Global Research

Fifty years ago, I could have tried to stop the Vietnam War, but lacked the courage. On Aug. 20, 1967, we at CIA received a cable from Saigon containing documentary proof that the U.S. commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, and his deputy, Gen. Creighton Abrams, were lying about their “success” in fighting the Vietnamese Communists. I live with regret that I did not blow the whistle on that when I could have.

(I wrote about this two years ago: “The Lasting Pain from Vietnam Silence,” republished below.)

Why raise this now? Because President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with starry-eyed generals (or generals with their eyes focused on their careers). And he seems to have little inkling that they got their multiple stars under a system where the Army motto “Duty, Honor, Country” can now be considered as “quaint” and “obsolete” as the Bush-Cheney administration deemed the Geneva Conventions.

All too often, the number of ribbons and merit badges festooned on the breasts of U.S. generals these days (think of the be-medaled Gen. David Petraeus, for example) is in direct proportion to the lies they have told in saluting smartly and abetting the unrealistic expectations of their political masters (and thus winning yet another star).

In my apologia that follows, the concentration is on the crimes of Westmoreland and the generations of careerist generals who aped him. There is not enough space to describe (or even list) those sycophantic officers here.

President Trump with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general.

There are, sadly, far fewer senior officers who were exceptions, who put the true interests of the country ahead of their own careers. The list of general officers with integrity – the extreme exceptions to the rule – is even shorter. Only three spring immediately to mind: two generals and one admiral, all three of them cashiered for doing their job with honesty. What they experienced was instructive and remains so to this day.

1-On February 25, 2003, three weeks before the attack on Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that post-war Iraq would require “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers.” He was immediately ridiculed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, for having exaggerated the requirement. Shinseki retired a few months later.

2-Army General David McKiernan was cut from the same cloth. When President Barack Obama took office, McKiernan was running the war in Afghanistan. Even before Obama’s election, he had expressed himself openly and strongly against applying the benighted Iraq-style “surge” of forces to Afghanistan, emphasizing that Afghanistan is “a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq,” where he had led U.S. ground forces.

“The word I don’t use for Afghanistan is ‘surge,’” McKiernan told a news conference on Oct. 1, 2008. He warned that a large, sustained military buildup would be necessary to achieve any meaningful success. Worse still for the Washington Establishment, McKiernan added a stunning “no-no” – he said to achieve anything approaching a satisfactory outcome would take a decade, perhaps 14 years. Imagine!

Former CIA Director (and later Defense Secretary) Robert Gates.

For his political bosses, that cautionary realism was too much. On May 11, 2009, the Defense Secretary whom Obama’s predecessor bequeathed to him, Robert Gates, sacked McKiernan, who had been in command less than a year. Gates replaced him with the swashbuckling Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a protégé of Gen. (and later CIA Director) David Petraeus.

Now, more than eight years later – with the American death toll almost quadrupled since the start of the Obama administration (now exceeding 2,400), with a vastly greater death toll among Afghan civilians and with the U.S. military position even more precarious – President Trump is receiving advice to dispatch more U.S. troops.

3-Admiral William J. (“Fox”) Fallon, one of the last Vietnam War veterans on active duty late into George W. Bush’s administration, took over as chief of the Central Command on March 16, 2007. Fallon had already come under heavy criticism from the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute for not being hawkish enough.

Fallon had also been confronting Vice President Dick Cheney’s desire to commit U.S. forces to another Mideast war, with Iran. As Fallon was preparing to take responsibility for U.S. forces in the region, he declared that a war with Iran “isn’t going to happen on my watch,” according to retired Army Col. Patrick Lang who told the Washington Post.

Fallon’s lack of patience with yes-men turned out to be yet another bureaucratic black mark against him. Several sources have reported that Fallon was sickened by David Petraeus’s earlier, unctuous pandering to ingratiate himself with Fallon, his superior (for all-too-short a time). Fallon is said to have been so turned off by all the accolades in a flowery introduction given him by Petraeus that he called him to his face “an ass-kissing little chicken-shit,” adding, “I hate people like that.”

Fallon lasted not quite a full year. On March 11, 2008, Gates announced the resignation of Fallon as CENTCOM Commander, but Fallon’s resistance to a war on Iran bought enough time for the U.S. intelligence community to reach a consensus that Iran had stopped work on a nuclear bomb years earlier, thus removing President Bush’s intended excuse for going to war.

A Troubling Message

Sadly, however, the message to aspiring military commanders from this history is that there is little personal gain in doing what’s best for the American people and the world. The promotions and the prestige normally go to the careerists who bend to the self-aggrandizing realities of Official Washington. They are the ones who typically become esteemed “wise men,” the likes of Gen. Colin Powell, who went with the political winds (from his days as a young officer in Vietnam through his tenure as Secretary of State).

Someone needs to tell President Trump what Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity told President George W. Bush in a memorandum for the President on February 5, 2003, immediately following Powell’s deceptive testimony urging the United Nations’ Security Council to support an invasion of Iraq. What we said then seems just as urgent now:

“[A]fter watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

And on the chance that President Trump remains tone-deaf to such advice, let me appeal to the consciences of those within the system who are privy to the kind of consequential deceit that has become endemic to the U.S. government. It is time to blow the whistle – now.

Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003, citing satellite photos which supposedly proved that Iraq had WMD, but the evidence proved bogus.

Take it from one who lives with regret from choosing not to step forward when it might have made a difference. Take it from Pentagon Papers truth-teller Daniel Ellsberg who often expresses regret that he did not speak out sooner.

Take it from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a passage ironically cited often by President Obama:

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now … there is such a thing as being too late.”

[Below is McGovern’s article from May 1, 2015]

The Lasting Pain from Vietnam Silence

Exclusive: Many reflections on America’s final days in Vietnam miss the point, pondering whether the war could have been won or lamenting the fate of U.S. collaborators left behind. The bigger questions are why did the U.S. go to war and why wasn’t the bloodletting stopped sooner, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern reflects.

By Ray McGovern

Ecclesiastes says there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. The fortieth anniversary of the ugly end of the U.S. adventure in Vietnam is a time to speak and especially of the squandered opportunities that existed earlier in the war to blow the whistle and stop the killing.

While my friend Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 eventually helped to end the war, Ellsberg is the first to admit that he waited too long to reveal the unconscionable deceit that brought death and injury to millions.

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

I regret that, at first out of naiveté and then cowardice, I waited even longer until my own truth-telling no longer really mattered for the bloodshed in Vietnam. My hope is that there may be a chance this reminiscence might matter now if only as a painful example of what I could and should have done, had I the courage back then. Opportunities to blow the whistle in time now confront a new generation of intelligence analysts whether they work on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, ISIS or Iran.

Incidentally, on Iran, there was a very positive example last decade: courageous analysts led by intrepid (and bureaucratically skilled) former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence Thomas Fingar showed that honesty can still prevail within the system, even when truth is highly unwelcome.

The unanimous intelligence community conclusion of a National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier played a huge role in thwarting plans by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to attack Iran in 2008, their last year in office. Bush says so in his memoir; and, on that one point, we can believe him.

After a half-century of watching such things closely, this is the only time in my experience that the key judgment of an NIE helped prevent a catastrophic, unwinnable war. Sadly, judging from the amateurism now prevailing in Washington’s opaque policymaking circles, it seems clear that the White House pays little heed to those intelligence officers still trying to speak truth to power.

For them I have a suggestion: Don’t just wring your hands, with an “I did everything I could to get the truth out.” Chances are you have not done all you can. Ponder the stakes the lives ended too early; the bodies and minds damaged forever; the hatred engendered against the United States; and the long-term harm to U.S. national interests and think about blowing the whistle publicly to prevent unnecessary carnage and alienation.

I certainly wish I had done so about what I learned of the unconscionable betrayal by senior military and intelligence officers regarding Vietnam. More recently, I know that several of you intelligence analysts with a conscience wish you had blown the whistle on the fraud “justifying” war on Iraq. Spreading some truth around is precisely what you need to do now on Syria, Iraq, Ukraine and the “war on terror,” for example.

I thought that by describing my own experience negative as it is and the remorse I continue to live with, I might assist those of you now pondering whether to step up to the plate and blow the whistle now, before it is again too late. So below is an article that I might call “Vietnam and Me.”

Photo of victims of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam galvanized public awareness about the barbarity of the war. (Photo taken by U. S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle)

My hope is to spare you the remorse of having to write, a decade or two from now, your own  “Ukraine and Me” or “Syria and Me” or “Iraq and Me” or “Libya and Me” or “The War on Terror and Me.” My article, from 2010, was entitled “How Truth Can Save Lives” and it began:

If independent-minded Web sites, like WikiLeaks or, say, Consortiumnews.com, existed 43 years ago, I might have risen to the occasion and helped save the lives of some 25,000 U.S. soldiers, and a million Vietnamese, by exposing the lies contained in just one SECRET/EYES ONLY cable from Saigon.

I need to speak out now because I have been sickened watching the herculean effort by Official Washington and our Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) to divert attention from the violence and deceit in Afghanistan, reflected in thousands of U.S. Army documents, by shooting the messenger(s), WikiLeaks and Pvt. Bradley Manning.

After all the indiscriminate death and destruction from nearly nine years of war, the hypocrisy is all too transparent when WikiLeaks and suspected leaker Manning are accused of risking lives by exposing too much truth. Besides, I still have a guilty conscience for what I chose NOT to do in exposing facts about the Vietnam War that might have saved lives.

The sad-but-true story recounted below is offered in the hope that those in similar circumstances today might show more courage than I was able to muster in 1967, and take full advantage of the incredible advancements in technology since then.

Many of my Junior Officer Trainee Program colleagues at CIA came to Washington in the early Sixties inspired by President John Kennedy’s Inaugural speech in which he asked us to ask ourselves what we might do for our country. (Sounds corny nowadays, I suppose; I guess I’ll just have to ask you to take it on faith. It may not have been Camelot exactly, but the spirit and ambience were fresh, and good.)

Among those who found Kennedy’s summons compelling was Sam Adams, a young former naval officer out of Harvard College. After the Navy, Sam tried Harvard Law School, but found it boring. Instead, he decided to go to Washington, join the CIA as an officer trainee, and do something more adventurous. He got more than his share of adventure.

Sam was one of the brightest and most dedicated among us. Quite early in his career, he acquired a very lively and important account, that of assessing Vietnamese Communist strength early in the war. He took to the task with uncommon resourcefulness and quickly proved himself the consummate analyst.

Relying largely on captured documents, buttressed by reporting from all manner of other sources, Adams concluded in 1967 that there were twice as many Communists (about 600,000) under arms in South Vietnam as the U.S. military there would admit.

Dissembling in Saigon

Visiting Saigon during 1967, Adams learned from Army analysts that their commanding general, William Westmoreland, had placed an artificial cap on the official Army count rather than risk questions regarding “progress” in the war (sound familiar?).

It was a clash of cultures; with Army intelligence analysts saluting generals following politically dictated orders, and Sam Adams aghast at the dishonesty, consequential dishonesty. From time to time I would have lunch with Sam and learn of the formidable opposition he encountered in trying to get out the truth.

Commiserating with Sam over lunch one day in late August 1967, I asked what could possibly be Gen. Westmoreland’s incentive to make the enemy strength appear to be half what it actually was. Sam gave me the answer he had from the horse’s mouth in Saigon.

Official photo of Army Chief of Staff GEN William C. Westmoreland. (Wikipedia)

Adams told me that in a cable dated Aug. 20, 1967, Westmoreland’s deputy, Gen. Creighton Abrams, set forth the rationale for the deception. Abrams wrote that the new, higher numbers (reflecting Sam’s count, which was supported by all intelligence agencies except Army intelligence, which reflected the “command position”) “were in sharp contrast to the current overall strength figure of about 299,000 given to the press.”

Abrams emphasized, “We have been projecting an image of success over recent months” and cautioned that if the higher figures became public, “all available caveats and explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion.”

No further proof was needed that the most senior U.S. Army commanders were lying, so that they could continue to feign “progress” in the war. Equally unfortunate, the crassness and callousness of Abrams’s cable notwithstanding, it had become increasingly clear that rather than stand up for Sam, his superiors would probably acquiesce in the Army’s bogus figures. Sadly, that’s what they did.

CIA Director Richard Helms, who saw his primary duty quite narrowly as “protecting” the agency, set the tone. He told subordinates that he could not discharge that duty if he let the agency get involved in a heated argument with the U.S. Army on such a key issue in wartime.

This cut across the grain of what we had been led to believe was the prime duty of CIA analysts, to speak truth to power without fear or favor. And our experience thus far had shown both of us that this ethos amounted to much more than just slogans. We had, so far, been able to “tell it like it is.”

After lunch with Sam, for the first time ever, I had no appetite for dessert. Sam and I had not come to Washington to “protect the agency.” And, having served in Vietnam, Sam knew first hand that thousands upon thousands were being killed in a feckless war.

What to Do?

I have an all-too-distinct memory of a long silence over coffee, as each of us ruminated on what might be done. I recall thinking to myself; someone should take the Abrams cable down to the New York Times (at the time an independent-minded newspaper).

Clearly, the only reason for the cable’s SECRET/EYES ONLY classification was to hide deliberate deception of our most senior generals regarding “progress” in the war and deprive the American people of the chance to know the truth.

CIA Director Richard Helms.

Going to the press was, of course, antithetical to the culture of secrecy in which we had been trained. Besides, you would likely be caught at your next polygraph examination. Better not to stick your neck out.

I pondered all this in the days after that lunch with Adams. And I succeeded in coming up with a slew of reasons why I ought to keep silent: a mortgage; a plum overseas assignment for which I was in the final stages of language training; and, not least, the analytic work, important, exciting work on which Sam and I thrived.

Better to keep quiet for now, grow in gravitas, and live on to slay other dragons. Right?

One can, I suppose, always find excuses for not sticking one’s neck out. The neck, after all, is a convenient connection between head and torso, albeit the “neck” that was the focus of my concern was a figurative one, suggesting possible loss of career, money and status not the literal “necks” of both Americans and Vietnamese that were on the line daily in the war.

But if there is nothing for which you would risk your career “neck” like, say, saving the lives of soldiers and civilians in a war zone your “neck” has become your idol, and your career is not worthy of that. I now regret giving such worship to my own neck. Not only did I fail the neck test. I had not thought things through very rigorously from a moral point of view.

Promises to Keep?

As a condition of employment, I had signed a promise not to divulge classified information so as not to endanger sources, methods or national security. Promises are important, and one should not lightly violate them. Plus, there are legitimate reasons for protecting some secrets. But were any of those legitimate concerns the real reasons why Abrams’s cable was stamped SECRET/EYES ONLY? I think not.

It is not good to operate in a moral vacuum, oblivious to the reality that there exists a hierarchy of values and that circumstances often determine the morality of a course of action. How does a written promise to keep secret everything with a classified stamp on it square with one’s moral responsibility to stop a war based on lies? Does stopping a misbegotten war not supersede a secrecy promise?

Ethicists use the words “supervening value” for this; the concept makes sense to me. And is there yet another value? As an Army officer, I had taken a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

How did the lying by the Army command in Saigon fit in with that? Were/are generals exempt? Should we not call them out when we learn of deliberate deception that subverts the democratic process? Can the American people make good decisions if they are lied to?

Would I have helped stop unnecessary killing by giving the New York Times the not-really-secret, SECRET/EYES ONLY cable from Gen. Abrams? We’ll never know, will we? And I live with that. I could not take the easy way out, saying Let Sam Do It. Because I knew he wouldn’t.

Sam chose to go through the established grievance channels and got the royal run-around, even after the Communist countrywide offensive at Tet in January-February 1968 proved beyond any doubt that his count of Communist forces was correct.

When the Tet offensive began, as a way of keeping his sanity, Adams drafted a caustic cable to Saigon saying, “It is something of an anomaly to be taking so much punishment from Communist soldiers whose existence is not officially acknowledged.” But he did not think the situation at all funny.

Dan Ellsberg Steps In

Sam kept playing by the rules, but it happened that unbeknown to Sam Dan Ellsberg gave Sam’s figures on enemy strength to the New York Times, which published them on March 19, 1968. Dan had learned that President Lyndon Johnson was about to bow to Pentagon pressure to widen the war into Cambodia, Laos and up to the Chinese border perhaps even beyond.

Later, it became clear that his timely leak together with another unauthorized disclosure to the Times that the Pentagon had requested 206,000 more troops prevented a wider war. On March 25, Johnson complained to a small gathering, “The leaks to the New York Times hurt us. We have no support for the war. I would have given Westy the 206,000 men.”

President Lyndon Johnson meeting with South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu on July 19,1968.

Ellsberg also copied the Pentagon Papers the 7,000-page top-secret history of U.S. decision-making on Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 and, in 1971, he gave copies to the New York Times, Washington Post and other news organizations.

In the years since, Ellsberg has had difficulty shaking off the thought that, had he released the Pentagon Papers sooner, the war might have ended years earlier with untold lives saved. Ellsberg has put it this way: “Like so many others, I put personal loyalty to the president above all else above loyalty to the Constitution and above obligation to the law, to truth, to Americans, and to humankind. I was wrong.”

And so was I wrong in not asking Sam for a copy of that cable from Gen. Abrams. Sam, too, eventually had strong regrets. Sam had continued to pursue the matter within CIA, until he learned that Dan Ellsberg was on trial in 1973 for releasing the Pentagon Papers and was being accused of endangering national security by revealing figures on enemy strength.

Which figures? The same old faked numbers from 1967! “Imagine,” said Adams, “hanging a man for leaking faked numbers,” as he hustled off to testify on Dan’s behalf. (The case against Ellsberg was ultimately thrown out of court because of prosecutorial abuses committed by the Nixon administration.)

After the war drew down, Adams was tormented by the thought that, had he not let himself be diddled by the system, the entire left half of the Vietnam Memorial wall would not be there. There would have been no new names to chisel into such a wall.

Sam Adams died prematurely at age 55 with nagging remorse that he had not done enough.

In a letter appearing in the (then independent-minded) New York Times on Oct. 18, 1975, John T. Moore, a CIA analyst who worked in Saigon and the Pentagon from 1965 to 1970, confirmed Adams’s story after Sam told it in detail in the May 1975 issue of Harper’s magazine.

Moore wrote:

“My only regret is that I did not have Sam’s courage. The record is clear. It speaks of misfeasance, nonfeasance and malfeasance, of outright dishonesty and professional cowardice.

“It reflects an intelligence community captured by an aging bureaucracy, which too often placed institutional self-interest or personal advancement before the national interest. It is a page of shame in the history of American intelligence.”

Tanks But No Thanks, Abrams

What about Gen. Creighton Abrams? Not every general gets the Army’s main battle tank named after him. The honor, though, came not from his service in Vietnam, but rather from his courage in the early day of his military career, leading his tanks through German lines to relieve Bastogne during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. Gen. George Patton praised Abrams as the only tank commander he considered his equal.

As things turned out, sadly, 23 years later Abrams became a poster child for old soldiers who, as Gen. Douglas McArthur suggested, should “just fade away,” rather than hang on too long after their great military accomplishments.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey, President Lyndon Johnson and General Creighton Abrams in a Cabinet Room meeting on March 27, 1968. (Photo credit: National Archive)

In May 1967, Abrams was picked to be Westmoreland’s deputy in Vietnam and succeeded him a year later. But Abrams could not succeed in the war, no matter how effectively “an image of success” his subordinates projected for the media. The “erroneous and gloomy conclusions of the press” that Abrams had tried so hard to head off proved all too accurate.

Ironically, when reality hit home, it fell to Abrams to cut back U.S. forces in Vietnam from a peak of 543,000 in early 1969 to 49,000 in June 1972, almost five years after Abrams’s progress-defending cable from Saigon. By 1972, some 58,000 U.S. troops, not to mention two to three million Vietnamese, had been killed.

Both Westmoreland and Abrams had reasonably good reputations when they started out, but not so much when they finished.

And Petraeus?

Comparisons can be invidious, but Gen. David Petraeus is another Army commander who has wowed Congress with his ribbons, medals and merit badges. A pity he was not born early enough to have served in Vietnam where he might have learned some real-life hard lessons about the limitations of counterinsurgency theories.

Moreover, it appears that no one took the trouble to tell him that in the early Sixties we young infantry officers already had plenty of counterinsurgency manuals to study at Fort Bragg and Fort Benning. There are many things one cannot learn from reading or writing manuals, as many of my Army colleagues learned too late in the jungles and mountains of South Vietnam.

Unless one is to believe, contrary to all indications, that Petraeus is not all that bright, one has to assume he knows that the Afghanistan expedition is a folly beyond repair. So far, though, he has chosen the approach taken by Gen. Abrams in his August 1967 cable from Saigon. That is precisely why the ground-truth of the documents released by WikiLeaks is so important.

Whistleblowers Galore

And it’s not just the WikiLeaks documents that have caused consternation inside the U.S. government. Investigators reportedly are rigorously pursuing the source that provided the New York Times with the texts of two cables (of 6 and 9 November 2009) from Ambassador Eikenberry in Kabul. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning.”]

To its credit, even today’s far-less independent New York Times published a major story based on the information in those cables, while President Barack Obama was still trying to figure out what to do about Afghanistan. Later the Times posted the entire texts of the cables, which were classified Top Secret and NODIS (meaning “no dissemination” to anyone but the most senior officials to whom the documents were addressed).

The cables conveyed Eikenberry’s experienced, cogent views on the foolishness of the policy in place and, implicitly, of any eventual decision to double down on the Afghan War. (That, of course, is pretty much what the President ended up doing.) Eikenberry provided chapter and verse to explain why, as he put it, “I cannot support [the Defense Department’s] recommendation for an immediate Presidential decision to deploy another 40,000 here.”

Such frank disclosures are anathema to self-serving bureaucrats and ideologues who would much prefer depriving the American people of information that might lead them to question the government’s benighted policy toward Afghanistan, for example.

As the New York Times/Eikenberry cables show, even today’s FCM (fawning corporate media) may sometimes display the old spunk of American journalism and refuse to hide or fudge the truth, even if the facts might cause the people to draw “an erroneous and gloomy conclusion,” to borrow Gen. Abrams’s words of 43 years ago.

Polished Pentagon Spokesman

Remember “Baghdad Bob,” the irrepressible and unreliable Iraqi Information Minister at the time of the U.S.-led invasion? He came to mind as I watched Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell’s chaotic, quixotic press briefing on Aug. 5 regarding the WikiLeaks exposures. The briefing was revealing in several respects. Clear from his prepared statement was what is bothering the Pentagon the most. Here’s Morrell:

“WikiLeaks’s webpage constitutes a brazen solicitation to U.S. government officials, including our military, to break the law. WikiLeaks’s public assertion that submitting confidential material to WikiLeaks is safe, easy and protected by law is materially false and misleading. The Department of Defense therefore also demands that WikiLeaks discontinue any solicitation of this type.”

Rest assured that the Defense Department will do all it can to make it unsafe for any government official to provide WikiLeaks with sensitive material. But it is contending with a clever group of hi-tech experts who have built in precautions to allow information to be submitted anonymously. That the Pentagon will prevail anytime soon is far from certain.

Also, in a ludicrous attempt to close the barn door after tens of thousands of classified documents had already escaped, Morrell insisted that WikiLeaks give back all the documents and electronic media in its possession. Even the normally docile Pentagon press corps could not suppress a collective laugh, irritating the Pentagon spokesman no end. The impression gained was one of a Pentagon Gulliver tied down by terabytes of Lilliputians.

Morrell’s self-righteous appeal to the leaders of WikiLeaks to “do the right thing” was accompanied by an explicit threat that, otherwise, “We shall have to compel them to do the right thing.” His attempt to assert Pentagon power in this regard fell flat, given the realities.

