to see Haftar on the of 24th August at his headquarters, urging the field marshall to keep to the “unsigned” agreement announced in Paris. But why should Hafter do so? It’s farcical.

The United States has kept a low profile thus far. Though rumour has it there has been a shift in policy in the last few days. Expect Rex Tillerson to get involved in the near future.

With the big powers so divided, and the GNA experiment having failed, the new UN envoy, Ghassan Salame, a Lebanese politician, said by some to be distrusted by the Russians, would have done better to dump the GNA.

Instead Salame is planning to send UN staff and “British Gurkhas,” disguised as “guards,” into the Tripoli cauldron, putting many lives needlessly at risk to support a failed and unelected government.

When will the UN throw in its losing hand? And when will Russia return to the aces it had when it supported Haftar?

The Prevent strategy originally set up in 2006 by Tony Blair’s government was reviewed by the 2011 coalition government and then fully updated in a 116 page document that describes the potential threat of terrorism in Britain:

“Intelligence indicates that a terrorist attack in our country is ‘highly likely’. Experience tells us that the threat comes not just from foreign nationals but also from terrorists born and bred in Britain. It is therefore vital that our counter-terrorism strategy contains a plan to prevent radicalisation and stop would-be terrorists from committing mass murder. Osama bin Laden may be dead, but the threat from Al Qa’ida inspired terrorism is not. The Prevent programme we inherited from the last Government was flawed. It confused the delivery of Government policy to promote integration with Government policy to prevent terrorism. It failed to confront the extremist ideology at the heart of the threat we face; and in trying to reach those at risk of radicalisation, funding sometimes even reached the very extremist organisations that Prevent should have been confronting.”

The basic strategy was then redefined as:

“First, we will respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat from those who promote it. Second, we will prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and ensure that they are given appropriate advice and support. Third, we will work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation.”

All seems good and reasonable in a lengthy document, written and signed off by the then Home Secretary Theresa May.

Clearly, the Prevent programme was originally designed to combat terrorism. It’s new rollout included mandatory training for public bodies. By 2015 over half a million public sectors workers had undergone Prevent training, which included schools and the NHS.

Criticisms of the strategy emerged that included the alienation of Muslim communities, that it restricted freedom of expression and impacted on human rights. This has been echoed by a number of NGOs. A UN representative also suggested that the Prevent programme was having the opposite of its intended effect by “dividing, stigmatising and alienating segments of the population”.

The government has said the strategy was working and “had made a significant impact in preventing people being drawn into terrorism”. This was widely reported in the press throughout the last five years.

Less publicly known is that the Prevent strategy is part of “Channel”. This is another strategy where the Police work with public bodies, including local councils, social workers, NHS staff, schools and the justice system to identify those at risk of being drawn into terrorism, assess what the risk might be and then develop tailored support for those referred to them.

At this point, with criticism or not, most of what is laid out seems on the face of it to be reasonable given the difficulty in approaching problems such as being radicalised, not forgetting that radicalisation is an ideology and nothing else.

The Canary news outlet has published documentation acquired by ‘Cage’ that proves the Prevent strategy, a strategy designed purely for prevention of terrorism has defined the Occupy movement, anti-fracking environmentalists, the Green Party, and individuals in anti-war and anti-austerity protests – as extremists worthy of being in the collective group of ‘terrorist threats.’ One document even highlights individuals who ‘home educate’ their children as a threat to national security.

We always knew a few years ago that organisations like the Occupy movement were under extreme surveillance and infiltration tactics and yet were still defined as ‘domestic extremists’ and placed in the same category of al-Qaida and IRA Terrorism in what emerged as Project Fawn. In that leak even student protests were targeted by police and listed as threats to society alongside David Copeland, a neo-Nazi who carried out a nail-bombing campaign in 1999. It looks like the Prevent strategy is going the same way as recent terror related legislation over the last few years that was either broadened or abused.

The Guardian reported back in 2015 that

“A coalition of police monitoring groups, the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), accused the City of London police of conflating protest with terrorism and violence. Kevin Blowe, a co-ordinator of Netpol, said this was repeated around the country and was the “result of including ill-defined labels, like ‘domestic extremism’, within the language and strategies of counter-terrorism”.

Another document released by Cage states that 87 percent of those being monitored are individuals, 11 percent are institutions, but that only 2 percent are ideologies. Emerging threats were referrals coming from Syria – hardly a big surprise given Britain’s role in destroying yet another sovereign nation without good reason.

Netpol went on to say at the time that:

“Programmes like the government’s Prevent strategy overwhelmingly target and stigmatise Muslim communities, but as Project Fawn shows, they also provide plenty of scope to include almost any group of political activists that the police dislike or consider an inconvenience. There a real disdain for legitimate rights to exercise freedoms of expression and assembly in a free society, which leads to individuals having their lawful activities recorded and retained on secret police intelligence databases.”

Since then the government have gone on to create more anti-radicalisation programmes, in addition to Prevent.

• Pursue—its main aim is “to stop terrorist attacks”.
• Protect—“to strengthen our protection against terrorism attack”.
• Prepare—“where an attack cannot be stopped, to mitigate its impact”.

Meanwhile, Britain’s freedoms continue to be massively eroded by a government hell bent on ensuring our endemic surveillance state is supported through legislation such the Investigatory Powers Act that effectively legalises a range of tools for snooping and hacking by the security services over the wider general public. Whistleblower Edward Snowden stated that –

“The UK has legalised the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies.”

Snowden has not been proved wrong.

The Guardian reported six months ago that Liberal Democrat peer Lord Strasburger, one of the leading voices against the investigatory powers bill, said:

“We do have to worry about a UK Donald Trump. If we do end up with one, and that is not impossible, we have created the tools for repression. The real Donald Trump has access to all the data that the British spooks are gathering and we should be worried about that.”

Within this Act, journalists are no longer protected – another sure sign of autocratic tendencies.

In the end, even Max Hill QC, the barrister appointed by the government to be the independent reviewer of terrorism laws in the United Kingdom has said enough is enough.

Speaking exclusively to The Independent, a few days ago, Max Hill QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, argued potential jihadis can be stopped with existing “general” laws that are not always being used effectively to take threats off the streets and that the “Government should consider abolishing all anti-terror laws as they are “unnecessary” in the fight against extremists”.

Hill also expressed concern over the threat to civil liberties posed by some proposed anti-terror measures, warning laws aimed at tackling hate preachers could easily veer into the territory of “thought crime”.

David Videcette, a former Scotland Yard counter-terror detective, agreed, arguing that police should be using “disruption” techniques that are frequently applied to organised crime.

“The profile of religious extremists is changing, they are more criminal-based,” he told The Independent. “We need to be better … the counter-terror work needs to be more crime-focused.”

Max Hill and David Videcette’s comments will fall on deaf years though.

Like so many other Acts of parliament, terror laws in their various guises are being used for nefarious reasons. Under the cover of national security, legislation such as the Public Space Protection Orders, the expansion of Privately Owned Public Spaces, The Anti-Terrorism and Security Act, the Terrorism Act and RIPA continue to be used against civil society, civil liberty and human rights.

Considering that the BBC – a publicly funded organisation uses terror laws to hunt down licence fee dodgers, local councils use them for council tax arrears, dog fouling, illegal sun bed use and even feeding pigeons, was it really any big surprise that the Prevent strategy was going to be abused by the authorities in their continued battle against the civil liberties of the general public in yet another threat to the principles of British democracy.

All images in this article are from TruePublica.

Is there anyone in Trump’s government who is not an imbecile?

After years of endless military threats against Russia—remember CIA deputy director Mike Morell saying on TV (Charlie Rose show) that the US should start killing Russians to give them a message, and Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley threatening “We’ll beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before”—now the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin threatens China. If China doesn’t abide by Washington’s new sanctions on North Korea, Mnuchin said the US “will put additional sanctions on them [China] and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system.”

Here is the broke US government $20 trillion in public debt, having to print money with which to buy its own bonds, threatening the second largest economy in the world, an economy on purchasing power parity terms that is larger than the US economy.

Take a moment to think about Mnuchin’s threat to China. How many US firms are located in China? It is not only Apple and Nike. Would sanctions on China mean that the US firms could not sell their Chinese made products in the US or anywhere outside China? Do you think the global US corporations would stand for this?

What if China responded by nationalizing all US factories and all Western owned banks in China and Hong Kong?  

Mnuchin is like the imbecile Nikki Haley. He doesn’t know who he is threatening.  

Consider Mnuchin’s threat to exclude China from the international dollar system. Nothing could do more harm to the US and more good to China.

A huge amount of economic transactions would simply exit the dollar system, reducing its scope and importance.  Most importantly, it would finally dawn on the Chinese and Russian governments that being a part of the dollar system is a massive liability with no benefits. Russia and China should years ago have created their own system.  Being part of Washington’s system simply lets Washington make threats and impose sanctions. 

The reason Russia and China are blind to this is that they foolishly sent students to the US to study economics.  These students returned completely brainwashed with neoliberal economics, “junk economics” in Michael Hudson’s term. This American economics makes Russian and Chinese economists de facto American stooges. They support policies that serve Washington instead of their own countries.

If China and Russia want to be sovereign countries, they must pray that Mnuchin does cut them off from the dollar system that exploits them. Then Russia and China will have to put in place their own system and learn real economics instead of propaganda posing as economics that serves Washington’s interest.

TOKYO/LIMA – Today, 47 civil society organizations delivered an open letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Tokyo 2020 Olympic authorities, at the start of the IOC Executive Board Meeting in Lima, Peru. The letter reiterated grave and mounting concerns about the legitimacy and accountability of IOC sustainability commitments and the reputation and credibility of the iconic Olympic games. The letter criticizes the Olympics for knowingly exploiting tropical forests and potentially fueling human rights abuses in the construction and implementation of the games. The groups are calling for full transparency and an end to the use of rainforest wood to construct the Tokyo Olympic facilities, including the new National Olympic Stadium.

The signatory organizations, which include a broad cross section of NGOs with expertise in supply chain risks associated with environmental and human rights, are critical of the continued lack of transparency by Tokyo Olympic authorities.

“The Tokyo Olympic authorities are hiding the fact that they are using massive volumes of tropical wood to construct the new National Olympic Stadium. Without full transparency of the timber supply chain, claims to hosting a sustainable Olympics are completely baseless,” said Hana Heineken with Rainforest Action Network.

NGOs claim that the IOC’s failure to address the obvious risk of unsustainability is a clear breach of its own commitment to “include sustainability in all aspects of the Olympic Games.” In particular, they point to a major loophole in the Tokyo 2020 procurement policy that allows wood used for concrete formwork to be exempted from the policy’s environmental, labor and human rights requirements, despite the majority of this type of wood in Japan coming from the rainforests of Malaysia and Indonesia where problems of illegal logging, rainforest destruction, and land rights violations persist.

On December 6 2016, 44 NGOs sent a letter to the IOC warning them of the high risk that illegal and unsustainable rainforest wood would be used to construct Tokyo’s new Olympic National Stadium and other related facilities. The groups warned that failure to adopt additional safeguards and due diligence measures at the outset of the construction could result in complicity with human rights abuses, illegal logging, and rainforest destruction. The letter offered evidence of high risk timber from Malaysia being used in Tokyo construction projects and argued that the Tokyo 2020 Timber Sourcing Code is ill-equipped to prevent the use of risky timber. Yet, not a single demand put forward in the letter has been met.

Today’s letter states that the new National Olympic Stadium is using significant volumes of rainforest wood as concrete formwork plywood. They point to evidence that tropical plywood supplied by a notorious Malaysian timber company called Shin Yang is being used, despite the company’s history of illegal logging, rainforest destruction, and human rights violations. While Tokyo Olympic authorities have defended their use of Shin Yang wood by claiming it is certified, the letter refutes claims to sustainability with evidence that Shin Yang’s certified wood is linked to human rights violations in Sarawak, Malaysia. The letter also states that the majority of wood being used for the Stadium as concrete formwork is in fact uncertified and very likely to have originated from the rainforests of Malaysia or Indonesia, which supplies most concrete formwork plywood used in Japan.

“Shin Yang’s certification is meaningless in the face of evidence from Indigenous representatives themselves that its logging practices are destroying Indigenous peoples’ traditional lands and livelihoods,” said Peg Putt, CEO of Markets For Change.

Tokyo 2020 authorities are in the midst of developing procurement standards for palm oil and pulp & paper, commodities that are major drivers of tropical deforestation. Given Japan’s significant consumption of rainforest-derived paper and growing consumption of palm oil, NGOs warn Olympic authorities to adopt robust social and environmental safeguards or face further criticism for fueling rainforest destruction, illegal logging and human rights violations.

Featured image is from the author.

Sixteen years after the event, 9/11 stands as striking evidence of an insidious assault on science. Officialdom’s dogged adherence to a discredited account of 9/11 stands as a stark illustration of this phenomenon. The subordination of scientific method to the higher imperatives of imperial war propaganda is epitomized by officialdom’s failure to formulate a credible account of the 9/11 debacle.

Universities have become important sites of this betrayal. The sabotage of society’s primary platforms of scholarly enterprise forms an essential feature of a more pervasive attack from within.  Everywhere, but especially on the Internet, fundamental freedoms are being menaced to investigate, publish, publicize and discuss interpretations that might undermine or inconvenience power.  

As a tenured full professor with 27 years of seniority at my home institution, I am currently facing a sharp attack on the remaining protections for academic freedom. In early October of 2016 the President of the University of Lethbridge, Michael J. Mahon, suspended me without pay. He also prohibited me from stepping foot on the University of Lethbridge campus. In explaining his actions Dr. Mahon’s speculated I might have violated a section of the Alberta Human Rights Act.

The vagueness of this assertion exposes the reality that severe punishment was imposed without any proper investigation. Dr. Mahon’s abrupt deviation from the terms of the collective agreement with my faculty association has established precedents and countervailing responses with broad implications.  Adversarial proceedings on this matter began this August in the Lethbridge Alberta Court House. As evidenced by the intervention of the 68,000 members of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the outcome of this case will in all probability significantly affect the future of university governance in Canada and beyond.

Dr. Mahon’ suspension letter detailed that there was a possibility that I might be guilty because of allegations that

a) “my Facebook page had been used for virulent anti-semitic comments “and

b) “Inferring that Israelis, and hence Jewish individuals, were responsible for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.”

Dr. Michael J. Mahon (Source: uleth.ca)

Before dealing with the manipulation of my Facebook wall in the prelude to my suspension, allow me to linger on questions concerning the academy and 9/11. Along with government, media and law enforcement agencies, universities are deeply implicated in sabotaging the quest for 9/11 truth and many other varieties of inconvenient truth as well. The punitive measures directed at me can be seen as a warning to scare other professors into compliance with all manner of official stories?

As for my own reading of the available evidence, I am far from alone in positing that Israel First partisans, including the American neocons that dominated the Project for the New American Century, are prominent among the many protagonists of the 9/11 crimes. These crimes extend to orchestrating the media spin, rigging investigations, and sustaining the ongoing 9/11 cover-up. In publications and on False Flag Weekly News, Dr. Kevin Barrett and I have joined others in extending this investigative and interpretation trajectory into many cases of possible false flag terrorism particularly after 2001.

I am astonished that the Administration of my University became so aggressive in attempting to outlaw an evidence-based interpretation of the most transformative event of the twenty-first century. New frontiers of subversion are being pioneered in the U of L’s audacious administrative attempt to criminalize independent academic work.

What are the implications of subordinating the scholarly judgments of academic experts on campus to the executive dictates of administrators?  How can the principles of critical thinking be cultivated when adherence to conformity is so aggressively enforced by administrators?

The University Administration extends its claims of academic control several steps further in the complaint it brought forward to the Alberta Human Rights Commission seven months after I was suspended. The complaint begins with six sweeping statements outlining topics that the complainants want removed from the reach of critical academic examination. One of the complainants chief assertions is the Islamophobia-inducing proposition that “acts of terrorism between 2001 to the present… were in fact committed and financed by Islamic terrorists.”

Facebook Machinations

A maliciously-engineered Facebook operation created the original catalyst of the smear and disinformation campaign leading to my suspension. Without the originating momentum set in motion by the Facebook operation the campaign to discredit me could not have unfolded as it did. The most public face of this campaign was presented by the Canadian extension of the Israeli- and US-based Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. According to B’nai Brith Canada, an abhorrent post appeared and then disappeared on my Facebook wall during a short interval on Aug. 26, 2016.  The text of the disgusting digital item proclaimed that the Holocaust didn’t happen and that Jews should be “KILLED, EVERY LAST ONE.”

This heinous assertion goes against everything I have tried to stand for in my life including in my academic work.  As soon as I became aware of this blaspheme embedded in the planted Facebook post I publicly condemned it. By mid-September, however, my persecutors were far advanced in pushing forward the manufactured crisis. By then B’nai Brith Canada was mounting a petition campaign demanding that I be investigated, fired and silenced.

Recently the results of a Freedom of Information inquiry have brought to light documents illuminating the elaborate defamation pointed my way in the hours and days immediately following the August 26 Facebook operation. One document was sent to the Office of the University of Lethbridge President and copied to the Premier of Alberta as well as the Alberta Justice Minister. Citing the B’nai Brith, the document’s author characterized me as an “advocate for the murder of Jews.”

Another letter dated 1 Sept. 2016 was signed by the President of the Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association. This signator, who has since passed away, cited the complete text of the offending Facebook post. The letter to Dr. Mahon indicated the reprehensible words actually came “from my lips.”

I cannot understand why Dr. Mahon did not at this juncture properly investigate by consulting me directly and conferring with the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association. Instead the President opted to push ahead with drastic action based on incomplete information combined with the intense pressure brought to bear on him by an extremely influential external political lobby

Hate Speech Deceptions

None of my persecutors has yet identified the true source of the offending Facebook item. My own research into the matter, including my email exchange with cartoonist Ben Garrison, has led me to Joshua Goldberg. American Herald Tribune has published my article on this young man. Goldberg is widely reported to be the creator of many Internet personalities, all of whom generate abundant “hate speech deceptions” from various ethnic and ideological perspectives.

Goldberg’s case exposes much about the wholesale manufacturing and misrepresentation of so-called “hate speech” to justify censorship on the Internet. In my case an atrocious digital item was strategically inserted with the aim of ruining me professionally and personally.

The intervention of Internet leviathans like Google and Facebook is especially aggressive when it comes to disappearing material critical of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. My own experience with the Canadian branch of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith points to the strength of this pattern. Why is it that this same Zionist organization is being tasked with the strategic responsibility of censoring and categorizing You Tube videos?

As illustrated by William Pepper’s development of civil litigation to bring to light the US government’s role in the tragedy suffered by the family of Martin Luther King Jr., we rarely get criminal trials pressed against the world’s most powerful interests and operatives. Instances of possible false flag terrorism, but especially 9/11, have been rendered especially immune to any kind of trial that would put before the public evidence garnered from genuine investigations of facts.

Perhaps the reference to 9/11 in a University Administration’s efforts to condemn me for academic thought crimes and speech crimes will force the forbidden topic into some kind of evidence-based juridical procedure. When it comes to understanding the real dynamics of who did what to whom on 9/11, the truth must prevail.

Dr. Hall is editor in chief of American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

Featured image is from the author.

Last week, Israel began holding its largest military drill in 20 years, and it was specifically designed to simulate a war with Hezbollah.

From the Independent:

“The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has deployed thousands of air, sea and land personnel to the Lebanese border for its biggest military drill in almost two decades, a show of strength designed to [intimidate] Hezbollah and Iran even as their power grows in neighbouring Syria.”

Beginning last Monday, soldiers and reservists alike practiced simulating a 10-day-long war with Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored Shi’a militant group located mainly in Lebanon. Israel even prepared two field hospitals, as well as trucks and helicopters for evacuating simulated casualties.

According to the Independent, the drill began with small border skirmishes and escalated into a full-on war with the aim of completely obliterating the Lebanese opponents. Even the soldiers playing the role of Hezbollah were to be dressed in the group’s traditional attire and will don their yellow and green flag.

“The purpose of the drill is to test the fitness of the Northern Command and the relevant battalions during an emergency,” one IDF officer told Haaretz.

In the exercise, Israel was to give the armed forces an order to “vanquish” Hezbollah, “the state in which Hezbollah either has no ability or desire to attack anymore,” the IDF officer explained.

The drill, known as the “Light of the Grain” drill, took 18 months to plan. It utilizes fighter planes, ships, submarines, drones, cyber and canine units, and Israel’s missile defense system.

Speaking of Israel’s missile defense system, Defense News recently reported that Israel is readying its Iron Dome defense system for its first intercept test in the U.S., part and parcel of the U.S. Army’s demonstration aimed at selecting an interim solution for a medium and short-range air defense system.

The Iron Dome has proven very effective, scoring over 1,500 intercepts against Gaza-launched rockets since it was first deployed in 2011. However, it is now being tested to see if it can defend Israel against other potential threats, as its proven capabilities “don’t even come close” to the full extent of the system’s capabilities, according to Ari Sacher, Rafael Ltd.’s Iron Dome Systems Project Manager.

Clearly, Israel is preparing its defense systems for something far greater than the standard home-made rockets found flying out of the Gaza strip. Considering the fact that an Israeli military general is drafting a defense policy document with the specific goal of launching a war with Iran, this might give us some clues about what Israel is preparing for specifically.

Over a decade ago, Israel fought a major short-lived war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has been preparing for its rematch with Hezbollah for some time now, as well as striking Hezbollah targets from within Syria. Hezbollah has been a natural ally of Syria, even dating back to the reign of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father.