Morrell also chose the occasion to remind the Pentagon press corps to behave themselves or face rejection when applying to be embedded in units of U.S. armed forces. The correspondents were shown nodding docilely as Morrell reminded them that permission for embedding “is by no means a right. It is a privilege.” The generals giveth and the generals taketh away.

It was a moment of arrogance, and press subservience, that would have sickened Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, not to mention the courageous war correspondents who did their duty in Vietnam. Morrell and the generals can control the “embeds”; they cannot control the ether. Not yet, anyway.

And that was all too apparent beneath the strutting, preening, and finger waving by the Pentagon’s fancy silk necktie to the world. Actually, the opportunities afforded by WikiLeaks and other Internet Web sites can serve to diminish what few advantages there are to being in bed with the Army.

What Would I Have Done?

Would I have had the courage to whisk Gen. Abrams’s cable into the ether in 1967, if WikiLeaks or other Web sites had been available to provide a major opportunity to expose the deceit of the top Army command in Saigon? The Pentagon can argue that using the Internet this way is not “safe, easy, and protected by law.” We shall see.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Meanwhile, this way of exposing information that people in a democracy should know will continue to be sorely tempting, and a lot easier than taking the risk of being photographed lunching with someone from the New York Times.

From what I have learned over these past 43 years, supervening moral values can, and should, trump lesser promises. Today, I would be determined to “do the right thing,” if I had access to an Abrams-like cable from Petraeus in Kabul. And I believe that Sam Adams, if he were alive today, would enthusiastically agree that this would be the morally correct decision.

My article from 2010 ended with a footnote about the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII), an organization created by Sam Adams’s former CIA colleagues and other former intelligence analysts to hold up his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power.

At the time there were seven recipients of an annual award bestowed on those who exemplified Sam Adam’s courage, persistence and devotion to truth. Now, there have been 14 recipients: Coleen Rowley (2002), Katharine Gun (2003), Sibel Edmonds (2004), Craig Murray (2005), Sam Provance (2006), Frank Grevil (2007), Larry Wilkerson (2009), Julian Assange (2010), Thomas Drake (2011), Jesselyn Radack (2011), Thomas Fingar (2012), Edward Snowden (2013), Chelsea Manning (2014), William Binney (2015).

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a close colleague of Sam Adams; the two began their CIA analyst careers together during the last months of John Kennedy’s administration. During the Vietnam War, McGovern was responsible for analyzing Soviet policy toward China and Vietnam.

More than 12 lakhs (1.2 million) bankers working in around 10,300 branches around India are on a one-day nationwide strike today protesting against the policies adopted by the government towards the sector. Around 12 lakh financial instruments valued around Rs 7,300 crore would not be cleared. The strike is organized by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), which is an umbrella body of nine unions, including All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (AIBOC), All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW).

Among the 17-point charter of demands, the main demands are relating to government’s denial of adequate capital to public sector banks thus creating conditions for privatization, AIBEA said in a statement.

“Privatization of banks would mean privatizing the Rs 80 lakh crore of common people’s money available in our banks. This is dangerous for the country and our people. Privatisation of banks would also result in denial of loans to priority sectors like agriculture, rural development, education, etc“, AIBEA added.

Other demands include no write-off policy for non- performing assets (NPAs) of corporate loans, declaring wilful default of loans as criminal offence and implementation of recommendations of Parliamentary Committee on recovery of NPAs, AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatchalam said.

This is not the first time the Bankers have gone to strike. As we reported last year, when the entire nation was busy in the #JNUrow in the ongoing debate on tolerance, a very important development with major consequences to everyone in the country had seemingly gone unnoticed. It was during this time that the Indian government announced a series of major banking reforms, including lowering its stake in state-owned banks to a staggering 51 per cent. The announcement was met with nationwide resistance from the bankers. It should be understood that this is not a case of just the banks.

Just before the Demonetisation move was announced even BSNL employees held a nation-wide protest against the privatization of BSNL. The day the BSNL employees went on strike the “government approved an ambitious plan to sell loss-making state-owned companies, subsidiaries and select manufacturing plants to strategic buyers, setting the stage for the return of privatisation after more than a decade”. Touted under what is called as the Strategic Sale of PSUs, there is a wholesale privatization of what is termed as distressed assets (state units) underway. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that this historic plan was approved when the entire nation was busy fighting foreign spies infiltrated SIMI terrorists.

Across the country farmers, traders, retailers and even a section of the press have been raising their voices against these policies. Although the Indian government has repeatedly claimed the support of 125 crore Indian for the Demonetisation drive, there has been a massive wave of protests and violence against it across the country. It is to paint a rosy picture of India to the international financiers that these events were largely not given its due attention by the mainstream media. We have already exposed these claims in our recent report here Demonetisation & GST Myths Exposed By Parliamentary Committee Report & Statistics.

The NPA Scam

According to a report by Credit Suisse published in October 2015, the total amount of money owed to the state-owned banks alone was calculated to be Rs 3.04 lakh crore. Here’s a list of the top 10 companies with the largest debt. Here is a simple explanation of how the scam works as explained in our Global War on Cash Series.

Most of these loans are classified in banking books as Non-Performing Assets (NPAs). In simple terms, an asset is tagged as non-performing when it ceases to generate income for the lender, meaning these loans became unrecoverable bad loans. But wait, when the companies themselves are making good profits how could their loans be termed NPAs?

According to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India Shashi Kant Sharma, a significant part of NPAs amount to fraudulently obtained advances and a large part of these loans may now be irretrievable as they are likely to have been transferred abroad. He also said that in recent times, there have been frauds against institutions, frauds committed against banks, especially public sector banks that are struggling. NPAs do not just reflect badly in a bank’s account books, they adversely impact the national economy.

So what has the Government been doing about this? Well, simply writing it off the books. Government has been writing off such corporate debts in lakhs of crores of rupees under what is called ‘revenue forgone’ now known by a new fancy name ‘revenue impact of tax incentives’. Data presented by Santosh Kumar Gangwar in a question answered in Rajya Sabha on 2nd August 2016 show the extent of such revenue foregone in 2015-16 – this is estimated to be Rs 6.11 trillion.

According to the ‘Revenue Forgone Statement’ corporate companies on an average get tax waiver of Rs 7 crore every hour or Rs 168 crore every day or Rs 5.32 lakh crore every year. It’s close to three times the amount said to have been lost in the 2G scam. About four times what the oil marketing companies claim to have lost in so-called “under-recoveries” in 2012-13. In the nine years from 2005-06 to 2013-14, the corporate karza maafi amounted to Rs 36.5 lakh-crore. That, in case you like the sound of the word, is Rs 36.5 trillion. This is how the richest 1% of Indians get to own 58.4% of the country’s wealth.

Now this debt write-off is also a major fraud and has been continuing on a regular basis since a long time. Even the Supreme Court has reprimanded RBI whose responsibility it is to keep a watch on this and ordered it to share the list of major defaulters which RBI didn’t had any information on.

So where has all the money gone? The US Department of Commerce estimates that each $1 billion in trade deficit translates to about 13,000 to 19,000 lost jobs for Americans – meaning that every $1 billion sucked out of India will stabilize atleast 13,000 jobs in the US. How many jobs would RS 36.5 trillion that the govt. wrote off save? Roughly around 80 lakh American jobs, enough to sustain entire US economy with job/wage guarantee multiplier effects setting in. This same 80 lakh jobs it was promised in 2011 will be created in India instead by FDI in Retail. No one asked from where the money for investment would come from when the entire US-EU economies themselves were running bankrupt? (read our special report on Demonetisation & the Global War on Cash to understand how this works)

PARA – A New Central Bank For Strategic Sale Of India

To resolve the issue of Large Stressed Loans there is a push to privatize the public sector banks by creating a Central Bad Bank along the lines of the US TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) termed here as the PARA (a centralized Public Sector Asset Rehabilitation Agency). The only difference is that while TARP was designed to bailout the bankrupt banks and companies and were taken over by the US government, PARA in contrast is designed to sell-off the state owned units to those same companies and banks that went bankrupt in 2008.

The idea is mooted by the deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India, Viral Acharya. Before appointed as the deputy governor Acharya was a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. It is here that Mr. Acharya came up with the idea published in the co-authored research paper that analyzed “the precarious condition of public sector banks” in India. The paper found that “the onus of remedying this situation through radical reform lies primarily with the Government.” In conclusion the paper recommended a fix: Privatize public sector banks or reallocate their assets.

According to Acharya,

“Banks in India haven’t typically failed except for small banks here and there. But the trouble is that a public sector bank cannot under the current statute be sold to a private sector bank.”

It is here that PARA comes into picture. PARA would provide a mechanism to create a government-driven asset reconstruction company – a Bad Bank, where banks can park their stressed assets and be merged or picked up by private players.

Now with traditional Indian businesses at a standstill and government units stressed out the hedge-vulture funds are already circling India to pick up their prizes. Under the Strategic Sale of PSUs, there is a wholesale privatization of what is termed as distressed assets (state units) underway.

What is taking place today is the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in the history of this world. Contrary to a myth long popular in the West and now espoused by the East it’s been the poor of the world that finance the rich not the other way round. At the end it was the decades of hard earned public money that was sucked to bail out the ailing Indian banking system that in turn would bailout and stabilize the bankrupt Western-European economies and corporations.

Shelley Kasli is the Co-founder and Editor at GreatGameIndia, a quarterly magazine on international affairs providing global intelligence through strategic analysis by placing events in a geopolitical and historical framework to better understand international developments and the world around us.

In every nation there are power conglomerates that determine and influence the domestic and foreign policy choices of their nations. In the United States, it is important to highlight the concept known as American exceptionalism that accompanies these power centers, often called the deep state. According to this principle, the United States alone has been chosen by God to lead mankind.

After the World War II, a notion very similar to that of Nazi Aryan racial supremacy was born – that of the chosen people. In this case, however, the chosen people were Americans, who emerged victorious at the end of the Second World War II, ready to face the “existential danger” of the USSR, a society and culture that was different from that of the US. With such mental imprinting, the trend over the following decades was predictable. What followed was war after war, the capitalist economic system sustained by the US war machine widening its sphere all over the globe, reaching Southeast Asia, but then being forced back by the failure of the Vietnam War, signaling the first sign of the end of American omnipotence.

As the Berlin Wall fell and eliminated the Soviet “threat”, American expansion had almost reached its existential limit. What has been a constant element during all of these US presidencies, during various wars and economic growth thanks to a rising capitalism, has been the presence of the deep state, a set of neural centers that make up real US power. In order to understand the failure of the deep state to achieve its goals to exercise full-spectrum control over the globe, it is crucial to trace the connections between past and the present presidencies from the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When thinking of the deep state, it is easy to identify the major players – the mainstream media, think-tanks, central and private banks, foreign-state lobbyists, politicians, intelligence agencies, large industrial groups, and the military-industrial complex (MIC). These are the inner circles that hold the true levers of power in the United States. Often, by analyzing past events over a long period of time, it becomes easier to identify motivations and goals behind specific actions, and the manner in which the various members of the deep state have often accompanied, influenced and sometimes sabotaged various administrations – such as is currently the case with the current Trump administration – for the sole purpose of advancing their economic interests.

During the Clinton and Bush administrations, the deep state was able to maintain a united and compact front, counting on the economic and military power of what was still a rising global power. The mainstream media, the intelligence agencies, the military and the financial and political centers supported both presidents in their ambitious plans to expand American hegemony. From intervention in Yugoslavia to the bombing to Afghanistan through to the war in Iraq, the refrain has been conflict and devastation in exchange for financial impositions that were focused on maintaining the dollar as the reserve or exchange currency for such assets as oil. In Yugoslavia, the strategy also aimed at dismantling the last block linked to the former Soviet Union, the last act of the end of the Cold War. Even the control of opium trading routes from Afghanistan has been of great importance, becoming a key element in US expansion and control plans, other than maintaining a foothold in central Asia for further destabilization attempts.

The war in Iraq, engineered by three fundamental elements of the deep state (false intelligence services, journalists with a specific agenda, and the military straining at the leash to bomb a hostile nation), has produced a number of consequences, primarily the disintegration of the country, leaving the door open to Iranian influence. Over the course of 15 years, Tehran’s influence has grown to such an extent that it engages Iraq in a Shiite arch that starts from Iran, passes through Iraq, and ends in Syria, reaching the Mediterranean. In terms of the effect intended and the result actually obtained, the Iraq war may be considered the largest strategic failure of the US deep state since Vietnam.

In addition to a loss of American influence with the petro-monarchies, Iraq has highlighted the American inability to conquer and hold a territory when the population is hostile. Facing local and Shiite militias, the United States paid a heavy human toll, shocking the American population during the ten-year war with planes returning home to deliver flag-draped coffins. This is not to mention the creation of the Afghan and Iraq wars of hundreds of billions of dollars of debt, all placed on the shoulders of the American taxpayer.

In a sense, Obama owes much of his victory in 2008 to the financial crisis and the American defeat in Iraq. Even today, the debate about the role of the deep state in Obama’s election is open. The most plausible explanation is based on Obama’s telegenic appeal over Senator McCain, likely a decisive factor for Americans. As many Americans did not admit, Obama’s election, after eight years of Bush, was a break with the past, a clear message to the elite, especially after Obama’s victory over Clinton during the Democratic primaries.

Obama’s victory was immediately accompanied by a strategic recalculation by the deep state, which sensed the new opportunity linked to Obama’s nature as well as ongoing changes. There were to be no more explicit wars of the type that involve tank divisions. After the disaster in Iraq, even the deep state understood how American military power was unable to prevail over a hostile local population. For this reason, the neoconservatives have been progressively displaced by the liberal, human-rights brigade. Their new approach has turned the Middle East upside down through the Arab Spring, creating a new balance in the region and causing the situation to degenerate in Egypt, destabilizing neighboring countries, ending up human-rights dystopias in places like Libya and Syria, both victims of direct or indirect military aggression on the grounds of protecting human rights.

In this scenario, the most important components of the deep state are the media that, by disseminating false intelligence information through manipulation and disinformation for the purposes of justifying military aggression, conditions the populations of Europe and the US to attack sovereign countries like Libya. During the Obama administration, the deep state rarely faced a hostile presidency, demonstrated by the bank bailout during the 2008 crisis. A few months after the election, it became apparent how empty Obama’s election promises had been, representing the triumph of marketing over substance. By printing money at zero interest, Obama allowed the Fed to donate almost $800 billion to the banks, saving them from a collapse and postponing the consequences of the next financial crisis, which will likely be irreparable. Obama preferred to follow the dictates of the Fed, a key component of the deep state, instead of reforming the banking sector.

The underlying mistakes of the last months of the Obama administration continue to affect Trump’s new presidency. Obama’s attempt to placate the deep state by arming terrorists in the Middle East, putting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, bombing Libya, and bailing out the banks has only increased the appetite of the deep state, which has progressed to more explicit demands like an attack on Iran and direct intervention in Syria. From this moment on, after having granted virtually all the wishes of the deep state, Obama pulled the handbrake and activated a couple of countermeasures to rebalance the legacy of his presidency. He opposed a direct intervention in Syria following the false-flag chemical attacks, signing and implementing the nuclear agreement with Iran and he restoring relations with Cuba.

It was at this very moment that the deep state declared war on Obama, relying on the indispensable support of intelligence agencies, the mainstream media, and the most conservative wing of the American establishment. Attacks on Obama’s presumed weaknesses as president, his inability to defend American interests, and his lack of courage characterized the last two years of his presidency.

It was this perennial state of siege during Obama’s presidency that created the conditions for Trump’s electoral ascent. The deep state has for years insisted on the need for a strong and determined leader representative of the spirit of American exceptionalism. Initially, the deep state focused on Hillary Clinton, but Trump had the intuition to emphasize the military and industrial aspects of the country, appealing to the yearning of the population for a rebuilding of domestic industry, and opening new opportunities for the deep state. This served to drive a split within the intelligence agencies, the mainstream media, and a good deal of the domestic political class, leaving them in open warfare. Russia’s affairs and Trump’s alleged connections to Putin are false news, created to sabotage Trump’s presidency.

In the 2016 Republican primaries, Americans voted for a leader who promised to improve their livelihoods by boosting the domestic economy and placing the interests of their country first. This promise almost immediately captured the working component of the population and large industrial conglomerates. Trump later gained the support of another fundamental component of the deep state, the military wing, thanks to the proclamation that the United States will be returned to the role they deserve in the world, salvaging the perverse idea of American exceptionalism.

Trump’s decision to embrace the MIC is particularly controversial and represents the beginning of a deep-state faction built upon Trump’s presidency. The daily din surrounding his presidency, with constant attacks from the opposing faction of the deep state, became intense with fake news alleging Trump’s links with Russia. With the appointment of generals who subscribe to the idea of American exceptionalism, it can be debated whether Trump intentionally wanted to give a leadership role to his own generals or whether he had no choice, having to associate with some of these deep-state members in order to defend himself against the assaults of opposing deep-state factions.

Recent Trump-related events are all based on these factors, namely a deep state driven by the neoliberal faction that has never stopped attacking Trump, and a neoconservative deep-state faction that has been tightening the noose around Trump.

The immediate results have been a level of chaos that has been unprecedented in a US administration, with continuous appointments and layoffs, the latest one Steve Bannon, not to mention the impossibility of abolishing Obamacare with all the forces arrayed against Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump has progressively had to concede more power and authority to his generals, acceding to bombing Syria and passing sanctions that worsen relations between Moscow and Washington. A self-destructive spiral began with the granting of a primary role to those nominated to key positions.

The final effect of this ongoing sabotage ever since the Obama presidency is a bankrupt US foreign policy and a continuing fratricidal struggle within the deep state. America’s European allies are in revolt over anti-Russia sanctions, which is their main source of energy. Countries like Russia, China and Iran are beginning to undergo an economic revolution as they progressively abandon the dollar; and as these countries take over a Middle East devastated by years of American wars, Moscow gains significant influence in the region. The crisis engulfing the Gulf Cooperation Council, increasingly beset with fickle fractures between Riyadh and Doha.

One of the consequences of two decades of the US deep state’s brazen foreign policy has been the birth of a multipolar world order, with US superpower status being challenged by competing powers like China and Russia. Indeed, Washington’s historic allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, have borne the consequences of the disastrous policies of the US, with Iran rising to be one of the power centers of the region destined to dominate the Middle East militarily and even economically.

The incredible paradox of the failure of deep state is represented by the emergence of two alternative poles to the American one, increasingly allied with each other to counter the chaotic retreat of a unipolar world order. In this scenario, Washington and all its power centers are in an unprecedented situation, where their desire does not match their abilities. A sense of frustration is increasingly evident, from the incredible statements of many American political representatives on Russian influence in US elections, to the threats of aggression against North Korea, or the game of chicken with the nuclear powers of Russia and China.

If the deep state continues to hamstring the presidency, and the military wing succeeds in pressuring Trump, there are likely to be a number of indirectly linked effects. There will be an exponential increase in synergies between nations not aligned with American interests. In economic terms, there are alternative systems to that centered on the dollar; in terms of energy, there are a host of new agreements with European, Turkish or Russian partners; and in political terms, there is a more or less explicit alliance between Russia and China, with a strong contribution from Iran, as will soon become more evident with Tehran’s entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

By the end of the 1980s, the United States was the only world power destined for a future of unchallenged global hegemony. The deep state’s greed, as well as the utopian desire to control every decision in every corner of the world, has ended up consuming the ability of the US to influence events, serving only to draw Russia and China closer together with the shared interest of halting America’s heedless advance. It is thanks to the firmly ensconced American deep state that Moscow and Beijing are now coordinating together in order to put to an end the United States’ unipolar moment as soon as possible.

It is not entirely wrong to say that the American unipolar moment is coming to an end, with the deep state’s attacks on the Trump presidency preventing any rapprochement with Moscow. The stronger the pressure of the deep state on the multipolar powers, the greater the speed with which the advance of the multipolar world will replace the unipolar one. Early effects will appear in the economic sphere, particularly in relation to movement towards de-dollarisation, which may mark the beginning of a long-awaited change.

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

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

As the mainstream corporate press attempts to guilt Westerners over making Syrian refugees return home, Western outlets are, in fact, deconstructing their own propaganda narrative for all to see.

For instance, according to the International Organization for Migration, more than 600,000 Syrians have returned home to Syria since the beginning of 2017, more than the number of returning refugees in the entire year of 2016.

IOM reports that the majority of those Syrians going home were internally displaced people. After that, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq followed respectively.

The typically pro-imperialist NPR attempted to suggest that the return of the internally displaced to their homes are being forced to relocate back home by the Syrian government. That claim, while largely nonsensical, is also contradicted by reports from other mainstream agencies.

IOM is worried that the “appropriate measures” to ensure safety to those Syrians returning home are not yet in place.

Of course, the real question that needs to be asked here is simple: “If Assad is killing his own people, why are Syrians running back to him in droves?” After all, when African refugees were being labeled Syrian two years ago, we were told that these people were fleeing the “brutal Assad,” the dictator “killing his own people.” So why would people who were being slaughtered by their own government rush back to it at the earliest possible opportunity?

Perhaps because they actually prefer to live in Syria than some other country. Perhaps their government isn’t killing them like Americans are being told they are.

It is also important to point out that the rate of return for Syrian refugees has increased directly with the amount of territory liberated by the Syrian government. In other words, as the Syrian government liberates more territory, more Syrians return to their homes in government-controlled territory. Obviously, if Syrian refugees were fleeing Assad, we would be seeing an increase in refugees.

Regardless, it is clear to all who are not being paid to see otherwise that Syrians are returning home because America’s terrorists are losing territory and, thus, they now have the ability to return to their homes under government control.

While alternative media researchers have been pointing this out since the beginning of the conflict, mainstream media now has no choice but to admit that Syrians are willingly returning to the country run by the man these same outlets have attempted to demonize and destroy for six years.

Slowly but surely, the mainstream media’s narrative surrounding Syria is unraveling in front of everyone’s eyes.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

SAN FRANCISCO— The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today affirmed the right of American and Japanese conservation groups and Okinawan citizens to sue to compel the U.S. military to fully consider the impacts of a new U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan. The base would pave over some of the last remaining habitat for endangered Okinawa dugongs, ancient cultural icons for the Okinawan people. The lawsuit is part of a long-running controversy over the expansion of a U.S. Marine air base at Okinawa’s Henoko Bay. Preliminary construction on the base began earlier this year.

After conservation groups and Okinawan community members filed a lawsuit to challenge the U.S. government’s inadequate assessment of the proposed new military base’s impacts on the dugong — including failure to consult with the relevant stakeholders or adequately consider all possible effects on the dugong as required by law — the government argued that the district court could not consider the case because of its foreign-policy implications. The court of appeals today disagreed, holding that the plaintiffs had standing to sue, and that the fact that the case related to a project in another country did not give the government license to ignore the requirements of U.S. law.  The court remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings.

“The court today affirmed the right to sue to prevent the U.S. government from taking action that might harm an endangered species of special importance to people in another country without giving serious consideration to the possible effects of its actions,” said Martin Wagner, managing attorney of Earthjustice’s International Program. “The law is intended to respect the cultural values of the Japanese people, and requires the Defense Department to make every effort to understand and minimize the effects of this project on the dugong. Today’s decision affirms the right to ask the courts to ensure that the U.S. government complies with this law.”

Dugongs are gentle marine mammals related to manatees that have long been revered by native Okinawans, even celebrated as “sirens” that bring friendly warnings of tsunamis. The dugong is listed as an object of national cultural significance under Japan’s Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. Under the U.S. National Historic Protection Act and international law, the United States must take into account the effect of its actions and avoid or mitigate any harm to places or things of cultural significance to another country.

“Our folktales tell us that gods from Niraikanai [afar] come to our islands riding on the backs of dugongs and the dugongs ensure the abundance of food from the sea,” said Takuma Higashionna, an Okinawan scuba-diving guide who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Today, leaving their feeding trails in the construction site, I believe, our dugongs are warning us that this sea will no longer provide us with such abundance if the base is constructed. The U.S. government must realize that the Okinawa dugong is a treasure for Okinawa and for the world.”

“This ruling is a critical lifeline for the highly endangered Okinawa dugong,” said Peter Galvin, director of programs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are hopeful that an objective review of the project will cause the U.S. Department of Defense to rethink this environmentally and socially disastrous military base expansion plan.”

In 1997, it was estimated that there may have been as few as 50 Okinawa dugongs left in the world; more recent surveys have only been able to conclude that at least three dugongs remain in Okinawa. The Defense Department has authorized construction of the new base, despite the precariously low dugong population estimates.

“Paving coral reefs for a military airbase runway does not make us safer, but more vulnerable to planetary extinction. The Okinawa dugong, sea turtles, coral reefs and the ocean environment are the winners today in this 14-year litigation battle with Department of Defense,” said Todd Steiner, executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network.

For years many locals have protested and opposed the base-expansion plan for Okinawa, where 20 percent of the island is already occupied by U.S. military. This lawsuit was originally filed in 2003 by Earthjustice on behalf of the U.S. organizations Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network; the Japanese organizations Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation and the Save the Dugong Foundation; and three Japanese individuals.

SAN FRANCISCO— The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today affirmed the right of American and Japanese conservation groups and Okinawan citizens to sue to compel the U.S. military to fully consider the impacts of a new U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan. The base would pave over some of the last remaining habitat for endangered Okinawa dugongs, ancient cultural icons for the Okinawan people. The lawsuit is part of a long-running controversy over the expansion of a U.S. Marine air base at Okinawa’s Henoko Bay. Preliminary construction on the base began earlier this year.

After conservation groups and Okinawan community members filed a lawsuit to challenge the U.S. government’s inadequate assessment of the proposed new military base’s impacts on the dugong — including failure to consult with the relevant stakeholders or adequately consider all possible effects on the dugong as required by law — the government argued that the district court could not consider the case because of its foreign-policy implications. The court of appeals today disagreed, holding that the plaintiffs had standing to sue, and that the fact that the case related to a project in another country did not give the government license to ignore the requirements of U.S. law.  The court remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings.

“The court today affirmed the right to sue to prevent the U.S. government from taking action that might harm an endangered species of special importance to people in another country without giving serious consideration to the possible effects of its actions,” said Martin Wagner, managing attorney of Earthjustice’s International Program. “The law is intended to respect the cultural values of the Japanese people, and requires the Defense Department to make every effort to understand and minimize the effects of this project on the dugong. Today’s decision affirms the right to ask the courts to ensure that the U.S. government complies with this law.”

Dugongs are gentle marine mammals related to manatees that have long been revered by native Okinawans, even celebrated as “sirens” that bring friendly warnings of tsunamis. The dugong is listed as an object of national cultural significance under Japan’s Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. Under the U.S. National Historic Protection Act and international law, the United States must take into account the effect of its actions and avoid or mitigate any harm to places or things of cultural significance to another country.

“Our folktales tell us that gods from Niraikanai [afar] come to our islands riding on the backs of dugongs and the dugongs ensure the abundance of food from the sea,” said Takuma Higashionna, an Okinawan scuba-diving guide who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Today, leaving their feeding trails in the construction site, I believe, our dugongs are warning us that this sea will no longer provide us with such abundance if the base is constructed. The U.S. government must realize that the Okinawa dugong is a treasure for Okinawa and for the world.”

“This ruling is a critical lifeline for the highly endangered Okinawa dugong,” said Peter Galvin, director of programs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are hopeful that an objective review of the project will cause the U.S. Department of Defense to rethink this environmentally and socially disastrous military base expansion plan.”

In 1997, it was estimated that there may have been as few as 50 Okinawa dugongs left in the world; more recent surveys have only been able to conclude that at least three dugongs remain in Okinawa. The Defense Department has authorized construction of the new base, despite the precariously low dugong population estimates.

“Paving coral reefs for a military airbase runway does not make us safer, but more vulnerable to planetary extinction. The Okinawa dugong, sea turtles, coral reefs and the ocean environment are the winners today in this 14-year litigation battle with Department of Defense,” said Todd Steiner, executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network.

For years many locals have protested and opposed the base-expansion plan for Okinawa, where 20 percent of the island is already occupied by U.S. military. This lawsuit was originally filed in 2003 by Earthjustice on behalf of the U.S. organizations Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network; the Japanese organizations Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation and the Save the Dugong Foundation; and three Japanese individuals.

How fragile the NATO ranks are is illustrated by the following incident that happened at the Noble Jump exercise (NOJP 17) held in June in Romania. Military units from 11 NATO countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Greece, Spain, Latvia, Holland, Norway, Poland, Romania and the USA took part in the drills. During the shooting at the training grounds, the Bulgarian soldiers flatly refused to shoot as “Russian identification marks have been placed on the targets, and they won’t shoot at Russians!” 

It turned out that the Romanians responsible for the equipment of the landfill saved by using for the targets canvasses taken from billboards located near shopping malls, with images that strongly resemble the identification signs of the Russian Armed Forces. The Romanians were too lazy to repaint the canvases, and from the distance it really looked like they had signs of Russian aircraft. The error was quickly corrected. Cloths changed, and the NATO members apologized to the Bulgarians. Agreed not to disclose publicly what happened, but the information still leaked into space.

In 2014-2015 years Bulgaria refused to accept elements of American missile defense complexes on its territory. Subsequently, the US received the consent of neighboring Romania to create an appropriate infrastructure for them.

In 2016, Bulgaria again categorically refused to participate in the formation of the anti-Russian Black Sea flotilla with the participation of Turkey, Romania and Ukraine, which had to counteract “the transformation of the Black Sea into a Russian lake.” As a result, the whole project was buried.

The current dispersion in NATO alludes to a deep crisis in this organization and shows an extremely low level of its fighting efficiency.

Featured image is from the author.

“This is a historic and dangerous development which only increases the chances of total war.”

Over the last 24 hours, the United States has made clear its status as a hostile occupational force in Syria. Yesterday, the US issued a communique to the legitimate Syrian government and the Russian anti-terrorist coalition assisting the Syrians. The United States has indicated that it has carved out a swath of Syria with boots on the ground fulfilling the roles of active duty personnel, such as special ops forces, advisors, trainers, mechanics, and supporting units. The US has declared a no fly zone and threatened to target and shoot down Syrian and Russian planes within Syrian airspace [over the Kurdish autonomous region – ed]. 

As RT reports, US Commander of American forces in Iraq and Syria Lt. General Stephen Townshend stated:

“We’ve informed the Russians where we’re at … (they) tell us they’ve informed the Syrians, and I’d just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened.”

Since, as Reuters reports, clashes between Kurdish and Syrian forces have intensified.

A number of analysts previously forecasted that the US would take this route given the success of the Syrian and allied Russian campaign in general and in particular in light of souring US-Turkish relations, the possibility of the US losing access to the Turkish Incirlik base, and the dire situation of Takfiri forces holed up in Aleppo. Different international news agencies have already run a version of the story which presents the US forces’ communique as a “warning for Russia and Syria” (CNN) or a “defensive threat” (IBT), but they have failed to distinguish the de facto meaning of this development. Nor have they included that the US military’s official statement is in stark violation of international law, constituting an illegal occupation of a sovereign state.

It has long been assessed that the reason that the US had simultaneously backed ISIS and Kurdish forces was for the purpose of using ISIS as a “place holder” to be defeated, either virtually or in actuality, only to then carve out a US occupation zone under the pretext of forming an independent Kurdish state. Previously last year, representatives of the Kurdish autonomous region made an unconstitutional and unilateral announcement of federalization. This turn was used to create a seemingly legal ambiguity, or ‘gray area’, to confuse public discourse at the media level. However, the anti-terrorist coalition’s foreign ministers as well as international legal experts are under no illusions that the unilateral declaration of federalization is just as much a violation of Syrian sovereignty as would be a breakaway republic made possible only thanks to a war of US occupation. Under the international legal norms of the Geneva convention as well as subsequent parallel agreements, a foreign occupying country does not have the right to divide, separate, occupy, or carve out a section of a country regardless of what the occupying army terms such as.

Moreover, the most recent communique from the US Lt. General Townshend in Northern Syria laid out plans to increase the area of what the US considers “Kurdistan.” Under the present Syrian Constitution, Kurds are represented both in the government in Damascus and have a semi-autonomous status within the central Syrian state.

A major collision course

The brazen and illegal warnings issued by the US commander pose the real possibility of creating a direct confrontation between Syrian, Iranian, Russian, and other independent forces on the one hand, and the US military and their Kurdish puppet outfits on the other. This dramatic increase in hostilities would deal a major blow to hopes for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.

In 2011, the US, alongside its Israeli, Turkish, Qatari, and Saudi allies and with assistance from Jordan, organized, sponsored, and financed the launch of an illegal invasion by non-uniformed regular soldiers, mercenaries, child soldiers, and armed religious fanatics (many of whom themselves were shipped into the region from Europe where they have legal residence). A 2011 protest movement which had blossomed out of the efforts of the US National Endowment for Democracy and UN-sanctioned NGO’s financed by the House of Saud and Qatari monarchy took advantage of Syria’s liberal and open society, infiltrating civic organizations and manipulating Syria’s secular pluralism against itself. This created the possibility for a media simulacrum in which international observers and media, both intentionally and unintentionally, conflated a protest movement comprised mainly of Syrians with a military operation which very quickly became nothing more than a foreign invasion.

Russian involvement upon the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria was the source of a serious setback to US aims in the region. Now what remains to be seen is what the US is actually prepared to do. Syrian and Russian military planners no doubt long ago gamed out multiple scenarios and developed some kind of responsive contingency plans. It is only natural that, while such responsive plans exist, they would not be a matter of public disclosure. At issue is the capacity of the US, a once global hegemon which geostrategic analysts around the world have assessed to now be in a waning phase, to maintain an occupational foothold in the Kurdish region of Syria. Both Syria and Turkey may find that they have a common interest in opposing a US puppet Kurdish state.

Prior to the outbreak of the present conflict, Syria and Turkey maintained a treaty which allowed Turkish security forces to pursue Kurdish separatist terrorists who would at times flee to Syria from operations in Turkey. After the conflict began, both Syria, and Turkey and the United States (to the extent to which the latter two can be considered to have divergent interests) all engaged in the game of playing the Kurdish card. Each side in the conflict hoped to be able to use the support of armed Kurdish groups to their own ends. While there is much information that suggests that Turkey is in the process of reorienting itself away from Euro-Atlanticism and NATO, especially in light of Turkey’s moves during and after the failed coup attempt, there is always the possibility that recent Turkish moves are actually part of a long term plan to cast a specter of uncertainty over Turkey’s future plans in concert with the US. Such would not at all be unprecedented in the history of geopolitical alliances.

In conclusion, the US’ announcement marks a turning point in this conflict. If before there had been any ambiguity about the US’ intentions in Syria – a plan to divide Syria which had been publicly elaborated in numerous pro-Atlanticist think tank publications such as those of the Brookings Institute or Council on Foreign Relations – then now the US has revealed its hand. This is a historic and dangerous development which only increases the chances of total war.

All images, except the featured image, in this article are from Fort Russ.

According to IntelNews.org quoting Catalonia’s daily El Periodico, the CIA had warned the Spanish authorities that the Islamic State was planning to attack Barcelona, they even mentioned that it could take place in Las Ramblas. 

In the hours following the attack, several observers noted that Barcelona was always an obvious target for the Islamic State, given that the group had already perpetrated terrorist attacks in Berlin, London, Paris and Brussels. They also raised questions about the low level of police presence and the absence of anti-vehicle barrier systems in Barcelona —one of Europe’s busiest tourist destinations. Late on Thursday, the Catalan newspaper El Periódico reported that, two months ago, the CIA alerted the Mossos d’Esquadra, the autonomous police and security service of Catalonia, of a possible terrorist attack by the Islamic State. According to the Barcelona-based daily, the CIA even mentioned La Rambla as the main target of Islamist militants.

Even before the CIA issued its warning, the Islamic State had directed several threats against Spain since 2014, when the group first appeared in Syria. As El Periódico said, the group’s followers “consider themselves obligated to re-establish Islam” in areas that were ruled by Muslim leaders in the past.

For much of the medieval period, Spain and Portugal were known as Al-Andalus, and were ruled by a succession of Muslim caliphs. The Spanish daily also reported that a Twitter account associated with the Islamic State issued several warnings against Spain two weeks ago. Specifically, on July 30, the account twitted a series of messages that read: “We will implement the caliphate in Spain and will recover our land. Impending attack on Al-Andalus, God willing”. Similar threats had been issued a year ago on social media, but were later disregarded after they failed to materialize, said El Periódico. (IntelNews.org

This news report is in large part propaganda. It’s disinformation.

It portrays the CIA as “going after” the terrorists, i.e. as a major actor in the “war on terrorism” advising Catalonia’s police of an imminent danger. “CIA alerted the Mossos d’Esquadra, the autonomous police and security service of Catalonia, of a possible terrorist attack by the Islamic State.”

The CIA is said to have warned the authorities as part of the US-led counterterrorism campaign.

El Periodico, August 17, 2017

Translation of byline: The CIA two months ago advised the Mossos (Catalan Police) of the risk of an attack in Barcelona,

The US intelligence agency  warned the autonomous (Catalan) police that the Ramblas could be a target.

The report tacitly places the blame on the Catalan police force for not having heeded to the advice and authority of US intelligence.

The unspoken truth (amply documented) is that the CIA has always been behind the terrorists. The CIA is the architect of Al Qaeda going back to the outset of the Soviet Afghan war in 1979.

All Al Qaeda affiliates are “intelligence assets” covertly supported by US intelligence in liaison with Pakistan’s ISI, Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP); (رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة‎‎ ) not to mention Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad.

The ISIS has a certain degree of independence in relation to its State sponsors. That is the nature of what is called an “intelligence asset”.  But an “intelligence asset” is always on the radar of the intelligence services.

ISIS-Daesh has from the very outset in 2014 been supported and financed by the western military alliance, with direct funding provided by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in consultation and liaison with Washington.

The US-led counterterrorism operation initiated by Obama in 2014 was not meant to go after the ISIS. Quite the opposite: the coalition was killing civilians while providing covert support including weapons to the ISIS. Of significance Spain was not part of the 14 countries US-led coalition.

The claim that the Islamic State wanted to restore the caliphate in Spain which prevailed in medieval Spain borders on the absurd. It’s a lie. It is nonsensical. It is intended to reinforce the wave of Islamophobia.

Barcelona, Manchester, London, Nice ….

The Islamic State prior to changing its label in 2014 was an affiliate of al Qaeda, namely Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It then  took on the name of  The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) (Arabic al-Dawlah al-Islāmiyyah fī al-ʿIrāq wa al-Shām, Daesh), also designated as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) 

A leaked Pentagon document confirms that the US and its allies are supportive of ISIS. And that’s the terrorist entity which –according to European press reports– is  behind the terrorist attacks in Barcelona, Manchester, London, Brussels, Nice, Berlin…

Read carefully. What the DoD document intimates is that the Islamic State is “on our side” in support of “our” endeavor to topple the Bashar al-Assad government.

According to the DoD document, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State are “the major forces driving the insurgency”, and that insurgency is supported by US-NATO.

The document refers to AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq), which is the acronym of the Islamic State before it took on its new name and identity of ISIS-Daesh.

AQI [renamed ISIS in 2014] “supported the opposition” and fought the regime of Bashar al Assad. And US-NATO and their Gulf States allies have persistenly supported AQI.

A  7-page Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated August of 2012, points to US complicity in supporting the creation of the  Islamic State. (Excerpt below) 

The Pentagon Document is crystal clear: The Islamic State is calling upon “the Sunnis in Iraq to wage war against the Syrian Regime”, which happens to coincide with US foreign policy.  That means “they support us and we support them”.

The Western media conveys the illusion that the Islamic State ordered the Barcelona/ Cambrils attacks as an act of retribution (revenge) against the US led coalition’s alleged bombings of ISIS facilities in Iraq and Syria.

[The Spanish] authorities have labelled both incidents as terrorism, and ISIS has claimed responsibility, saying the attack in Barcelona was carried out by “soldiers of the Islamic State” in response to the extremist group’s calls for followers to target countries participating in the coalition trying to drive it from Syria and Iraq” (CBC, August 18, 2017).

This is an absurd proposition which is refuted by the DoD document above.

Read the DoD document and then decide who is telling the truth.

ISIS has been fighting Syrian and Iraqi government forces on behalf of US-NATO.  It was the Syrian government SAA forces with the support of Russia and Iran which drove the ISIS rebels out of Syria.

The DoD document says that “China, Russia and Iran support the Regime”. Yet neither China nor Russia have been the target of acts of retribution led by ISIS.

Moreover, there is another fallacy in the statement issued by the Spanish authorities: Spain is not officially part of the 14 countries’ US led combined joint (“counterterrorism”) task force entitled Operation Inherent Resolve against the ISIS, which was launched to protect rather than “go after” the Islamic State.

The governments of  EU countries –whose citizens are the victims of terror attacks– have been supporting ISIS-Daesh through their military and intelligence services.

That is the truth as confirmed by the leaked DoD report above. There are mountains of evidence which confirm that US-NATO, Israel and the Gulf States are directly or indirectly supporting the Islamic State (including financing, the delivery of weapons, training, recruitment).  

And those governments want their citizens to believe that the ISIS is the “outside enemy” responsible for terror attacks in major urban areas, when in fact the ISIS is supported by the US and its coalition allies. 

How will Spain define its position in the wake of the Barcelona attacks?

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

America’s vaunted military knows how to wage wars of aggression, not win them – including time and again failing to win peace, mass slaughter, destruction and chaos its legacy everywhere its killing machine shows up.

Its post-WW II record includes an uneasy armistice with North Korea, defeat in Vietnam, post-war violence and chaos in Libya, unacknowledged defeat in Afghanistan with Trump set to announce escalated US involvement, and heading for defeat in Syria.

Addressing a Foreign Ministry conference on Sunday in Damascus, Assad said

“the West is facing an existential conflict… living in a state of hysteria whenever there is a state that wants to take part with it in the international decision-making in any field and in any place in the world.”

“We paid a dear price in Syria in this war, but we have managed to foil the Western project in Syria and the world.”

“Talking about foiling the Western project in the region doesn’t mean we are victorious.”

“They have failed, but the battle is still going on. They have failed until this moment, and we haven’t won until this moment. The signs of victory are there…”

Miles remain to achieve it, things heading in the right direction, a hopeful sign. Assad thanked Russia, Iran and Hezbollah for their invaluable contribution to combatting foreign-supported terrorism.

Syria is fighting against and defeating “the fiercest terroristic organizations supported by the strongest and richest countries in the world,” Assad explained.

Russia especially “never stopped supporting the Syrian army or offering whatever it needs for it to carry out its tasks in combating terrorism.”

Assad blasted Turkey’s Erdogan as an invader, his support for terrorists exposed, an adversary not to be trusted. He called Syrian territorial integrity “not up for debate or discussion.”

America’s longest war in modern times continues endlessly in Afghanistan, accomplishing only greater carnage and human misery the longer it’s waged.

On Monday evening, Trump is expected to announce the deployment of around 4,000 more US combat troops to the country, according to CBS News.

The network cautioned that plans could change before he delivers his Monday evening address. He delegated warmaking authority to generals, letting them decide on theaters to engage in, troop deployments and related issues.

Ahead of his address, commander of US forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson Jr. said

“I assure you we are with you in this fight. We are with you and we will stay with you,” remarks made to Afghan commandos.

Deploying more US forces perpetuates the illusion of a winnable war lost years ago – well known in Washington and the Pentagon without acknowledging it.

America targeted the country for its strategic importance, a geopolitical prize, straddling the Middle East, South and Central Asia, in Eurasia’s heartland close to Russia.

Afghanistan serves as a US land-based aircraft carrier, part of its plan to encircle Russia and China with military bases.

Permanent occupation is planned to exploit regional oil, gas and other resources, including significant Afghan riches.

It’s also about maintaining the country as the world’s largest opium producer, used to produce heroin, flooding world markets with it, the CIA and Wall Street profiting from it.

It’s virtually inconceivable for Trump to announce withdrawal, ending 16 years of war.

It continues endlessly despite being unwinnable – a forever war like in other US conflict theaters, benefitting America’s military/industrial complex hugely, profiting from naked aggression.

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

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

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

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Featured image is from South Front.

“The tasking we get at Pine Gap is look for this particular signal coming out of this particular location. If you find it, report it, and if you find anything else of interest, report that as well.” David Rosenberg, former NSA Team leader, weapon’s analysis at Pine Gap, Aug 20, 2017

At times, there is a lag between the anticipation and the revelation, the assumption that an image might be as gruesome, or perhaps enlightening, as was first assumed. Nothing in the latest Edward Snowden show suggests anything revelatory. They knew it, as did we: that the US military satellite base spat on a bit of Australian dust in a part of the earth that would not make Mars seem out of place, is highly engaged.

Radio National’s Background Briefing made something of a splash on Sunday, with some assistance from the Edward Snowden National Security Agency trove.[1] The documents do much in terms of filling in assumptions on the geolocating role of the facility, much of which had already had some measure of plausibility through the work of Richard Tanter and the late Des Ball.

As Tanter puts it,

“Those documents provide authoritative confirmation that Pine Gap is involved, for example, in the geolocation of cell phones used by people throughout the world, from the Pacific to the edge of Africa.”[2]

“NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia,” by way of example, discloses the NSA term for the Pine Gap facility, ironically termed RAINFALL. “Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap (RAINFALL) [is] a site which plays a significant role in supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.”

Another document supplies some detail as to the role of the facility, confirming that it does beyond the mundane task of merely collecting signals. It also does the dirty work analysing them.

“RAINFALL detects, collects, records, processes, analyses and reports on PROFORMA [data on surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter aircraft] signals collected from tasked target entities.”

Pine Gap has always generated a gaping accountability gap of its own, and these Snowden treats affirm the point. Rather than being an entity accountable to the queries and concerns of the local indigenous population; rather than supplying the local members of parliament from the Senate and the lower house briefings about its activities, Pine Gap is hived off from usual channels, a reminder about how truly inconsequential democracy is in the Canberra-Washington alliance.

Pine Gap has always had its platoons of unflinching apologists, and a common theme, apart from the worn notion that the US security umbrella prevails with fortitude, is that the base is genuinely good. In a Central Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence Daily (Feb 13, 1987), the agency notes with approval the forthcoming Australian Defence white paper indicating strong “support or US-Australian joint defence facilities.”[3]

The publication would dispel any wobbliness on Australian military commitments, a point alluded to by the then minister for defence, Kim Beazley. A further point was to note the “defensive” nature of the facilities, opposition to those “leftwing groups to the contrary.”

So what if Australians in the Northern Territory are ignorant that the communications facility pinpoints targets for drone strikes? We can be assured that these are legitimate, vetted and, when struck, obliterated with fastidious care.

Much of this dressed up bunk is based on the notion, sacrosanct as it is, that drone strikes work. They certain do on a few levels – in galvanising more recruits and liquidating more civilians. Like any military weapon, the hygienic notion of the engineered kill, the surgical operation on the battlefield, is fantasy. If the target so happens to be embedded in an urban setting, one filled with non-combatants, the moral calculus becomes less easy to measure.[4]

The other through-the-glass-darkly feature of the Pine Gap facility lies not only in its geolocation means, but its value as a target. Having such conspicuous yet inscrutable tenants places Australia in harm’s way, a loud invitation to assault.