Israel also continues to strike Syrian territory to this day in a flagrant disregard for international law, specifically targeting Syrian government facilities with ties to Hezbollah. Syria and Hezbollah have not responded yet, but no one seems to be able to answer the question: what happens if Iran, Syria and/or Hezbollah decide to respond in kind with an equally aggressive act?

A senior Israeli official warned the Russian government that if Iran continues to expand its presence in Syria, Israel plans to respond by bombing the Syrian president’s palaces. This is all while Israel knows full well that it cannot realistically take on Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah by itself and without American intervention.

Hezbollah is a quasi-ally of not only Iran, but Russia, too. Russia recently threatened to veto any UN Security Council resolution that describes Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Russia also warned Israel indirectly not to attack Iran in Syria, explaining that parties that violate international law and undermine Syria’s sovereignty will not be tolerated.

Not to mention that in response to Donald Trump’s April strike on the Syrian government, Russia and Iran issued a joint statement with Hezbollah warning that the next time such an attack occurs, they will all respond in kind.

It is also worth noting that Hezbollah has spent six years in the brutal Syrian battle arena, during which time they have attained new recruits, battle-hardened their members, and developed the belief that they can successfully take on a number of military forces in the region. As the Hill explains:

“The new cadre of fighters Hezbollah is bringing in is also professionalizing what was previously an explicitly guerrilla-oriented organization. The fight for Syria against the nominally Sunni ‘Takfiri’ (apostate) ISIS, has been a gift to the Shia Hezbollah, spurring recruitment efforts. Put simply, Hezbollah is not just getting better at fighting, its army is also getting bigger.”

Prior to the 2006 conflict, Hezbollah had approximately 13,000 rockets. It now boasts some 150,000 rockets and missiles, as well as Russian-supplied missiles that “can hit anywhere in Israel,” according to one Lebanese commander.

Unsurprisingly, none of this is headline news. Only those paying attention are aware of these looming developments and the dangers of a direct confrontation involving Israel — a stalwart American ally — approaching the Middle East’s numerous battle theaters. Whether or not the world will sleep-walk into this war remains to be seen; perhaps, and, ideally, Israel’s invasion simulation will act as a deterrent only and ensure that cooler heads will prevail in order to diffuse the situation between these regional adversaries.

Under heavy pressure and threats from Washington, the UN Security Council voted unanimously on Monday evening for harsh new economic sanctions on North Korea following its sixth nuclear test, the largest to date, on September 3. Far from easing tensions in North East Asia, the resolution sets the stage for further US provocations and heightens the danger of military conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

While the US made concessions to China and Russia to obtain their support, the new bans further isolate the North Korean economy and threaten to precipitate an economic and political crisis in Pyongyang. Following on from the Obama administration’s sanctions last year, the Trump administration is not specifically targeting North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, but is seeking to cripple the country economically.

After North Korea’s nuclear test, Washington pressed for a complete oil embargo, a global ban on the use of North Korean workers abroad and a mandate to use military force to inspect ships suspected of carrying goods prohibited under UN resolutions. China and Russia, which fear the US will exploit any crisis in Pyongyang to install a pro-American regime, opposed these sweeping measures.

The compromise UN resolution, however, still imposes severe penalties on North Korea, including:

• An annual cap of 8.5 million barrels on the sale of refined and crude oil to North Korea. The sale of natural gas and condensates is prohibited, to close off possible alternative fuels. A US official told the Washington Post that the figure represents a 30 percent cut.
• UN member states will be required not to renew the contracts of an estimated 93,000 North Korean guest workers, whose wages bring in an estimated $500 million a year to North Korea. The only caveat is for guest workers who are deemed necessary for humanitarian assistance or denuclearisation.
• Countries will also be obliged to inspect ships suspected of carrying North Korean goods that might be banned under UN resolutions. Any ship found to be carrying banned goods will be subject to an asset freeze and may be barred from sailing into ports. The resolution, however, drops the US proposal to allow the use of military force, and the consent of the country in which the ship is registered is required.
• The purchase of all North Korean textiles is banned. Last year, textile exports were $726 million, or more than a quarter of North Korea’s total export income.

This comes on top of UN bans last month on the export of coal, iron, iron ore, lead and seafood estimated to be worth $1 billion, or about one third of export income.

The resolution did not include a travel ban and asset freeze on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as originally proposed by Washington.

While blocking aspects of the draft US resolution, China announced its own unilateral financial sanctions yesterday that could have a far-reaching impact on North Korea.

The country’s top five banks—Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Bank of Communications—will freeze the opening of new accounts by North Korean individuals or companies. Three of the five banks said they had started “cleaning out” existing accounts by blocking new deposits.

The Financial Times pointed out there were ways to circumvent the new ban, including through the use of Chinese citizens as intermediaries. Two Chinese businessmen who run companies in North Korea, told the newspaper that all their payments to North Korean staff were in Chinese currency, avoiding the use of Chinese or North Korean banks.

Nevertheless, the new Chinese sanctions will make it far harder for major North Korean enterprises to conduct financial transactions in China—their chief connection to the global financial system.

Beijing’s banking ban is a clear sign of rising tensions with the Pyongyang regime, which has publicly criticised China for supporting UN sanctions. Relations between the two countries, which are formally allies, deteriorated markedly after Kim Jong-un ordered the execution in 2013 of his uncle Jang Song-thaek, who was regarded as close to Beijing.

China’s President Xi Jinping is yet to meet Kim Jong-un, and the last high-level visit by a Chinese official to Pyongyang was nearly two years ago. North Korea’s September 3 nuclear test publicly embarrassed Xi, who was hosting a summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) leaders at the time.

While not wanting the collapse of the Pyongyang regime, China has opposed North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests because they provide a pretext for the US to maintain and expand its military presence in North East Asia. Beijing also fears that Japan and/or South Korea could exploit the “threat” posed by North Korea to justify building their own nuclear arsenals.

Before the adoption of the latest UN sanctions, North Korea lashed out at the US, warning it would respond in kind if Washington managed to “rig up the illegal and unlawful resolution.” An official statement declared that North Korea would take measures to “cause the US the greatest pain and suffering” it had ever experienced.

Far from defending the North Korean people, this empty nationalist bluster only plays directly into the Trump administration’s hands. The American ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, yesterday suggested the US was not looking for war and North Korea could “reclaim its future” by abandoning its nuclear program. But the Trump administration has repeatedly declared that all options are on the table—including pre-emptive military strikes against North Korea.

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump again threatened to attack North Korea, saying “military action is certainly an option.” While declaring he would “prefer not going the route of the military” and it was not inevitable, Trump bluntly warned:

“If we do use it on North Korea, it will be a very sad day for North Korea.”

Earlier in the week, Trump huddled together with his top military and national security advisers to review all options, which, according to NBC sources, included the possibility of pre-emptive US nuclear strikes on North Korea.

Featured image is from Zobiyen TV.

Featured image: US Air Force (USAF) C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft assigned to Ramstein Air Base (AB), Germany, flies over the Ramstein AB tower, before retiring to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC) or “bone yard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (AFB), Arizona. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The US military has been using its massive air base in western Germany to arm rebel groups in Syria without Berlin’s permission, according to a report from German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitungpublished on Wednesday.

The US military may have violated German law with the alleged weapons transfers as the German government has not approved any weapons transports of this type since the conflict in Syria began in 2011.

The report was published after months of collaborative research among the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).

The data was gathered from internal emails from the US military, interviews with whistleblowers, official reports and databanks from the US as well as the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms.

Weapons flown from Ramstein to Turkey

According to the Süddeutsche report, private service providers with the US military have been purchasing weapons and ammunition in eastern Europe since 2013.

The Russian-designed weapons, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were sent from factories in Serbia, Bosnia, Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic and found their way to US command centers in Turkey and Jordan.

Read full article by Deutsche Welle here.

After Yesterday’s unanimous vote on not allowing Kurdistan’s separation by the Iraqi parliament, forces of the so-called Peshmerga militias (armed forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling Barazani regime) suddenly started to spread in the areas of of Kirkuk, Daquq and Tuz Khurmatu.

“These forces did not come for the purpose of the referendum, but to suppress the Arabs and Turkmens, as well as to enforce the will of the Barazani regime through arms, tanks and armored vehicles”, said Mohammad Al Bayati, the Turkmen leader of the armed wing of Badr Organization, an Iraqi political party.

Al Bayati called on the Iraqi government to take responsibility for its citizens or resign.

It is noteworthy that in late August, the Council of the Iraqi province of Kirkuk, voted in favor of inclusion of its territory in the forthcoming referendum on the independence of the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, scheduled to take place on September 25th.

On Tuesday, the Iraqi parliament voted to reject the referendum in the Kurdistan region, with the Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi committing himself to take all necessary measures that would preserve the unity of the country’s territory.

A number of countries, particularly the United States, Turkey and Iran, condemned the decision of the Kurdistan Regional Authorities to hold the referendum, with Ankara even calling on Tehran to do its best to abandon this initiative, as it may lead to an increase of tensions in the already troubled region.

Translated by Samer Hussein

English: Fortruss

Featured image is from Fort Russ.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the National Defense Forces (NDF), and the Qalamoun Shield Forces (QSF) have liberated the villages of Um Rujm, ‘Amudiyah, Rasm Sawwanah, Unq al-Hawa, Khan, Luwaybidah, and Darwishiyah from ISIS in the eastern countryside of Salamiyah north of the Homs-Palmyra highway.

Despite strong ISIS resistance, government troops continue developing momentum in the area. The operation was slowed down in late August because the Syrian military redeployed many units to Deir Ezzor province.  However, according to pro-government sources, the entire pocket will be liberated within a few weeks.

The SAA and the Syrian Republican Guard have seized the important Rouad mountain and developed an advance in the direction of Baghiliyah on the northwestern flank of Deir Ezzor city.  Government troops have also advanced against ISIS in Jafrah and al-Mariiyah.

Government forces are seeking to secure the recent gains and to expand a buffer zone around the city in order to prevent future ISIS counter-attacks in the area.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) further advanced in the northern Deir Ezzor countryside and entered the area of al-Husayniyah within about 3km from Deir Ezzor city.

Meanwhile, in Raqqah, the SDF repelled an ISIS attack in the central part of the city killing some 33 ISIS members.

In summing up the recent events, it becomes clear that both the US-led coalition and the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance are now consolidating their resources in Deir Ezzor province in a race for strategic areas in eastern Syria, including the Baghdad-Damascus highway and the oil fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

Voiceover by Harold Hoover

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

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

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

Special Pre-Publication Offer

**Pre-Order Special Offer: Voices from Syria (Ships mid-September)

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Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 2 new chapters)

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Featured image: Multitudinous demonstration for the independence of Catalonia. (Photo credit: @ideiazabaldu)

Two laws have been passed after alterations in the order of the day of the Catalonian Parliament—otherwise, they would have been blocked by the delegitimized Spanish Constitutional Court. After a marathonic session of filibustering by anti-independentists (12 and 14 hours respectively), Catalonia approved two bills that bring the region closer to the dream of independence from Spain: the Law of Self-Determination Referendum was passed on Wednesday night, and the Law of Juridic Transition was passed Thursday night. The former establishes that a binding referendum will be called next October 1, in which citizens will have a say on Catalan independence. The latter will provide a constitutional framework after a declaration of independence if the “yes” vote wins the referendum to be held on October 1.

Just a few hours before the vote on the second bill, the Spanish Constitutional Court had suspended the Catalan independence referendum and its legal framework, following allegations by the Spanish government which claimed the vote is illegal and unconstitutional.

Opposition leader, Inés Arrimadas, referred to the transition law as “something which is not a law, despite being called a law”, and which “will never come into effect” and that she expected an immediate ban of the bill. “It is no surprise that the Constitutional Court has already suspended the referendum law, just like it will probably do with the document that is currently being voted,” she said.

Multitudinous demonstration for the independence of Catalonia. (Photo credit: @ideiazabaldu)

Madrid’s prosecutors are threatening representatives, officials and citizens to try to make them desist of having the referendum. The Spanish capital has also sent civil guard officers to enter the press of a newspaper in the city of Valls, to intimidate them, violating freedom of speech.

The people of Catalonia reacted in a heartbeat. In 48 hours, over 30 thousand citizens took to the streets to confront the threat. This community is organized and doesn’t easily give in to intimidation.

Today, on Monday September 11, 303 years after the fall of Barcelona, over a million Catalans will hold an ever bigger demonstration to prove the world they are united in their will to create a new Republic and a better world.

Multitudinous demonstration for the independence of Catalonia. (Photo credit: @ideiazabaldu)

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday killed an effort by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to sunset the war authorizations that have been used for 16 years to justify ongoing military actions in regions around the globe.

Despite the failure, Win Without War director Stephen Miles argues that the

vote “shows that momentum is building to cancel the president’s blank check for endless war,” adding that “it’s clear that our representatives in Congress are beginning to recognize that after nearly two decades, the conflicts we are currently fighting have a tenuous connection to the laws that are used to authorize them.”

“If Congress can’t even be bothered to vote on whether we should be in war, then we have no business sending young men and women to die fighting in it,” Miles concluded.

In essence, as observers noted, the chamber gave the OK to continuing “endless war”:

US Senate #AUMF vote now being counted. US Senators just voted for endless war. https://t.co/QomVVKilfF pic.twitter.com/ncCsCwE5P1

— Julian Assange ? (@JulianAssange) September 13, 2017

More endless war. https://t.co/jCDA1zQ5EY

— CODEPINK (@codepink) September 13, 2017

Sen. Paul’s attempt was an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have repealed the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force after six months and allow for Congress debate another potential war authorization.

The procedural vote was 61-36, with the “yea” votes in support of tabling (rejecting) the amendment.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Paul said,

“I rise today to oppose unauthorized, undeclared, and unconstitutional war. What we have today is basically unlimited war—war anywhere, anytime, any place on the globe.”

“No one with an ounce of intellectual honesty believes these authorizations allow current wars we fight in seven countries,” he said.

In addition to Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Paul’s effort had the backing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who tweeted that

“Congress owes our troops and their families a full debate to authorize the sue of military force before we send them into harm’s way.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, (D-Calif.)—the sole member of Congress to vote against the AUMF passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack—saw her similar effort to repeal the 2001 AUMF killed by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) earlier this summer, and called the vote a must-follow issue.

“Every member of Congress, regardless of party, has a constitutional obligation to debate and vote on war,” she tweeted.

With the vote to table Paul’s amendment,

“Congress once again chose political convenience over our duty to the American people and service members,” she said in a press statement.

“While this outcome is disappointing,” she added, “we must and will keep fighting to get this blank check for war off the books. The Constitution—and the American people—deserve no less.”

To bring the AUMF to an end, “the public has got to speak out, organize, and mobilize,” Lee told MSNBC Wednesday.

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

Featured image is from Dandelion Salad/flickr/cc.

Former US President Jimmy Carter said the US works more like an “oligarchy than a democracy,” while also lambasting Trump’s “hopeless” approach to solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and the increasing tension with North Korea.

Apparently confirming what President Maduro had warned following the recent US sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reports that Venezuela has officially stopped accepting US Dollars as payment for its crude oil exports.

As we previously noted, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said last Thursday that Venezuela will be looking to “free” itself from the U.S. dollar next week. According to Reuters,

“Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a multi-hour address to a new legislative “superbody.” He reportedly did not provide details of this new proposal.

Maduro hinted further that the South American country would look to using the yuan instead, among other currencies.

“If they pursue us with the dollar, we’ll use the Russian ruble, the yuan, yen, the Indian rupee, the euro,” Maduro also said.

*  *  *

And today, as The Wall Street Journal reports, in an effort to circumvent U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is telling oil traders that it will no longer receive or send payments in dollars, people familiar with the new policy said.

Oil traders who export Venezuelan crude or import oil products into the country have begun converting their invoices to euros.

The state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PdVSA, has told its private joint venture partners to open accounts in euros and to convert existing cash holdings into Europe’s main currency, said one project partner.

The new payment policy hasn’t been publicly announced, but Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who has been blacklisted by the U.S., said Friday, “To fight against the economic blockade there will be a basket of currencies to liberate us from the dollar.“

There is no major market reaction for now – a modest bid to Bitcoin and some weakness in EUR and Gold (seems someone wants this to look like nothing).

Source: The Burning Platform

However, as Nomura debt analyst Siobhan Morden warns:

 “You can say whatever you want for your domestic propaganda and make it look like you’re retaliating against the U.S…. This political posturing will only be to their detriment.”

So what happens if Europe also sanctions Venezuela? Will Rubles or Yuan… or Gold be the only way to buy Venezuela’s oil?

*  *  *

This decision by the nation with the world’s largest proven oil reserves comes just days after China and Russia unveiled the latest Oil/Yuan/Gold triad at the latest BRICS conference.

It’s when President Putin starts talking that the BRICS reveal their true bombshell. Geopolitically and geo-economically, Putin’s emphasis is on a “fair multipolar world”, and “against protectionism and new barriers in global trade.” The message is straight to the point.

“Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.”

“To overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies” is the politest way of stating what the BRICS have been discussing for years now; how to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar.

Beijing is ready to step up the game. Soon China will launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold.

This means that Russia – as well as Iran, the other key node of Eurasia integration – may bypass US sanctions by trading energy in their own currencies, or in yuan.

Inbuilt in the move is a true Chinese win-win; the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

The new triad of oil, yuan and gold is actually a win-win-win. No problem at all if energy providers prefer to be paid in physical gold instead of yuan. The key message is the US dollar being bypassed.

RC – via the Russian Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China – have been developing ruble-yuan swaps for quite a while now.

Once that moves beyond the BRICS to aspiring “BRICS Plus” members and then all across the Global South, Washington’s reaction is bound to be nuclear (hopefully, not literally).

Washington’s strategic doctrine rules RC should not be allowed by any means to be preponderant along the Eurasian landmass. Yet what the BRICS have in store geo-economically does not concern only Eurasia – but the whole Global South.

Sections of the War Party in Washington bent on instrumentalizing  India against China – or against RC – may be in for a rude awakening. As much as the BRICS may be currently facing varied waves of economic turmoil, the daring long-term road map, way beyond the Xiamen Declaration, is very much in place.

*  *  *

Having threatened China today with exclusion from SWIFT, we suspect Washington is rapidly running out of any great ally to sustain the petrodollar-driven hegemony (and implicitly its war machine). Cue the calls for a Venezuelan invasion in 3…2..1…!

Featured image is from the author.

Over 20 shopping centers, railway stations and universities had to be evacuated in Moscow, following warnings that they had been rigged with explosives. In total, 190 sites have been evacuated across 17 Russian cities after bomb threats, a security source told RIA news agency.

.

@lifenews_ru эвакуация ТЦ МЕТРОПОЛИС @m24video pic.twitter.com/k9cVmhtki5

— М.М (@me1nikoff_m) September 13, 2017

Очередная эвакуация. БЦ "Город столиц" и ТЦ Афимолл, Москва-Сити. Угроза взрыва, говорят, ждут кинологов. pic.twitter.com/2aE8XmWoCL

— Тихомирова Ольга (@TikhomirovaON) September 13, 2017

“This appears to be a case of telephone terrorism, but we have to check the credibility of these messages,” an emergency service source told Tass news agency, noting that the calls began at the same time, and continued after the evacuations had begun.

Tass reported that over 20,000 people had been affected by the evacuation in Moscow alone.

Эвакуация из за анонимного звонка. Киевская pic.twitter.com/CUkj5Y83CO

— Екатерина Шишкова (@kattyshishkova) September 13, 2017

Emergency services said that police units including explosives specialists and officers with sniffer dogs are examining the buildings. Several later reported that police cordons had been lifted.

Эпидемия анонимных звонков о минировании в России. Эвакуация ТЦ Метрополис в Москве. А здесь о том, что происходит: https://t.co/rpRIh34ksc pic.twitter.com/2ZLUWkzubQ

— Business FM (@Radio_BFM) September 13, 2017

Among the locations affected are three of the capital’s biggest railway stations, more than a dozen shopping centers – including GUM, located next to Red Square – and at least three universities, the leading First Moscow State Medical University, and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations among them.

В Москве эвакуировали три ТЦ и три вокзала #Москва #эвакуацияhttps://t.co/DKH8HUHfsy pic.twitter.com/wUOPuyHfHW

— Спектр (@spektronline) September 13, 2017

Tass reported that the railway timetable remained unaffected by the police operation. Social media accounts show bemused crowds milling passively outside evacuated buildings, and there have been no reports of disturbances of public order.

President Vladimir Putin has been informed of the incidents, but his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that he would not be commenting “as this is a matter for the security services to address.”

An epidemic of hoax bomb warnings has plagued Russia over the past week. Security services told the RIA news agency that over 45,000 people were evacuated from public places in 22 Russian cities on Tuesday, adding that many of the calls appeared to have come from Ukraine.

Terrorist false alarms are punishable by up to five years in prison under Russian law, and multiple police investigations have been opened. However, the possibility that the hoaxers are using pre-recorded messages – as appears to be the case in earlier, identical messages – automated dialing systems and digital means of concealing their true location present difficulties in identifying the culprits.

Featured image is from RT.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Featured image is from Washington Examiner.

Russia and China are wary of having their multipolar Balkan megaprojects transit through a state which increasingly looks likely to end up internally partitioned or worse, and are instead considering rerouting their planned corridors through Bulgaria instead.

There was once tremendous hope that the landlocked Central Balkan country of the Republic of Macedonia would become “land-linked” in serving as one of the most important transit states in Russia and China’s multipolar Balkan megaprojects of the Balkan Stream gas pipeline and Balkan Silk Road high-speed railway, respectively, but those hopes are seriously threatened by the latest infrastructure news coming out of the region.

In response to Zaev’s shadow implementation of the “Tirana Platform” in disproportionately empowering the Albanian minority and moving towards the de-facto internal partitioning of Macedonia, which itself is being pushed forward under the tacitly blackmailed threat of an Albanian-driven Hybrid War if it doesn’t occur, Russia and China are taking steps to reroute their multipolar Balkan megaprojects through Bulgaria in order to avoid this simmering zone of instability and safeguard the security of their future investments.

Right now nothing is official, but the writing’s on the wall that the two Great Powers are looking to diversify their previously planned strategic dependence on Macedonia as their preferred transit route into the heart of Europe. Take for example what Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in late August about his country’s interest in selling Turkish Stream’s gas to Bulgaria, which could either go through the planned Greece-Bulgaria Gas Interconnector or directly from Turkey to the South Slavic country. For reasons of strategic complementarity with China that will be made clearer in a little bit, it’s likely that Russia would opt for the first variant because it would also allow Moscow to improve the regional position of its Athens ally.

This is ironic in a sense because Russia commissioned Turkish/Balkan Stream in response to Bulgaria’s shelving of its South Stream predecessor, but it just goes to prove that Moscow might rather rely on Sofia than Skopje in light of the dark future that its strategists could be predicting might lie ahead for the Republic of Macedonia. Increasing the prospects that Macedonia will no longer be a direct part of Balkan Stream is the recent trilateral meeting between Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia where all three states agreed to deepen their energy cooperation, which obviously refers to Balkan Stream given the current context.

Oil and gas pipelines in South-East Europe

It’s not just Russia that’s considering moving its Balkan megaproject away from Macedonia, but also China as well, which originally had plans to build a high-speed railroad through the country in connecting the Greek port of Piraeus with Budapest and beyond. Instead, however, China might consider detouring through Bulgaria as opposed to risking the future tumult that might explode in Macedonia. This idea doesn’t come out of nowhere, however, as it’s based on the recent development of Greece and Bulgaria agreeing to build the multi-billion-dollar “Sea2Sea” high-speed railway to run alongside their planned Russian-sourced pipeline. This demonstrates that there might be a deeper level of coordination between Russia, China, and their relevant Balkan partners in pioneering a new route for their megaprojects than initially meets the eye.

Another factor to keep in mind is that Zaev has been very unfriendly towards the Chinese since his installation into power and even “delayed” two Beijing-funded road projects in a clear signal of hostility against the People’s Republic, likely done at the behest of his American backers. The Chinese are wise enough to know that leaders come and go, especially those pushed into power through a “constitutional-electoral coup”, but Beijing might think twice about Macedonia’s future political stability just like Moscow appears to be doing and make the decision to accept the added financial and transport costs in rerouting its famed high-speed rail project through what it expects will be the much more stable country of Bulgaria instead.

By and large, the geostrategic situation doesn’t look promising at all for Macedonia, and Russia and China’s contemplation of alternative routes for their multipolar Balkan megaprojects appears to be much more than just a knee-jerk reaction to Zaev. Rather, these Great Powers seem to be signaling that they expect the country to enter into a period of prolonged political unrest, or at the very least, be indefinitely kept in a blackmailed position whereby the Damocles’ Sword of Albanian Hybrid War threateningly hangs over the head of every Macedonian and their international partners.

For this reason, it looks unlikely that Russia will include Macedonia in its Balkan Stream plans, and there’s a chance that China might feel the same way too given how Greece and Bulgaria’s new railway plans open up another alternative for it as well. The strengthening of the Greco-Bulgarian Strategic Partnership is designed to make both countries the indispensable replacement for Russia and China’s much-needed access to Serbia, the Balkan pivot state, and this contributes to giving both Great Powers an enticing option for avoiding what they might predict will be the enduringly uncertain situation in Macedonia for years to come.

None of this, however, would have been possible had Zaev not worked with the US to illegally seize power in his homeland and take Macedonia down the radical path of a de-facto internal partition, which when combined with the government’s capitulation to this demographic’s demands, is the reason why Russia and China are reluctant to have their multipolar Balkan megaprojects transit through the country. Not only has Zaev harmed Macedonia’s grand strategic interests in this way, but he’s also sold its remaining national ones to Bulgaria through the recent treaty with it and looks to be on the verge of betraying his people’s very identity through what many have speculated is an imminent behind-the-scenes deal with Greece.

Tragically, Zaev has empowered his country’s two rivals to join together in forming what might soon turn out to be the Greco-Bulgarian cornerstone of Russia and China’s multipolar inroads to Europe, thereby threatening to relegate Macedonia into geostrategic obscurity in the emerging Multipolar World Order aside from being a ticking unipolar time bomb for disrupting its Balkan component sometime in the future.

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 11, 2017, we launched the “Bobby McIlvaine World Trade Center Investigation Act” — and we need your help to do it. In addition to our news conference and our visit to Capitol Hill, it will take thousands of you to help ensure that every member of Congress learns about the Bobby McIlvaine Act this week.

Washington, D.C., on September 11th, we held a press conference and the National Press Club. 1:00 PM news conference (you can also help by sharing our media advisory). On September 12th we delivered the Bobby McIlvaine package to all 535 members of Congress. Please email [email protected] with “RSVP” in the subject line for details on when and where to meet.

If you have enough time, you can even download the Bobby McIlvaine package and mail it to your three representatives, which we strongly encourage!

Our aim is to have at least 1,000 people contact their representatives by the end of the week. This way, we will put the Bobby McIlvaine Act on the radar of hundreds of congresspeople and senators during the time of year when it means the most. If you go with snail mail, please notify us at [email protected] (for emails, we will know automatically how many are sent).

Of course, we all know that these efforts won’t bear fruit immediately and that a congressional investigation is only one of several avenues we must pursue. But if we are going to obtain a new investigation, we must put our stake in the ground now and begin rallying support for a message that millions of people can believe in. Our first goal, then, is to have the Act introduced within one year. With your support, we’re confident we can get there.

A Note about the New Website: As you’ll notice, the Bobby McIlvaine Act page is one of several pages we’re making available from our nearly-finished website. We’re a month or two away from unveiling the handsome new site in its entirety. So stay tuned!

WTC 7 Study Update

Earlier this week, Dr. Leroy Hulsey gave his much-anticipated presentation on the findings and conclusions detailed in the September 2017 progress report of his team’s two-year study into the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.

A video of the presentation is now on AE911Truth’s YouTube channel, and the September 2017 progress report is on the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ website.

The presentation and report describe a substantial amount of new analysis conducted by the UAF team over the past six months — analysis that demonstrates in great detail how NIST arrived at false conclusions by using inaccurate assumptions and omitting certain structural features from its WTC 7 model.

Dr. Hulsey also explained that his team has conducted significant analysis of the building’s global response to various hypothetical local failures and that the findings of that analysis — which is nearing completion — will be detailed in the draft report, to be released later this fall.

The study once again received positive coverage from the public radio station in Fairbanks. We believe the favorable local reception is a precursor to the kind of response Dr. Hulsey’s draft report, final report, and journal articles will eventually garner throughout the world.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the hundreds of dedicated activists who have supported the WTC 7 study since the beginning.

For more information about our September 11th events, visit our Events page.

After it emerged that sitting Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is now subject to investigation for alleged fraud and bribery – not least regarding his notorious clandestine deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel re the multi-billion dollar supply of a fleet of nuclear-ready submarines to Netanyahu’s coalition government, his wife, Sara Netanyahu, is now reported to have been indicted on four counts of fraud for allegedly diverting some $100,000 in public funds for her family’s own personal use. 

An alleged family business of fraud, bribery, kickbacks and corruption are not exactly the type of ‘friends’ with whom Britain should be negotiating bilateral arms deals worth millions of pounds that could conceivably adversely affect UK national security.

The state of Israel is the only secret nuclear weapons state in the world, and one that is outside the inspection of the IAEA  – but a regime with which Prime Minister Theresa May together with the Conservative Friends of Israel lobby group, [CFI], are inexplicably linked with bilateral military deals.

May and Netanyahu are not only strange bedfellows but constitute a dangerous liaison that could well set fire to the bedclothes. So why carry out bilateral military trade with this non-European, non-NATO, Middle Eastern, undeclared nuclear weapons state that could, if it wished, blow Britain out of the water?

Are there matters of national security of which the British electorate should really be more aware, and adequately informed? In particular, why is Theresa May not dealing with NATO suppliers/manufacturers of military equipment, for Britain’s armed forces?

Featured image is from Kobi Gideon/GPO.

The bill in Congress to fund U.S. intelligence services includes a provision, Sec. 623, which states:

SEC. 623. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON WIKILEAKS.

It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.

In other words: if this bill passes, Wikileaks will be categorized by U.S. Intelligence in the same way as will the intelligence services of Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other countries that the U.S. Government wants to conquer.

(Whereas the Cold War ended in 1991 on the Russian side, it secretly has continued on the American side.) Cooperation with Wikileaks would then be treated by the U.S. Government as treachery, the same as cooperation with Soviet intelligence was treated when the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy (backed by the Democratic Party’s Kennedy family) held sway over the U.S. Senate, from 9 February 1950 to  9 March 1954. Though this was the situation during the Cold War (prior to its having been ended by Russia in 1991), the time when there existed an authentic ideological reason for the U.S. Establishment’s opposition to the Soviet Union’s ruling Establishment (and when there existed not only the ongoing thirst for conquest of the entire world by the U.S. aristocracy), America’s Establishment (the aristocracy and its agents) is trying to restore that hostility now, 26 years after 1991, which was the year when the Soviet Union broke up, and after which, only Russia remained, and when communism had ended, and when the Soviet Union’s military alliance with the Soviet Union’s surrounding nations, the Warsaw Pact (mirroring America’s NATO), also ended — all of that happening in 1991. 

This fake-‘populist’ and fake-‘patriotic’ ostracism of Wikileaks would then bring the U.S. even closer to being the police-state (dictatorship by the aristocracy) than it already is — even more totalitarian than the U.S. Government now is. (And the U.S. already has a higher percentage of its population in prison than does any other nation. So, the steps that are being taken now, are beyond extreme — especially if this bill passes unamended.)

The real question that is being posed by this attempt to link future funding, of the U.S. regime’s intelligence agencies, to the aristocracy’s already near-monopoly on the reporting of international ’news’ and of domestic politics, is: Will the U.S. aristocracy unite behind it, as they already have virtually united behind the attempts to conquer Russia, and to conquer any nation that’s friendly toward Russia, such as Syria? 

Ever since the U.S. regime and its ‘news’media lied about ‘WMD in Iraq’ and said blatantly false things about Iraq such as that the IAEA had just reported “they were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon”, and invaded and destroyed Iraq on that basis, it is clear that the U.S. is a dictatorship, not a democracy. The U.S. Government is doing what the Nazi German Government did starting in 1939 — invading foreign countries on the basis of lies — and for which the Nazis were prosecuted at the Nuremberg Tribunals after WW II.

The opening statement by the Chief Prosecutor for the United States, at Nuremberg, set forth the fundamental principle of international law, upon the basis of which the Nazis were to be tried:

An “aggressor” is generally held to be that state which is the first to commit any of the following actions [including]: … Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another state, [such as the U.S. did to Iraq on 20 March 2003; and, it also includes perpetrating a coup, by means of] Provision of support to armed bands formed in the territory of another state [such as the U.S., under President Eisenhower, was soon to do, by overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected President Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953 and so, “giving the United States and Great Britain the lion’s share of Iran’s oil. In return, the US massively funded the Shah’s resulting government, including his army and secret police force, SAVAK, until the Shah’s overthrow in 1979.”]. …

It is the general view that no political, military, economic, or other considerations shall serve as an excuse or justification for such actions; but exercise of the right of legitimate self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a state which has been subjected to aggression, shall not constitute a war of aggression [so, for example, Iranians’ taking back control of their country in 1979 and ousting the foreign oil companies was not, at all, ‘aggression’, despite U.S. lies saying it was].

It is upon such an understanding of the law that our evidence of a conspiracy to provoke and wage an aggressive war is prepared and presented. By this test each of the series of wars begun by these Nazi leaders was unambiguously aggressive.

It is important to the duration and scope of this Trial that we bear in mind the difference between our charge that this war was one of aggression and a position that Germany had no grievances. We are not inquiring into the conditions which contributed to causing this war. They are for history to unravel. It is no part of our task to vindicate the European status quo as of 1933, or as of any other date. The United States does not desire to enter into discussion of the complicated pre-war currents of European politics, and it hopes this trial will not be protracted by their consideration. The remote causations avowed are too insincere and inconsistent, too complicated and doctrinaire to be the subject of profitable inquiry in this trial.

Anyone who would want to know the detailed historical background of the present effort (such as in Congress’s funding-bill for the intelligence-services), by the U.S. aristocracy, to clamp down in their control over the ‘news’ that their victims see and hear, will find extremely enlightening the masterful 28,000-word report by Nafeez Ahmed, titled “How the CIA Made Google”. One can certainly call a Government like that an “empire,” but to continue calling it a ‘democracy’ would reflect nothing more than one’s being fooled by that regime.

For example: this news-report is being sent to TIME, the New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, The Atlantic, and all news-networks and other major ‘news’media in the U.S., but if you web-search the title here, “Bill in Congress to Fund CIA & NSA Outlaws Wikileaks” and look to see how many of them are actually publishing it, the count will be zero, unless one or more of them breaks from the past, and suddenly decides to transform itself by publishing an article from me (and I’ve sent them so many) exposing them all as being the propaganda-vehicles that they’ve all been — at least, until now.

Perhaps if this is to be, in the United States, “freedom of the press,” then Americans will instead need freedom from the press.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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

It’s been almost one hundred years since the Balfour Declaration and we are still trying to “understand” Zionism and Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

For a long time, what stood in the way of full understanding is the desire in Jewish intellectual circles on the left to fuse Zionism and Socialism in the belief that such a fusion would achieve so-called “Jewish national and social redemption” and at the same time be universally humanist toward Palestinian Arabs — in other words, the desire to view Zionism as “complicated” and give it validation through a critical perspective while at the same time insisting on its invaluable contribution to Jewish national development.

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Zionist delegation, “well versed in Western diplomacy and psychology”, rested their claims over Palestine on the promise contained in the Balfour Declaration as well as on various religious, historic and humanitarian “rights”. At the time, these Zionists, while careful to continue to use the term Jewish “national home” rather than Jewish state, contended that a Jewish Palestine with Jewish capital and know-how would be to the benefit of backward Arabs, ‘long oppressed by the Turks.”

This Ashkenazi man’s burden extended to indigenous Arab Jews as well, who at the time were a small minority in Palestine before their forced emigration to Israel in the 1950s from other Arab countries. Regardless of deceptive declarations around British aims in Palestine, Zionist goals were never “the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous population” that Great Britain supposedly espoused in a Nov 8, 1918 communiqué representing the British and French governments that was proclaimed throughout the Levant, including Palestine.

The majority of Jews in the world today are Ashkenazim, tracing their ancestry to Europe. In Israel, however, Sephardic Jews, who descend from Jews in Spain and North Africa, and Mizrahi Jews, who descend from Middle Eastern (i.e., Arab) Jews, account for “just over half (52%) of the Jewish population. There is also a small population (approximately 125,000) of Ethiopian Jews who account for 1% of the Israeli Jewish population.”

Smadar Lavie, author of Wrapped in the Flag of Israel, writes about:

… the paradox that allows the majority of the world to ignore the Mizrahi problem in Israel. While 85% of world Jewry are Ashkenazim, they mainly reside in the diaspora. 15% of world Jewry are Mizrahim, and almost all of them reside in Israel. I discuss the implications of this paradox on the Israeli Ashkenazi Left’s ability to hide its racism when this Left talk with pro-Palestinian NGOs in the West and with the Palestinian national elite in the WB and Gaza… Nothing is going to move toward resolution of the Palestine-Israel conflict without taking into account Israel’s Mizrahi majority and their continual support of Israel’s ultra-nationalist Right, stemming out of the racist history of Israel’s Zionist Left.

The Mizrahim have a history of inequality in Israel, “based on the eugenics ideologies and practices of the Ashkenazi establishment”, with the Israeli Labor Party openly referring to the 1990s Jewish emigration to Israel by Ashkenazim from the former Soviet Union as the “white ‘alliya” meant to redeem the Jewish state from Mizrahization.

But again, we have a “complicated” situation here:

… The third generation of Mizrahim in Israel, those born in the 1970s whose parents and grandparents immigrated to Israel with the large wave of immigration in the 1950s, has mixed feelings toward its Mizrahi identity. For many, the lines between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim are blurring. Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, for the most part, study together, are enlisted together in the army, and often marry one another [On this last point, Lavie says, “All current demographers — some even of the Ashkenazi Zionist species — debunk “mixed marriages” between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim as a myth. Present rate of such marriages is 24–28%”.]

The Jewish state is in the business of brainwashing its Jewish citizens of all backgrounds (as well as Jews worldwide, the vast majority of whom are Ashkenazim). Renee Leavy, manager of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) South Florida’s social media campaign, writes:

Judaism teaches, that we should be willing to sacrifice our lives rather than commit murder, commit adultery or worship idols. [But] How many [Jewish] teenagers, especially those who grew up in the Israeli school system who have been brainwashed to believe that Arabs are subhuman are capable of thinking like that?

To help us understand the ins-and-outs of Zionism fully, the shameful realities of Israeli Jewish society, including Apartheid, had to be called out, one by one, dissected and analyzed, their “complications” often obscuring the heart of the matter — Palestinian suffering and dispossession — and putting the focus on Jewish identity politics.

Today in discourse about Palestine we have new “complications” having to do with internal differences among Israeli Jews and with the imperative of being consistent ethically and intellectually.

Ran Greenstein, author of Zionism and its Discontents: A Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/Palestine, expressed these new dynamics in a Facebook status as “Two self-defeating pseudo-radical strategies of ‘call out’ politics in Israel/Palestine”:

(1) conflating Zionism with ‘Zionists’, thereby excluding those willing to act on the basis of opposition to current Israeli state practices (post-1967), because they do not share a critique of earlier historical practices. Result: elevating the radical leftist credentials of the caller out (call outer?), while diminishing the potential for a broader action-based front here and now. And

(2) refusing to protest current manifestations of racism and state oppression (towards Palestinians, African asylum seekers and others), together with ‘white’ leftists, because of the historical sins of the Zionist left against Mizrahim. Result: elevating the radical Mizrahi credentials of call-out activists, who end up serving as useful idiots for the Israeli state and its oppressive practices at present.

We have catchphrases in the above (“conflating Zionism with Zionists”? Really?) that may make us feel clever but that needlessly complicate, in my view, our understanding of Zionism and Zionists (past and present) and the strategies that ought to be open for all those struggling to achieve Palestine’s liberation.

It is true that recognition of the brutalities of the ongoing Jewish-state-Nakba and explanations of its cause, which have been taking place among activists on social and alternative media for a long time now, have not translated into policies or concerns in the United States and the EU (let alone in Israel) for the well-being of Palestinian Arabs. Chances are good that joining a “broader action-based front”, admirable and exhilarating as this movement is, will also fail to question the normative principles and narratives associated with Zionism — i.e. Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

This is because, beyond self-interest politics, I believe that at the heart of the resistance of Western countries to justice in Palestine is the underlying and pervasive concern for Ashkenazi Jews, stemming from the trauma of the holocaust.

This position is ingrained even as it flies in the face of the very international laws these Western countries have themselves put in place.

The context of broader global social dynamics can work only if we address the particularity of the Jewish nationalist movement in Palestine — i.e., both its colonial and Jewish supremacist character — leading us to a position that embraces “the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous population” of Palestine.

It will not work if we begin making distinctions between Zionism and Zionists! Ran Greenstein writes,

“These people [liberal-left tendencies (Meretz in Israel, J Street in the USA, and many unaffiliated individuals and organizations)]define themselves as Zionist but deviate, to some extent at least, from some of the core policies pursued by mainstream Zionist movements and the State of Israel… There is no need for perfect agreement on all issues, tactical collaboration would serve us well.”

The core policy in the liberation of Palestine is that of return, which means the end of the Jewish state. Any Zionist who espouses the Zionist core ideology that Palestine belongs to Jews worldwide and not to its indigenous inhabitants, regardless of religion or ethnicity, is a Zionist without a difference in my view. Tactical alliances with such Zionists are bound to lead to another decade or two of obfuscation regarding the “rights” of Ashkenazi Jews to Palestine.

Fighting to make Israel “Jewish and Democratic”, rather than one truly democratic state for all, is a no starter for the liberation of Palestine. As Wayne Kraft, an American BDS activist, wrote on Facebook:

Those who believe that the occupation must be ended first to alleviate the most savage abuses must contend with the fact that the occupation has only been strengthened throughout all attempts to resolve and end it. That is, if the two-state solution is the only possible solution (interim or otherwise), well, it doesn’t appear to be possible.

The end of Israel— i.e., the end of Jewish Supremacy in Palestine is not only the ultimate goal; it is the only goal that will bring justice and liberation to Palestine after all these decades.

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.

Featured image: The Pacific Northwest has been engulfed in wildfire smoke from Montana, British Columbia, Eastern Washington and Oregon for much of this summer. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

Featured image: Victoire Ingabire (Source: Friends of Victoire)

I spoke to Joseph Bukeye, an officer of Victoire Ingabire’s FDU-Inkingi party in Brussels, Belgium.