The CIA was already cognisant of this point in 1987, identifying awareness on the part of Australian defence officials that “the joint facilities would be attacked in a US-Soviet nuclear exchange but argues that removal of the US presence would increase the likelihood of superpower conflict.”[5] The end of the Cold War does little to dispel the significance of Pine Gap as a target of considerable interest.

Where to, then? A firm insistence, for one, that Australia detach itself from the tit of empire, the bosom of Washington’s military industrial complex. This requires something virtually outlawed in Canberra: courage. It has fallen upon such delightfully committed if motley outfits as the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network (IPAN), an organisation of calm determination committed to seeing Australia as something more than the grand real estate for empire.

With each disclosure, with each revelation about Australia’s all too willing complicity in facilitating strikes against foreign targets, many in countries Australians would barely know, the will to change may be piqued. They most certainly will once Australian officials face their first war crimes charges over the use of drones, aiding and abetting their US counterparts in the whole damn awful enterprise.[6]

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

Notes

Featured image: Charlottesville Governor Terry McAuliffe (center) and Mayor Mike Signer (right) (Source: Washington Examiner)

On Saturday, August 12, violence erupted amongst skirmishes between protestors and counter-protesters gathered around the removal of a Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville, Virginia. With reports of the brutality and responsive protests unfolding, the complexity of the event is quickly being packaged by the mainstream media in a way that advances the Democratic political establishment’s ongoing effort to discredit President Donald Trump using false and inflammatory media narratives that exploit America’s systemic and troubling racism for political gain.

The events in Charlottesville took place days after an earth-shattering Disobedient Media report broke into the mainstream, unequivocally and finally debunking the baseless Clinton-Obama argument that it was Russian hackers who interfered in the 2016 American election, and not the American Democratic Party itself. Though Americans blocked the efforts of the Clinton campaign, Obama administration, Democratic Party, and mainstream media to install Clinton as Obama’s successor last November, holdovers from the Clinton-Obama alliance continue exerting any political power they have to advance the interests of the American oligarchy and its rogue shadow government — or “Deep State” — flailing desperately to unseat Trump.

The debunking of the Clinton-Obama “Russiagate” myth followed a call from the House Judiciary Committee to appoint a special counsel to investigate Clinton, Obama, and their network of co-conspirators in the FBI, DOJ, and mainstream media for their wrongdoing in the 2016 election and its aftermath. Massive court victories by Judicial Watch calling for emails from Clinton’s aides around the 2012 Benghazi attack, and others pertaining to the handling of the infamous “Comey memos” the DOJ failed to turn over following former Director James Comey’s departure, have party leadership in a state of utter paralysis as various scandals unfold and the party descends into free-fall.

Bleak: The Democratic Party’s Looming Fundraising Crisis https://t.co/9arL4BUyRs

— Shirtless Pundit (@zachhaller) August 14, 2017

America’s Ongoing War on Its Own

Context to understanding the state of American society in 2017 is the brutal recency of The Great Fleecing. After the working class’s political power was decimated by the wholesale export of good-paying American manufacturing jobs around the 2008 economic crisis, Americans have been left at the mercy of the United States’ rogue banks. What Obama orchestrated prior to his departure amounts to the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world: $4.5 trillion dollars was gifted to Wall Street banks, widening the gap between rich and poor more than under any president before. With a smile on his way out the door, Obama quietly left the vast majority of Americans in worse economic conditions than they have ever seen in their lifetimes.

While Obama and Hillary Clinton’s relationship fluctuated over time, their 2016 alliance with each other, the Party, and the mainstream media was effectuated to protect the mutual interest of each of these four “pillars” of the American power establishment. As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign fraudulently vacuumed money, time, and votes from millions of engaged citizens organizing to reject the Clinton-Obama agenda, Obama’s administration worked with Clinton’s campaign to seemingly do all they could to disenfranchise and impoverish what remained of the American working class and the progressive Americans that rejected their agenda.

It's no coincidince #Charlottesville is happening on @HillaryClinton criminal co-conspirator @TerryMcAuliffe's turfhttps://t.co/LxcQS249HT

— Shirtless Pundit (@zachhaller) August 12, 2017

The savvy are aware of Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe’s involvement with the Clinton-Obama alliance. Prior to the election, McAuliffe drew fire for inviting a Chinese national who donated to both his campaign and the Clinton Foundation to a fundraiser in Clinton’s home; the corruption in plain sight is currently under investigation by the Justice Department. Since then, his $500,000 donation to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the FBI who helped oversee Clinton’s email investigation has McAuliffe under even more intense scrutiny.

Mayor Mike Signer also flaunts a precarious affiliation with the Clinton-Obama network. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Signer famously — and now ominously — declared Charlottesville the “Capital of the Resistance”. Considering the emptiness of this sloganeering by the Democrats, his reasons for doing so appear misguided at best.

The Charlottesville Clash

Saturday morning, a “Unite the Right” demonstration was scheduled to occur in Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park. Having secured the appropriate permits to protest, officials in Charlottesville had committed to protecting the demonstrators’ right to protest, regardless of the hideous ideologies of white supremacy at the root of the event’s purpose or espoused by any of its attendees. While some arrived in street clothes, many came dressed and armed in ad-hoc riot gear similar to the protective gear used by Virginia State troopers and Charlottesville police on site, undoubtedly emboldened by the overt racism inflamed by the establishment in the run-up to Trump’s election.

The intentions of the counter-protestors, however, may be even more concerning. A loose network of “Antifa” (anti-fascist) activist groups had coordinated heavily in advance to supply counter-protesters to confront any outward racism anticipated at the event. This network included efforts directed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC, BoldProgressives.org), a Soros-funded activist group, and other left-leaning groups, such as Standing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) and Refuse Fascism. While organizing to reject the white supremacy entrenched in American society is an urgent priority, political organizations motivated to confront voters perceived as racist instead of confronting the policymakers that protect and enforce America’s racist system should call for both skepticism and scrutiny.

That morning, as the “Unite the Right” rally proceeded, counter-protester groups arrived en masse with the intention of disruption. Eventually, barricades sanctioning the permitted protest area were removed, eliminating the oversight afforded to demonstrators legally permitted to protest, and allowing confrontations to escalate. Demonstrators were forced by police to disperse, and deliberately funneled through groups of agitated counter-protesters, leading them directly into the conflicts that ensued.

ACLU confirms that police were given stand-down order. This invited the violence the city used to shut down a court-permitted protest. https://t.co/FQUhcYaIIm

— Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) August 12, 2017

With the police locked in an intentional retreat, violence broke out. As the brutality was allowed to escalate, Governor Terry McCauliffe declared a State of Emergency that would disperse the masses; as they did, a car plowed through a crowd near the city’s downtown, killing a 32-year-old woman. Overall, an estimated 34 people were injured; a later helicopter crash resulted in two additional casualties by the end of the day.

In the aftermath of the Charlottesville clash, it is clear that Mayor Signer allowed local authorities to abstain from preventing the violence that escalated. It is also clear that Governor McAuliffe’s declaration of a State of Emergency allowed further escalations of violence. It was on both the watches of Signer and McAuilffe that 34 innocent Americans were injured, and 3 killed. This negligence utterly disgraceful, and completely unacceptable.

The failures of Signer and McAuliffe here should be investigated as soon as possible, going all the way up the chain of command, and leaving no stone unturned. There is no valid reason an elected official would order a police force to “stand down” or for a Governor to support it; any elected official that would allow such preventable violence should lose their seat and be banned from public service. At a time when virtuous leadership is called for, Signer and McAuliffe showed none of it.

Worse, what they did was show continued participation in the Clinton-Obama establishment in a tantrum state as Trump’s administration neuters the massively corrupt network they hoped to install to rule the free world. That the Charlottesville clash took place on Clinton crony McAuliffe’s home turf, at the “capital of the Resistance”, and inflamed by paid partisan agitators, is by no means a coincidence: it is a clear continuation of the Clinton-Obama war on the 99%. Americans must resolve with unity to address this.

The real evil exists in political structures that control Charlottesville and allowed the city to be a stage for yesterday's grotesque play. https://t.co/y4eHnaBbWl

— Jared Beck (@JaredBeck) August 13, 2017

A Politicized Media’s Motives in View

As the events unfolded in Charlottesville, there was almost more to observe in the media’s response to the events than in the events themselves.

Friday night headline on @CNN: "#Charlottesville remains on edge ahead of #UniteTheRight rally"https://t.co/f7MfyluuVv

— Shirtless Pundit (@zachhaller) August 13, 2017

Having famously allotted Trump billions in free airtime leading up to the 2016 election, the American mainstream media’s intentions remain under heavy scrutiny in light of numerous revelations that have exposed its flagrant and unethical loyalty to the corrupt Democratic party establishment. The irony of the intolerance espoused by those denouncing intolerance will continue until the Democrats accept and address this blatant and discrediting hypocrisy.

If condemning White Supremacy destroyed White Supremacy I'd condemn it everyday. It doesn't. Help me wake up more people! #Charlottesville

— Tim Black ™ (@RealTimBlack) August 13, 2017

Americans tuned into the Democrats’ response to their 2016 failure have watched as the Clinton-Obama coalition has shamelessly transitioned their failed campaign operations into a network of astroturf groups that seek to continue to discredit Trump instead of meaningfully addressing the struggles of America’s working class that rejected the Democrats last November. Truthfully, the Party cannot address these economic struggles honestly since they deliberately worsened them. Their only to option to move forward remains elevating Trump as a straw-man to distract from their wrongdoing.

Tweets from party operatives Neera Tanden and John Iadrola offer a clear look at how the American establishment is casting the Charlottesville clash in favor of the dethroned Obama-Clinton regime. In response to an odd Friday night rally featuring choreographed neo-Nazis bearing tiki torches identical to those of the Ukrainian coup Obama and Clinton supported in 2014, Tanden issued an ominous setup that seemingly sought to pre-empt observers from blaming the establishment for what was to come.

Prior to Saturday’s violence, Tanden pointed the finger at “fascists marching with torches .. the enemies of progress”, suggesting “everyone on the progressive side” should not blame the oppressors in power but rather the “actual fascists” demonstrating:

We have actual fascists marching with torches. Maybe everyone on the progressive side could focus on the enemies of progress in front of us

— Neera Tanden?? (@neeratanden) August 12, 2017

It’s hard to find more clear of a tool of the corporate duopoly desperate to project than the insufferable Tanden. In her tweet, Tanden exposes the intent of the Clinton-Obama Pied Piper strategy clearly: in place of any substantive agenda, the goal is to divert attention away from crimes of a ruling class that continues to pillage the earth and humanity every day.

While Tanden’s tweet exposed the intention of the Democratic establishment to pit Americans against each other, The Young Turks host John Iadrola’s August 13 tweet reinforced the Democrats’ strategy to use both the white supremacist faction of Trump’s base and his legitimate cooperation with Russian head of state Vladimir Putin in any way that could discredit Trump:

There are two things Trump can't ever seem to criticize: white supremacy, and Vladimir Putin.

— John Iadarola (@johniadarola) August 13, 2017

Fortunately in light of the Disobedient Media report, the Democratic Party’s “muh Russia” excuse is officially null and void. Further, as included in the House Judiciary’s call for a second special counsel, an independent investigation will be conducted to investigate Clinton and Obama’s own inappropriate ties with the Russian government around the Uranium One deal, the Ukrainian coup, and favoritism within the FBI and DOJ. Following the Syrian cease-fire and the withdrawal of covert CIA operatives pushing for regime change, the Clinton-Obama network will finally answer to the millions of Americans exploited by their delinquent and insidious endeavors.

In the aftermath of the clash, one thing is certain: Americans of all party affiliations should unite to denounce the failure of these elected officials to protect their citizens and allow such needless losses of life. While the underlying dynamics of the demonstration deserve thoughtful analysis as America addresses its ongoing identity crisis, the malicious actions of Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe should be the cause for greatest concern. With blood on their hands and knee-deep in scandal, Mayor Signer and Governor McAuliffe should step down immediately and allow Americans to move forward in investigating Clinton and Obama without them. Until then, they will remain the faces of the most deadly cancer currently destroying American society.

The new face of America is eerily familiar. pic.twitter.com/xpAcHo7gHH

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

The Only Way Out is Through

As overwhelming as it is to look the rotten American establishment in the eye, knowledge in the information age is more powerful than ever. While the corrupt establishment insists Americans should fight “right versus left” among themselves, the common sense of 300 million citizens suggests the American people are aware the most important battle is the one against a Deep State desperate to control them. The people who deserve the ire of the Americans are the oligarchs in the top 0.1% responsible for the expansion of poverty in America and unbridled militarism around the world. Americans by and large know this, and are gaining more ground than the Deep State.

America Fixates On 500 Assholes Instead Of Healing Its Own Institutional Racism#Charlottesville #Nazi #reparationshttps://t.co/E4JJe92NXk

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 13, 2017

As intimidating as the Deep State’s war on Americans is, the American people are making progress. As complex as it may be to prioritize Americans’ interwoven struggles for economic and racial justice along with it, the American people should commit to making progress here too. As overwhelming as it may seem to confront America’s multiple oppressors, the American people should stay confident in their strength in numbers.

As ugly as the road ahead may be, the fearless American spirit knows the only way out is through.

Zach Haller zachhaller.com @zachhaller  (Shirtless Pundit) is a writer, activist, and expert on the DNC Fraud Lawsuit. Support Zach’s work at patreon.com/zachhaller/ and by subscribing to The Zach Haller Affair, a YouTube channel by the people, for the people.

On July 30, 2017 the people of Venezuela went to the polls to elect a National Constituent Assembly (ANC). The vote was Constitutional, verifiable, secret, direct and universal, and over 8 million people participated. Despite this reality, the government United States and their allies, along with mainstream capitalist media have all decried the elections as “illegitimate,” “unpopular” and a “sham.”

On July 17, there was another “vote” in Venezuela. In sharp contrast to their reaction to the Constituent Assembly, imperialist governments and their capitalist media had nothing but praise for this illegal “plebiscite.” Basically, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition organized a non-binding referendum without the authority of either Venezuela’s National Electoral Council or the Constitution of Venezuela. The opposition claims that over 7 million people participated in this referendum, however, the results are not verifiable as the ballots were destroyed.

It has been 19 years since election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 and the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolutionary process. Since then, poor, working and oppressed people in Venezuela have made tremendous gains in their standards of living; in healthcare, education, housing, access to food and clean water, among other basic indicators of quality of life.

Today, Venezuela has a revolutionary government led by the democratically elected President, Nicolas Maduro, but the economy of Venezuela is still run by Venezuela’s rich class. This rich class is represented in government by the opposition coalition MUD (the Democratic Round Table).

Over the past four months the people of Venezuela have been facing an increasingly violent campaign by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition and their violent mercenaries, whose ultimate goal is to overthrow the legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro and reverse the gains of the Bolivarian revolution. Over 100 people have been killed and over 1000 injured in the terrorist attacks that have included murders, assassinations, road barricades, fires and attacks on government buildings, among other crimes.

The National Constituent Assembly is the revolutionary government of Venezuela’s response to this escalated violence. The right-wing so-called plebiscite was the opposition’s response to the ANC. Thus there is, with these two votes, a “Tale of Two Elections,” an important illustration of the revolution and counter-revolution in Venezuela.

What is the National Constituent Assembly?

“Today, on May 1, I announce that I am going to use my constitutional powers as the head of state to convoke the Original Constituent Power, which, according to Article 347, allows for the working class and the people convoke the National Constituent Assembly…I convoke a citizens’ Constituent Assembly, not a Constituent Assembly of parties or elites…a citizen’s, workers’, communal, campesinos’ Constituent Assembly. A feminist, youth, students’ Constituent Assembly. An Indigenous Constituent Assembly.” (teleSUR)

As President Maduro explained, the ANC would be elected by the people of Venezuela through a popular, direct and secret vote. The ANC would then be charged with proposing changes to improve and broaden Venezuela’s Constitution in order to strengthen the Bolivarian revolutionary process and “make peace triumph over violence.” After the ANC had completed its work, any proposed changes to the Constitution of Venezuela would then be approved by the people of Venezuela in a referendum.

In the three months following the May announcement, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), together with the various social institutions of the Bolivarian revolution, mobilized the mass majority of people in Venezuela towards the ANC election. By election day, July 30, there were 6,120 candidates running for the 545 seats in the Constituent Assembly.

Not a single candidate in the election was from the right-wing opposition. This, however, was not because they were not allowed from running. The right-wing opposition parties decided to boycott the National Constituent Assembly. While at the same time, they increased their campaign of violence and fear meant to discourage the people of Venezuela from participating in the vote.

It is also important to note that, as with previous elections, the Constituent Assembly elections were overseen by the National Election Council (CNE). The CNE is actually one of the five branches of government in Venezuela.

July 30, 2017 – Election Day 

The Constituent Assembly elections were a great success for the revolutionary government of Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolutionary process. According to the CNE, on Sunday, July 30, 8,089,320 Venezuelans went to the polls for the Constituent Assembly vote. This represents 41.5% of the registered voters in Venezuela (people living abroad were not able to vote). In comparison, in 2013 President Maduro won the election with 7,587,579 votes and Chavez won his 2012 re-election with 8,191,132 votes.

537 representatives, out of the 545 total members, were elected on that day. The majority of these seats were voted on using the method that most people in North America are familiar with, by region. Much like elections in the US or Canada, 364 representatives were chosen on the basis of where people lived, with one representative for every 83,000 people, and at least one representative for every municipality. A further 173 of the representatives were chosen based on sector. This means that they were nominated and voted upon by specific sectors of society such as workers, farmers, people with disabilities, students, pensioners, the business sector and communes and communal councils. This way, groups within Venezuelan society, with specific needs, could be sure to have their interests represented in the Constituent Assembly.

The final eight representatives were chosen from within Venezuela’s Indigenous peoples on Tuesday August 1. In keeping with the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999, for Indigenous people the “their ancestral methods of choice and participation” were recognized as part of the election process.

The ANC will be inaugurated on Friday, August 4.

Venezuela’s Violent Right-Wing Opposition Attacks Democracy 

The great success of the Constituent Assembly elections came despite an intensified campaign by the violent right-wing opposition to sabotage the vote. In the months leading up to July 30, leading members of the opposition publically stated that they would not let the Constituent Assembly happen. Following their marching orders, violent mercenaries and counter-revolutionary thugs then got to work, bringing violence and terror to the streets of Venezuela. This included the assassination of a Constituent Assembly candidate, Felix Pineda Marcano, the night before the election.

The violence in the streets of Venezuela continued on election day. The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, reported that 200 voting stations were surrounded by violent opposition members. Because of this, alternate voting stations had to be set-up. Attacks were also carried out against government security forces deployed to protect the voting stations; the Interior Ministry has reported that 21 state security personnel were wounded with gunshots, in addition to the murder of National Guard Second Sergeant Ronald Ramirez in Tachira State. At least nine other people were killed that day. There was also a bombing attack directed against a police motorcycle envoy. The bombs went off as the police drove through a pro-opposition neighborhood in Caracas, injuring eight officers.

The right-wing campaign to stop the Constituent Assembly elections also extended beyond the borders of Venezuela. In the days leading up to the elections, both the government of the United States and the government of Canada demanded that Venezuela cancel the elections. The US even threatened to impose further sanctions, a direct violation of the people of Venezuela’s sovereignty and self-determination.

Within the Organization of American States (OAS), United States government, Canada, Mexico and their allies attempted to get the regional body to issue a formal condemnation of the Constituent Assembly. However, their efforts failed, just like so many other attempts by the imperialists to use the OAS to promote intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela.

What About Allegations of Fraud by Venezuela’s Opposition and Their Foreign Allies? 

This was the 21st time that elections were held as part of the Bolivarian revolutionary process that began with the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998. Out of these 21 elections, two were considered a loss for the Bolivarian revolution, the most recent being the 2015 parliamentary elections in which Venezuela’s opposition won a majority of the seats.

The two times that elections in Venezuela were in favour of the opposition, imperialist governments and their capitalist media machine were silent about the results. For the other 18 elections that brought about advancement in the Bolivarian revolutionary process, these same governments and the mainstream media were quick with their allegations of fraud, irregularities and rigging. This was no different for the Constituent Assembly elections on July 30. In fact, immediately following the elections, the US government took their threats one step further, and President Trump imposed sanctions directly on President Maduro.

The imperialist and right-wing allegations against the July 30 elections are, however not based in fact. Instead of relying on data from the electronic voting machines used in the elections (which by the way use finger-prints to identify voters), mainstream media sources like the New York Times are instead quoting so-called “independent” election observers (like the investment bank Tornio Capital) and the observations of unnamed reporters in the country.

An audit of the Constituent Assembly election is also set to be carried out to further verify the results, but imperialist governments are not waiting in on this before continuing their attacks against President Maduro and the Bolivarian revolution. This is another sign that the allegations of fraud and rigging are baseless. They speak of “democracy” in Venezuela, but what they really mean is “democracy” for Venezuela’s violent opposition and capitalist class. The reaction of the US representative to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, says it all

“Maduro’s sham election is another step toward dictatorship. We won’t accept an illegitimate govt. The Venezuelan people and democracy will prevail.”

Right-wing Plebiscite in Venezuela – Exactly What the US Government and Their Allies Were Looking For 

On Sunday, July 17, Venezuela’s opposition organized another vote, what they referred to as a “plebiscite.” This “plebiscite” was essentially a non-binding referendum called by the right-wing opposition, with no recognition by Venezuela’s democratically elected government or the National Electoral Council, and no Constitutional recognition. Despite this, the opposition went ahead with the voting with the full support of the government of the United States and their allies, and received wide-spread recognition as the “voice of the people of Venezuela” in mainstream capitalist media.

So, What Was This Opposition “Plebiscite” All about? 

As reported by Al Jazeera, the three questions on the ballet (which were supposed to be answered with a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’) were:

1. Do you reject and ignore the realization of a Constituent Assembly proposed by Nicolas Maduro without the prior approval of the Venezuelan people?
2. Do you demand that the National Armed Forces and all public officials obey and defend the Constitution of 1999 and support the decisions of the National Assembly?
3. Do you approve the renewal of public powers in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, and the holding of free and transparent elections, as well as the formation of a government of national unity to restore constitutional order?

Instead of being organized by the government and Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), it was organized by a coalition of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition. In contrast to the Constituent Assembly vote which took three months to prepare, this vote was organized is just two weeks, after being announced on July 3.

Anyone over the age of 18 could vote in the plebiscite, including people living outside of Venezuela.

What Were the Results? 

The opposition reported that 7 million people voted in the referendum. There are however, a number of significant irregularities that have been reported about this number.

For example, the opposition has reported that 693,000 votes were cast abroad, while only about 101,000 voters live outside of Venezuela. There are also basic problems exposed by mathematical analysis that make 7 million votes impossible.

As reported by Ryan Mallett-Outtrim of venezuelaanalysis.com

“According to the pro-opposition newspaper El Nacional, on Sunday the opposition organized roughly 2000 voting centers nationwide, with a total of 14,800 individual booths. That means that on election day, each booth must have received an average of 485 votes. Yet the voting centers were only open for nine hours, from 7am to 4pm. That means each booth had to receive 54 ballots per hour: that’s around one every minute.”

Unlike the Constituent Assembly election, the opposition has also made an audit of the results impossible as the ballots have already been burned from some states.

Some of the irregularities in the number of votes might be explained by repeat voting. A teleSUR investigative report conducted during the unconstitutional referendum revealed that one person was able to vote three times.

This is What Democracy Looks Like? 

Leopoldo Lopez

On the eve of the Constituent Assembly election in Venezuela, US Vice-President Mike Pence made a phone call to Leopaldo Lopez, a leader in Venezuela’s violent, counter-revolutionary opposition. Mr. Lopez had recently been let out of prison, and was under house arrest, for his role in inciting street riots in 2013 that killed 43 people.