Ann Garrison: What danger is Victoire Ingabire facing now in her seventh year in prison?

Joseph Bukeye: Starvation. She requires a special diet which has been provided by our staff since her arrest. Two people have been authorized to see her, but they have both been arrested. No one else is allowed to see her.

AG: And what’s your source of information about this?

JB: Her lawyer and our own sources.

AG: Five more members of your party, FDU-Inkingi, have been arrested in Kigali, as has at least one member of another opposition party. Do you have any word of them?

JB: A total of 10 members of our party have been arrested plus one from our sister party PDP-Imanzi. Three of ours, the driver, the security guard, and the house worker, were set free yesterday. Family members were denied access to the seven still detained. Our lawyer managed to see two of them today.

AG: Diane Rwigara, the woman who attempted to challenge Paul Kagame for the presidency this year, has also been arrested, so this seems to be part of a wider crackdown on any opposition. Do you have any idea why it is happening now?

JB: It is indeed a well orchestrated campaign to uproot the opposition. Kagame has just managed to get himself “re-elected,” and he doesn’t want any dissenting voices from any corner. He is facing growing dissent within his own party and he does not want to have to face the opposition parties on another front. He does not care whether the opposition is Hutu or Tutsi; he just wants to stifle it. His relations with neighbours are souring, and his plan to oust Burundi’s leadership has failed. He fears retaliation.

AG: Do you know when the regional African Court of Human and People’s Rights might rule on Victoire’s appeal of her sentence in Rwanda?

JB: Very soon. Probably during the ongoing session of the court. Kagame no doubt sees that coming soon and feels more embattled. The court has no enforcement authority, but a ruling in Victoire’s favor will further damage his image.

AG: What can anyone do to help Victoire and the other opposition leaders in prison or detention?

JB: People can attempt to turn press attention to the situation and ask their governments to demand that the prisoners are all given due process, The US and the UK are the top donors to Rwanda, so it is especially important to contact them.  Ask them to demand due process, fair trials, and access to subsistence commodities for the prisoners as long as they are detained. They can also object to the West’s double standard regarding Rwanda and Burundi. Western governments, with the help of the UN Human Rights Council, are pushing for an ICC indictment of Burundian officials, when the human rights abuse in Rwanda is much worse.

Almost ten days have passed since the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the allied forces managed to break the siege on Deir Ezzor city, which was maintained by terrorists since 2014. This date undoubtedly will be incorporated into school textbooks and immortalized forever for all the Syrians.

Unfortunately, besides the true allies of the Syrian government, neither Western states nor human rights organization has offered assistance to the residents of the liberated city. It seems that this significant event for the Syrians exactly gone unnoticed by the mass media around the world.

We can confidently assume that the groundless accusations of the West against the Syrian authorities regarding the alleged massacre of its nation and the use of chemical weapons are unlikely to end. The point is that such accusations of the Western countries are basically a potential opportunity to implement its own strategic interests and plans in the region.

When it comes to real help to the resident of the besieged Raqqa or newly liberated Deir Ezzor, the Western charities merely disappear, trying not to notice population’s problems.

Consequently, the fate of the Syrian population, as well as the fate of other countries, where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch operate, does not really care about them. These organizations pursue completely different tasks, which are frequently aimed at breaking up Syria, and the problems of the local population are only means to achieve these tasks. In this context the duplicity of human rights defenders perfectly complements the established tradition of Western countries to support terrorists.

At the same time, playing a double game is very convenient as you will never lose face or become a loser. Feeling the defeat of your subordinates, you can always change the political vector. Washington is a striking example, whose efforts are now supposedly focused on combating terrorism, rather on overthrowing Bashar Assad.

It logically follows that as soon as all terrorists group are completely eliminated, the international coalition will be forced to leave Syria, without the right to interfere in the policy of the country. Unfortunately, such a scenario is hardly possible.

Under the circumstances, the Syrian government has only one way to get rid of Western and Middle Eastern ‘partners’ interference – to defeat ISIS on its own. Having cleared the territory of the country from the illegal armed groups, President Assad will not leave an excuse for the illegal presence of ‘humanitarian’ institutions and international coalitions on Syrian soil.

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

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

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

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The Canadian-Venezuelan Sociologist, Dr. Maria Páez Victor explains, in the following interview, the National Constituent Assembly in the context of the Bolivarian Revolution, the US boycott through an economic and media warfare.

“The achievements of the Bolivarian government will not be televised by the international media, because they show the failure of the neo-liberal ideas of development”, says the researcher.

Edu Montesanti: The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) has decided to assume partially Congressional duties. What are your thoughts on this, Professor Doctor Maria Páez, especially as the mainstream media and the Washington regime have been accusing President Nicolás Maduro of anti-democratic for promoting it. It is worth pointing out that you have said that there is a defamation campaign against Venezuela, specifically against the NCA itself: please detail each lie that has been said against the Bolivarian government, regarding the NCA.

Dr. Maria Páez Victor: What would happen in the USA (or any other democracy) if its Congress or Parliament refused to obey a sentence of the Supreme Court?

What would happen in the USA (or any other democracy) if its Congress or Parliament decided not to concern themselves to passing laws but to overthrow the legitimate elected President, all this while the country faced serious economic and security problems? You would, without a doubt have a political gridlock, a mayor institutional crisis.

Well, the National Assembly of Venezuela –in which the opposition has the majority having won those seats in the last congressional elections- took all of these undemocratic decisions.

When the opposition won the majority in the National Assembly in January of 2016, its president, Ramos Allup declared that they were not there to pass laws, but “to get rid of Maduro and his government”, declaring itself in rebellion against the Executive Power.

This un-democratic stance then created the crisis that started on the 29th of July 2016 when the National Assembly declared itself in rebellion against sentence of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declared that 3 deputies could not be sworn in because of the blatant irregularities in their election and therefore there had to be by-election in that state.

The National Assembly refused to obey this order, and so, the Supreme Court had to declare all the acts of the National Assembly null and void until such time that it disallows these three persons. Later on, the second president of the National Assembly, Julio Borges declared publicly that the Assembly was “in open rebellion” and that it will not recognize the Supreme Court of Venezuela. In other words, the Legislature Power was in rebellion against the Judicial and Executive Power.

The National Assembly has proceeded to act as if it were a parallel government, even going to foreign countries and international banks asking for Venezuela to be sanctioned and blackballed and even asking help to overthrow the government. The opposition in Venezuela created a crisis that has put the state institutions in peril.

At the same time, there was an economic crisis promoted by the opposition and foreign powers, paramilitary attacks on the frontier, and violent street insurrections in certain city sections. President Maduro asked the National Assembly for help to jointly to face these problems but they refused to work with the Executive, insisting only that the president resign.

President Maduro could have taken the anti-democratic measure of suspending guarantees of civil rights, but instead opted for the most democratic of all decisions: he called for a Constitutional Assembly (CA) that would amend the constitution to deal with these serious problems and cut off the legal loopholes that sustained those problems.

The opposition coalition, the MUD, immediately realized the checkmate that this would mean. Therefore it used all its arsenal of weapons including its considerable foreign media connections to prevent the election of a CA.

Firstly it alleged that an elected CA was anti-democratic. It was akin to accusing the Pope of not being a Catholic. There is no higher democratic power than the will of the people represented in an assembly, and there is a cornerstone of international law that states that countries have the inalienable right to make their own laws, particularly if done through properly elected representatives.

Secondly, the opposition told the international press that the CA was simply a ploy so that President Maduro could make himself president for life and would eliminate elections forever in the country. They completely failed to acknowledge the 9 specific areas that of the mandate of the CA that do not include the terms of office for the president. It is quite absurd that having had 20 clean election in 18 years the Bolivarian government was about to give up on elections, especially as Jimmy Carter (Carter Foundation) has stated that Venezuela’s electoral process is the best in the world.

This is a blatant as the CA has a specified the mandate to deal with 9 specific priority issues, none of which pertain to the prolonging of presidential terms. These issues were not pressing or even existent in 1999 when the current Constitution was drafted: how to deal with the economic crisis, how to maintain security in the face of the growth of narco-traffic groups, paramilitary groups, urban terrorism and impunity, how to institutionalized the anti-poverty programs (misiones), how to preserve the rights of victims of crimes, the need to prepare a post-oil economy, climate change, the rights of homosexuals/ transgendered people, youth and disabled persons.

The representatives to the CA were chosen not as members of parties, but from among citizens who put their name forward as individuals. There were two categories of representatives: those who wished to represent the area where they lived, and those that wished to represent one of the special sectors: workers, businessmen, youth, women, disabled people, communal counsels, and indigenous peoples.

Most of the main parties that compose the MUD decided (in their un-wisdom) that they would not support the election of representatives to the new CA. However, many smaller opposition parties did decide to encourage members to stand for election.

The MUD tried to cast a pall over the elections alleging that it was a fraudulent election yet presented not one shred of evidence of this. All the international election witnesses confirmed that the process occurred without any distortion or bias.

What did happen and was not reported was that in many sections of the country this anti-democratic and violent opposition tried its best to prevent people from voting, even with the use of firearms. The international press did not once criticize the opposition for these appalling anti-democratic actions.

When the CA then met, it did NOT dissolve the National Assembly, which theoretically it had it in its power to do. The CA declared that it would work with the National Assembly and asked it to meet in joint session, but the National Assembly refused to meet with it. Instead, the National Assembly declared that it did not recognize the CA at all. It is utterly astonishing that it would disregard 8,089,320 million voters, who elected the CA.

Faced with this blatant insurrection, the CA passed a decree allowing it to pass the laws that are needed to meet the most pressing, vital problems that are threatening the State itself.

The CA got up and running. One of the first things it did was to fire the Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz based on a mountain of evidence that linked her and her husband, a National Assembly Deputy, German Ferrer office with a vast network of blackmail and dereliction of duty.

The people could not understand why the violent protestors that during four long months created havoc and terror on the streets were not arrested, or if arrested, let off on flimsy excuses. Crimes against public safety and peace that would never have been tolerated in any other nation, in Venezuela went unpunished and unchecked. It was the foreign companies of the petroleum belt that blew the whistle on Ortega Diaz, as she was black mailing them for millions of dollars.

In the end, it was recently discovered she was working with the Justice Department of the USA to maintain the street insurrections un checked.

Another of the measures taken by the CA to maintain peace was the creation of the Commission of Truth, Justice and Public Peace which is in charge of determining the political and moral responsibilities of those found guilty of the violent actions that have plagued the nation since 1999.

The Law Against Hate, Intolerance and Peaceful Conviviality is now under consideration. These are a direct result of the urban terrorism unleashed during the past April through June that left 100 people dead and the overt racist and classist tone that accompanied these vile acts.

To summarize:

• The President of Venezuela has the clear an unequivocal right to call for a Constitutional Assembly: articles 347, 348, 349 of the Constitution.
• The representatives to the CA were freely elected among citizens, not parties, in a clean, transparent and orderly election process totally backed by all the international electoral witnesses.
• There were citizens who opposed the government who stood for election, although they may not have won the votes. The Opposition umbrella organization MUD refused to participate.
• The National Assembly was not dissolved. It was invited to join the CA in dealing with pressing threats to the State. Having declined even to recognize the CA, the CA then had to assume some lawmaking powers in order to preserve the peace and security of the nation.

EM: Highlight please the principal lies against the Revolution in general, through years.

DMPV: Describing true facts:

Since 1999 when Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela, the wealthy elite that ran that country for 40 years conspired to delegitimize him and depose him. The USA was and still is, their stalwart partner in this, along with its allied nations and corporations. There is ample proof that the State Dept orchestrated the coup of 2002, which overthrew President Chavez for 48 hours. These facts were later confirmed through information from the FOI and through through Wikileaks.

Upon the death of President Chavez, the conspiracy became virulent as the USA and its allies thought that President Maduro would be easier to overthrow. The fall of petroleum process increased their hopes. Apart from Cuba, no other Latin American country has had the full force of the spectrum of “fourth generation war “which includes terrorism, media manipulation, economic destabilization, low intensity conflict, and psychological warfare.

The psychological and media campaign centred on the person of Chavez, and later the person of Maduro: alleging they are dictators (despite clean elections), they are autocratic (“its not a question only of election but how they govern”), and with Maduro the outrageous media campaign that has seen the most violent and despicable terrorism of the opposition being presented to the public as if they were carried out by the government. It has been a grotesque twisting of the truth. The international media has lost any sense of balanced reporting when it comes to Venezuela; they are prostituting their once esteemed profession.

The economic war the USA and its allies in the elites and corporations have unleashed on the country has been brutal: whole-scale warehousing of goods, corporate smuggling by the millions, black market manipulations, pressuring international banks and rating agencies against the country, artificial scarcity of goods, the sabotaging of the electric and water systems, the paramilitary assassinations, the street violence.

Venezuela should be lauded for defending the rule of law, not tarred with malicious fake news. But its government is sitting on top of the Hemisphere’s largest oil reserves and it repudiates the policies of the cannibalistic neo-liberal capitalism. So for the USA State Department and its supine allies and greedy corporations, Venezuela must be defied, deposed and defamed.

EM: How could it be explained that Venezuela’s NCA is the most democratic event all over the world, so popular as the members of NCA are ordinary citizens, not hand picked elites or individuals chosen by parties, at the same time so attacked by the United States, its allies and the mainstream media?

DMPV: The USA and the right wing governments of Latin America are, in fact, not concerned with a lack of democracy in Venezuela even though this is the slogan that they continuously 43 repeat to the media.

Hypocrisy is quite blatant:

Why are they not concerned over democracy in Saudi Arabia where people are beheaded and women cannot vote or stand for election?

Why are they not concerned with democracy in Mexico where 43 students in Ayotzinapa in 2014 disappeared and where 300 journalists have been killed since 1980?

Why are they not concerned with democracy in Colombia where in the last 38 years 152 journalists have been killed and since 1977 there have been 3,000 unionists killed?

They are worried about the PARTICIPATORY nature of democracy in Venezuela: i.e., the fact that the Bolivarian option has won the 18 of the 20 different elections that Venezuela has had in the last 19 years. They are worried that other people -of Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, the USA or Spain- may want to re-write their constitution also.

The establishment of an elected Constitutional Assembly is entirely within international law: countries have the inalienable right to write their own laws, unhindered.

These last few years have demonstrated to Venezuelans that their 1999 Constitution, written within a neo-liberal framework, has loopholes that do not help with the pressing economic crisis, the terrorist and paramilitary problem, and the problem of rogue opposition that disregards the rule of law and seeks foreign intervention to overthrow the government.

EM: Your evaluation please on the OAS’s position against Venezuela, now and long ago contradicting its own chart – the UN has been quite silenced, too… No consistent position on the Venezuelan case.

DMPV: On 28 March 2017, Luis Almagro, the director of the Organization of American States (OAS) called for Venezuela to be suspended from the OAS opening the way for foreign intervention in Venezuela, alleging a violation of democratic principles.

This is the same OAS that kept silent about the coup d’etat against President Chavez in 2002, the parliamentary coups d’etat in Brazil and Paraguay, the coup d’etat in Honduras, which has kept silent on the hideous assassinations of students and journalists in Mexico, and the multitude of human rights violations of labour unionists in Colombia.

The Venezuelan National Assembly publicly supported this outrageous proposal. Almagro failed, as he could not get such a decision passed at the OAS.

Almagro – embarrassingly like a Latin American version of Uriah Heep – is at the beck and call of the USA and its satellite right-wing governments of the region. But he cannot get past the real fact that Venezuela is not alone and the majority of the OAS will not side with the forces that bolster a continued colonization of the region by the USA.

The Non-Aligned Nations of the UN, which represent 2/3 of all the countries of the world, have unequivocally backed the right of Venezuela to establish an elected Constitutional Assembly and write its own laws. The UN has also stated that Venezuela has the right to call a Constitutional Assembly and write its laws.

The UN will not be able to fully go against Venezuela because the country has international law on its side and the Non-Aligned Nations, who are not fooled by the manipulations of the great powers. Furthermore, both Russia and China have strongly supported Venezuela.

EM: The Washington regime has been for so long pressuring the Venezuelan revolutionary government: so what has maintained Persident Maduro in the presidency, as we see all over the world the US overthrowing democratic governments through color revolutions, or by the military force?

DMPV: The achievements of the Bolivarian government of Venezuela are real, tangible and impressive, they are the bedrock of its consistent public support. In 1999 Venezuela was a country although rich in oil, yet steeped in misery, high rates of malnutrition, maternal and infant mortality, high rates of school dropouts and illiteracy, high rate of poverty.

From the discovery of oil at the beginning of the last century, oil revenues were used in a corrupt manner by an unpatriotic elite and sold to the highest foreign bidder with little advantage to the country’s population.

Under Chavez and now Maduro, oil revenues are used to satisfy the social needs of the Venezuelans.

Poverty in Venezuela has been halved and the country, by mid-2014, boasted the highest average standard of living in Latin America. In 1999, half of the country was living under the poverty line, with 23 percent in “extreme poverty”.

By 2011, there were 23 percent poor and 8 percent in extreme poverty. No other country in modern history has accomplished that in just a decade. This triumph was accompanied by a huge increase in consumption and a drop in malnutrition from 13.5 percent in 1990 to 5 percent in 2010.

These dramatic domestic changes are mirrored by the changes in Venezuela’s foreign policy and activities. A genuinely independent foreign policy boosted Venezuela to a position of leadership in Latin America and made its oil reserves a source of political clout and a tool of international solidarity — as demonstrated by the vital petroleum contributions to several countries, including Cuba, made by its nationalized oil company: PDVSA.

The government also founded the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) whose 11 members — Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Venezuela — coordinate mutual economic support and serve as an alternative to the U.S. controlled Organization of American States.

• There are now 59 physicians for every 100, 000 inhabitantes when before there was barely 20
• Venezuela is now free of iliteracy, as UNESCO has verified and it has reached the educational Millenium goals
• In the past two years -despite the fall of oil prices- they have built 1.7 million public housing
• Poverty has diminished in half from levels that in 1999 were 50% – 80% in some areas to mid-20% and extreme poverty which affected 1/3 of the population has now been reduced to 4.5%
• The UN has acknowledged that Venezuela has achieved the Nutrition Goals of the Millennium having reduced the number of people with hunger. Between 1999 y 2015, more than 5 million people ceased to suffer hunger.
• There are more about 50,000 Communal Councils and Communes that now identify local needs and carry out many economic and social investments
• The UN– Habitat declared that Venezuela is one of the countries in the region that most have reduced inequality according to the GINI Coefficient.

But the achievements of the Bolivarian government of Venezuela “will not be televised“ by the international media because they show the failure of the neo-liberal ideas of development, they show that the public socialist policies of government are strong enough to shield its population even from the economic war that the US and allies have unleashed against Venezuela.

While in Europe and North America the people have had to bear the brunt of the worldwide financial crisis with “adjustments” and “austerity” policies that have increased the total of people in poverty, in Venezuela, despite the economic crisis, the government of President Maduro has done everything in its power to shield the people by not cutting social benefits and distributing food and basic goods directly to the people at very subsidized prices.

The USA in particular wishes to undermine the regional integration of Latin America that is the cornerstone of the Venezuelan foreign policy. They do not want to see strong, independent nations in Latin America, but submissive nations that depend on the USA for everything: that is how they have dominated the region.

Venezuela is showing that the great defence against the great powers of the world is the participatory democracy of its people and regional integration and solidarity.

EM: What can we expect from the NCA?

DMPV: The Bolivarian government of Venezuela has demonstrably shown great political creativity.

• Its new constitution in 1999 inspired the new constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia.
• Its communal councils and communes have been the breadbasket of the people at a time when food was being hoarded, smuggled and made scarce by the economic war.
• The military-civil union has brought about a 180 degree change in the relationship of armed forces and civilians whereby harmony, solidarity and protection are pivotal, not repression.
• The Venezuelan efforts to achieve regional integration brought forth the innovative institutions of CELAC, UNASUR, PETROCARiBE, PETROSUR and TELESUR.

I expect of the Constitutional Assembly more creativity – especially in changing the neo-liberal legal framework that has allowed the country to have been taken to the edge of disaster by unscrupulous and unpatriotic elites that only seek their own gain and not the public good.

As Simon Bolívar’s good teacher, Simón Rodríguez said:

“We are either creative or we err.”

I expect great things from the citizens of the Constitutional Assembly.

Not for nothing the movement for the Independence of Latin America from the Spanish Empire was born in Caracas.

Maria Páez Victor is the author of “Liberty or Death! – the life and campaigns of Richard L. Vowell, British Legionnaire and Commander, hero and patriot of the Americas” (Tattered Flag, UK). [email protected]

Edu Montesanti is an independent analyst, researcher and journalist whose work has been published by Truth Out, Pravda, Global Research, Telesur, 9/11 Truth.org, Brazilian magazine Caros Amigos, and numerous other publications across the globe. www.edumontesanti.skyro ck.com

Another brutal war in the Middle East between Israel and Hezbollah is inevitable. Hezbollah remains a difficult adversary to defeat for Israel’s expansionist plans in the Middle East which is the ultimate goal. An important article published by Global Research in 2013 “Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East” detailed Oded Yinon’s plan “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” translated by Israel Shahak outlines what Israel needed to do to become an imperial power in the Middle East:

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

There are several obstacles preventing Israel ‘s long-term plan to become a regional power including the Palestinians, Syria, Lebanon and the grand prize, Iran. Iran is a major obstacle for Israel, however, in order for Israel to declare war on Iran (with U.S. backing of course), Hezbollah needs to be eliminated. It is an extremely difficult task for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to fight on multiple fronts, especially against a well-armed militia located on its northern borders with Lebanon. In 2006, as the world knows, Hezbollah defeated Israel. During the war, The New York Timesinterviewed an Israeli soldier at the height of the conflict and admitted that Hezbollah fighters as “highly qualified”:

Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” said a soldier who just returned from Lebanon. “They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised”

Last April, Israel introduced to the world, David’s Sling, a US-Israeli missile interceptor made to counter Hezbollah’s arsenal of medium-range missiles. It is a clear sign that Israel is in preparation for the next long war against Hezbollah, who is an ally of Syria and Iran. The Independent, a London-based news source described ‘David’s Sling’ as follows:

David’s Sling, meant to counter medium-range missiles possessed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, officially became operational at the ceremony, the military said.  It marks the completion of the multi-tier system that includes the Arrow, designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles in the stratosphere with an eye on Iran, and Iron Dome, which defends against short-range rockets from Gaza

A 10-day drill now taking place in Israel which is lead by the IDF. Haaretz reported on what the exercises’ entailed:

Israel’s army will be commencing its largest drill in 20 years in the north of the country on Tuesday, one that will encompass all forces: ground, air, sea and intelligence. The drill, which will be overseen by Israel Defense Forces’ Northern Command, is expected to last about 10 days.

It will include a scenario of instant escalation, in which the army has to defend Israel against multiple terrorist infiltrations in the north. For instance, one scenario has “terrorists” entering moshav Shavei Tzion, 15 kilometers from the Lebanese border, from the sea, while “Hezbollah” forces stage an attack by Gesher Benot Yaakov in the Golan Heights (and a famous prehistoric archaeological site). The army will also be practicing an attack on Lebanon and the evacuation of Israeli towns by the border in preparation for the eventuality of heavy missile attacks. It will include a scenario of instant escalation, in which the army has to defend Israel against multiple terrorist infiltrations in the north

It is a sign that Israel plans to eliminate Hezbollah, once and for all. According to the Haaretz report:

“The purpose of the drill is to test the fitness of the Northern Command and the relevant battalions during an emergency,” said a top IDF officer. In the drill scenario, the cabinet tells the armed forces to vanquish Hezbollah – “as I understand it, the state in which Hezbollah either has no ability or desire to attack anymore,” explained the officer”

Back in 2016, Haaretz first reported that Israel planned an evacuation involving more than 78,000 Israeli civilians in order to protect them against incoming missiles fired by Hezbollah in the event of an actual war. Make no mistake, the next war will between Israel and Hezbollah will be catastrophic. A nightmare for civilians on both sides of the conflict.

Hezbollah is an Obstacle, Destroying Iran is the Goal

The former deputy chief of IDF staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan spoke at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank based in Washington, D.C. and said:

For Israel, Iran is “much more threatening compared to the Daesh threat,” Golan asserted, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS, “because the Iranians are sophisticated, they are a higher form of civilization, they have a nice academic infrastructure, nice industry, good scientists, many talented young people. They are very similar to us,” he said. “And because they are similar to us, they are much, much more dangerous”

Iran is more dangerous than ISIS or Al-Qaeda? In fact, as we already know, ISIS has been funded and armed by the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia to destabilize and eventually to impose “regime change” in the Middle East as in the case of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad which ultimately failed. However, for Israel, destabilizing and eventually destroying Iran would be an ideal scenario. Israel’s vision for the Middle East is hegemony among its Arab neighbors. Iran plays an important role within the Middle East when it comes to economics and geopolitics, therefore it’s in Israel’s best interest to divide, conquer and even colonize Arab states along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Israel, America’s bulldog in the Middle East must face a major obstacle, and that obstacle is Hezbollah if it wants to become an Imperial power. War with Iran won’t happen anytime soon because Israel needs to permanently destroy and neutralize Hezbollah and even Syria before they take the next step against Iran. I believe the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party is psychotic enough to use their nuclear weapons to essentially destroy Iran. Would the Trump administration allow Israel to carry out such an attack? With Trump’s love for Israel as he stated in a 2016 speech at an American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) event, I believe he definitely would. Let’s hope world powers such as Russia and China can prevent such a war. The coming war between Israel and Hezbollah will be much worse than the last war in 2006, because Israeli officials see this as an open opportunity (especially with a staunch ally in President Donald Trump) to attack Hezbollah with everything in its arsenal. Hezbollah is prepared for the next long war with Israel as well. It will take center stage once it begins. A war with Iran won’t happen anytime soon as long as Hezbollah exists, making Israel’s imperial agenda only a dream that may not come true after all.

This article was originally published by Silent Crow News where the featured image was sourced.

Two of America’s most populous states, Texas and Florida, are in hurricane ruins, and Washington is fomenting more wars.

The US national debt is now over $20 trillion, and Washington is fomenting more wars.

The entire world is helping Washington foment wars—including two targeted countries themselves—Russia and China—both of which are helping Washington foment more wars.  Believe it or not, both Russia and China voted with Washington on the UN Security Council to impose more and harsher sanctions on North Korea, a country guilty of nothing but a desire to have the means to protect itself from the US and not become yet another  Washington victim like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Serbia, and Ukraine overthrown in a US coup and now poverty-stricken.

I once thought that Russia and China were checks on Washington’s unilateralism, but apparently not. Both governments have been knuckled under by Washington and both voted to punish North Korea for striving to be sufficiently armed to protect its sovereignty from Washington. 

Why are Russia and China repeating their same mistake that they made when they supported Washington’s no-fly UN resolution for Libya, a resolution that Washington and NATO stood on its head when they launched air attacks that helped the CIA organized “jihadists” overthrow Libya’s progressive government and murder Gaddafi?

Russia knows that it is surrounded by US nuclear and military bases. So does China. The question is: have Russia and China capitulated out of fear?  Or is their cooperation with Washington a ruse while they prepare their own strike on Washington, or are the two misguided governments trying to cooperate with Washington a la sanctions so as to avoid having to confront a US military attack on North Korea?

It requires much competence to confront evil, and there is probably more evil in Washington than there is competence in Russia and China, two countries interested in being rich to an extent that it might cost them their sovereignty and existence.

When you see such potentially powerful countries as Russia and China collapse under Washington’s pressure in the UN Security Council, it makes you wonder if the various analyses of Washington’s many weaknesses are real, and if they are real, if Russia and China are aware of them.

How does one go about explaining why two countries, whose sovereignty is in the way of Washington’s world hegemony, help their known enemy bully yet another small country, especially one in their orbit of influence? How can Russia complain of sanctions against Russia based on nothing but Washington’s propaganda when Russia supports sanctions against North Korea based on Washington’s propaganda?   

Russia and China have nothing to fear from North Korean nuclear weapons.  Indeed, no one does except a country that attacks North Korea.

What is the explanation for Russia and China lining up with Washington’s foreign policy against North Korea when Russia and China know that Washington’s foreign policy is hostile to Russia and China?

Just the other day Washington announced that it was increasing its navy warships in the South China Sea to make sure China doesn’t think the South China Sea is Chinese, instead of American, territorial waters.  Just the other day more election interfering charges were leveled against Russia. This time Facebook was the mechanism by which Russia stole the US presidential election.

These positions taken by Washington are absurd.  Yet, they are becoming the reality.  The frightening development is that the entire world, the entirely of the UN and Security Council are now captured by Washington in The Matrix.  It seems that not even Russia and China can any longer see their own national interest. 

Russia and China are working hand-in-hand with Washington toward their own demise.

It is becoming biblical. Washington the anti-Christ is subverting all good on earth.

Behold, a Pale Horse, and its Rider is Washington.

Featured image is from The issue.

I’m sitting outside a small café/bakery alongside Vienna’s Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main railway station. I’m between trains, on my way to Brussels from Krakow, and observing the scene. Concrete and glass rising-up everywhere in absolute neutered conformity. A ‘Novotel’ trying to make itself visible amongst the high-rises, but remaining hardly distinguishable from anything else.  A square featureless concrete carbuncle.

It’s 8 in the morning and it’s late August. A man in a dark business suit walks past on the wide pavement, a Coca Cola in one hand and two trim brown sandwich bags in the other. Chemtrails cover the otherwise blue sky. Someone in green shorts and dark glasses is sitting at a nearby table staring at nothing in particular and smoking nervously.

Meanwhile trains glide in and out of the elevated station platforms, their wining turbo-electric motors rising and falling as they come and go. This is the 2017 gateway into classical old Vienna.

In my mind I trace the steps of the ‘good European business-man’ with his US Coke and standardised EU sandwiches. I see him entering a large office block and taking a lift up to the 5th floor and proceeding to a white plastic cubicle with desk and computer. One of hundreds of identical cubicles. He sits down and turns on the modem, twisting off the cap of his Coca Cola bottle as he does so. The rest, as they say, is history. It’s the history of a dying capitalist dream. Of boredom, conformity and stagnation. A mediocrity so complete that it can be confirmed as insanity. Corporate, big brother contrived slavery.

So, I reflected, as I sat at this café table just outside Vienna’s Hauptbahnhof main station, I am observing a pastiche, a cameo of what is called ‘normality’, but I prefer to call ‘insanity’. The seemingly innocuous 9 to 5 office job is where millions devote a great proportion of their (precious) lives.

In reality – and tragically – they are no longer human beings, but automatons. They take the same train to work each day of the working week; or the same bus, the same car; the same car route. They do the same things each weekend. Meet the same people; watch the same films as their friends; eat at the same restaurants. They are called the ‘suburban middle class’ – but it means little or nothing. Little or nothing is pretty much the sum total of their lives.

George Orwell saw it all coming more than fifty years ago, describing it perfectly in this novel ‘1984’. Aldus Huxley likewise in ‘Brave New World’. But do we recognise this? Do we see to just what degree this dystopian cycle of daily death has captivated the great majority of the population of US and European ‘Westernised’ society?

Do we understand just how far removed from Life this stultifying daily ritual has actually taken people? I wonder.

You see, the hidden hand of oppression, whose ambition is total global dominance, is depending upon the fact that we all accept this slave trade as somehow inevitable. That we won’t ever see that it represents an advanced stage of mass insanity. And because of this, we are still vulnerable to its pull; especially those of us who think we are ‘free’. But such thinking is delusional; none of us are fully freed from the grip exerted by the dominant pattern of the status quo.

It is, after all, what informs almost everything we see and do every day of our lives. It screams at us (if we are ’alive’) in the supermarket; in the ‘gallery’; on the city street; on the billboards; in the fashion market; on the screens of our computers; the newspapers, TV, radio; the motorway; the airport; the hotel.

It works on us in an unseen way via Wi Fi; the mobile phone; the mobile phone towers; the ‘smart meters’; the satellite navigation systems; the surveillance cameras; the electro smog; the atmospheric geoengineering; the microwave oven; the genetically modified and pesticide laced food; the chlorinated and/or fluoridated water; the plastic mineral water bottle; the nanotech fabrics – the list goes on and on – but I think I’ve made my point.

Do you still think you’re free from mind control?

Listen carefully. There are just a few environments left in this post-industrial nation state and trading block divided ‘Westernised’ world – where you might still find some sanity. But you’ll need to be clear about what sanity is in order to locate them. If you’re still ‘alive’ and wish to stay that way, what you’re going to need is the support of some place where big brother has not yet got a total grip on the way of life. Not yet replaced simple reality with virtual reality.  A ‘virtual reality free zone’.

Chances are that you’re not going to find such a place in an urban setting. Towns and cities are being entrained as slave centres under Agenda 21 ambitions to shift whole populations into fully anaesthetised environments, 100% dependent upon corporate controlled resources. It is delusional to imagine that one can remain ‘sane’ in these cosmetically dressed prisons.

The way to retain your sanity, your joie de vivre, your sensitive soul and your resistance to that which wishes to ensnare you, is to re find your connection with nature: the natural environment. Preferably a largely uncontaminated nature; a nature that still breathes, that still lives out its predilection for diversity, beauty and rugged self-expression.

An environment where those who work the land still do so in the old native tradition, without the imposition of toxic pesticides and soil neutering monocultures.  Places where you still might find a bit of true wisdom. Places where you yourself might imbibe some of that wisdom and start on your own route to taking control of your destiny and ultimate self-sufficiency. Freeing yourself from the strangling tentacles of a subversive status quo with its ‘cult of convenience’.

A setting in which you elect to cultivate life rather than death. For staying with the latter means contributing to a system which leads, inevitably, to collapse. But that is, I’m afraid, what many of us are still doing – until we find a way to break free.

Make your stand in defence of life*, but make it in a place that offers the chance for ‘arks of true independence’ to become established. Places where one can be one’s own master and where a new resistance can rise up from fertile and secure foundations. Somewhere where one can help bring to birth the seeds of a new society.

I council you to make this shift soon. Very soon.

Julian is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer, international activist and president of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. He is author of two acclaimed titles *In Defence of Life and Changing Course for Life – you can find them on www.julianrose.info

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We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.

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US Anti-BDS Legislation Punishes Solidarity with Palestine

By Stephen Lendman, September 13, 2017

Congressional Israel Anti-Boycott Act legislation wants it criminalized. It aims to “amend the Export Administration Act of 1979 to include in the prohibitions on boycotts against allies of the United States boycotts fostered by international governmental organizations against Israel and to direct the Export-Import Bank of the United States to oppose boycotts against Israel, and for other purposes.”

How Palestinians Can Reverse Israel’s Divide and Conquer Tactics

By Sam Bahour, September 13, 2017

Oslo allowed Israel to reduce Palestinians to disparate fragments, each with their own challenge to merely survive. It’s time to reset that reality and view the Palestinians for what they are — physically fragmented, politically divided, but a whole people.

Israel: “There Is No Palestine”, It Cannot be Allowed to Join the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)

By Juergen T Steinmetz, September 12, 2017

From time to time, Israel puts more restrictions on tourism to Palestine, including disallowing western visitors to re-enter Israel when staying in a hotel in Palestine.

Israel to Remove Palestinian Village’s Sole Water Pipe

By Middle East Monitor, September 11, 2017

Daghlas said that the pipeline is the sole water source for the area. According to Wafa, 14 Palestinian families live in the area and depend on the pipeline.

Israel Campaigns Against Palestine Joining UN Tourism Body

By Middle East Monitor, September 10, 2017

Israel is attempting to thwart a Palestinian bid to join the United Nation’s World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), arguing that the “State of Palestine” does not exist, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me. I was home when the phone rang at 9 A.M. It was my daughter, who was on a week’s vacation with her future husband. “Turn on the TV,” she said. “Why?” I asked.  “Haven’t you heard? A plane hit the World Trade Tower.”

I turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower. I said, “They just showed a replay.” She quickly corrected me, “No, that’s another plane.” And we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the South Tower this time. Sitting next to my daughter was my future son-in-law; he had not had a day off from work in a year. He had finally taken a week’s vacation so they could go to Cape Cod. He worked on the 100^th floor of the South Tower. By chance, he had escaped the death that claimed 176 of his co-workers.

That was my introduction to the attacks. Sixteen years have disappeared behind us, yet it seems like yesterday. And yet again, it seems like long, long ago.

Over the next few days, as the government and the media accused Osama bin Laden and 19 Arabs of being responsible for the attacks, I told a friend that what I was hearing wasn’t believable; the official story was full of holes. It was a reaction that I couldn’t fully explain, but it set me on a search for the truth. I proceeded in fits and starts, but by the fall of 2004, with the help of the extraordinary work of David Ray Griffin (see How Bush And Cheney Ruined America And The World) and other early skeptics, I could articulate the reasons for my initial intuition. I set about creating a college course on what had come to be called 9/11.

But I no longer refer to the events of that day by those numbers. Let me explain why.

By 2004 I was convinced that the U.S. government’s claims (and The 9/11 Commission Report) were fictitious. They seemed so blatantly false that I concluded the attacks were a deep-state intelligence operation whose purpose was to initiate a national state of emergency to justify wars of aggression, known euphemistically as “the war on terror.” The sophistication of the attacks, and the lack of any proffered evidence for the government’s claims, suggested that a great deal of planning had been involved.

Yet I was chagrined and amazed by so many people’s insouciant lack of interest in researching arguably the most important world event since the assassination of President Kennedy. I understood the various psychological dimensions of this denial, the fear, cognitive dissonance, etc., but I sensed something else as well. For so many people their minds seemed to have been “made up” from the start. I found that many young people were the exceptions, while most of their elders dared not question the official narrative. This included many prominent leftist critics of American foreign policy. Now that sixteen years have elapsed, this seems truer than ever.

So with the promptings of people like Graeme MacQueen, Lance deHaven-Smith, T.H. Meyer, et al., I have concluded that a process of linguistic mind-control was in place before, during, and after the attacks. As with all good propaganda, the language had to be insinuated over time and introduced through intermediaries. It had to seem “natural” and to flow out of events, not to precede them. And it had to be repeated over and over again.

In summary form, I will list the language I believe “made up the minds” of those who have refused to examine the government’s claims about the September 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks.

1. Pearl Harbor.  As pointed out by David Ray Griffin and others, this term was used in September 2000 in The Project for the New American Century’s report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (p.51). Its neo-con authors argued that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to attack Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. “absent some catastrophic event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” Coincidentally or not, the film Pearl Harbor, made with Pentagon assistance and a massive budget, was released on May 25, 2001 and was a box office hit. It was in the theatres throughout the summer. The thought of the attack on Pearl Harbor (not a surprise to the U.S. government, but presented as such) was in the air despite the fact that the 60^th anniversary of that attack was not until December 7, 2001, a more likely release date. Once the September 11 attacks occurred, the Pearl Harbor comparison was “plucked out” of the social atmosphere and used innumerable times, beginning immediately. Even George W. Bush was widely reported to have had the time that night to allegedly use it in his diary. The examples of this comparison are manifold, but I am summarizing, so I will skip giving them. Any casual researcher can confirm this.

2. Homeland. This strange un-American term, another WW II word associated with another enemy – Nazi Germany – was also used many times by the neo-con authors of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” I doubt any average American referred to this country by that term before. Of course it became the moniker for The Department of Homeland Security, marrying home with security to form a comforting name that simultaneously and unconsciously suggests a defense against Hitler-like evil coming from the outside. Not coincidentally, Hitler introduced it into the Nazi propaganda vernacular at the 1934 Nuremberg rally. Both usages conjured up images of a home besieged by alien forces intent on its destruction; thus preemptive action was in order.

3. Ground Zero. This is a third WWII (“the good war”) term first used at 11:55 A.M. on September 11 by Mark Walsh (aka “the Harley Guy” because he was wearing a Harley-Davidson tee shirt) in an interview on the street by a Fox News reporter, Rick Leventhal. Identified as a Fox free-lancer, Walsh also explained the Twin Towers collapse in a precise, well-rehearsed manner that would be the same illogical and anti-scientific explanation later given by the government: “mostly due to structural failure because the fire was too intense.” Ground zero – a nuclear bomb term first used by U.S. scientists to refer to the spot where they exploded the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico in 1945 – became another meme adopted by the media that suggested a nuclear attack had occurred or might in the future if the U.S. didn’t act. The nuclear scare was raised again and again by George W. Bush and U.S. officials in the days and months following the attacks, although nuclear weapons were beside the point. But the conjoining of “nuclear” with “ground zero” served to raise the fear factor dramatically. Ironically, the project to develop the nuclear bomb was called the Manhattan Project and was headquartered at 270 Broadway, NYC, a few short blocks north of the World Trade Center.

4. The Unthinkable. This is another nuclear term whose usage as linguistic mind control and propaganda is analyzed by Graeme MacQueen in the penultimate chapter of the very important The 2001 Anthrax Deception. He notes the patterned use of this term before and after September 11, while saying “the pattern may not signify a grand plan …. It deserves investigation and contemplation.” He then presents a convincing case that the use of this term couldn’t be accidental. He notes how George W. Bush, in a major foreign policy speech on May 1, 2001, “gave informal public notice that the United States intended to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty”; Bush said the U.S. must be willing to “rethink the unthinkable.” This was necessary because of terrorism and rogue states with “weapons of mass destruction.” PNAC also argued that the U.S. should withdraw from the treaty. A signatory to the treaty could only withdraw after giving six months notice and because of “extraordinary events” that “jeopardized its supreme interests.” Once the September 11 attacks occurred, Bush rethought the unthinkable and officially gave formal notice on December 13 to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty. MacQueen specifies the many times different media used the term “unthinkable” in October 2001 in reference to the anthrax attacks. He explicates its usage in one of the anthrax letters – “The Unthinkabel” [sic]. He explains how the media that used the term so often were at the time unaware of its usage in the anthrax letter since that letter’s content had not yet been revealed, and how the letter writer had mailed the letter before the media started using the word. He makes a rock solid case showing the U.S. government’s complicity in the anthrax attacks and therefore in the Sept 11 attacks. While calling the use of the term “unthinkable” in all its iterations “problematic,” he writes, “The truth is that the employment of ‘the unthinkable’ in this letter, when weight is given both to the meaning of this term in U.S. strategic circles and to the other relevant uses of the term in 2001, points us in the direction of the U.S. military and intelligence communities.” I am reminded of Orwell’s point in 1984: “a heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words.”  Thus the government and media’s use of “unthinkable” becomes a classic case of “doublethink.” The unthinkable is unthinkable.