In his phone call to this convicted criminal, Vice President Pence gave Leopaldo Lopez words of support and encouragement, reminding him that the US government had demanded that the government of Venezuela cancel the Constituent Assembly elections and hold a US-supported, opposition led version of “free and fair elections” in Venezuela.

However, Mr. Pence, you forgot that those “free and fair” elections were just about to happen. Left with a choice between an election that was constitutionally recognized and verifiable, and a referendum that was neither of these things, the US government and their allies have chosen the latter.

Once again, imperialist lies, manipulations and intervention in Venezuela are exposed. The US government and their allies do not care about “democracy” or “legitimate” elections in Venezuela, as much as they do not care about the hundreds of people that have been killed in Venezuela by the violent opposition that they support. Together with Venezuela’s violent right-wing opposition, their only interest is in overthrowing the government of Venezuela and reversing the gains of the Bolivarian revolutionary process.

Increasing US and imperialist intervention and sanctions are preparation for further, and more aggressive attacks. As the people of Venezuela continue to build the Bolivarian revolutionary process, and defend their rights to sovereignty and self-determination, international solidarity is needed now more than ever before.

Alison Bodine is an Anti-war and Social Justice Activist Writer & Researcher  Follow  on Twitter: @Alisoncolette

Featured image: Rasmea Odeh (Source: Justice for Rasmea!)

(BNAziz’ commentary: Monday Aug 21, 7:45 am on WBAI, 99.5fm.)

Rasmea Odeh is either on a plane out of her country. Or she’s in a federal holding cell in Detroit or New York awaiting deportation from the USA.

Odeh’s departure marks the end of a bizarre life, yet one that can evoke admiration. As a young Palestinian Odeh fought against Israeli oppression. Now after a valiant legal battle with many supporters in this, her new homeland, she is departing (by force).

Some Americans may recall with satisfaction their support for Russian dissidents in the 1950s and 1960s when the Soviet Union exiled its critics. If they were not sent to Siberia, opponents of the USSR were denied residence in their own country, involuntarily banished. However much the US and UK welcomed them and even lionized them, banishment is a hard punishment to bear. Today’s Russia no longer metes out such penalties; which is not to say Russia is completely tolerant of dissent.

In the US, one hardly hears of Americans being banished from these hallowed shores. However rare, it does occur. Often Palestinian Americans are the target of this injustice, with Israeli authorities (somehow, usually) involved in legal cases brought against those Palestinians in US courts.

Perhaps the most widely publicized case is that of Professor Sami Al-Arian. Starting in 1993, after a long, noble struggle against false accusations, years in jail, support from a campaign determinedly led by his own family, continued harassment from the US government, Al-Arian finally succumbed and left the country in 2015. Before him, his associate Mazen Al-Najjar also spent years attempting to secure justice before he too was deported. [I myself interviewed both men on several occasions between 1993 and 2003 on Radio Tahrir (www.RadioTahrir.org ), WBAI, 99.5 fm. While Al-Arian’s case is well documented, Al-Najjar’s history is almost completely scrubbed from the public record.] Both men were brave advocates for US justice and for Palestinian rights.

Rasmea Odeh’s treatment is a troubling reminder that this happens to US citizens who have never committed a crime in this country and never threatened anyone in the US.

Odeh is the latest Palestinian banished from this country. Now 69, she moved to the US (where her father resided) and settled in the Chicago area in the 1990’s. She was pressed to leave her home in the Occupied Territories like countless Palestinians over the past half century, dispossessed people who lost homes, family and hope. They left under duress in search of peace and dignity.

In 1994 Odeh applied for an immigration visa, later for US citizenship. Unlike many immigrants, she dared to become a community leader. Any immigrant, whatever their background, who arrives here quickly learns to keep their head down, their mouth shut—civil rights-be-damned. Just join the American dream for a job and a house.

The long arm of Israeli injustice followed Odeh however, and perhaps because of her visibility, her earlier experience with Israeli authorities was disclosed. (Many years earlier, Odeh was convicted for involvement in an attack on Israelis. She was released after serving ten years in a prisoner exchange.) Her American crime? She’d failed to report that conviction in her immigration application, a serious oversight. So when her history came to light in 2013, US authorities brought a charge of “immigration fraud” against Odeh. In her defense a major campaign was launched, and in 2015 the conviction was set aside. Forces determined to destroy her stepped up the attack however and she faced yet another trial, set for May 2017. Although there was considerable public support for her, in March, Rasmea’s defense team advised a plea deal. She would serve no jail time, but her citizenship was revoked and she’d be deported. Thus the court’s announcement last week of her removal.  

While this conclusion was hardly noted in the regular US press, the Jewish press, in USA and in Israel, hailed the decision, using the news to highlight her 1969 terrorism conviction and to draw attention to the ubiquitous threat of Palestinian terrorism.

Such tactics are part of the ever present Israeli campaign coursing through US culture, a threat that smothers dissent, intimidates and drives academics out of the universities, and in response to the success of the BDS movement, is pressing ahead with S. 720, a bill in the US Congress, to prohibit Americans who will not countenance Israeli injustice, from participating in any boycott of Israeli products and institutions.

All the more reason to support vocal critics including journalists, and American community leaders like Linda Sarsour.

There will always be funds for shelter-less and malnourished children in refugee camps. Today, in the face of stepped up Israeli surveillance and political pressures, immense courage in needed to pursue justice for Palestine and free speech on behalf of their rights. Many Americans (including journalists), nameless and known figures–Arabs and non-Arabs— have moved into obscurity after years of threats and intimidation. Somehow new champions emerge to continue a just cause.

“The only legitimate role of search engines is to provide relevant search results, to facilitate public access to information. The only legitimate role of social media platforms is to facilitate public access to communications. … Content carriers have no legal nor moral authority to be self-appointed censors, nor to be self-proclaimed arbiters of Fact or Truth.” – Prince Judge Matthew of Thebes

At the request of the international Judiciary, the Council on Alternative Policy Studies (CAPS), an inter-governmental university think tank, has issued a ground-breaking exposé report proving the shocking reality of full-scale mass censorship of the Internet worldwide, and giving practical solutions for individuals to gain open access to uncensored Internet resources.

The 30-page think-tank report, entitled “How to Break Free From Internet Censorship Now”, concludes that

“humanity is directly confronted with… mass censorship, which was already quietly rolled out in full force by globalist mega-corporations… That rollout was completed while the mainstream establishment media… distracted with superficial stories of artificially divisive politics, while suppressing any mention of the fact of censorship.”

As the report notes:

“Without this presentation proving censorship, most people would not believe it, precisely because that same censorship in collusion with mainstream media willfully prevents them from knowing about this massive event.”

The report calls “for the general public… abandoning the online platforms of self-appointed censors, and switching to free and fair service providers”, with this dire warning:

“If humanity does not collectively send the strongest possible message to censoring mega-corporations now, then it will quickly and perhaps permanently lose all human rights to individually communicate any meaningful messages to each other.”

The report declares:

“The only legitimate role of search engines is to provide relevant search results, to facilitate public access to information. The only legitimate role of social media platforms is to facilitate public access to communications. By restricting access by censorship to impose and enforce only state-sanctioned mainstream narratives, service providers abandon that essential function, thereby destroying the sole justification for their own existence.”

It further declares:

“Search engines and social media content carriers have no legal nor moral authority to be self-appointed censors, nor to be self-proclaimed arbiters of Fact or Truth. Moreover, they have no professional qualifications to usurp any such role. Throughout all of human history since the beginning of time, it has been the exclusive domain of the independent Judiciary profession, relying upon and closely backed by free and independent Academia of classical scholarship, to be the ‘finders of fact’.”

The think tank report emphasized the profound impact of this mass censorship as a “full-scale assault against all Academia, Science, Law and Justice, directly attacking the very pillars of civilization”:

“Now, with this new censorship… of the primary flow of information and communications worldwide, the professions which are the essential pillars of civilization can no longer rely on the establishment channels of access to information: Academics can no longer conduct scholarly research… with any confidence that they have access to all relevant facts… A whole generation of scholars is being sabotaged; Lawyers [and Judges] can no longer develop cases… with any confidence in finding all relevant verifiable facts… A whole generation of jurists is being sabotaged.”

Faithful to the sub-title of the report, “Solutions to Continue Independent Research of Factual Truth”, it reveals many hard-hitting practical tools to uphold free speech:

For anti-censorship search engine alternatives to replace Google, Bing and Yahoo, it recommends DuckDuckGo, Qwant, UnBubble, and GoodGopher; For anti-censorship video service alternatives to replace YouTube, it recommends Minds, Vidme, DailyMotion, and Vimeo, combined with Patreon for monetization; For anti-censorship social media platform alternatives to replace Facebook and Twitter, it recommends Minds, Seen, Gab, and Diaspora. It also recommends a list of uncensored reliable and credible news outlets which give fair coverage to independent or alternative news reports.

The inter-governmental Council on Alternative Policy Studies (CAPS) proved that

“the propaganda narrative of mainstream ‘news’ media, that” censorship “is only prohibited… if done by an official government agency, or by a near-monopoly as a quasi-public utility, is false… it completely ignores the very existence of human rights… at the higher level of international law.”

The think tank developed the following new legal strategy for enforcing international law on free speech as human rights, even in domestic Courts, and even against private corporations:

(A) All countries of the world have recognized the right to freedom of speech, and the right to freedom of “correspondence” as communications, both enforceable by the right to equal protection of law, as fundamental human rights, protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights (Articles 19, 12, 7) and UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 19.2, 17, 26);

(B) International law imposes direct corporate and even personal liability for violations of human rights, subject to direct corporate and individual sanctions and penalties, under the UN Responsibility to Protect Human Rights (Articles 10-11), UN Remedy for Violations of Human Rights (Article 3(b)), and UN Justice for Victims of Abuse of Power (Article 8).

(C) All countries are required to enforce international human rights law both in domestic law enforcement and domestic Courts, under the UN Right to Protect Human Rights (Articles 9.5, 10-11). The United States Constitution confirms that “all treaties” – including UN human rights conventions – are “the supreme law of the land” and thus must be enforced by all American Courts (Article 6).

Today marks the 70th anniversary of India’s independence from colonial Britain. Flags in both India and Pakistan fly high to commemorate the end of colonial rule. But in talking about India’s independence we need to rid ourselves of some historical amnesia. The partition of northern India that was drawn up by the British at the same time meant that independence was a mixed blessing, offering freedom from imperialism on the one hand and some inherited imperial power struggles on the other. The rivalry and political tensions between the two countries continue as a result. That’s something which took me over a decade to figure out.

A story of heroes and villains?

This was the story of partition recited to me as a child at school.

1885 saw the birth of the Indian National Congress, the first nationalist political party and movement under the British Empire. Its most recognised Hindu leader, Gandhi, pushed for complete independence from British rule as a unified country. Muhammed Ali Jinnah, a Muslim and former Congress member, wanted to divide India by religious lines and remain loyal to colonial Britain. With no truce between factitious religious sides, securing a united and peaceful India under British rule was impossible. The British Raj recognised its loss of control in the region and India was divided into India, home of Hindus and Sikhs, and Pakistan for Muslims. Independence was won.

This account is biased, naively straightforward and historically inaccurate, but I never questioned it. Not only are the ‘heroes and villains’ of partition nuanced and complex, Britain’s role in an imperial controlled independence is still underplayed in schools and history books.

If you can’t rule you can still divide

In 1857 the Great Rebellion saw Muslim and Hindu soldiers and civilians standing side by side in revolt against the East India Company that was ruthlessly exploiting the sub-continent. That contradicted the familial narrative recounted to me at home that Hindus and Muslims just never got on – it had always been that way.

It took some time to piece together how the exploitation of religious division through partition helped shape my family’s perceptions.

Religious chasms were undeniably real at the time, and sometimes violent. In India representation in government was largely in favour of the Hindu majority. But, it is equally true that British colonial powers systematically exploited and stimulated political divisions along religious lines to its own advantage.

Prior to WWII, Britain opposed demands for independence. British viceroys had previously used allies in the Muslim League and their plans for partition as a threat and leverage over Hindu nationalists who wanted a united, independent India. But it became clear during the war that a lack of resources back in the UK and the growing clamour for independence in India meant that relinquishing (some) imperial control was inevitable.

A united independent India would withdraw from the Commonwealth under the Congress and British military influence would be denied. The creation of Pakistan through the Muslim League was now no longer leverage; it was a strategic policy to maintain some amount of British power and continued colonial control in India.

The Radcliffe line was drawn within five weeks and in August 1947 India quickly became two separate states divided by a religious border.

A violent aftermath which isn’t over

As religious divides heightened in the days following the announcement of partition, millions fled their homes to reach safety in the newly created Hindu and Sikh India and Muslim Pakistan. This remains the single largest mass migration of people in all history. Tragically, massive violence erupted in border areas, especially in Punjab. Women in particular were targeted and nearly one million people were killed as communal violence spread. 15 million people were displaced and remnants of that statelessness still affect thousands in both countries today.

The battle for disputed Kashmir and the buried roots of Islamic radicalism, the violent formation of Bangladesh, and a right-wing government in India which privileges Hindu nationalism, are all indicators that the legacy of 1947 isn’t over. There is still a deeply ingrained rivalry between India and Pakistan and it’s time we understood why. Those stories told to me as a child missed something. Not all stories have a hero and villain. Some stories are complex. Some stories require an understanding of power. And in the UK we have a tendency to downplay the impact of the political machinations of the Empire.

Featured image is from the author.

We’ve all heard that globalization lifts all boats and increases our prosperity…

But mainstream economists and organizations are now starting to say that globalization increases inequality.

The National Bureau of Economic Research – the largest economics research organization in the United States, with many Nobel economists and Chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers as members – published, a report in May finding:

Recent globalization trends have increased U.S. inequality by disproportionately raising top incomes.

***

Rising import competition has adversely affected manufacturing employment, led firms to upgrade their production and caused labor earnings to fall.

NBER explains that globalization allows executives to gain the system to their advantage:

This paper examines the role of globalization in the rapid increase in top incomes. Using a comprehensive data set of thousands of executives at U.S. firms from 1993-2013, we find that exports, along with technology and firm size, have contributed to rising executive compensation. Isolating changes in exports that are unrelated to the executive’s talent and actions, we show that globalization has affected executive pay not only through market channels but also through non-market channels. Furthermore, exogenous export shocks raise executive compensation mostly through bonus payments in poor-governance settings, in line with the hypothesis that globalization has enhanced the executive’s rent capture opportunities. Overall, these results indicate that globalization has played a more central role in the rapid growth of executive compensation and U.S. inequality than previously thought, and that rent capture is an important part of this story.

A World Bank document says globalization “may have led to rising wage inequality”. It notes:

Recent evidence for the US suggests that adjustment costs for those employed in sectors exposed to import competition from China are much higher than previously thought.

***

Trade may have contributed to rising inequality in high income economies….

The World Bank also cites Nobel prize-winning economist Eric Maskin’s view that globalization increases inequality because it increases the mismatch between the skills of different workers.

A report by the International Monetary Fund notes:

High trade and financial flows between countries, partly enabled by technological advances, are commonly cited as driving income inequality…. In advanced economies, the ability of firms to adopt laborsaving technologies and offshoring has been cited as an important driver of the decline in manufacturing and rising skill premium (Feenstra and Hanson 1996, 1999, 2003) ….

***

Increased financial flows, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio flows have been shown to increase income inequality in both advanced and emerging market economies (Freeman 2010). One potential explanation is the concentration of foreign assets and liabilities in relatively higher skill- and technology-intensive sectors, which pushes up the demand for and wages of higher skilled workers. In addition, FDI could induce skill-specific technological change, be associated with skill-specific wage bargaining, and result in more training for skilled than unskilled workers (Willem te Velde 2003). Moreover, low-skill, outward FDI from advanced economies may in effect be relatively high-skilled, inward FDI in developing economies (Figini and Görg 2011), thus exacerbating the demand for high-skilled workers in recipient countries. Financial deregulation and globalization have also been cited as factors underlying the increase in financial wealth, relative skill intensity, and wages in the finance industry, one of the fastest growing sectors in advanced economies (Phillipon and Reshef 2012; Furceri and Loungani 2013).

The Bank of International Settlements – the “Central Banks’ Central Bank” – also notes that globalization isn’t all peaches and cream. The Financial Times explains :

A trio of recent papers by top officials from the Bank for International Settlements goes further, however, arguing that financial globalisation itself makes booms and busts far more frequent and destabilising than they otherwise would be.

McKinsey & Company notes:

Even as globalization has narrowed inequality among countries, it has aggravated income inequality within them.

The Economist points out:

Most economists have been blindsided by the backlash [against globalization]. A few saw it coming. It is worth studying their reasoning ….

***

Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York believes such costs perpetuate a cycle of globalisation. He argues that periods of global integration and technological progress generate rising inequality ….

Supporters of economic integration underestimated the risks … that big slices of society would feel left behind ….

The New York Times reported:

Were the experts wrong about the benefits of trade for the American economy?

***

Voters’ anger and frustration, driven in part by relentless globalization and technological change [has made Trump and Sanders popular, and] is already having a big impact on America’s future, shaking a once-solid consensus that freer trade is, necessarily, a good thing.

“The economic populism of the presidential campaign has forced the recognition that expanded trade is a double-edged sword,” wrote Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

What seems most striking is that the angry working class — dismissed so often as myopic, unable to understand the economic trade-offs presented by trade — appears to have understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.

In a recent study, three economists — David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn at the University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson at the University of California, San Diego — raised a profound challenge to all of us brought up to believe that economies quickly recover from trade shocks. In theory, a developed industrial country like the United States adjusts to import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that can successfully compete in global markets.

They examined the experience of American workers after China erupted onto world markets some two decades ago. The presumed adjustment, they concluded, never happened. Or at least hasn’t happened yet. Wages remain low and unemployment high in the most affected local job markets. Nationally, there is no sign of offsetting job gains elsewhere in the economy. What’s more, they found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.

In another study they wrote with Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from M.I.T., they estimated that rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs.

“These results should cause us to rethink the short- and medium-run gains from trade,” they argued. “Having failed to anticipate how significant the dislocations from trade might be, it is incumbent on the literature to more convincingly estimate the gains from trade, such that the case for free trade is not based on the sway of theory alone, but on a foundation of evidence that illuminates who gains, who loses, by how much, and under what conditions.”

***

The case for globalization based on the fact that it helps expand the economic pie by 3 percent becomes much weaker when it also changes the distribution of the slices by 50 percent, Mr. Autor argued.

And Steve Keen – economics professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London – notes:

Plenty of people will try to convince you that globalization and free trade could benefit everyone, if only the gains were more fairly shared. The only problem with the party, they’ll say, is that the neighbours weren’t invited. We’ll share the benefits more equally now, we promise. Let’s keep the party going. Globalization and Free Trade are good.

This belief is shared by almost all politicians in both parties, and it’s an article of faith for the economics profession.

***

It’s a fallacy based on a fantasy, and it has been ever since David Ricardo dreamed up the idea of “Comparative Advantage and the Gains from Trade” two centuries ago.

***

[Globalization’s] little shell and pea trick is therefore like most conventional economic theory: it’s neat, plausible, and wrong. It’s the product of armchair thinking by people who never put foot in the factories that their economic theories turned into rust buckets.

So the gains from trade for everyone and for every country that could supposedly be shared more fairly simply aren’t there in the first place. Specialization is a con job—but one that the Washington elite fell for (to its benefit, of course). Rather than making a country better off, specialization makes it worse off, with scrapped machinery that’s no longer useful for anything, and with less ways to invent new industries from which growth actually comes.-

Excellent real-world research by Harvard University’s “Atlas of Economic Complexity” has found diversity, not specialization, is the “magic ingredient” that actually generates growth. Successful countries have a diversified set of industries, and they grow more rapidly than more specialized economies because they can invent new industries by melding existing ones.

***

Of course, specialization, and the trade it necessitates, generates plenty of financial services and insurance fees, and plenty of international junkets to negotiate trade deals. The wealthy elite that hangs out in the Washington party benefits, but the country as a whole loses, especially its working class.

Some Big Companies Losing Interest In Globalization

Ironically, the Washington Post noted in 2015 that the giant multinational corporations themselves are losing interest in globalization… and many are starting to bring the factories back home:

Yet despite all this activity and enthusiasm, hardly any of the promised returns from globalization have materialized, and what was until recently a taboo topic inside multinationals — to wit, should we reconsider, even rein in, our global growth strategy? — has become an urgent, if still hushed, discussion.

***

Given the failures of globalization, virtually every major company is struggling to find the most productive international business model.

***

Reshoring — or relocating manufacturing operations back to Western factories from emerging nations — is one option. As labor costs escalate in places such as China, Thailand, Brazil and South Africa, companies are finding that making products in, say, the United States that are destined for North American markets is much more cost-efficient. The gains are even more significant when productivity of emerging countries is taken into account.

***

Moreover, new disruptive manufacturing technologies — such as 3-D printing, which allows on-site production of components and parts at assembly plants — make the idea of locating factories where the assembled products will be sold more practicable.

***

GE, Whirlpool, Stanley Black & Decker, Peerless and many others have reopened shuttered factories or built new ones in the United States.

Liberals, progressive and Democrats should think critically about the negative impacts of widespread media bias on American democracy. There simply is no doubt that virtually all mainstream media regularly show their strong bias against president Trump and his administration. These media have convinced themselves that they are working to save American democracy from an incompetent, corrupt and dangerous president. And those on the left eat up the negative coverage, which means more money for the anti-Trump networks, newspapers and magazines. Never mind that he was elected fairly and legally.

It seems that the “leftist” media would only be happy if Trump was driven out of office by any means. Such a victory would confirm the undemocratic power of a free press that replaces a military coup with a media one…

Here is my point: More Americans should seriously consider the larger question of whether such a perversion of freedom of the press undermines our democracy. Why? Because instead of fairly presenting genuine news the opinion loaded negative coverage has the goal of bringing down Trump and overturning the election result. The press establishment overwhelmingly filled with liberals and progressives wanted Hillary Clinton and refuse to accept defeat. After all, despite a mighty effort, the media failed to elect Clinton. It continues to seek retribution by bashing Trump and ignoring the many failings of the Clinton campaign.

The press probably feels some responsibility for Trump’s success during the primary season. Coverage of Trump’s beating up of his Republican opponents was extreme. Now the press is getting even.

To dispel any doubt about the widespread perception of media bias, consider a June 2017 Rasmussen survey of likely American voters.

“Fifty percent (50%) think most reporters are biased against the president, up two points from January. Just four percent (4%) think most reporters are biased in Trump’s favor. Given the president’s testy relationship with the media, however, it’s not surprising that 76% of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major political party believe most reporters are biased against the president, a view shared by only 24% of Democrats.”

Perhaps the most important finding is that

“Nearly 90% of voters who Strongly Approve of the job the president is doing think most reporters are biased against Trump and rate media coverage of him as poor.”

These results support the view that all the negative coverage may strengthen the Trump base, which largely have stopped reading and listening to what they think is fake news. News based on reporting of facts has been replaced by opinion and a near total emphasis on what Trump says rather than on what he and his administration have does. In other words, rhetoric preempts accomplishments, and those positive accomplishments from a conservative perspective are also viewed negatively by the leftist press. Information about governance is purposely kept out of the media limelight to allow Trump rhetoric to get endless vicious criticism.

Often, such surveys are dismissed. So consider the 2017 study prepared by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard. It revealed what reasonable people would consider a disturbing level of media bias against president Trump. Here are the fractions of negative news coverage towards Trump: CNN and NBC, 93%; CBS, 91%; New York Times, 87%; Washington Pose, 83%. FOX had the most equal coverage, with 52% negative.