5. 9/11. This is the key usage that has reverberated down the years around which the others revolve. It is an anomalous numerical designation applied to an historical event, and obviously also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of another numerical appellation for an important event in American history. The future editor of The New York Times and Iraq war promoter, Bill Keller, introduced this connection the following morning in a NY Times op-ed piece, “America’s Emergency Line: 911.” The linkage of the attacks to a permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as Keller mentioned Israel nine times and seven times compared the U.S. situation to that of Israel as a target for terrorists. His first sentence reads: “An Israeli response to America’s aptly dated wake-up call might well be, ‘Now you know.’” By referring to September 11 as 9/11, an endless national emergency became wedded to an endless war on terror aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create another ground zero or holocaust. It is a term that pushes all the right buttons evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is language as sorcery; it is propaganda at its best. Even well-respected critics of the U.S. government’s explanation use the term that has become a fixture of public consciousness through endless repetition. As George W. Bush would later put it as he connected Saddam Hussein to “9/11” and pushed for the Iraq war, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” All the ingredients for a linguistic mind-control smoothie had been blended.

I have concluded – and this is impossible to prove definitively at this time because of the nature of such propagandistic techniques – that the use of all these words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic mind-control campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged in the minds of hundreds of millions of people and is very hard to dislodge.   It is why I don’t speak of “9/11” any more. I refer to those events as the attacks of September 11, 2001, which is a mouth-full and not easily digested in the age of Twitter and texting. But I am not sure how to be more succinct or how to undo the damage.

Lance deHaven-Smith puts it well in Conspiracy Theory in America. 

The rapidity with which the new language of the war on terror appeared and took hold; the synergy between terms and their mutual connections to WW II nomenclatures; and above all the connections between many terms and the emergency motif of “9/11” and “9-1-1” – any one of these factors alone, but certainly all of them together – raise the possibility that work on this linguistic construct began long before 9/11….It turns out that elite political crime, even treason, may actually be official policy.

Needless to say, his use of the words “possibility” and “may” are in order when one sticks to strict empiricism. However, when one reads his full text, it is apparent to me that he considers these “coincidences” part of a conspiracy. I have also reached that conclusion. As Thoreau put in his underappreciated humorous way,

“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” 

The evidence for linguistic mind control, while the subject of this essay, does not stand alone, of course. It underpins the actual attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks that are linked. The official explanations for these events by themselves do not stand up to elementary logic and are patently false, as proven by thousands of well-respected professional researchers  from all walks of life – i.e. engineers, pilots, architects, and scholars from many disciplines. To paraphrase the prescient Vince Salandria, who said it long ago concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, the attacks of 2001 are “a false mystery concealing state crimes.” If one objectively studies the 2001 attacks together with the language adopted to explain and preserve them in social memory, the “mystery” emerges from the realm of the unthinkable and becomes utterable. “There is no mystery.” How to communicate this when the corporate mainstream media serve the function of the government’s mockingbird (as in Operation Mockingbird), repeating and repeating  and repeating the same narrative in the same language; that is the difficult task we are faced with, but there are signs today that breakthroughs are occurring.

Words have a power to enchant and mesmerize. Linguistic mind-control, especially when linked to traumatic events such as the September 11 and anthrax attacks, can strike people dumb and blind. It often makes some subjects “unthinkable” and “unspeakable” (to quote Jim Douglass quoting Thomas Merton in JFK and the Unspeakable: the unspeakable “is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said.”).

We need a new vocabulary to speak of these terrible things.

Educated in the classics, philosophy, literature, theology, and sociology, Ed Curtin teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He states: “I write as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. I believe a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore see all my work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding.”   His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

All images in this article are from the author. 

Hezbollah declared a victory in Syria as the Russian Defense Ministry announced that pro-government forces have liberated 85% of the country from militants.

“We have won in the war [in Syria],” Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar. He added that “the path of the other project has failed and wants to negotiate for some gains.”

The Russian military group’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Aleksandr Lapin announced “To date, 85% of Syria’s territory has been cleared of the militants of illegal armed groups.” The general added that ISIS is still in control of about 27,000 km2 of Syria’s territory.

According to Lieutenant-General Lapin, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have killed over 450 ISIS members, destroyed 5 battle tanks, and 42 vehicles equipped with large-caliber machine guns during the operation near Deir Ezzor city as well as unblocked 1,000 troops that had been surrounded in Deir Ezzor Airport.

He added that the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed 180 facilities, including ammunition depots and command centers, in the Uqayribat area in eastern Hama.

On the same day, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Damascus and held a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, “The sides discussed current issues of military technical cooperation in the context of successful actions of Syrian government forces with the backing of the Russian aerospace force to exterminate the terrorist group Islamic State [ISIS] in Syria.“

The visit came amid the continued battle against ISIS in Deir Ezzor province. The US-led coalition and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are seeking to establish control over the oil-rich countryside of Deir Ezzor city and if it’s possible to prevent further SAA advances towards the border with Iraq.

The Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance is now developing a strategy to find a better way to liberate Deir Ezzor city amid the need to take control of the Deir Ezzor-Baghdad highway that will be a vital supply line between Syria and allied Iraq and Iran.

Meanwhile, the SAA Tiger Forces and their allies started storming ISIS positions inside Deir Ezzor city and preparing for a possible operation to cross the Euphrates River.

The SDF has further advanced in the northern countryside of Deir Ezzor and seized the Sadkop center, the paper mill plant and the cotton storage near the 113th Air Defense Base.

A representative of the SDF-linked Deir Ezzor Military Council has also claimed that the SDF is going to strike back the “regime forces” if the SAA or its allies try to attack the SDF.

In the city of Raqqah, the SDF has captured Thakanah district and advanced on ISIS positions north of it. The SDF advance is ongoing amid an intense bombing campaign by the US-led coalition.

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Rarely does the virus speak so formidably to the condition he is a product of. The soiling, devastating strategist Steve Bannon, despite exiting the Trump administration, remains within it (symbolically at least), moving about with effect and influence. But it is a legacy of mixed curses that bodes ill for the Republican Party.

The one call he repeats with truncheon carrying persistence is one of division. This is not a man who believes, let alone tolerates, unified fronts. Disunity is his bread, butter and caviar. Where a front of consensus appears, his shock methods seek to disrupt it. And nothing, for Bannon, would be more reflective of failure than a united GOP, lips moving in synchronous agreement, all on that one vast page of political thought. Unless, of course, they agreed with him.

His performance on the 60 Minutes show was nothing short than pure in its protest.[1] In his discussion with Charlie Rose, the familiar terms were deployed with weaponized zeal. Targets were identified, elites excoriated. There were those troublesome individuals, the “swamp”, the establishment. All were given a generous verbal lashing.

The personal targets were predictable enough: old stalwarts such as Speaker Paul Ryan and the human personification of the detested swamp, that veteran insider Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. They supply the stifling set, keen to submit Trumpism, or Trumpism envisaged by Bannon, to gradual strangulation.

“They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented.”

The theme of frustrated revolution proves constant in the interview, and here, the revolutionary was speaking as a combatant in exile, gazing over a world that refused to change.

“In the 48 hours after we won, there’s a fundamental decision that was made… We embraced the establishment.”

Everything else followed: the stuttering, the plodding, the meandering of the Republicans.

“I think their choice,” he predicts of the GOP functionaries in response to such instruments as the Affordable Care Act, “is going to be you’re not going to be able to totally repeal it.”

As, indeed, it is proving to be.

For Bannon, purity, despite being in a country of the energetic melting pot, is a genuine concept, the very product of a form of archaic Americanism. Amnesty for the undocumented, he blustered, was non-negotiable. “Economic nationalism” was indispensable to the American character. But the impure are in the ranks, laying out the pillboxes and road blocks.

“The Republican establishment,” he shot at Rose with conspiratorial suggestiveness, “is trying to nullify the 2016 election.”

Of course, nothing would be Bannon without the crystal ball, the gloomy prediction with its rich wafting of apocalypse. The GOP, he surmises, will duly be divided, and will suffer come the 2018 elections. He expressed particular worry about how the Republicans will fall on their sword regarding the matter of immigration and undocumented labour, the great poisoned chalice of US politics.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, introduced by President Barack Obama in 2012, is a point of considerable demurral. President Donald Trump promised on September 5 to repeal the measure, which allows applicants who arrived in the US before the age of 16, subject to various conditions (continuous residence, study, lack of a criminal record), the chance to receive work permits. There was one softening concession: a six month grace period before the program joints the ranks of history.

For Bannon, any approach to such programs should be unequivocal and swift, necessarily brutal and decisive. Opponents, such as the Catholic Church, were merely keen to fill the pews with the faithful. (The church, as an economic liberal entity, is a curious Bannonism indeed.)

DACA, however, risks being the bomb that goes off within GOP ranks, with its ticking device set. Leaving it linger will have lethal results:

“if this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March, it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party.”

When the ashes settled, the interview concluded, the fumes could still be seen. Bannonism remains furious and unbowed, and most of all, angrily unrepentant. But his one persistent illusion remains: Trump is not a Bannonist, an ideologue, a person who will sport his own variant of Mao’s Little Red Book to wave with dedication. (The Art of the Deal hardly counts.)

The current US president remains an opportunistic misfit, never one to play by the code of any specific philosophy, any credo that is not a self-interested one. It is for that very reason that Bannon had to go, to assume the visage of the indignant, philosophical monk, where he will continue to rail and pontificate about race, the undrained swamp of Washington, economic irrationalism and “the pearl-clutching mainstream media.”

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

Note

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/11/politics/bannon-60-minutes/index.html

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced an official Israeli support to creation of an independent Kurdish state in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister’s office released a statement claiming that Israel “supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own“.

The statement came ahead an independence referendum of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region scheduled for September 25. Thus, Prime Minister Netanyahu became the first head of state to support the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Netanyahu added that he was not referring to the efforts of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to establish an independent Kurdish state in Turkey.

“Israel rejects the PKK and considers it a terrorist organization, as opposed to Turkey, which supports the terror organization Hamas,” he said.

However, it does not look like this will be enough to keep a nice relations with Ankara that strongly opposes to creation of any Kurdish state near or even inside its borders.

On August 31st, the French government finally published decrees which alter labour law, for the second time in little over a year. Less rights for workers, more power for employers: that is, in a nutshell, the contents of this new law.

This further social retrenchment goes much further than the previous reform (so-called “El-Khomri Law”), although the El-Khomri Law was explicitly condemned by the United Nations as contrary to France’s international Commitments[1] and against which a complaint has been lodged with the International Labour Organization.[2]

Under the pretext of efficiency – but more so in order to reduce to nil any in-depth discussion and restrict protests – this pro-employer reform has been adopted through a fast-track process, i.e. with Parliament reduced to mere rubberstamping and unions granted a grand total of six hours each for consultation!

Below are the main bones of contention for the CGT:

1. Easier lay-offs

Although the current system already gave employers many options to choose from to terminate contracts and whilst job casualization is a plague for millions of people without any benefits to the economy, this new reform provides for:

• Drastic reduction of severance pay for unfair dismissal. In cases of questioning dismissals with the relevant jurisdictions, the decrees provide for capped compensation. This means that employers will know in advance how much it will cost them, when they violate the law through unfair dismissals! The bigger the firms and the greater their financial means, the easier it will be to include provisions in their budgets, so as to be able to organize dismissals without any real or serious grounds.
• The El-Khomri Law already provided for dismissals in cases of a drop in turnover or cash flows, even if only by a few Euros. But that was not enough. In order to remove all “obstacles to recruitment,” Emmanuel Macron is generalising the principle of “throwaway workers.”
• Easier economic redundancies. Whereas until now, multinational firms facing difficulties in France but making a profit elsewhere could not go ahead with economic redundancies, as per the decrees, their international financial standing will no longer be taken into consideration in such cases.

2. Devalued trade union activities

• Depreciation of the role of unions in firm-level bargaining. It will now be possible for bargaining to take place in small firms through referendum, without staff or union representatives. In other firms, the rules differ according to size, but globally, the result remains the same: any firm management can convene a referendum unilaterally. Such a referendum is therefore a major tool against workers, to impose an agreement that would be rejected by majority unions.
• Merger of the current three workers’ representative bodies into a single entity, “the Social and Economic Committee.” This reorganization will mean more remote representatives, as they will have to deal with affairs at higher levels, thus spending less time spent with workers facing difficulties at the workplace.The government is quite obviously trying to restrain any opposition, thus curtailing social democracy in our country.

3. Generalized casualization

• The decree will mean more casual contracts: “assignment contracts” are to be generalized. Whereas until now, such short-term contracts were reserved for some specific branches, they will now be introduced to all sectors, the idea being that such contracts terminate at the end of specific missions.
• The development of fixed-term contracts: from now on, it will be possible to increase their duration or renew them at will. We are therefore moving toward the end of permanent contracts in France.

4. Hierarchy of standards

• The El-Khomri Law turned upside the standards that regulate labour law. The new reform is a follow-up to, and an amplification of, that previous law. Thus, in most areas (bonuses, allowances, maternity leave…), company agreements will take precedence over branch agreement, even if they are less favourable to workers. For instance, a company agreement may provide for less bonuses or longer working time.If workers refuse changes to their contract of employment, they will automatically be laid-off on “compelling grounds.” Employers might be tempted to use this kind of blackmail to avoid any opposition.Ultimately, the purpose is for employers to be able to negotiate the retrenchments that suit them best. In France, over 50% of workers are employed in small or very small firms – with weak union representation – but they come under branch collective agreements. With the reform, workers will be faced with possible company agreements that are below branch agreements.

This will increase social dumping among French firms.

These decrees marginalize workers’ counter-powers and jeopardise the values and foundations of our social system.

For all the reasons mentioned above, the CGT has called for a day of united action on 12 September. We will remain mobilized, and defend our social rights!

We call upon our trade union friends worldwide to support us on this day of action.

Notes

1. Final remarks from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, dated June 2016, on the legal basis of Articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).

2. For violation of Conventions 87 (Freedom of Association), 98 (Collective Bargaining) and 158 (Termination of Employment).

Featured image is from the author.

On August 30, 2017, the Reserve Bank of India released its Annual Report for 2016-17 which revealed that 98.8 percent of scrapped currency notes has come back into the Indian banking system. This mind-blowing statistics has put a serious question mark over the efficacy of demonetization move because it was anticipated by the government that a large portion of scrapped currency notes might not come back into the banking system.

On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetization move under which high-value currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 – referred to as Specified Bank Notes – ceased to be legal tender with effect from November 9, 2016. In his address to nation, PM Modi said

“From midnight November 8, 2016 today, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes are no longer legal tender.”

People were asked to deposit scrapped currency notes in their bank accounts by 30th December and were allowed to exchange them with notes of other denominations subject to certain limits and conditions.

The central government and the RBI outlined three key objectives of demonetization: to curb black money and corruption by preventing hoarding of cash; to prevent counterfeiting of currency notes; and to fight against terrorism by cutting off cash funding of terrorist groups operating in India.

Due to the withdrawal of legal tender character of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, about 15.44 trillion rupees worth of the currency notes (about 86 percent of the total currency) were removed from circulation. In ‘Currency Management’ chapter of annual report, the RBI noted: “Subject to future corrections based on verification process when completed, the estimated value of SBNs received as on June 30, 2017, is 15.28 trillion.” In simple words, 98.8 percent of banned currency notes returned into the banking system after the demonetization. Hence, the expectation that the demonetization would force people to destroy their illegitimate cash in order to escape scrutiny from tax authorities simply did not materialize.

Why Delay?

These statistics have been eagerly awaited as the exact figure of the returned currency notes would reveal the effectiveness of demonetization move. It is beyond comprehension why the RBI took so long to reveal the official data. In the initial weeks of demonetization drive, the RBI was releasing the data pertaining to return of banned currency notes but this practice was stopped midway without any explanation.

Till July 2017, the RBI had maintained that it could not tell the exact amount of banned notes received by it as the counting process is not yet over. Until the RBI released its annual report on August 30, the official numbers were not publicly revealed even though many critics had estimated that the return of banned currency notes would be higher than 95 percent.

Gaming the System

The overarching objective behind the demonetization move was to flush out black money or illegally-acquired cash from the financial system. The RBI data lends credence to widely held claims that people hoarding black money gamed the system by converting their illegal currency into legal tender through various means including parking banned currency notes in the bank accounts of poor and low-income individuals. Millions of bank accounts were opened during a massive financial inclusion scheme – Jan Dhan Yojana – in 2014. Post-demonetization, a surge in deposits in Jan Dhan Yojana bank accounts was witnessed in both urban and rural areas. Of course, this is not the entire story as other creative methods were used by black money hoarders to convert and use banned currency notes.

In addition, significant amounts of black money in the form of new currency notes was sized across the country during the demonetization period thereby questioning the logic of whole exercise as an effective and credible deterrence to black money. In sum, the very objective of demonetization to eliminate black money from the economy stands defeated.

Changing Goalposts

When it appeared to the government that bulk of illegal currency might return to the banking system, it began shifting the goalposts by adding new objectives of demonetization move. Hence, policy objectives such as promoting digital transactions and taking country towards a “cashless” economy (subsequently modified to a “less-cash” economy) were added later. The goal to make India a cashless economy seems more as an afterthought plan. These objectives, despite desirable, were not listed in the earlier official notifications.

Using a Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut

How far the demonetization policy has been able to achieve other stated objectives? Let’s begin with fake Indian currency notes (FICNs) which the currency demonetization exercise was expected to curb its circulation and thereby reining the activities of anti-social elements.

In order to justify the demonetization move, Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy claimed that fake notes worth Rs 20,000 million are in circulation. In reality, the government has not detected a large volume of fake currency notes in circulation within the country despite eight months have passed after demonetization. The RBI’s annual report also noted that the face value of fake Indian currency notes (FICNs) of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination was merely Rs 410 million during 2016-17. If the total face value of FICNs is so meagre, why massive disruption in economic activity was caused by demonetization? Wouldn’t it have been better to curb the circulation of counterfeit currency through printing of new currency notes containing high security features that are difficult to replicate?

As far as the impact on terror funding is concerned, there is very little evidence to suggest that the demonetization has curtailed it significantly.

The Dream of a Cashless Economy

Another much-touted objective of demonetization was to promote the use of digital transactions and move towards a “cashless” economy. There is no denying that the number of digital transactions (via Paytm, MobiKwik and other electronic payment methods) grew rapidly in November and December 2016 in the aftermath of demonetization but such transactions have started showing a declining trend since March 2017 when cash money supply became normal.

It is worth noting here that much of the increase in digital transactions took place in urban areas where people have easy access to PoS machines, internet banking and mobile wallets. Whereas in the rural areas where people still rely on cash, digital and other kinds of cashless transactions will take years to penetrate because of lack of electricity, internet and other infrastructure. Hence, a shift in payment patterns may happen gradually throughout the country.

Rather than banking on demonetization which is essentially a one-off event, the government should develop a long-term perspective on how to create favorable ground conditions for promoting digital transactions and moving towards a less-cash economy over the long run. Nothing is stopping the central government to take steps in this direction.

Furthermore, it would be erroneous to treat all cash transactions as part of illegal money as millions of poor households and small businesses daily use cash for legitimate transactions.

New Offshoots?

Despite growing economic concerns, the government has vigorously defended the demonetization move on the grounds that the benefits will accrue over the medium and long term.

The government claims that one of the major offshoots of the demonetization drive would be significant rise in direct tax collections. It expects that the number of income tax payers would increase substantially as demonetization has brought many people under the tax net. The government is of the view that the widening of tax base would improve India’s tax-to-GDP ratio which remains very low as compared to other emerging economies.

Two points are important to note. The first point is that it is too early to make any assessment of the impact of demonetization on India’s direct tax base. The direct tax data available till now does not suggest a dramatic improvement in the tax base post-demonetization. Perhaps one needs to wait till 2018 to know whether demonetization led to widening of tax base and tax collections.

The second point is that the increase in income tax collections during 2016-17 should be largely attributed to Income Declaration Scheme (2016) which came into effect from June 1, 2016. The Scheme gave an opportunity to people who have not paid full taxes in the past to declare the undisclosed income and pay taxes. The government expects to collect Rs 300,000 million in tax revenue under this one-off scheme.

The Finance Ministry also claims to investigate a vast number of suspicious cash deposit transactions reported by the banking system. Using the advance data analytics tools, the income tax department has identified 556000 individuals whose tax profiles are found inconsistent with the money deposited by them during the demonetization period. Given the limited manpower with the income tax department, investigating such a large number of new cases is not going to be an easy task.

Furthermore, the manner in which Indian tax authorities have handled the recent cases of tax evasion inspire little confidence. Take the case of leaked Panama Papers which were released last year. The Indian tax authorities have yet to net a “big fish” listed in Panama Papers. There are more than 500 Indians named in the Panama Papers but the tax authorities have made little progress on that front.

A larger point is that some of the purported long-term gains such as investigation of suspicious transactions and widening of tax base could be well pursued without demonetization which disrupted the economy activity and caused severe hardship to common man. The income tax and other authorities have all the necessary policy instruments at their disposal to use them in the pursuit of these objectives.

At What Cost?

Some of the economic and social costs of the demonetization decision are summarized below:

• India’s GDP growth slipped to a three-year low of 5.7% in the first quarter (April-June) of fiscal 2017-18. The disruption caused by demonetization played a role in the slowdown along with other factors such as GST (goods and services tax) destocking.
• Demonetization had a debilitating impact on India’s vast informal sector, which employs more than 90 percent of country’s workforce. The cash crunch badly affected the daily wage labourers, street vendors and informal sector workers who rely solely on cash for income and expenditure. There are several reports highlighting the massive job losses in the labour-intensive sectors in the aftermath of demonetization.
• Consumer confidence fell sharply during demonetization. The much anticipated pickup in discretionary consumer spending has not been observed despite remonetization.
• Credit growth witnessed a historic low of 5.1 percent during the second half of 2016-17. In particular, bank loans to rural areas were badly affected as the growth in rural loans plummeted to 2.5 percent.
• As part of remonetization of currency notes, the RBI had to incur massive expenditure on the printing of new currency notes. The costs of printing new notes were Rs 79,650 million, about 133% higher than the previous year. It also contributed to the decline in the RBI’s surplus payable to the central government from Rs 658,760 million in 2015-16 to Rs 306,590 million in 2016-17.
• The poor execution of demonetization move resulted in long queues outside bank branches as people waited for hours to deposit and exchange the demonetized notes.

To conclude, the government needs to explain why it pursued a shock and awe strategy through demonetization when it already has a wide variety of policy instruments to achieve same objectives?

Kavaljit Singh works with Madhyam (www.madhyam.org.in), New Delhi.

On August 30, 2017, the Reserve Bank of India released its Annual Report for 2016-17 which revealed that 98.8 percent of scrapped currency notes has come back into the Indian banking system. This mind-blowing statistics has put a serious question mark over the efficacy of demonetization move because it was anticipated by the government that a large portion of scrapped currency notes might not come back into the banking system.

On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetization move under which high-value currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 – referred to as Specified Bank Notes – ceased to be legal tender with effect from November 9, 2016. In his address to nation, PM Modi said

“From midnight November 8, 2016 today, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes are no longer legal tender.”

People were asked to deposit scrapped currency notes in their bank accounts by 30th December and were allowed to exchange them with notes of other denominations subject to certain limits and conditions.

The central government and the RBI outlined three key objectives of demonetization: to curb black money and corruption by preventing hoarding of cash; to prevent counterfeiting of currency notes; and to fight against terrorism by cutting off cash funding of terrorist groups operating in India.

Due to the withdrawal of legal tender character of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, about 15.44 trillion rupees worth of the currency notes (about 86 percent of the total currency) were removed from circulation. In ‘Currency Management’ chapter of annual report, the RBI noted: “Subject to future corrections based on verification process when completed, the estimated value of SBNs received as on June 30, 2017, is 15.28 trillion.” In simple words, 98.8 percent of banned currency notes returned into the banking system after the demonetization. Hence, the expectation that the demonetization would force people to destroy their illegitimate cash in order to escape scrutiny from tax authorities simply did not materialize.

Why Delay?

These statistics have been eagerly awaited as the exact figure of the returned currency notes would reveal the effectiveness of demonetization move. It is beyond comprehension why the RBI took so long to reveal the official data. In the initial weeks of demonetization drive, the RBI was releasing the data pertaining to return of banned currency notes but this practice was stopped midway without any explanation.

Till July 2017, the RBI had maintained that it could not tell the exact amount of banned notes received by it as the counting process is not yet over. Until the RBI released its annual report on August 30, the official numbers were not publicly revealed even though many critics had estimated that the return of banned currency notes would be higher than 95 percent.

Gaming the System

The overarching objective behind the demonetization move was to flush out black money or illegally-acquired cash from the financial system. The RBI data lends credence to widely held claims that people hoarding black money gamed the system by converting their illegal currency into legal tender through various means including parking banned currency notes in the bank accounts of poor and low-income individuals. Millions of bank accounts were opened during a massive financial inclusion scheme – Jan Dhan Yojana – in 2014. Post-demonetization, a surge in deposits in Jan Dhan Yojana bank accounts was witnessed in both urban and rural areas. Of course, this is not the entire story as other creative methods were used by black money hoarders to convert and use banned currency notes.

In addition, significant amounts of black money in the form of new currency notes was sized across the country during the demonetization period thereby questioning the logic of whole exercise as an effective and credible deterrence to black money. In sum, the very objective of demonetization to eliminate black money from the economy stands defeated.

Changing Goalposts

When it appeared to the government that bulk of illegal currency might return to the banking system, it began shifting the goalposts by adding new objectives of demonetization move. Hence, policy objectives such as promoting digital transactions and taking country towards a “cashless” economy (subsequently modified to a “less-cash” economy) were added later. The goal to make India a cashless economy seems more as an afterthought plan. These objectives, despite desirable, were not listed in the earlier official notifications.

Using a Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut

How far the demonetization policy has been able to achieve other stated objectives? Let’s begin with fake Indian currency notes (FICNs) which the currency demonetization exercise was expected to curb its circulation and thereby reining the activities of anti-social elements.

In order to justify the demonetization move, Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy claimed that fake notes worth Rs 20,000 million are in circulation. In reality, the government has not detected a large volume of fake currency notes in circulation within the country despite eight months have passed after demonetization. The RBI’s annual report also noted that the face value of fake Indian currency notes (FICNs) of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination was merely Rs 410 million during 2016-17. If the total face value of FICNs is so meagre, why massive disruption in economic activity was caused by demonetization? Wouldn’t it have been better to curb the circulation of counterfeit currency through printing of new currency notes containing high security features that are difficult to replicate?

As far as the impact on terror funding is concerned, there is very little evidence to suggest that the demonetization has curtailed it significantly.

The Dream of a Cashless Economy

Another much-touted objective of demonetization was to promote the use of digital transactions and move towards a “cashless” economy. There is no denying that the number of digital transactions (via Paytm, MobiKwik and other electronic payment methods) grew rapidly in November and December 2016 in the aftermath of demonetization but such transactions have started showing a declining trend since March 2017 when cash money supply became normal.

It is worth noting here that much of the increase in digital transactions took place in urban areas where people have easy access to PoS machines, internet banking and mobile wallets. Whereas in the rural areas where people still rely on cash, digital and other kinds of cashless transactions will take years to penetrate because of lack of electricity, internet and other infrastructure. Hence, a shift in payment patterns may happen gradually throughout the country.

Rather than banking on demonetization which is essentially a one-off event, the government should develop a long-term perspective on how to create favorable ground conditions for promoting digital transactions and moving towards a less-cash economy over the long run. Nothing is stopping the central government to take steps in this direction.

Furthermore, it would be erroneous to treat all cash transactions as part of illegal money as millions of poor households and small businesses daily use cash for legitimate transactions.

New Offshoots?

Despite growing economic concerns, the government has vigorously defended the demonetization move on the grounds that the benefits will accrue over the medium and long term.

The government claims that one of the major offshoots of the demonetization drive would be significant rise in direct tax collections. It expects that the number of income tax payers would increase substantially as demonetization has brought many people under the tax net. The government is of the view that the widening of tax base would improve India’s tax-to-GDP ratio which remains very low as compared to other emerging economies.

Two points are important to note. The first point is that it is too early to make any assessment of the impact of demonetization on India’s direct tax base. The direct tax data available till now does not suggest a dramatic improvement in the tax base post-demonetization. Perhaps one needs to wait till 2018 to know whether demonetization led to widening of tax base and tax collections.

The second point is that the increase in income tax collections during 2016-17 should be largely attributed to Income Declaration Scheme (2016) which came into effect from June 1, 2016. The Scheme gave an opportunity to people who have not paid full taxes in the past to declare the undisclosed income and pay taxes. The government expects to collect Rs 300,000 million in tax revenue under this one-off scheme.

The Finance Ministry also claims to investigate a vast number of suspicious cash deposit transactions reported by the banking system. Using the advance data analytics tools, the income tax department has identified 556000 individuals whose tax profiles are found inconsistent with the money deposited by them during the demonetization period. Given the limited manpower with the income tax department, investigating such a large number of new cases is not going to be an easy task.

Furthermore, the manner in which Indian tax authorities have handled the recent cases of tax evasion inspire little confidence. Take the case of leaked Panama Papers which were released last year. The Indian tax authorities have yet to net a “big fish” listed in Panama Papers. There are more than 500 Indians named in the Panama Papers but the tax authorities have made little progress on that front.

A larger point is that some of the purported long-term gains such as investigation of suspicious transactions and widening of tax base could be well pursued without demonetization which disrupted the economy activity and caused severe hardship to common man. The income tax and other authorities have all the necessary policy instruments at their disposal to use them in the pursuit of these objectives.

At What Cost?

Some of the economic and social costs of the demonetization decision are summarized below:

• India’s GDP growth slipped to a three-year low of 5.7% in the first quarter (April-June) of fiscal 2017-18. The disruption caused by demonetization played a role in the slowdown along with other factors such as GST (goods and services tax) destocking.
• Demonetization had a debilitating impact on India’s vast informal sector, which employs more than 90 percent of country’s workforce. The cash crunch badly affected the daily wage labourers, street vendors and informal sector workers who rely solely on cash for income and expenditure. There are several reports highlighting the massive job losses in the labour-intensive sectors in the aftermath of demonetization.
• Consumer confidence fell sharply during demonetization. The much anticipated pickup in discretionary consumer spending has not been observed despite remonetization.
• Credit growth witnessed a historic low of 5.1 percent during the second half of 2016-17. In particular, bank loans to rural areas were badly affected as the growth in rural loans plummeted to 2.5 percent.
• As part of remonetization of currency notes, the RBI had to incur massive expenditure on the printing of new currency notes. The costs of printing new notes were Rs 79,650 million, about 133% higher than the previous year. It also contributed to the decline in the RBI’s surplus payable to the central government from Rs 658,760 million in 2015-16 to Rs 306,590 million in 2016-17.
• The poor execution of demonetization move resulted in long queues outside bank branches as people waited for hours to deposit and exchange the demonetized notes.

To conclude, the government needs to explain why it pursued a shock and awe strategy through demonetization when it already has a wide variety of policy instruments to achieve same objectives?

Kavaljit Singh works with Madhyam (www.madhyam.org.in), New Delhi.

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

Global BDS activism is vital – the most effective initiative challenging Israeli ruthlessness, essential to preserve and support.

Congressional Israel Anti-Boycott Act legislation wants it criminalized. It aims to “amend the Export Administration Act of 1979 to include in the prohibitions on boycotts against allies of the United States boycotts fostered by international governmental organizations against Israel and to direct the Export-Import Bank of the United States to oppose boycotts against Israel, and for other purposes.”

Its key provisions include:

• Congressional opposition to BDS.
• Calling UNHCR criticism of Israel support for BDS, notably its March 2016 blacklist of companies operating in Occupied Palestine on stolen land.
• Expanding the Export Administration Act (EAA), prohibiting involvement with any foreign government’s boycott of Israel.
• Prohibiting Americans from responding to boycott requests from international governmental organizations, including the UN and EU.
• Requiring the Export-Import Bank to consider an applicant’s BDS-related activities when considering granting assistance.
• Assuring nothing legislatively alters established US policy on final status issues, including borders, Jerusalem, and other issues left to Israel and Palestinians to resolve on their own – assuring continued occupation harshness and denial of fundamental Palestinian rights.
• Prohibiting commercial activities intended to harm Israel.
• Expanding and coordinating cooperation by America with Israel to counter BDS.
• Criminalizing BDS activism flagrantly violates First Amendment rights. Human rights groups strongly oppose proposed Israel Anti-Boycott legislation.

The ACLU blasted it for “punish(ing) individuals for no reason other than their political beliefs.” Requesting BDS information would be illegal.

Penalties would include stiff fines up to $1 million dollars and/or imprisonment as long as 20 years.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, First Amendment rights to express views freely fundamental. Without them, all others are endangered.

Israel is a Ziofascist, racist police state. Opposing its ruthlessness is an obligation along with a right. Criminalizing free expression is the hallmark of dictatorships.

In Abrams v. United States (1919), Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes called disagreement with free speech never a reason to condemn it. Their views strongly influenced nearly all subsequent High Court First Amendment rulings.

If Israel Anti-Boycott legislation is enacted, federal courts should strike it down, affirming its unconstitutionality.

Scores of human rights groups oppose it, including the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Council for American Islamic Relations, Peace Now, and Jewish Voices for Peace, among many others.

In a joint statement to Congress, they expressed strong “oppos(ition) (to) this unconstitutional, draconian bill and to affirm the First Amendment right of all people in the United States to support political boycotts as a means to achieve justice and equality for Palestinians.”

“(I)ts passage would still send a message that political boycotts for Palestinian rights are disfavored by the government, causing a severe chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech.”

“The US Supreme Court has ruled that peaceful political boycotts are protected by the First Amendment. The government may not enact laws that would punish those who support political boycotts or compromise the right to support political boycotts.”

Enactment “will have the effect of chilling First Amendment-protected political speech.”

“(W)e call on all members of Congress to publicly oppose the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and to affirm the First Amendment right to support political boycotts – including those aimed at achieving justice and equality for Palestinians.”

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: Palestinian youths force open a gate in the Israeli separation wall, built on land belonging to the village of Bil’in, which leads to the Israeli settlement of Modi’in Ilit, also built on village land, February 17, 2017. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Most veteran observers, including Israeli security authorities and Palestinian leadership, were dumbfounded by recent events in Jerusalem, where tens of thousands of Palestinians mobilized non-violently in response to the Israeli closure of the Old City and placement of metal detectors at the entrance of the Dome of Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. What was the secret ingredient that made such a mass action take place and be a successful example in Palestinian non-violent resistance to the 50 years of Israeli military occupation? How did it happen so spontaneously, non-violently and with seemingly no leadership?

A new report by the group, titled, Relations Between Palestinians Across the Green Line (Arabic here, English translation forthcoming), in the works for over two years, may hold the answer to some of these questions. For months, a group of dedicated Palestinian analysts, activists, intellectuals and politicians working with the Palestine Strategy Group (PSG) have been meeting to explore an angle of the Palestinians reality that is many times ignored—the relationship between the Palestinians living inside Israel, today coined as Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Transcending artificial boundaries

The report identifies Jerusalem as a place where, paradoxically, the boundaries of Israel and Palestine collapse — a site for joint work, cooperation and struggle against Israel’s colonial policies. Many political leaders (Palestinian members of Knesset, as well as Jerusalemites, Fatah members, Hamas-affiliated academics, etc.) who were part of the group that produced the report testified to the existing, nascent cooperation and possibility and need to further develop it.

Even beyond the recent developments in Jerusalem, there are also indications of grassroots and bottom-up engagements transcending conventional and formal realms of political engagement elsewhere. The cross-border mobilization and cooperation to address the Prawer Plan, for instance, a 2011 Israeli government plan to forcibly relocate some 40,000 Bedouin citizens living in dozens of villages in Israel’s Negev desert, was identified as additional proof to this growing phenomenon of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line finding common ground.

The PSG report starts with stating an obvious, but no less bold, fact that

“Fifty years after the Israeli occupation and forced annexation of Palestinians under Israel’s discriminatory ruling regime, political projects associated with ending the occupation and attaining full citizenship have ended in stalemate.”

That statement is not groundbreaking in and of itself. When coupled with the following realization, however, it provides more than just food for thought — it also sheds light on this rather invisible phenomenon which has the potential to rejuvenate the entire Palestinian national liberation movement. The report continues:

“In light of different political projects, national cohesion among the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line is a key tool to create a unified, collective umbrella that allows networking, empowerment and development. While it does not abolish political specificities, this umbrella will seek to integrate political projects. Every component of these projects will support the other with a view to realizing respective demands, including ending the occupation of the 1967 territory, return of the refugees, full citizenship, and individual and collective equality inside the Green Line.”

A new Palestinian agency?

The strategy presented is premised on two hypotheses. First, is the need to maintain a clear distinction between the national and the political realms. That means an inclusive Palestinian national project that brings together all Palestinian people — those under occupation in the (New) State of Palestine, those in Israel, and those refugees and diaspora abroad. Secondly, discrepant political interests and perceptions of Palestinian groups need to be viewed as complementary, rather than contradictory to one another. Doing so means embracing diversity, transforming it from a source of divisions into a foundation for rebuilding a national project.

It is important to emphasize that support, networking and joint action of Palestinians across the Green Line have always been in place. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian party leaders inside Israel have acted in concert and coordinated with and supported each other on innumerable occasions. However, coordination always took place beyond any institutional frameworks. Oftentimes, the report notes, “collaboration was arbitrary, individual [and not] bona fide.” Today, this cross-border cooperation is not only targeted, collective and authentic, but has within it the seeds of a new type of Palestinian leadership.

In this context, namely the lack of institutional networking, PSG discussants proposed several potential options to institutionalize relations between Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. A major thrust of the report entertains the “creating an inclusive, apolitical framework for all Palestinians.”

Palestinians are 12 million in number, and stuck in institutional paralysis. The nearly 25-year-old Oslo Peace Process successfully, and sadly, facilitated Israel’s strategic desire to utilize the age-old divide and conquer strategy to reduce Palestinians to disparate fragments, each with their own challenge to merely survive. It’s time to reset that reality and view the Palestinians for what they are, physically fragmented, politically divided, but a whole people nonetheless, from Ramallah to Santiago.

Sam Bahour is a Secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group and policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. He blogs at www.epalestine.com. @SamBahour. The PSG report was implemented in cooperation with the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR) and the Oxford Research Group (ORG). It was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Representative Office of Norway to the Palestinian Authority (2015-2017) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (2016-2017).  This latest report is the most recent of a series of important and influential documents the PSG has issued since its founding in 2008.

It has all the ingredients of screwball stand up comedy, the necessary corrective to end-of-the-world scenarios. “And there she was, Irma, blowing herself through the room… And I shot her.” But humour is in scant supply for authorities who have been paying attention to the relentless movements of Hurricane Irma. Irma, who sounds like a gentle, tea sipping teetotal passing her days on a patio, is keen to make an impression.

Certainly she has for those at the Pasco County Sheriff’s office, based in the Tampa Bay area. The good sheriffs got wind of a Facebook event titled “Shoot At Hurricane Irma” on Saturday, immediately sending out fitful warnings.[1] The barb of humour had struck. People had to be warned about the madness of directing weapons at Mother Nature’s finer furies in case her temper turned.

“DO NOT shoot weapons @ #Irma. You won’t make it turn around [and] it will have very dangerous side effects.” This warning is in the order of death being bad for your health. Bullets, warned the office, come back. “Don’t shoot.”[2]

The Facebook event itself, which took place on September 10, received over 80,000 responses. (And if you do care for the breakdown, 29 thousand went; 55 thousand were interested.) The “windy headass named Irma” would be shown a thing or two by the invitees. Well one thing at least: “Let’s show Irma that we shoot first.”

Responses to the event, hosted by Ryon Edwards and Zeke Murphy, were more interested in the humour of it than any intended physical, let alone literal effects But it has generated a quarry of hysterics to mine, many focused on gun culture, gallows humour and Florida. These are the follies and foibles of shooting, not necessarily related to hurricane-induced disaster.

For those happy to get into the jocular spirit of things, this was their chance at some light entertainment before the brute winds, and inevitable flooding, that Irma will bring. Links and posts to articles about Florida proliferated. Images of weapons and armaments, including infants placed beside rocket launchers, were posted showing firm resolution in the face of gloom.

Even an international dimension was injected into proceedings. “Breaking news,” posted Raghavendra Rao,

“North Korea has decided to stand by the US during hurricane Irma, and as a gesture of solidarity, it has decided to drop its h-bomb on Irma to make it turn around.”

Then there were the errors, the home video incompetents, the plain foolish to remind participants what happens in that state.

“A Florida man accidentally shot himself in the penis when he sat down on a gun in the driver’s seat of his car,” goes one post from Mike Hunter, featuring the Orlando Sentinel from July. “The sheriff’s office said the 38-year old man has a previous conviction for cocaine possession and may now face charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm.”[3]

There are others:

“Florida man shoots python that attacked family goat”; “Man robs store, then shoots himself”.

All these snippets have a certain underlying scorn to them, the upturned nose at hick madness. Humour can, after all, do its fair share of wounding. But it can just as well lighten and heal, soften impending and existing cruelties.

Not so, for the literal minded, fearful that wells of intelligence and caution were running dry. “Are you an idiot?” raged Janet Konst Wilson on the Facebook invitation wall.

“I hope no one actually follows your ‘sarcastic’ post.” Such angst, it seemed, was justifiable, because, “Not everyone recognizes sarcasm, especially when they are afraid of their lives.” Think about those law enforcement warnings, wrote Janet with priestly gravity. “You could be bringing a lot of hurt down on you [sic] own head.”

Another post from Jeff Cobb makes an assertion verging on the tone of an anti-book fatwa. If the author insults holy edicts, he should die.

“If someone dies from this,” claims Cobb, “@ryon should go to prison.”

The absurdity of adding such seriousness to the occasion diminishes on realising how Liberty Land can be so averse to the ironies of the human character. Special warnings must be issued; nothing eccentric or contrarian can be left to chance. People might just do it! And just as there are certain old jokes about the Floridian resident going troppo, there are always those who think that shooting at a natural disaster might just help.

Transforming the comic into stone serious panic amongst authorities was not confined to the US quarter. True, this is the land where biblical literalism banishes humour from discussion in the wake of fire and brimstone solemnity, but there was concerned Jiří Palička, who insisted that everyone part of “this silly happening should return his weapons and report himself to the nearest mental situation.”

As Edwards subsequently noted,

“It was cool to see the response this got from facebook. On another note, I’ve learned that about 50% of the world could not understand sarcasm to save their lives. Carry on.” As, indeed, they shall.

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

Notes

Sixteen years ago, Bush officially launched the “Global War on Terrorism”, paving the way for a war without borders. The corporate media backed this illegal act of war which in turn galvanized the public for immediate support. Did  Americans unhesitatingly buy the allegations that Al-Qaeda masterminded the WTC attack and that Osama bin Laden was  the number one enemy of the Western world? 