Those who like the biased anti-Trump media coverage should reflect on how all that coverage robs them of getting solid information on myriad local, state and world events. In other words, the biased media dominance inevitably leads to a dumbing down of the public about what is really happening that merits news coverage as well as details about what is happening in the sphere of public policy. Journalism itself has been degraded to such a degree that for much of the population no one believes anything coming from the opinion-loaded media. Apologists for the left and right unload opinions rather than enlightening information and analysis. Rational people do not trust the press.

The core issue is whether the press is giving itself too much credit for presenting the truth. In fact, what is happening is the presentation of opinion not objective facts that reveal the truth. Truth requires objectivity and a concerted emphasis on undisputed facts. Instead, opinion, even in so-called news stories, is routinely presented.

Biased media hiding behind freedom of the press should disgust all Americans. We all are being robbed of huge amounts of news and information. Amazingly, for example, network CBS news used its whole hour broadcast to presenting anti-Trump laced coverage of the recent Charlottesville event. That is virtually a nightly occurrence at CNN where only anti-Trump diatribes are presented in multiple shows. The front pages of the main newspapers are the same. Real news from all over the country and the world is not given to the public the way it used to be.

The credibility of the media has taken a lethal blow. What they deem good for their business now will ultimately backfire as Americans for years to come seek and find alternative news sources or eliminate news from their lives. A truly informed public is needed for a quality democracy, and we are losing that.

Yes, a free press is vital for democracy. But a deeply biased press is not.

As to these crazy times, Ruben Navarrette Jr. summed them eloquently:

“President Trump and the media deserve each other. Both are driven by ego and take criticism personally. Both will twist the facts to defend themselves and push their agenda.  …Americans are fed precooked narratives by the Fourth Estate. We’re told what’s important and what isn’t, what to focus on and what to ignore, and — above all — what to think.  …I sure miss journalism.”

So many of us do.

Joel S. Hirschhorn was a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association; he has authored five nonfiction books, including Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government.

In Part III of Abed’s analysis, she will cover human rights violations, both past and present, that have been committed by the Kurds against Arabs and Christian minorities, as well as address misconceptions as to why the Kurds remain stateless.

It’s important to reiterate that this three-part analysis is not meant to be understood as a sweeping generalization of the Kurdish ethnicity at large. The points being addressed are specifically in reference to the corrupt factions. The West has effectively preyed on the Kurds’ internal divisions and has used some factions to fulfill an imperialist goal of dividing and weakening the Near and Middle East. The Kurdish people are diverse, and in recent years, aspects of their culture and customs have been discussed in mainstream media. But the behavior of some of their more corrupt factions must be addressed.

Kurds and Assyrians: a tumultuous past and present

Much of what the Kurds claim as their own unique culture is actually borrowed from older cultures, such as the Assyrians, Armenians and Suryoye. In fact, much if not all of the land in Eastern Turkey that the Kurds claim as their own once belonged to the Armenians. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Kurds assisted in the Turkish genocide of Assyrians and the 1915 genocide of Armenians.

A group of men excavate the remains of victims of the Armenian genocide in modern day, Deir ez-Zor, Syria, 1938. (Photo: Armenian Genocide Museum Institute)

Also known as “Shato du Seyfo,” or the “Year of the Sword, ” this genocide targeted Christians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, mainly in 1915. The size of the Assyrian population was reduced by as much as 75 percent as a result.

On the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, the Kurds dwell in cities such as “Dohuk” (formerly known by the Assyrian name of Nohadra). But these cities are “theirs” only in that they have established a relatively recent presence there.

Employing the criteria of cultural identity and thousands of years of historical authenticity, these lands are, and have been, uniquely Assyrian. The Kurds were essentially “given” these lands in the early 1970s as a means of drawing their eyes away from the oil-rich lands in and around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. To this end, there were large migrations of Kurds into Dohuk which displaced, often forcibly, Assyrians who had far greater legal and historical claims to these lands.

This is a tactic commonly employed by the Kurds when attempting to ascribe validation to their “sacred quest” of establishing a Kurdish state – something which has never existed at any point in recorded history. By defining “Kurdistan” as any place where Kurds happen to dwell at any given point, they seem to be going by the maxim “possession is nine-tenths of the law” – which may work well in determining criminal liability, but not so well in determining one’s homeland.

In the early 1970s, the Kurds of Nineveh began to fall into what would become a familiar pattern of being used as a pawn of U.S. interests. In this instance, they betrayed their host country when the U.S. – through its puppet, the Shah of Iran – began arming them and encouraging them to rise up against the government.

The Iraqi government cracked down, which resulted in many Kurds being forced out of the lands they had only recently acquired. Iraq and Iran came to a diplomatic resolution and the Kurds were left holding the proverbial bag in what would also become a recurring scenario. Nearly the exact same phenomenon occurred in the 1980s and 1990s when, during the first Gulf War, a no-fly zone was established that granted the Kurds a tangible measure of international support and protection.

“Despite the oppression the Kurds have suffered at the hands of the Turks, they have not learned to be tolerant. In the Kurdish autonomous of North Iraq, The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) are acting in the same way as the Turkish government has for 90 years against Kurds and Assyrians. Reports of systematic abuses against Assyrians within the Kurdish autonomy in Iraq are constantly increasing in number. There is organized harassment, sanctioned by the Kurdish authorities. The aim is obviously the same as that of the Turks, to assimilate or expel the Assyrian indigenous people who have lived in these parts of the country for more than 7,000 years.” Augin Haninke wrote in her article The Kurds: Victims and Oppressors with Assyrian International News agency.

Watch: The assassination of an Assyrian leader by Kurdish forces:

As explained in the video above, Kurdish security forces in Syria tortured and murdered Assyrian military commander David Jindo after a false invitation under the pretense of cooperation. This was a move reminiscent of Kurdish leader Simko Shikak’s 1918 assassination of Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun XXI Benyamin, which took place when he invited the patriarch into his home.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq claims that it is $25 billion dollars in debt, despite having negotiated its own oil deals and received significant amounts of foreign aid. One has to question how much corruption exists within the Kurdish administration for it to be in the financial situation it claims to be in. This has resulted in circumstances where small charity groups are left to facilitate and distribute aid to the Assyrians and Yazidis, who are supposed to be under the governorship of the KRG.

Sporting a revised version of the phrase “Mesopotamia: The Cradle of Civilization,” this sign is located near the Assyrian heritage site of Khinis in Dohuk Province. Such sites are typically unguarded and are often vandalized. (Courtesy of aina.org)

In 2011, imams in Dohuk encouraged Sunni Kurds to destroy Christian churches and businesses. In response, shops were attacked and clubs were besieged by mobs of people numbering in the hundreds. Hotels and restaurants were attacked with small arms fire.

In recent years, Kurds have continued acting disingenuously towards Christian minorities, including Assyrians and even Yazidis. Their abuses have gone far beyond historical revisionism – an example of which can be seen in the picture below. This was also seen when they took refuge in northern Syria in the early 19th century and proceeded to drive Arabs and Armenians out of numerous towns.

Modern day horrors as Kurds allow Daesh to murder Assyrians

In July 2014, as Daesh began its incursion into Iraqi territory, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) began its systematic disarmament of Assyrians and several other ethnic groups so that it could use their weapons in its own struggle.

A disarmament order that was circulated by the KRG in Assyrian towns on the Nineveh plains. (Courtesy of ankawa.com)

Notices were circulated threatening severe punishment for noncompliance. Assurances were given that the Peshmerga would provide some degree of protection.

But as Daesh advanced, the Peshmerga took the weapons and fled, following the same example as the Iraqi Army.

This left the Assyrians and Yazidis with no means to resist or defend themselves against Daesh. Reports even surfaced of these same Peshmerga gunning down Yazidis who tried to prevent them from fleeing with all the weapons.

Haydar Shesho, a Yazidi commander who managed to procure weapons from the Iraqi government, was then arrested by KDP authorities for organizing an “illegal” militia.

This scene was repeated elsewhere throughout the country, as 150,000 Assyrians were forced to flee the Nineveh plains, their ancestral land.

These actions can only be seen as a deliberate ploy by the Kurdish leadership to allow foreign forces to violently cleanse these areas of all non-Kurdish residents and then, with the help of their U.S. allies, retake and “liberate their lands.”

Watch: Assyrians demanding an end to the Kurdish occupation of their land:

On April 13, 2016, Kurdish security forces blocked hundreds of Assyrians from participating in a protest outside of the Kurdistan Regional Government Parliament building. The protest was planned in response to the ongoing confiscation of Assyrian land by Kurds in northern Iraq.

Many testimonies have surfaced, such as a statement given to the UK Parliament by Yazidi ex-captive Salwa Khalaf Rasho, in which it is said that the Peshmerga, eager to flee first ahead of Yazidi civilians, has refused requests to stay and protect Yazidis or at least leave them their weapons. They had even reassured the Yazidis that they should return to their homes, where they would be defended.

Some Peshmerga ultimately started firing on Yazidis when their protests grew forceful – killing some of them – in order to clear the way for their convoy of vehicles to pass unhindered. Yazda, an organization that campaigns for Yazidi genocide recognition, wrote in its last report in January 2016:

“Had they [Yazidis] been defended for one day, they could have been evacuated safely and the massacres and enslavement crisis could have been averted.”

The following is an excerpt from Rasho’s testimony to the UK Parliament in which she pleaded for help after escaping eight months of Daesh slavery, rape and multiple attempted suicides.

“My name is Salwa Khalaf Rasho.  I was born in 1998 and was in the ninth grade.  I was leading a simple and modest life with my family until the day when Daesh attacked Shengal on August 3, 2014.  I liked my city, Shengal, very much.  I grew up under the principle of coexistence with all societies within the community, regardless of one’s religion or sect, because the values of my religion do not allow to hate others and discriminate against them.

Therefore, Shengal was well known as the city of tolerance and ethnic diversity.  What happened was shocking and unexpected, because we saw Daesh as our brothers.  With this, I mean the Arab tribes of the villages that belong to Shengal.  Suddenly, they became monsters and wolves.  They collaborated with Daesh when Yazidi women and children were enslaved and men were killed.

There were about 9,000 Peshmerga in my city who were armed with various types of weapons.  They said to us, ‘We will protect and defend Shengal, and Daesh will only enter Shengal over our dead bodies. We will defend Shengal until the last bullet.’”

Unfortunately, they ran away without any resistance and without warning or giving notice to the civilians so we could escape from falling into the arms of Daesh monsters.  They left us women and children to our cold-blooded fate. I and the people with me tried to flee into the mountains like the others.”

A history of human rights abuses

In light of these horrors, it should easily be understood why the Kurds would have a vested interest in claiming Arab, Assyrian or Armenian history as their own. Failing in that endeavor, they often resort to destroying any relevant history altogether. In this aspect, they operate in a similar manner to Daesh.

Every time the Kurds failed in an attack against Turkey, they would migrate to Syria and try to claim Syrian land as their own. For instance, they tried to claim the Syrian city of Ayn al Arab, naming it “Kobani.” The origin of the name is the word “company,” a reference to a German railway company that built the Konya-Baghdad railway. The Kurds also claimed Al Qamishli, another Syrian city, as their illegal capital and renamed it Qamishlo.

It’s worth mentioning that the Kurds are not even a majority in the land they claim as theirs in northeast Syria. For example, in the governorate of Al Hasakah, they amount to about 30 to 40 percent of the population. That number has decreased since the outbreak of the current Syrian conflict, as many Kurds have left for European countries.

Most of the have fled to Germany, where their numbers are about 1.2 million, a little less than the number of Kurds living in Syria. However, they do not seem concerned about seeking autonomy there. They only seek it in the Middle Eastern countries that have provided them with refuge all of these years – these are the countries they want to stab in the back instead of thanking them for their hospitality.

Amnesty International’s many refutable allegations against the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army cannot be taken at face value in the absence of other corroborating reports. In some cases, however, they do report truthfully, such as when they released a report in 2015 accusing the YPG, the militia of Syria’s Kurdish population, of a range of human rights abuses.

“These abuses include forced displacement, demolition of homes, and the seizure and destruction of property,” the group wrote. “In some cases, entire villages have been demolished, apparently in retaliation for the perceived support of their Arab or Turkmen residents for the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS) or other non-state armed groups.”

Amnesty International has also documented the use of child soldiers, according to Lama Fakih, a senior crisis advisor for the group.

The Kurds claim that their “Kurdistan” is “multicultural and multireligious,” which is disingenuous when you consider that those additional cultures consist of people now dwelling amongst a Kurdish majority in lands the Kurds took by force. These people will be faced with the prospect of casting meaningless votes on Kurdish independence since, even if they all voted “no,” they would nonetheless be outvoted by the Kurdish “yes” majority and as a result would still find themselves subject to a Kurdish government and agenda.

Why are they stateless?

The Sykes-Picot agreement, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret 1916 agreement between the United Kingdom and France, to which the Russian Empire assented. It set the borders for countries like Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, but the Kurds held little or no influence. The main purpose of the agreement for the French and British was to bolster their own influence and power in the region. The Kurds have made the argument that they were promised land at the time, but were then cut out of the deal at the last minute.

Kurdish history in the 20th century is marked by a rising sense of Kurdish nationhood focused on the goal of establishing an independent Kurdistan in accordance with the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. Countries like Armenia, Iraq, and Syria were able to achieve statehood, but the prospective Kurdistan was in the way of the newly founded state of Turkey, established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The state of Kurdistan has simply never existed.

The only areas in the Middle East where the Kurds were able to establish some semblance of legal autonomy are the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq – where minorities are well-protected under new laws– and Israel.

As a result of the disparity between areas of Kurdish settlement and the political and administrative boundaries of the region, a general agreement among Kurds could not be reached regarding borders. However, the Treaty of Sèvres was not implemented and was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne. The current Iraq-Turkey border was agreed upon in July 1926. While Article 63 of the Treaty of Sevres explicitly granted full safeguards and protections to the Assyro-Chaldean minority, this reference was dropped in the Treaty of Lausanne.

It’s worth noting that the Iraqi Kurds are situated on the country’s oil-rich fields. Syria’s Hasakah province – which the Kurds are illegally claiming as their territory and which includes their self-appointed capital, Al Qamishli – also contains some of Syria’s most valuable oil fields. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the U.S. is putting its money on the Kurds.

Unethical and violent treatment of minorities, particularly Christians

According to Aina.org, in an article written in 2014,

“Last year Ahmed Turk, a Kurdish politician in Turkey, declared that the Kurds have their share of ‘guilt in the genocide, too,’ and apologized to the Armenians. ‘Our fathers and grandfathers were used against Assyrians and Yazidis, as well as against Armenians. They persecuted these people; their hands are stained with blood. We as the descendants apologize,’ Turk said.”

The Kurds have a centuries-long history of persecuting minority groups, having committed genocide against them with alarming frequency. Historical accounts of acts of genocide by the Kurds from 1261 through 1999 are documented in Genocides Against the Assyrian Nation.

In A.D. 1261, in what was referred to as “the coming of the Kurds,” thousands of Assyrians fled the Nineveh plains villages of Bartillah, Bakhdida (Qaraqosh), Badna, Basihra and Karmlis, moving toward the citadel of Arbil to escape a substantial Kurdish emigration. King Salih Isma’il had ordered a great number of Kurds to move from the mountains of Turkey to the Nineveh plains. Assyrian villages on the plains were looted and the thousands of Assyrians who were not able to escape to Arbil were butchered by the Kurdish newcomers. A monastery for nuns in Bakhdida was invaded and its inhabitants brutally massacred.

Kurdish tribes in Turkey, Syria, and Iran conducted regular raids and even paramilitary assaults against their Christian neighbors during World War I. The Kurds, acting in accordance with a long-standing tradition of a perceived Kurdish right to pillage Christian villages, were responsible for many atrocities that were committed against Assyrian Christians. A Kurdish chieftain assassinated the patriarch of the Church of the Aast at a negotiation dinner in 1918, the aftermath of which led to the further decimation of the Christian population.

Kurdish complicity in Armenian genocide

The Armenian genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacres and subjection of army conscripts to forced labor, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.

Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups, such as the Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks, were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government in the Assyrian genocide and the Greek genocide, and their treatment is considered by some historians to be part of the same genocidal policy that targeted the Armenians. Most Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.

In the eastern provinces, the Armenians were subject to the whims of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors, who would regularly overtax them, subject them to brigandage and kidnapping, force them to convert to Islam, and otherwise exploit them without interference from central or local authorities.

Egged on by their Ottoman rulers, Kurdish tribal chieftains raped, murdered and pillaged their way through the southeastern provinces where for centuries they had co-existed, if uneasily, with the Armenians and other non-Muslims. Henry Morgenthau, who served as U.S. Ambassador in Constantinople at the height of the bloodshed, described the Kurds’ complicity in his chilling 1918 memoir Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story:

“The Kurds would sweep down from their mountain homes. Rushing up to the young girls, they would lift their veils and carry the pretty ones off to the hills. They would steal such children as pleased their fancy and mercilessly rob all the rest of the throng…While they were committing these depredations, the Kurds would freely massacre, and the screams of women and old men would add to the general horror.”

Discrimination against Feyli Kurds in Iraq

It is important to reiterate that there are many Kurds to whom some of the characterizations presented in this analysis cannot and should not be applied. There are Kurds who have assimilated into their current cultural societies and reject the ideals of the separatist Kurds. Their concerns are mostly political in nature and specific to the nations in which they reside.

They are not interested in establishing a united Kurdish country in the four countries they occupy, through Balkanization, land theft, genocide or any of the other violations against humanity that have been addressed here. In fact, these Kurds have faced discrimination from the Kurdish community as a result of their unwillingness to support the establishment of a Kurdish state.

The Feyli Kurds in northern Iraq are a prime example. Many of them expressed opposition to a referendum on independence announced by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on June 7, 2017, as they feared it could lead to an escalation of the area’s ongoing crisis.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi laid out the Iraqi government’s official position on June 18, stating,

“The Kurdistan Regional referendum on secession is illegal, and the federal government will not support it, fund it or participate in it.”

The United States and Iraq’s neighbors, including Turkey, Iran and Syria, oppose the country’s territorial division.

Fouad Ali Akbar, a Feyli member of the Baghdad provincial council, told Al-Monitor,

“They are Shiite Kurds…neither Shiites nor Kurds have done Feylis justice. Most Feylis are moderate and culturally diverse, and this has prevented them from earning the trust of Kurds and Shiites, who, for ethnic and sectarian reasons, have not wanted them to have a stable identity with normal rights like other Iraqi citizens.”

Feyli activist Hassan Abdali said,

“We, the Feyli Kurds, consider ourselves original Iraqis. We have deep historical and social roots in Iraq. We defended the country and its people in all the Iraqi liberation movements, in the Iraqi revolt against the British, and we took part in Kurdish movements and Shiite revolutions and also in the fight against the Islamic State (IS). And we faced persecution from Arab and Kurdish nationalist movements.”

Ali Akbar also told Al-Monitor,

“The majority of Feylis are voicing concerns about the potential displacement, killing, confiscation of funds and systematic looting that they might face in the event of the declaration of independence of Kurdistan as a result of the threats they receive whenever a dispute between the central government and the KRG erupts.”

Sarwa Abdel Wahid, head of a KRG parliamentary bloc in Gorran (an Iraqi Kurdish political party), said at a joint press conference with Feyli representatives, including legislators,

“The referendum to be held in September in Kurdistan is a partisan referendum that does not represent the ambition of all the Kurdish people, as it has failed to go through the legitimate national institutions.”

Kurdish racism against Arabs – especially Syrians

Finnish investigative journalist Bruno Jantti described his experience working in Iraqi Kurdistan while investigating Daesh:

“When working in Iraqi Kurdistan, I was struck by the prevalence of regressive attitudes, including racism and sexism. I returned recently from Iraqi Kurdistan where I spent a couple of weeks investigating the Islamic State (IS) group. Working mostly in the vicinity of Sulaymaniyah and Dohuk, I could not help but notice a great many societal and cultural characteristics that somewhat surprised me.

Considering what is happening right next door in Syria, the level of anti-Syrian racism did catch me off guard. I came across such prejudice almost daily. A taxi driver quipped in Sulaymaniyah: ‘These Syrians are ruining our country.’ Another taxi driver was quite upset at Syrian kids who were washing car windows and selling tack. ‘These are dirty kids.’ he said. It was all but unusual that internally displaced persons of Iraqi or Syrian Arab descent who had fled to Iraqi Kurdistan were discussed using such language.

It wasn’t just taxi drivers. In the Sulaymaniyah governorate building, an officer deemed it appropriate to prep us for our interviews in refugee camps in the area. She told me, verbatim, that Syrian refugees ‘complain about everything.’ In another city, a police chief was astonished and disappointed that my colleagues and myself were applying for a permit to work in a camp inhabiting Syrian refugees. The police chief stated: ‘But these are Syrian refugees!’ There was no shortage of contempt in his voice.

I had been fully aware that Kurdish nationalism flirts with highly questionable portrayals of Arabs, Persians and Turkish people. In Iraqi Kurdistan, I was surprised at how prevalent some of those attitudes seemed to be.”

A Well-Curated Myth

The Kurds have gained popularity through effectively marketing themselves to Western audiences as revolutionary, feminist, Marxist “freedom fighters” who have a burning desire to create their version of a utopia where peace for all will reign — an image that Stephen Gowans recently critiqued in “The Myth of the Kurdish YPG’s Moral Excellence.”

What they actually seek to create is an illegal autonomous state carved out of existing sovereign countries. The freedom they seek is to be brought about by means of slaughtering natives in the countries that they want to Balkanize and divide on sectarian lines. They have set about vacating areas of indigenous people, utilizing fear and forceful tactics that are supported by their sponsors but that are in violation of globally accepted human rights. To agree with their cause is to agree with genocidal actions that, in essence, tear people away from their homes and lands while fitting conveniently into the imperial views of Western nations.

Up until recently, Kurds with separatist ambitions were seen in a positive light. But their hidden agenda has now been exposed and their true intentions revealed.Their past and present alliance with Israel and the United States is indicative of these intentions. This can not be dismissed or underappreciated, as it is the hidden foundation on which they have built their mission. The Greater Israel project is in full swing and needs to be halted before it makes any further headway.

To support the Kurds’ demands for autonomy, and the establishment of a federation at the expense of others in the region, is illegal, profoundly illogical, and a violation of human rights for all of the reasons that have been discussed here. And it bears remembering as well that one of the top leaders of Daesh was a Kurd. If the Kurds truly want to live in peace and coexist with others, they must end the excessive historical revisionism in which they incessantly partake; they must forgo alliances that threaten the stability of the countries in which they currently reside; and they must work together and unite with their brethren who share the same geographical land. Only then will the Kurds truly have friends other than the mountains.

This article was originally published by The Rabbit Hole.

Featured image is from ekurd.net Daily news.

“AIPAC shares the outrage and deep concern of our fellow Americans about the inexcusable violence and sickening displays of racism and anti-Semitism in Charlottesville this past weekend. The vile hatred expressed by neo-Nazis, the KKK and white supremacists must be categorically and unambiguously rejected. We urge all elected officials to reject moral equivalence between those who promote hate and those who oppose it. There must be no quarter for bigotry in our country.'”

It is strange indeed that whilst AIPAC is outraged by the violence, racism and antisemitism in Charlottesville and categorically rejects the vile hatred exposed, it is not outraged by the brutal military occupation of former Palestine or the illegal blockade of essential supplies for the 500,000 Arab families in Gaza who are forced to live without power as a result of Israel’s deliberate destruction of its electricity supplies.

In fact, AIPAC actively arms, funds and supports the Occupation and the illegal settlement that has induced over 600,000 Israelis to settle on Palestinian land.   