After 16 years of unrelenting debunking of the 9/11 official narratives by genuine progressive activists, do Americans still believe what their government told them?

Below is a selection of articles.

*     *     *

The Disturbing Aftermath of 9/11

By Stephen Lendman, September 11, 2017

The day will live in infamy, the attacks planned well in advance. Bin Laden and so-called “crazed Arabs” had nothing to do with destroying the twin towers and striking the Pentagon.

September 11, 2001: Questions to Ask if You Still Believe the Official Narrative

By Tony Cartalucci, September 11, 2017

Can the similarities between 9/11 and plans drawn up by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in 1962 under the code name “Operation Northwoods” be easily dismissed?

9/11 Unanswered Questions: Mysterious September 11, 2001 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2017

Sixteen years later, the propaganda campaign seeks to “infiltrate” the 9/11 Truth movement by bringing in the notorious 28 pages. What is now occurring is that Al Qaeda did it, but they were supported by Saudi Arabia (according to the 28 pages), all of which is meant to dispel the fact amply documented that Al Qaeda did not have the ability to bring down the towers and that Al Qaeda has been supported from the outset by the CIA. The towers were brought down through controlled demolition.

Overwhelming Evidence that 9/11, Used to Justify Washington’s Military Agenda Was a Deception. 9/11 Consensus Panel

By Consensus911.org, September 08, 2017

The first Point, “The Claim that the Hijackers were Devout Muslims,” cites many media reports that the hijackers were engaged in “decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures,” including lap dancing in Las Vegas night clubs.

Video: 9/11 and the Global War on Terrorism

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett, September 04, 2017

9/11 was also a stepping stone towards the relentless repeal of civil liberties, the militarization of law enforcement and the inauguration of “Police State USA”.

Sixteen More Convincing Reasons to Question 9/11

By Kevin Ryan, August 28, 2017

The 19 young men accused within 72-hours of the attacks were known to enjoy strip bars, alcohol, drugs, and other things that are clearly non-Muslim activities. Moreover, these suspects were not capable of accomplishing most of what was needed to pull off the crimes.

*     *     *

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Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

The Trump administration is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico in secret, just as President Obama did with the TPP. Over the past two decades, NAFTA has resulted in workers losing their jobs and being replaced by machinery, ruined family farms throughout the continent, displaced communities and privatized social services, environmental disasters like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a widespread attack on labor rights and unions.

Everything the new administration has done indicates that NAFTA2 is a deal that, once again, prioritizes the interests of corporations over people and the planet. Workers in each country will be worse off, the planet will be threatened by further contamination of the environment, and big corporate interests will take precedence over the sovereignty and democracy of each country.

This week, we explain our opposition to NAFTA2 and put forward a strategy to remake trade so it is no longer corporate-driven trade for the profits of a few, but people-driven trade to benefit all and protect the planet. See the list of actions below.

Pitting Community Against Community

In the United States, while both Democrats and Republicans continued to pursue larger-scale free trade agreements with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and others, Republicans also fought against a national agenda of greater racial equality. Trump’s rejection of free trade deals that hollowed out the industrial Midwest along with his unapologetic contempt for people of color were fundamental factors for his popularity among the white working class. As a voting bloc, they decided they would benefit more from making their political allegiances based on racial supremacy rather than class unity through a labor movement that had been failed by the Democrats. Ta-Nahesi Coates’s brilliant article, “The First White President,” details how the re-formulation of this cross-class white coalition is deepening a long legacy of race playing a central role in US politics.

NAFTA is a deal that lets corporations pit North American communities against one another to attain the lowest price and the highest profit and that will not change under the Trump administration. There is no tweak or modernization that can change this fact. No deal that seeks to employ and benefit the white working class while jeopardizing the very livelihood of black and brown folks in the United States, Mexico, and Canada should be deemed acceptable to anyone and must be made politically toxic to pass. The trade justice movement must be committed to changing the corporate trade model that NAFTA represents with trade that benefits working people and the planet.

NAFTA 2 is a Trade Deal that Serves Powerful Corporations

The central struggle in NAFTA is between transnational corporations and the people and communities of North America. The Trump administration’s economic team is made up by two corporate factions that are learning to work together: advocates of free trade agreements like the TPP and economic nationalists who more explicitly seek US (white) supremacy over the international economy. Both models uphold a system in which powerful corporations and their governing allies benefit most when the people are dis-empowered. They benefit when we are displaced and divided.

The ‘Modernize’ NAFTA Camp

Free trade advocates that want NAFTA to be ‘modernized’ remain amongst the more powerful stakeholders in the negotiations, especially with the removal of Steve Bannon. Consistent with neo-liberal trade policy, under their Wall Street model of trade, they view the renegotiation of NAFTA as an opportunity to reshuffle trade by using the TPP as its foundation so the rules of the game benefit transnational corporations.

Trump’s NAFTA would likely include an expansion of the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism to be similar to the TPP, which allowed corporations to sue governments if they take any action that threatens potential profits. For example, the government may be sued if it violates strict intellectual property provisions like those that benefit the pharmaceutical industry in the interest of public health or if it challenges new digital trade provisions that undermine Internet freedom.

Through ISDS, transnational corporations could also sue the government if it tries to implement stronger environmental and labor regulations. The judges of these tribunals are mostly corporate lawyers who in the past have consistently ruled against any progressive legislation, resulting in millions of taxpayer dollars being handed over to corporations, as is well documented in this “Global Super Court” BuzzFeed series by Chris Hamby. The powerful players in agribusiness will keep fighting for domination over family farms, and corporations like Monsanto will keep urging legal protection of their monopoly over seeds. Unions will continue to be trampled on by corporations’ ability to pit communities, cities, and governments against each other for their own benefit. Communities of color will remain the principal victims of mass incarceration, poverty wages, workplace discrimination, and environmental racism.

The Economic Nationalism Camp

The economic nationalism camp is the Make America Great Again faction of Trump’s trade team, advocating for the government to use the country’s position as the world’s largest consumer and third largest exporter as an extortion mechanism to get unfair advantages for US corporations.

They put forward the myth that if US corporations are succeeding, then the American worker is succeeding. The fallacy of trickle-down economics has been disproven over and over again as it has only led to economic inequality and impoverishment, especially for communities of color. Without a higher minimum wage, strict enforcement of labor regulations, strong unions and the repeal of right-to-work laws, there will never be a working class that achieves justice and is treated with respect in the United States. Without basic protections for family farms, rural communities will be pushed off of their land.

Trump’s nationalistic agenda is an agenda about the dominance of the United States government and its major corporations as a world imperial power with its white nationalist and neoliberal tendencies. It is directly opposed to a vision of trade justice in which working people everywhere are collaborating to bring each other economic prosperity and environmental well-being. Without enforceable equal pay standards and an end to workplace discrimination against communities of black and brown people, immigrants, people with disabilities, and our LGBTQI+ family that prohibits our folks access to jobs with dignity and justice, there is no such thing as “Fair Trade”.

Internationally, the administration wants the ISDS to have an opt-in option so that corporations in other countries cannot sue the US government while US corporations can sue governments everywhere else. This is the camp that is bullying Mexico with threats to build a wall and make their taxpayers pay for it, to terminate NAFTA with no contention plan for a transition as a threat to pressure Mexico and Canada, to use the corporate influence over Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and a difficult 2018 election for his party to, once again, impose a US agenda over the Mexican people.

Trade must benefit the working class everywhere while combating every form of discrimination and economic inequality. When the global economy works for everyone and makes reparations for the damages of past trade deals, then we will have “Fair Trade.”

Trade for People and the Planet

We propose a vision for trade that serves working people and protects the planet. That is why we have to say #NoNAFTA2, and make a radical refusal of any new or re-worked corporate trade deals. We want to #ReplaceNAFTA with trade for people and the planet.

#NoNAFTA2

We must make sure there is #NoNAFTA2. We will not accept any more deals like the original NAFTA or TPP that are created by and for Wall Street. We will also never be complicit with a nationalist agenda that targets the poor, people of color, and basic environmental protections at home while ensuring oppression, poverty, and environmental destruction abroad. We must fight NAFTA and also #DefendDACA, make sure #Not1More person is deported, rise up because #BlackLivesMatter, and put our bodies on the line so that there is #NoWall.

We also do not support Trump’s threat to terminate the deal altogether. Any termination or re-negotiation has to happen in consideration of the real impacts for workers, preparing for important shifts in the economy that could lead to unemployment and displacement.

We will oppose the continuation and expansion of the ISDS trade tribunals that give major corporations the power to prevent laws in the public interest that protect workers, the environment, our health and our food systems, safety and access to information.

Anything short of that means more power for mega-corporations over workers, a world order constructed in complicity and collaboration with white supremacy, the selling off of our environment and our democratic sovereignty.

#ReplaceNAFTA

Our fight against NAFTA is a golden opportunity to push our vision for trade: trade for people and the planet. We want an entire replacement of NAFTA negotiated by the working class, environmentalists, consumer protection organizations, indigenous peoples, black people, immigrants, family farmers and rural communities, artists, social movements and organizations, Internet freedom and security organizations, and trade experts that care about justice and dignity for all.

We want trade that makes sure no corporation can take advantage of workers anywhere, that labor and environmental standards are high in North America and are tied to projects of economic sustainability and prosperity that are led by communities, not greedy multinational corporations. Fair trade requires free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples to be mandatory with any matters concerning their territory, sovereignty, and culture.

Fair trade would empower popular assemblies with social organizations from across the continent – as happened with the Encounter of Social Organizations of Canada, United States, and Mexico, which produced a visionary proposal for collaborations between the three countries – to have democratic decision-making power.

To achieve fair trade, negotiation must not be in secret but must be transparent. It must not be limited to transnational corporate interests but be led by broad civil society organizations, family farmers and small businesses to participate. There must be democratic checks and balances as the negotiation proceeds, accompanied by public hearings and legislative oversight. Ending corporate trade will not occur by tinkering, but through the transformation of the process and goals of trade deals.

Our Strategy for Action

Our first task is education, this requires exposing NAFTA for the corporate trade deal it is through corporate and social media and then mobilizing people to take action in all three countries. Our second task is delaying the negotiation process as much as possible. The Mexican presidential elections of mid-2018 and the congressional elections of the US in fall of 2018 are critical factors that will change the political climate. There will be a surge in progressive politics in both countries, creating a much more favorable electoral panorama that will help make sure corporations cannot lock in this disastrous replay of NAFTA. We cannot let these secret negotiations go under the radar, we must expose them.

The NAFTA renegotiation must be at the forefront of the national political agenda as occurred with the TPP. Voters in the US and Mexico must make support of another corporate NAFTA a central issue in 2018 so that politicians who support trade for big business pay a political price. Renegotiation of NAFTA should not be conducted by an outgoing Mexican president who does the bidding of big business or by a US Congress in bed with transnational corporate interests and a racist President. Replacing NAFTA must be an issue for the 2019-2020 electoral agenda as well. This is an opportunity to revolutionize trade for the well-being of the people and the planet.

Here are the actions we are taking now to make that happen:

Twitter Storm

Every negotiation round (every three weeks for the rest of the year) we will organize a Twitter Storm to let negotiators know that we are watching and we are shaping the conversation. In addition, these twitter storms will be used to educate and activate people  in the US, Mexico and Canada. This has already started. On the inaugural day of NAFTA’s renegotiation, Popular Resistance launched a #NoNAFTA2 Twitter Storm that produced over 1,900 tweets and generated over 800,000 impressions.

The next round will be in Canada this month. For more information follow us on Twitter @PopResistance,@FlushtheTPP (trade for people and planet’s twitter) and join Trade for People and Planet.

#NoNAFTA2 October Action

Protests are building in Mexico and must do so in the US and Canada. The movement for fair trade must protest at every NAFTA negotiation to show opposition and build the movement for fair trade. The fourth round of NAFTA negotiations will be held in Washington, D.C. in October and we will be outside their secret meetings making our voices heard. We want Trade for People and the Planet. For more information follow our Facebook page!

Pressure Congress to revoke Fast Track

The Obama administration managed to pass Fast Track (or Trade Promotion Authority), which limits Congress to an up or down vote on the TPP without any ability to amend the deal. Fast Track legislation is applicable to all trade deals until July 31, 2018 with the option of an extension through 2021. We must pressure members of Congress to revoke Trade Promotion Authority by making NAFTA 2 as politically toxic as the TPP.

Congress must Choose the People, Not Big Corporations

NAFTA2 is a conflict between corporations and the people, Congress has to pick a side and suffer the consequences when elections occur. Will they stand with their big corporate donors or with the people they were elected to serve? If they stand with big business interests, they will lose elections as voters will not support them.

The movement of movements that came together to stop the TPP was able to make TPP stand for “‘toxic political poison’. Trump’s NAFTA plans are no different and the diverse groups that will be negatively impacted must come together to stop toxic corporate trade once again. We can do so and when we win, we need to transform trade so it serves the people and protects the planet.

Join the campaign for trade that puts people and the planet first. For more information and to get active, join the Trade for People and Planet mailing list.

Daniel Cooper Bermudez is Campaign Coordinator of Trade for People and Planet.

Australia is having an energy crisis. A country with such abundant resources is incapable it seems, of handling matters of reliable supply, either in terms of affordability, or in terms of delivery. The situation has been further muddied by the inability of the parties in parliament to find common ground. The gloves are off, and there is blood in the chambers.

The blame game is being fanned with the enthusiasm of Tourette syndrome sufferers. The impoverished state of Australian political speak is evident in the use of various terms of derision. Labor frontbencher, Joel Fitzgibbon, has become “No coal Joel” to members of the government.

The leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, has been labelled by the uninventive Prime Minister “Electricity Blackout Bill”. “There’s never been a more exciting time,” rues comedian Mark Humphries, “for crap nicknames.”[1]

A political form of schizophrenia has developed towards the energy market, though it had already announced its arrival with the previous Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Apparently leaving matters to the market, the religious bread and butter of the conservative coalition government, is not the way to go on this one.

This interventionist approach has manifested itself in two ways. Companies, like AGL, are battered (at first glance) into making business choices that favour the LNP’s policy agenda. Monsters like Adani are rewarded with subsidies to further mine a commodity that is fast reaching economic obsolescence.

The Turnbull government, in a state of numbing panic, has badgered AGL boss Andy Vesey who is intent on moving his company from coal generation to renewables. This would see the coal fired Liddell power station in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley closed.

In horror, the government is intent on treating the energy issue as an ideological one, though it has shaped it as a matter of necessity more for their survival than anything else. This necessity was borne, supposedly, by the assessment by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) that much of the east and southern coast of the country could face the prospect of intermittent blackouts this scorching summer.[2] Just to add some zest to the forecast, the AEMO also suggested these might continue for many more summers.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his colleagues, preferring to turn their minds away from the repeated comments by Vesey that the Liddell power station’s days were numbered, took the insistent route. Insist, for instance, that the station be sold to a third party rather than close. Insist that this agreement would enable the station to produce electricity for five years beyond 2022 so that it might make up for the possible 1000 megawatt shortfall in dispatchable base load power.

Coal, the Turnbull government has decided, cannot be factored out. Never mind what the penny counting banks say; or the somewhat unscrupulous energy companies themselves. Or the bleeding heart environmentalists and the cool calculating economists, the latter reminding the government that using coal for electricity is no longer viable.

As one of the doyens of the Australian science establishment, Alan Finkel, noted in his independent review of Australia’s national electricity market, wind and solar sources are proving more attractive, with coal losing its economic edge.[3] Listening to members of the government coalition, and you might be tempted to think otherwise.

Caught in a dinosaur’s twilight zone, the Turnbull government has brought its knuckledusters to the political podium. The opposition Labor party has been clipped around the ears: Do you really want to be responsible for putting coal workers out of work in your electorate, No coal Joel?

The result of hectoring Vasey yielded a minor, if only distracting concession – 90 days, in fact – during which options to keep the station open, selling it, or finding a suitable market equivalent to ensure supply, will be considered. In the cocksure words of Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, the outcomes would ensure that there would be no “adverse impact on consumers in terms of those price and reliability on the system.”

The bully of the show, in this case the prime minister, was less sure. AGL had not “articulated what [the plan] is, so we don’t know and, frankly, I don’t think they do either.” Naturally: having wished to close the plant and move off coal, the board was now being asked to revise, renege, and repudiate.

The Greens climate change spokesman Adam Bandt MP was unimpressed by the proceedings: Turnbull was simply delaying the sword of inevitability:

“All the government has done has forced AGL to bring forward its planning for new renewables. AGL’s board will discuss what they were going to discuss anyway.”[4]

Vesey’s own comments suggest that.

“Short term, new development will continue to favour renewables supported by gas peaking. Longer term, we see this trend continuing with large scale battery deployment enhancing the value of renewable technology.”[5]

Even after receiving a mock bruising from Turnbull, Vesey could still maintain the unflappable line on coal.

“In this environment, we just don’t see new development of coal as economically rational, even before factoring in a carbon cost.”

Turnbull’s handiwork had not extracted everything government members had wanted. Taking the truncheon to the energy companies has been fashionable of late down under, and the identifiable Vesey has certainly left his mark on members of the Coalition.

“It appears,” claimed an accusing Craig Kelly MP, “AGL speaks with forked tongue.”[6]

Less forked, perhaps, than realistic.

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

Notes

Australia is having an energy crisis. A country with such abundant resources is incapable it seems, of handling matters of reliable supply, either in terms of affordability, or in terms of delivery. The situation has been further muddied by the inability of the parties in parliament to find common ground. The gloves are off, and there is blood in the chambers.

The blame game is being fanned with the enthusiasm of Tourette syndrome sufferers. The impoverished state of Australian political speak is evident in the use of various terms of derision. Labor frontbencher, Joel Fitzgibbon, has become “No coal Joel” to members of the government.

The leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, has been labelled by the uninventive Prime Minister “Electricity Blackout Bill”. “There’s never been a more exciting time,” rues comedian Mark Humphries, “for crap nicknames.”[1]

A political form of schizophrenia has developed towards the energy market, though it had already announced its arrival with the previous Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Apparently leaving matters to the market, the religious bread and butter of the conservative coalition government, is not the way to go on this one.

This interventionist approach has manifested itself in two ways. Companies, like AGL, are battered (at first glance) into making business choices that favour the LNP’s policy agenda. Monsters like Adani are rewarded with subsidies to further mine a commodity that is fast reaching economic obsolescence.

The Turnbull government, in a state of numbing panic, has badgered AGL boss Andy Vesey who is intent on moving his company from coal generation to renewables. This would see the coal fired Liddell power station in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley closed.

In horror, the government is intent on treating the energy issue as an ideological one, though it has shaped it as a matter of necessity more for their survival than anything else. This necessity was borne, supposedly, by the assessment by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) that much of the east and southern coast of the country could face the prospect of intermittent blackouts this scorching summer.[2] Just to add some zest to the forecast, the AEMO also suggested these might continue for many more summers.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his colleagues, preferring to turn their minds away from the repeated comments by Vesey that the Liddell power station’s days were numbered, took the insistent route. Insist, for instance, that the station be sold to a third party rather than close. Insist that this agreement would enable the station to produce electricity for five years beyond 2022 so that it might make up for the possible 1000 megawatt shortfall in dispatchable base load power.

Coal, the Turnbull government has decided, cannot be factored out. Never mind what the penny counting banks say; or the somewhat unscrupulous energy companies themselves. Or the bleeding heart environmentalists and the cool calculating economists, the latter reminding the government that using coal for electricity is no longer viable.

As one of the doyens of the Australian science establishment, Alan Finkel, noted in his independent review of Australia’s national electricity market, wind and solar sources are proving more attractive, with coal losing its economic edge.[3] Listening to members of the government coalition, and you might be tempted to think otherwise.

Caught in a dinosaur’s twilight zone, the Turnbull government has brought its knuckledusters to the political podium. The opposition Labor party has been clipped around the ears: Do you really want to be responsible for putting coal workers out of work in your electorate, No coal Joel?

The result of hectoring Vasey yielded a minor, if only distracting concession – 90 days, in fact – during which options to keep the station open, selling it, or finding a suitable market equivalent to ensure supply, will be considered. In the cocksure words of Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, the outcomes would ensure that there would be no “adverse impact on consumers in terms of those price and reliability on the system.”

The bully of the show, in this case the prime minister, was less sure. AGL had not “articulated what [the plan] is, so we don’t know and, frankly, I don’t think they do either.” Naturally: having wished to close the plant and move off coal, the board was now being asked to revise, renege, and repudiate.

The Greens climate change spokesman Adam Bandt MP was unimpressed by the proceedings: Turnbull was simply delaying the sword of inevitability:

“All the government has done has forced AGL to bring forward its planning for new renewables. AGL’s board will discuss what they were going to discuss anyway.”[4]

Vesey’s own comments suggest that.

“Short term, new development will continue to favour renewables supported by gas peaking. Longer term, we see this trend continuing with large scale battery deployment enhancing the value of renewable technology.”[5]

Even after receiving a mock bruising from Turnbull, Vesey could still maintain the unflappable line on coal.

“In this environment, we just don’t see new development of coal as economically rational, even before factoring in a carbon cost.”

Turnbull’s handiwork had not extracted everything government members had wanted. Taking the truncheon to the energy companies has been fashionable of late down under, and the identifiable Vesey has certainly left his mark on members of the Coalition.

“It appears,” claimed an accusing Craig Kelly MP, “AGL speaks with forked tongue.”[6]

Less forked, perhaps, than realistic.

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

Notes