AIPAC rejects UN Resolution 2334 that condemns the Israeli government illegal settlement policy notwithstanding that the United States is bound by that Resolution as a UN Member.

AIPAC’s outrage is a ‘selective’ outrage that helps one community, whilst violating another and AIPAC’s claimed indignation at the abuse of human rights, apparently only extends to Virginia, in the United States of America.

The Trump administration and Pentagon have taken multiple steps in recent days to strengthen Washington’s military-strategic alliance with India.

These moves are manifestly aimed at encouraging India to hold fast to its hardline stance in the current dispute with China over control of the Doklam Plateau—a ridge in the Himalayan foothills that both China and Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom that New Delhi treats like a protectorate, claim as their sovereign territory.

For the past two months Indian and Chinese troops have been arrayed against each other “eyeball-to-eyeball” on the Doklam Plateau, while New Delhi and Beijing have exchanged bellicose threats and taunts, and ordered their militaries to ready for war.

India has moved thousands of troops to forward positions along its northeastern border with China, placing them on a high-alert “No War, No Peace” status, and undertaken emergency purchases of munitions, spare parts and other war materiel.

China has reportedly deployed fighter jets to Tibet and surface-to-air missile batteries near its border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and sent additional blood stocks to Tibet, in anticipation of casualties.

Washington’s intervention in the conflict, even if at present only indirect, greatly heightens the danger that a border clash between India and China, themselves both nuclear powers, could rapidly escalate and draw in the US and other regional and imperialist powers with catastrophic consequences for the people of Asia and all humanity.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that, during an Indian Independence Day telephone conversation between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the US and India agreed to enhance their military-security cooperation “across the Indo-Pacific region.”

As a first step, the two countries will “elevate their strategic consultations” by establishing a “2-by-2 ministerial dialogue,” involving their foreign and defense ministers. This set-up is akin to that which the US has with its principal treaty allies in the region, Japan, Australia and the Philippines.

The next day, Washington announced it has designated Hizbul Mujahideen, an Islamist militia opposed to India’s rule over disputed Kashmir as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Not surprisingly, this move was warmly welcomed by India—which claims Pakistan government-backed terrorism is the principal, if not sole, reason for the mass alienation and opposition to New Delhi in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley—and condemned no less sharply by Islamabad.

Yesterday, a “2-by-2” meeting between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and their Japanese counterparts, respectively Taro Kono and Itsunori Onodera, decided that the US and Japan will work together “to advance trilateral and multilateral security and defence cooperation with other partners in the region, notably the Republic of Korea, Australia (and) India.”

This was presented as a response to North Korea’s refusal to cede to US demands that it unilaterally cease nuclear-weapon and ballistic-missile tests. However, the North Korean crisis, which the Trump administration has systematically enflamed since coming to office eight months ago, is above all driven by American imperialism’s drive to strategically isolate, encircle, and bully China, Pyongyang’s northern neighbor and principal ally.

As part of its ever-deeper integration into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China, India has taken to parroting the US line on North Korea, depicting this small, impoverished country as a unique threat to world peace, when it is Washington that over the past quarter-century has illegally invaded one country after another.

Ominously, Modi has aligned India with Trump’s reckless threats to rain unprecedented “fire and fury” on North Korea. According to the readout of their August 15 conversation,

“Prime Minister Modi thanked President Trump for his strong leadership uniting the world against the North Korean menace.”

For the past decade-and-a-half, a central strategic goal of Washington, whether under a Democratic or Republican administration, has been to build up India as a counterweight to China and harness it to US strategic aims. Not only does India share a nearly 3,500 kilometre-long border with China and possess one of the world’s largest armies. It also geographically dominates the Indian Ocean, whose sea-lanes bear most of the oil and many of the other resources that fuel China’s economy.

During the three-year rule of Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India has been transformed into a veritable frontline state in the US offensive against China. India now allows US warplanes and battleships to make routine use of its military bases and ports, shares intelligence with the Pentagon on Chinese ship and submarine movements in the Indian Ocean, and has dramatically expanded bi-lateral and tri-lateral military-strategic ties with Japan and Australia.

In an interview with the Press Trust of India last weekend, the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, reiterated the importance the Pentagon accords to India, declaring the US “is ready to help India modernise its military.” The admiral lauded the recent joint US-Indian-Japanese naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal, adding that if Australia were added to the annual Malabar exercise—making it a quadrilateral exercise of the US and the states that are the pivot of the Pentagon’s strategy to militarily confront and defeat China—it would be even better.

Washington’s moves to bolster ties with India come in the wake of calls from various strategists of US imperialism for the Trump administration to make clear that it stands with India in the current border crisis with China, even if for diplomatic reasons it continues to publicly maintain that the US has no position on who is the rightful owner of the Doklam Plateau.

Particularly significant in this regard was an article penned by the longtime CIA operative and Obama administration official Bruce Reidel titled, “JFK stopped a China-India War. Can Trump? The nuclear stakes are much higher now.” The article argues that it was President John Kennedy’s dispatching of “the US Air Force to resupply the Indians” and an aircraft “carrier battle group to the Bay of Bengal” that caused China to unilaterally end the 1962 Sino-Indian border war and withdraw from its “conquests” in northeast India.

While Reidel urges the Trump administration to be ready to mount a diplomatic offensive to prevent the outbreak of a conflict that could have “potentially enormous consequences for the world,” his implicit argument is that Washington must come to India’s military support so as to help it stare down Beijing and, if need be, bloody it on the battlefield.

For his part, Richard M. Rossow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major US think-tank, is urging the Trump administration to recognize that in “sending its troops into foreign territory to stand up to China,” New Delhi is realizing the hopes that American imperialist strategists have long placed in it.

War, Rossow concedes, may not be desirable, but “Washington must recognize—we just received a loud, clear signal that India is ready to take important steps to contribute to the” US-led “global order, and it should strengthen our resolve to further deepen our emerging security partnership.”

Japan, American imperialism’s most important Asian ally, has gone even further than the US in backing India’s stance on the Doklam Plateau dispute. Thursday, Japan’s ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, defended the intervention of Indian troops on territory to which it has no legal claim, saying India has a “treaty understanding with Bhutan.” He also suggested, without naming Beijing, that its attempt to expand a road on the disputed plateau was tantamount to “unilaterally” trying to “change the status quo by force.”

In the hope of supplanting China as the principal cheap-labour supply-chain hub for Western capital and advancing its own great power ambitions, the venal Indian bourgeoisie is serving as a satrap for American and Japanese imperialism in their drive to re-subjugate China.

The Chinese regime, which represents the oligarchs that emerged from the restoration of capitalism in the People’s Republic, has no progressive answer to the relentless offensive being mounted against it.

Organically incapable of making any appeal to the anti-war sentiment of the people of Asia and the world, it oscillates between seeking an accommodation with Washington and whipping up bellicose nationalism and engaging in its own militarist actions.

A recent article in the South China Morning Post cited People’s Liberation Army sources as saying war was increasingly likely, but that the Chinese military believes the conflict can be limited to the eastern sector of the Indo-Chinese border and last no more than a week or two.

But as the developments of recent days have underscored, a border war could rapidly involve other powers, starting with US. Even if such a catastrophe were averted and a clash between India and China limited to a border war, it would have calamitous consequences for working people around the world.

Whatever its outcome, such a war would only strengthen imperialism.

A Chinese “victory” would only cause the Indian bourgeoisie to cement its place in a US-led NATO-type alliance against China. Moreover, Germany, Japan and the other imperialist wars would use the events in the Himalayas as a pretext to accelerate their plans for rearmament and war.

In the event China suffered a defeat, US imperialism would seize on the opportunity to intensify its reckless military-strategic offensive against China. Meanwhile, the Modi government, flush from reversing the “humiliation” of 1962, would step up its efforts to bully India’s neighbors into recognizing it as the hegemon of South Asia and whip up a climate of bellicose nationalist euphoria to intensify the assault on the working class and drive Indian politics still further right.

There is, however, an antipode to the war drive of the bourgeoisie. Recent decades have seen the growth of a massive working class in India and China. It is this mighty social force, which has no interest in the capitalist struggle for profits, resources and strategic advantage, which must be mobilized along with workers in the US, Japan, and around the world in an anti-war movement aimed at liquidating the source of war—capitalism and the outmoded nation-state system in which it is historically rooted.

Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad said that throughout history, Syria has been a target, and those who control this target gain great control over decision-making in the Middle East, and those who control decision-making in the Middle East will have important and influential say on the international arena.

In a speech delivered at the opening of the Foreign and Expatriates Minister Conference on Sunday, President al-Assad said that the West is currently experiencing an existential presence whenever it feels that a state wants to share its role.

His Excellency said that the Ministry Conference is an important opportunity for exchanging expertise and ideas, discuss the state’s future policies, and propose ideas for developing the Foreign Ministry to make it more effective in carrying out its duties.

He pointed out to this Conference’s importance due to the very rapid dynamics of the events in the world, the region, and Syria in particular.

“Talking about foiling the Western project doesn’t mean we are victorious; the battle is still going on, and the signs of victory are there, but victory itself is another thing,” President al-Assad said.

He said that the deep regime in the United States doesn’t share power with the US President; it only gives him a margin.

“The price of resistance is much lower than the price of surrender… we paid a dear price in Syria in this war, but we managed to foil the Western project,” His Excellency said, noting that changes in positions doesn’t mean changes in policies, adding “the West is like a snake, changing its skin according to the situation.”

“The media and psychological war they practiced during the past years were unable to affect us in fighting terrorism or push us towards fear and hesitation… we struck terrorism since day one, and we will continue to strike it as long as there is a single terrorist in Syria… fighting terrorism is a goal and the basis for any action we take.”

“We have dealt in a very flexible manner with all initiatives that were proposed despite knowing beforehand that most of them were based on bad intentions.”

“Sectarian rhetoric was transient, and what’s on tongues is not important; what’s important is what is in the hearts. If this divisive aspect that we hear about now in different parts of our society was in the hearts, then Syria would have fallen a long time ago, and the civil war that they talk about in Western media and that they tried to convince us about would have been a fait accompli.”

“Erdogan is playing the role of political beggar after his support for terrorists was exposed. We don’t consider the Turkish side to be a partner nor a guarantor nor do we trust it.”

President al-Assad affirmed that as long as the fight against terrorism is ongoing, there is no place for the idea of a fait accompli or division in Syria, adding that the goal of de-escalation zones is to stop bloodshed, deliver humanitarian aid, removing militants, and restoring the situation to normal.

His Excellency pointed out that Russia used the right of veto to defend Syria’s unity and the UN Charter, and China did the same.

“Our Armed Forces are realizing one achievement after another every day, one week after the other, crushing terrorists and clearing the lands desecrated by terrorists,” he said, asserting that the valiant heroics of the Syrian Arab Army and supporting forces constitute a role model in the history of wars.

“We will continue in the upcoming stage to crush terrorists everywhere in cooperation with friends, and we will continue national reconciliations that proved their effectiveness, as well as increasing communication with the outside and marketing economic and economic opportunities… The direct political, economic, and military support of our friends made the possibility of advancing on the ground greater and the losses fewer, and these friends are our actual partners.”

President al-Assad affirmed that Syrian economy has entered the stage of recovery, which might be slow, but it is consistent.

“We are not in a state of isolation as they think, but this state of arrogance makes them think in that way. There will be no security cooperation or opening of embassies or role for some states that say they are looking for a solution until they cut off their ties with terrorism in a clear and unambiguous way.”

“We will not allow enemies and rivals to achieve through politics what they failed to achieve through terrorism. We must work seriously from now to build the future Syria on solid bases,” His Excellency said.

“Everything related to the destiny and future of Syria is a one hundred percent Syrian issue, and the unity of Syrian territory is self-evident and not up for debate or discussion,” President al-Assad affirmed.

More to come…

In Syria, we have heard of significant progress following the ceasefire agreement with the warring parties. Syrian refugees successively returned to their abandoned homes to renew their economic activities. Damascus held its first modern trade fair after several years dating back to 1954. The Syrian Army was able to recover militant-held provinces after a devastating blow to the ISIS. 

Is Syria nearing its complete revival? Or is the Washington simply re-structuring their drawing board? Read our selected articles below to know what’s going on.

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Video: Syrian Army Delivers Devastating Blow to ISIS in Homs Province

By South Front, August 19, 2017

According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, pro-government fighters have liberated the Tuweiyan gas factory, the Tuweiyan gas field, the Akram gas field, the Husain gas field, the Ghadur gas field and the Tuweiyan station. The SAA reportedly destroyed 15 armed vehicles of ISIS and removed dozens of IEDs and mines planted in the gas fields.

Syrian Conflict Nearing Its End: Adviser to President Assad

By Press TV, August 19, 2017

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network on Friday, Bouthaina Shaaban said the inauguration of Damascus International Fair and regional participation proves a “U-turn was achieved” in the foreign-sponsored crisis.

Damascus International Fair Signals Syria’s Revival

By Adam Garrie, August 19, 2017

While winning the war against radical Salafist/Wahhabi terrorism is crucial, securing a peace that is based on the future prosperity of the Syrian people is essential. The Syrian government, its state partners and private businesses and entrepreneurs from around the world seem to determined to view the challenges of post war Syria as mutual opportunities.

Terrorist Attack directed against Damascus International Fair. At Least Four Killed

By Sputnik, August 20, 2017

The local source told RIA Novosti that the shelling came from Eastern Ghouta on Damascus’ outskirks controlled by anti-government armed militant groups.

Carla Del Ponte – A War Crimes Prosecutor or A Guided Missile Against Syria?

By Sarah Abed, August 20, 2017

Only one week after announcing her decision to step down as one of the three members on the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria where she has spent five years since it’s inception in September 2012, Carla Del Ponte told Swiss media in interviews published Sunday, that her team has collected enough evidence against the President of Syria, Dr. Bashar Al Assad to convict him of war crimes.

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Featured image: Carla Del Ponte, former member of Commission the Independent International of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic during the press conference. 8 February 2016. (Source: UN Photo /Jean-Marc Ferré/ flickr)

Only one week after announcing her decision to step down as one of the three members on the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria where she has spent five years since it’s inception in September 2012, Carla Del Ponte told Swiss media in interviews published Sunday, that her team has collected enough evidence against the President of Syria, Dr. Bashar Al Assad to convict him of war crimes.

She stated that her reason for stepping down is due to frustration at the U.N. Security Council’s failure to continue the commission’s work by setting up a special tribunal for Syria that could try alleged war criminals.

“That is why the situation is so frustrating. The preparatory work has been done, but nevertheless, there is no prosecutor and no court,” she told Sonntagszeitung. “It’s a tragedy.” She stated that “everyone in Syria is on the bad side. The Assad government has perpetrated horrible crimes against humanity and used chemical weapons. And the opposition is now made up of extremists and terrorists.”

In Sunday’s interviews, she said she had handed in her resignation letter last Thursday, and that she would officially step down on September 18, after the commission presents its latest report to the UN Human Rights Council. UN chief Antonio Guterres appealed last week for the commission to continue its work despite Del Ponte’s departure.

As a veteran former war crimes Prosecutor and former Swiss Attorney General, Del Ponte has prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia and is accustomed to high stress, high level corruption and crimes. Therefore her abrupt decision to step down and theoretically throw in the towel based on “frustration” seems a bit out of character for someone of her caliber.

Due to her obsessive perseverance her slain friend Giovanni Falcone had warmly dubbed her “the personification of stubbornness”. Interestingly enough though, when she left a previous office in 2007 her two most high-profile targets (The former Bosnian Serb wartime leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic) were still at large. They have yet to be brought to trial to face charges of genocide. Could this be a pattern for Ms. Del Ponte, the petite lawyer known for her ruthless pursuit of fugitives? Does frustration and the inability to carry out a task to completion cause her to quit time and time again?

A few additional nicknames Carla Del Ponte has been known by are “the new Gestapo”, “the whore”, “the unguided missile”.

Del Ponte’s evident bias against the Syrian Government

As writer Brandon Turbeville states:

“In her remarks announcing her resignation, Del Ponte, who is 70 years old, also admitted her own bias against the Syrian government since the beginning of the crisis. She stated that, when she was first appointed to the Independent Commission of Inquiry On Syria in 2012, “the opposition (members) were the good ones; the government were the bad ones.” Apparently, the woman so concerned with “crimes against humanity” was fine with “opposition members” randomly shooting civilians, raping women, slaughtering whole families and villages, and committing unspeakable acts against Syrian military soldiers and Syrian civilians. After all, she considered them the “good ones.” Only when the Syrian military began fighting back in earnest did “war crimes” become a concern. “The Assad government is committing terrible crimes against humanity and using chemical weapons. And the opposition, that is made up only of extremists and terrorists anymore,” she said.

Del Ponte claims that the Security Council should have appointed a court similar to the ones for Rwanda and Yugoslavia but the decision to do so was vetoed by Russia. Del Ponte is clearly frustrated at the fact that the Russians have prevented the U.N. from condemning and prosecuting Assad for crimes he did not commit. Thus, she will be leaving her post in September, leaving only two members left on the commission”.

Del Ponte under Investigation for bullying, bribery, and tainted evidence charges

In 2010, Judges at the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague ordered an independent inquiry into the practices of Del Ponte and two prominent serving prosecutors, Hildegard Ürtz-Retzlaff and Daniel Saxon, after complaints from witnesses that they had been harassed, paid, mistreated and their evidence tampered with.

Ms. Del Ponte, the former war crimes prosecutor who put Balkan warlords and political leaders behind bars, was investigated over claims that she allowed the use of bullying and bribing of witnesses, or tainted evidence.

In the eight years leading up to this investigation Del Ponte was a combative and divisive figure. As a determined Swiss investigator she served as her country’s ambassador to Argentina until she left her post in 2007.

The allegations against her concerned the working practices of her team of investigators in the prosecution for war crimes of the Serbian politician, Vojislav Seselj, a notorious warlord.

“Some of the witnesses had referred to pressure and intimidation to which they were subjected by investigators for the prosecution,” said a statement from the judge in the Seselj case. “The prosecution allegedly obtained statements illegally, by threatening, intimidating and/or buying [witnesses] off.”

One Serbian witness said he was offered a well-paid job in the US in return for testimony favourable to the prosecution.

“The statements mention sleep deprivation during interviews, psychological pressuring, an instance of blackmail (the investigators offered relocation in exchange for the testimony they hoped to obtain), threats (one, for example, about preparing an indictment against a witness if he refused to testify), or even illegal payments of money.”

An independent investigator, expected to be a French magistrate, is to report on the allegations within six months. Prosecutors in The Hague rejected the allegations while promising to co-operate with the inquiry.

Another call for an investigation against Del Ponte but this time with a request for sanctions against her as well

Yet again, Ms. Del Ponte was under investigation in 2012 when the counsel for Mr. Ante Gotovina filed a formal complaint and request for an investigation and for sanctions to be placed against her.

“We, the undersigned, were counsel for Mr. Ante Gotovina, who on 16 November 2012 was acquitted of all charges by the Appeals Chamber of the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). 1, On 20 November 2012, in an interview with the Serbian newspaper Blic, Ms. Carla Del Ponte, former ICTY Prosecutor and currently a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria. 2, reacted to the ICTY Judgment with the following comments: “This is not justice; this is denial of a huge crime.” 3, She further elaborated on her position stating that the “Serbian Government and the Serbs cannot accept such a verdict and I completely agree with their televised statements because it is clear that the crime has been committed. We shall see what is going to happen next, but surely this is not justice.” 4, Her remarks were later published by other regional and international media. 5, Ms. Del Ponte’s improper media statements constitute a grave violation of Mr. Gotovina’s fundamental rights and are an unacceptable interference with the reputation and authority of the ICTY”.

They went on to say

“Clearly, Ms. Del Ponte is accusing the Appeals Chamber judges of corruption. This is highly inappropriate, especially where there is no basis whatsoever for such serious allegations. The United Nations must act immediately both to protect Mr. Gotovina’s fundamental rights and to protect the reputation of the United Nations and its judges. Remarkably, Ms. Del Ponte admitted that she made these statements before she had even read the judgement of the ICTY Appeals Chamber.”

Interview with David Greene putting blame on all Sides of the Syrian Conflict

On August 8th, 2017 David Greene interviewed Carla Del Ponte, regarding the reason(s) why she decided to leave the UN Syria Commission. The complete interview is included below.

DAVID GREENE, HOST: A former war crimes prosecutor has decided that she is done. She’s had enough of serving on a U.N. Syria commission because, in her words, the commission does absolutely nothing. This commission was investigating human rights violations. They released around a dozen reports on atrocities, but the United Nations never referred Syria to the International Criminal Court. Carla Del Ponte is the former prosecutor. She’s on the line now from her home in Switzerland. Thanks for joining us.

CARLA DEL PONTE: Good morning for me, yes.

GREENE: Well – so tell me why you decided to quit this commission.

DEL PONTE: Myself and my colleagues in the commission, we could not do it. We could not achieve that. We were many time – Security Council in New York we were all called. We present twice a year a report to the Council of Human Rights. We travel around the world to persuade the states. No, nothing happened. Justice is not an issue to discuss. And so I got enough. And I quit.

GREENE: You had enough and quit. How much do you point the finger at Russia? Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council. They can veto anything. And they, of course, support the government of Bashar al-Assad. Are they a big reason that nothing has happened, in your mind?

DEL PONTE: Absolutely because they are putting the veto right – that no resolution for the constitution of the international tribunal. So, of course, Russia (unintelligible) because in the end what I mean is that the other states are not making pressure to Russia to change in his opinion. But in any case, that’s politics. So myself – I’m ready to be prosecutor of a tribunal for Syria, but I’m not ready to continue to sit in this commission that just is an alibi for the international community.

GREENE: I just want to finish by asking you, I mean, you’ve worked doing this kind of work with Rwanda and the genocide there, with the former Yugoslavia. How does the war in Syria compare to those conflicts?

DEL PONTE: Well, you know, what I see myself is that the crimes that are committed in Syria are even much, much more horrible and terrifying what is happening in Syria. I never saw that kind of brutality. Not in the former Yugoslavia, not in Rwanda, but in Syria we are seeing atrocities that we can’t even imagine. And that is something more why it’s not possible to obtain justice.

GREENE: Is it all sides, not just the government in Syria?

DEL PONTE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, all sides, All sides. But, you know, at the beginning in 2011, it was the government, the opposition – democratic opposition was the good side. But now, they are all all, all, all committing crimes. All parties on this conflict are committing crimes.

GREENE: That’s former war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte speaking to us from Switzerland. Thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it.

DEL PONTE: Thank you.

As we can decipher from her responses above, from just a few days ago, she clearly stated that “all sides” were committing crimes. She did not single out one side. One must then question why on Sunday she changed her narrative to implicate and allege that President Assad is guilty of war crimes. Also, Del Ponte has no reservations against blaming Russia for interference yet she completely leaves out the fact that the United States, the U.K, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, etc. have been supporting, backing, training, and funding the armed opposition terrorist groups that have carried out most of the atrocities in Syria during the past 6 years. Again if in fact she believes that ALL sides are responsible why is she only trying to convict one side with war crimes? The hypocrisy is blaring.

Attempting to frame President Assad with unreliable evidence while looking away from crimes committed by terrorists and their sponsors

Ms. Del Ponte is overly eager to prosecute President Assad for crimes he didn’t commit while simultaneously looking past crimes that his adversaries did in fact commit.

The Syrian government led by Dr. Bashar Al Assad an ophthalmologist who is widely loved and respected and won his latest election in 2014 with 88.7% of the votes in what international observers who were present during the elections deemed as a fair and free election has denied  reports by the commission documenting widespread war crimes committed by government-backed forces and Syria’s security services.

In her latest interview with Swiss media on Sunday, Ms. Del Ponte expressed her resignation was also meant as a provocation.  Adding that she hoped it would “put pressure on the Security Council, which must deliver justice to the victims.” Del Ponte however said that if an international judicial process is eventually established for Syria, “I am ready to take on the position of international prosecutor.” She stressed that international justice was vital for Syria, where the crimes committed were “far worse” than what she had seen in the former Yugoslavia. “Without justice in Syria, there will never be peace and thus no future,” she said. “I do not want to be an alibi for an international community that is doing nothing at all,” Del Ponte told Le Matin Dimanche, explaining her decision to leave the UN commission.

2013 Del Ponte blamed “rebels” for chemical weapons attack NOT the Syrian Government

In an interview with Swiss-Italian TV in 2013, Ms Del Ponte, who served as a commissioner on the panel, said:

“Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals”. “According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated…This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities”.

Interestingly enough, no calls to prosecute the nation’s responsible for sponsoring these “rebels” were made.

This begs the question, why is Del Ponte more concerned with unverified information from unreliable sources which she is somehow wholeheartedly convinced is enough to charge President Assad with war crimes?

Effectively, a biased, unreliable, frustrated UN official has quit a mockery of an independent team which was set up to do a witch hunt rather than actually investigate war crimes in Syria, and the world is better off because of it. If this team actually cared about the truth and was procuring information via reliable sources they would name and shame the ones that are in fact responsible for this imposed war and invasion. They would call out the United states for arming terrorists, and the UK, NATO, GCC, etc. for their involvement in fueling the armed opposition as well. They would charge Turkey and Jordan with crimes for allowing terrorists to cross the border into Syria to help with the staged uprising in 2011.

That would simply be asking too much from the UN which has chosen to have Saudi Arabia a leading violator of human and women’s rights on both councils. The UN is a sham and does more harm than good and if there is any justice on earth it should be replaced with a group that actually does have the worlds best interests at heart, not one that is complicit in war crimes against humanity, that deliberately ignores real atrocities such as Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war against Yemen, which is being fueled by weapons purchased from the US and UK.

In contrast to the West, and in particular the biased, untrustworthy UN Council which has been intent on destroying Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, Russia and Iran are playing a constructive role in preventing the overthrow of Assad and the formation of a fundamentalist Sunni government in the country, a group of German academics have written in an open letter.

A group of German university professors have penned a joint statement criticizing the mainstream media’s portrayal of the roles of Russia and Iran in regulation of the Syrian conflict, Sputnik Deutschland reported. Called “a statement on the Syrian war,” the declaration was written by the scientific advisory board of the German branch of Attac, an international organization that campaigns for alternatives to globalization.

“Russia and Iran exhausted all the possibilities for a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the conflict; (although) such an attempt seemed be futile at first, they have for the time being ended military attacks and the war in Aleppo. Therefore, we think the attacks on Russia in the mainstream media are absurd,” they wrote.

The statement, written by 14 German university professors, recalls a 2011 interview with former NATO Secretary-General Wesley Clark, who revealed that just weeks after 9/11, the US had plans to not only invade Iraq, but five countries in the Middle East.

Until we hold the correct parties responsible for war crimes, and demand that countries take every precaution to help prevent additional wars, based on lies which are meant to essentially help our military industrial complex, and line the pockets of neocons in first world countries, then we will continue to watch as countries are destroyed, innocent people are killed, refugees are created, infrastructure is leveled, lives are ruined, and sovereign nations attacked for daring to not blindly follow and become subdued by powerful Western countries led by greedy, blood thirsty, war mongers.

Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Her articles can be read at the Rabbit Hole.

Warplanes of the US-led coalition have carried out airstrikes on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces in the village of Kadir in the province of Homs, according to pro-government sources.

The airstrikes were reportedly followed by an ISIS attack in the area. Kadir is an important village located at the Resafa-Sukhna road, north of the Kawm oasis.

If reports are confirmed, it will be another sign of the long-standing US campaign aimed at undermining the anti-ISIS efforts of the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance in the war-torn country.

Earlier, spokesperson for the United States Department of State, Heather Nauert, said that the US has no plans to remain in Syria after ISIS is defeated. How could such statements be reliable amid the US actions on the ground?

Source: South Front

Source: South Front

The Damascus International Exhibition is taking place from August 17 to 26 in the country’s capital, the first time it has taken place in 6 years after its suspension amid the war in the country. There are official delegations and about 1,300 businessmen from Arab and other countries, the Syrian prime minister told Sputnik earlier.

The local source told RIA Novosti that the shelling came from Eastern Ghouta on Damascus’ outskirks controlled by anti-government armed militant groups.

“Four people were killed and four others injured when rocket-propelled projectiles fell at the Damascus International Fair,” the source said.

#Damascus reports: a missile launched by terrorists from E-ghouta fell in front of the entrance to the Fair,reports of martyrs & injured ppl https://t.co/wwl3s8jzq8

— Syrcassian ?? (@syrcassian) August 20, 2017

300.000 people visited 59th International Exhibition of #Damascus the first day after its inauguration#FromSyria pic.twitter.com/L3eBcPc2Ns

— Ahmad Al-Issa (@ahmadalissa) August 18, 2017

The shelling comes amid a ceasefire in Syria.

Before the war broke out, the Damascus International Industrial Fair in Syria used to be one of the largest in the Middle East region. The first time it was held was in 1954, and the last time in 2011.

Earlier, the director general of the fair said that 43 states, including Russia, are taking part in the fair this year. A total of 70,000 people are expected to visit the fair.

Featured image is from The Duran.

Featured image: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival, held annually in Edinburgh, Scotland

Britain stands accused of operating a secret travel ban against Arabs after it emerged that a large number of internationally renowned academics, religious leaders, musicians, artists and performers from the Middle East have been refused visas to enter the UK. All were booked to appear or perform at the world famous Edinburgh Festival in Scotland but were rejected on the grounds that they would not return to their home countries after the festival ends on 28 August. The move by the Home Office in London is said to have angered many in the Scottish government, which has long wanted to determine its own immigration, asylum and border controls instead of relying on the British government.

Included in the Arab ban list is the Reverend Rola Sleiman, the first Christian woman to be ordained in the Middle East. Like the others whose visa applications were rejected by the Home Office, she was informed that she had been refused because it was feared that she would not return to her home in Lebanon where her children live.

Reverend Sleiman, of the National Evangelist Presbyterian Church in Lebanon, has a Syrian father and Lebanese mother. Although she was born and has lived in Tripoli all of her life, and considers herself to be Lebanese, she does not have Lebanese nationality. Lebanese mothers cannot pass on their nationality to their children, so Sleiman is Syrian like her father and must periodically renew her Syrian passport and residency permit to maintain her legal status in Lebanon.

Her church, situated in the centre of the old city, is surrounded by Muslim shopkeepers in the largely Muslim neighbourhood. Its decision-making body, the Synod, voted 23 to one in favour of her being ordained in February this year.

Despite the intervention of the Scottish National Party’s Carol Monaghan MP, the Reverend Sleiman is just one of many who were prevented from travelling to the Scottish capital for the festival. The ban, described as Kafkaesque by some, has cost event organisers and promoters thousands of pounds in cancelled air tickets.

Dr Nazmi Al-Masri [right] seen during an appreciation ceremony for aid delivered by Mercy Malaysia at the Islamic University of Gaza, on February 20, 2017 (Photo: Islamic University of Gaza)

UNESCO’s Dr Nazmi Al-Masri, of the Islamic University of Gaza, was also refused a visa, despite having visited the UK in 2015. His colleague Alison Phipps, a language professor at Glasgow University and UNESCO chair in refugee integration, had also booked musicians and dancers from Ghana’s Noyam African Dance Institute as part of a UK-government funded academic project in June, but several had their visas refused.

“Effectively it is now a universal ban on travel from global south countries regardless of whether you are a world leading academic or artist, or a first time traveller on a humanitarian or development project working with UK institutions,” said Phipps, who in 2012 was awarded an OBE for services to education.

We can only surmise that there is a secret travel ban in place now in the Home Office.

This is denied by the government. A Home Office spokesman issued a statement to MEMO refuting claims of a secret travel ban, bias or discrimination in the visa rejections, claiming instead that every case was dealt with on its own merit.

“UK Visas and Immigration continually reviews its global visa operation to improve performance and ensure it continues to deliver fast and fair decisions to customers,” said the official. “All visa applications are considered on their individual merits and applicants must provide evidence to show they meet the requirements of the immigration rules.”

The Home Office decisions have forced the cancellation of a production in the first showcase of Arab theatre and dance at the Edinburgh Fringe, with a further two under threat. Four members of the Cairo-based production team have also been denied visas to travel to Britain, including the technical director who has been the point of contact between the companies and the three venues hosting the shows.

Sara Shaarawi, an Egyptian playwright, translator and performer who is now based in Glasgow, is co-producing the showcase, made up of 10 productions, from Scotland. She described the process of trying to get visas for Arab performers by making reference to the nightmarish, red-taped fictional world of author Franz Kafka.

Some of the decisions were appealed against, with endorsements and supporting documentation from the prestigious Fringe Society, all of the venues and the British Council. They were rejected a second time.

The cast of ‘The Elephant Your Majesty’ is comprised of Syrian refugees in Lebanon

The Elephant Your Majesty, to be performed by teenage Syrian refugees from Lebanon, is one of the shows which has been cancelled, while others are under threat or being heavily rewritten to accommodate smaller casts. Your Love is Fire has already had to be reworked after two of the Berlin-based Syrian cast were unable to get the necessary residency papers needed to apply for visas.

“While we’re uncertain of the status of several shows at the moment,” explained Shaarawi, “the majority of our showcase is otherwise unaffected and we’re looking forward to presenting the first significant showcase of Arab theatre and performance at the Edinburgh Fringe. Our aim is to represent the diversity of performance within the Arab region and we feel it is more vital now than ever that we take this opportunity to celebrate this work as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s 70th anniversary.”

In the end, it was mainly performers from Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Sudan who were affected by the travel ban, despite 18 months of planning and preparation.

The response in Edinburgh is typical of the vitality and spontaneity for which the Fringe is renowned. Every night at an event called Chill Habibi, actors are reading out one of the visa refusal letters from the Home Office. Last Tuesday, Emma Thompson made a surprise appearance to read a rejection letter which said that the visa official was:

not satisfied on the balance of probabilities, that you will leave the UK at the end of your visit… I am not convinced you are genuinely seeking entry to the UK for a purpose that is permitted by the visitor rules and that you will not undertake any prohibited activity

The Oscar- and Bafta-winning actor looked exasperated after reading the letter.

“Why would anyone ever want to visit this country?” she asked the audience.

Jogging, a Syrian play that opened on Wednesday, was also affected after a technician based in Lebanon did not get his visa, while the Palestinian children’s play Jihan’s Smile was affected by a visa refusal for a musician. To date, nearly a quarter of the performers from the Arab world have had their visas denied more than once.

One can’t help but wonder that if we were talking about an arms fair in Edinburgh and not the world’s largest cultural event of its kind, then the Home Office would be handing out visas left, right and centre to Arab applicants, especially those wanting to buy weapons of mass destruction. With Brexit making it even more tempting for the government to condone human rights abuses by Arab regimes in the hope of picking up million-pound arms deals, a few upset artists, musicians and luvvies from the region are unlikely to wreck Theresa May’s friendship with Middle East tyrants.

Meanwhile, the State of Israel, which treats international law with contempt and is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was able to hold a “peace” event at the Edinburgh Festival. Sometimes not even the sweetest of roses can disguise the stench of hypocrisy emanating from officialdom these days.

Thousands of people filled the streets in downtown Durham on August 18 after rumors circulated that the Ku Klux Klan had been granted a permit to march in the city.

Soon a standoff between anti-racist demonstrators and the police threatened to erupt into a rebellion. As the marchers moved to the Durham County old courthouse, four white men were confronted after making racist comments directed towards African Americans. Two arrests among the white men later followed. Another arrest was made after protesters refused a command by the police to disperse.

The events of August 18 reflect the rising tension in Durham and across the United States involving the continued existence of institutional racism. Reports from the demonstration indicate that some people were armed with axes and carbine rifles in an obviously open carry state in the South.

On the same day, August 18, Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist was relieved of his duties within the administration of President Donald Trump. Bannon had given a number of what was described as “unauthorized interviews” to media outlets where he drew the ire of chief of staff Gen. John Kelly.

Trump’s apologist view of the neo-fascist and racist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12, went up against the standard view of the American elites in regard to issues of race and political culture. Although the U.S. political and economic structures are permeated with racial and national oppression which remain the order of the day as it relates to the social status of African Americans, the posture of Wall Street and the Washington establishment is not to acknowledge this reality.

The display of neo-fascist sentiments on the campus of the University of Virginia and in downtown Charlottesville was far too much for anti-racist and social justice activists to contemplate without a response. Thousands came out into the streets to oppose the “Unite the Right” rally designed to preserve the Southern Confederate heritage.

Police units withdrew when the alt-right operatives went on the offensive attacking the anti-racists and anti-fascist contingents. Eventually the racist mob was not able to hold its event at the location of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In retaliation, one of their numbers plowed his vehicle into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators, killing one young woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring 20 others, including five critically and four seriously.

People across the U.S. were outraged at this blatant act of right-wing terror. Demonstrations flourished spontaneously in various cities and towns from the east coast to the west.

What added further fuel to the crisis was the response of Trump to the developments in Charlottesville. He appeared to be blaming “both sides” for the disturbances and consequently the death of Heyer. The following Monday, August 14, the president then made a statement which seemed to be scripted condemning the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who marched through Charlottesville with burning torches chanting “we will not be replaced.”

A former KKK Grand Wizard told the corporate media that Trump must remember who put him in office. It was the white people and not the radical Left who voted for him in large numbers last November.

On August 15, Trump sought to add some luster to his non-existent “infrastructural program” through a press conference from Trump Towers where he was said to be on a “working vacation.” After a brief statement, he took questions which inevitably asked him about his views on white nationalists who have claimed that they are his supporters.

The president resurrected the “both sides are responsible” argument going even further insisting that not all of those present in the neo-fascist demonstrations were white nationalists, that some were “good people.” Taking to twitter on the morning of August 17, he reiterated this view while condemning what he called the “alt-Left.”

By the previous day, the White House manufacturing and business councils had been disbanded. Since the events in Charlottesville and Trump’s utterances on racism and neo-fascism, many leading council members from some of the largest multi-national corporations had resigned. All during the week of August 14-18, the stock market in New York experienced a precipitous decline, revealing the uncertainty over the direction of the current administration in Washington.

Durham Socialists Take Direct Action on Confederate Symbol

During an anti-racist rally on August 15, members of Workers World Party Durham branch led a political operation which took down a statue commemorating Confederate soldiers. Assisted by activists from other local organizations, those present sought to emphasize the necessity of anti-racists and anti-fascists to take matters into their own hands: to immediately remove symbols of the slave system independent of the official policies of the state.

Durham Workers World Party member Taqiyah Fatima Thompson

Taqiyah Thompson, 22, a student at the Historical Black North Carolina Central University, climbed the statue and placed a rope around the neck of the soldier while others brought it tumbling down to destruction. No arrests were made at the time since Durham police claimed they had no jurisdiction due to the fact that the statue was on County property.

At a press conference called by WWP on Wednesday August 16, the activists relayed why they resorted to direct action. Thompson was quoted as saying:

“I did the right thing. Everyone who was there—the people did the right thing. The people will continue to keep making the right choices until every Confederate statue is gone, until white supremacy is gone. That statue is where it belongs. It needs to be in the garbage.”

Chronicling the direct line from the Confederate withdrawal from the U.S. in 1861, the four year battle they waged to preserve slavery as an economic system and today’s lethal force utilized by law-enforcement against the African American people, Thompson emphasized that racism and national oppression remain as vestiges of the historical legacy of America. Over the last four years there has been an upsurge in anti-racist demonstrations in response to the police killings of Black and Brown people.

Thompson went on to say at the WWP Durham press conference on August 16:

“The statue in Durham, North Carolina, said ‘to the boys who wore the gray.’ If we understand history, we know that those boys who wore the gray, today they wear blue, and they wear sheets over their heads.”

Soon after the press conference concluded Thompson was accosted and taken into custody by Durham County sheriff deputies. It was announced that other arrests would take place and they did. Leading WWP members’ homes were raided and personal property confiscated by the sheriff deputies. They have been charged with both felonies and misdemeanors.

By Thursday August 17, eight people had been arrested, charged and then released on $10,000 bond. All of them remain committed to direct action against racist monuments throughout the South and the country.

Durham anti-racist demonstration on August 18, 2017

National Campaign Launched to Defend Durham Activists

Immediately a nationwide effort to raise legal defense funds for the activists began. On August 17, when four other activists who were informed that warrants were issued for their arrests turned themselves in at the Durham County Courthouse, dozens of people in solidarity attempted to solicit arrest as well. Those without warrants were turned away by the County.

According to the Herald Sun:

“Peter Gull Gilbert, 36, Dante Emmanuel Strobino, 35, and Ngoc Loan Tran, 24, all of Durham, walked into the courtroom with their lawyer Scott Holmes, a private attorney and law professor at N.C. Central University…. Taylor Alexander Jun Cook, 24, turned himself in Thursday (August 17) afternoon. Three others – Raul Mauro Arce Jimenez, 26, of Durham; Elena Everett, 37, of Durham; and Aaron Caldwell, 24, of Raleigh surrendered at the Durham County magistrate’s office Thursday morning. All four faced warrants charging them with three misdemeanors – disorderly conduct by injury of a statue, damage to real property valued at more than $200, and damage to real property – and two counts of felony inciting a riot to cause property damage in excess of $1,500.”

Supporters of those charged are asking concerned people to demand that all of the felony and misdemeanor counts be dismissed. A statement released in the aftermath of the arrests says that people should call the DA (919-808-3010, press 4) – to insist the charges be dropped and for the sheriff and county prosecutors to halt all attempts to harass, detain or charge anti-racist activists.

All images in this article, except the featured image, are from the author.

Featured image: Mohammad Mosaddegh in court, 8 November 1953 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

After WWII, the West had one huge ‘problem’ on its hands: all three most populous Muslim countries on Earth – Egypt, Iran and Indonesia – were clearly moving in one similar direction, joining group of patriotic, peaceful and tolerant nations. They were deeply concerned about the welfare of their citizens, and by no means were they willing to allow foreign colonialist powers to plunder their resources, or enslave their people.

In the 1950’s, the world was rapidly changing, and there was suddenly hope that the countries which were oppressed and pillaged for decades and centuries by first the European and then North American geopolitical and business interests, would finally break their shackles and stand proudly on their own feet.

Several Communist countries in Eastern Europe, but also newly liberated China, were actively helping with rapid de-colonizing process in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Those developments were exactly what the West in general and both the U.K. and the U.S. in particular, were not ready or willing to accept. ‘Ancient’ belief in some sort of ‘inherited right’ to colonize, to loot and to control entire non-white world, was deeply engraved in the psyche of the rulers in both Europe and North America.

Peaceful, tolerant and socially oriented Islam was seen as a tremendous threat, at least in London, Washington, and Paris. It had to be stopped, even destroyed – resolutely and by all available means. Only the pre-approved Wahhabism, which was collaborative with the West and from the onset at least partially ‘co-produced’ by the British Empire, was singled-out and allowed to ‘bloom and succeed’.

*

Iran fell first, in 1953.

Actually, it did not fall; it was brutally destroyed.

According to the logic of the Empire, Iran had to be derailed and ruined, in order to prevent so-called ‘domino effect’.

As written by Irfan Ahmad, an Associate Professor of Political Anthropology at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne and author of “Islamism and Democracy in India”:

“…Major theatre of de-democratization was Iran, whose elected government was overthrown, in 1953, by a US-UK alliance. Mohammad Mosaddeq was Iran’s elected prime minister. He enjoyed the approval of Iran’s parliament for his nationalization program. The US and UK organized a CIA-led coup to oust Mosaddeq – because Iran refused make oil concessions to the West. During World War II, the UK had taken control of Iran to prevent oil from being passed to its ally, the Soviet Union. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the UK continued to control Iran’s oil after the war. The French-educated Mosaddeq was highly critical of Iran’s draining of resources to the West. Soon after getting elected as prime minister in March 1951, Mosaddeq and his National Front alliance had moved to nationalize Iranian oil and throw out foreign control of oil fields. One such was the Abadan refinery, then the largest in the world. The UK retaliated by imposing economic sanctions, backed by its heavy naval presence in the region. Mosaddeq, however, was undeterred; his popularity only increased among the Iranian people. Faced with Mosaddeq’s resistance, the UK-US alliance staged a coup to over throw Mosaddeq’s government.”

*

France, the U.K. and Israel attacked it, in 1956, during so-called “Suez Canal Crises”. Although the invasion eventually ended and Canal stayed in the hands of Egypt, the country never fully recovered. There were further Israeli attacks and invasions, and after President Gamal Abdel Nasser passed away in 1970, gross meddling in Egypt’s internal affairs by the Western countries. Gradually, Egypt was turned into an impoverished client state.

In Indonesia, a progressive and religiously tolerant President Ahmed Sukarno was overthrown more than a decade after Mohammad Mosaddeq in Iran. The coup took place in 1965, with direct involvement of the United States. Between 1 and 3 million people were brutally slaughtered.

Sukarno’s main ‘sins’, at least in the eyes of the Western Empire, consisted of strong left wing, patriotic stands, which included nationalization of almost all natural resources. Sukarno was also one of the founding fathers of non-aligned movement.

By the end of the 1960’s, socialism in the Muslim countries had been almost thoroughly demolished. Dark era of collaboration, particularly in the [Persian] Gulf region, arrived.

The 1953 coup in Iran was later replicated in various parts of the world, even as far as Latin America.

For years it is has been no secret that the U.S and the U.K. planned and executed this deadly event.

In its article, CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup, published on 19 August 2013, The Guardian reported:

“The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.

On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

“The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.”

Source: Andre Vltchek

Declassified, U.S Department of State “Top Secret” documents from 1952, also clearly demonstrated great appetite of the U.K. to perform the coup in Iran:

“Subject: Proposal to Organize a Coup d’etat in Iran

Problem:

“The British foreign Office has informed us that it would be disposed to attempt to bring about a coup d’état in Iran, replacing the Mosadeq Government by one which would be more “reliable”, if the American government agreed to cooperate…”

Although the U.S. government was originally hesitant about supporting the U.K. in planning to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq, it soon changed its mind and allowed the CIA to plot and execute the coup.

What followed was 26 years of perversely brutal rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, as well as of the British-US control over almost all great natural resources of Iran.

In brief: the West performed an experiment on Iran and on its people: how would the country react to a bloodbath, to overthrowing of its popular leader, to a theft of its resources?

*

As it did for centuries, the U.K. ‘scored’: it correctly predicted that it would be able to ‘get away with murder’. It managed to convince its offspring, the United States, that huge international crimes pay, as long as they are committed barefaced.

And the US industrialized these crimes, as it earlier did production of automobiles or radio sets. Crimes got mass-produced. One ‘inappropriate’ government after another got overthrown, destroyed; all over the world: Congo, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam… Crimes were piling up, and still are.

1953 in Iran marked the beginning of a ‘new chapter’ in the world history – a terrible and brutal chapter.

Iranian people and Iranian leadership are well aware of it. The country that suffered so much, the country which lost hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters to Western imperialism, geopolitical games as well as naked greed, is now standing tall and strong, unwilling to surrender or to even budge.

It wants to go forward, it is going forward, but in its own direction, at its own pace, for the benefit of its people.

Iran is not alone. There is now an entire powerful alliance in place, consisting of countries from all over the world: an alliance of those who are not afraid to confront deadly expansionism and consequent terror. From Bolivia to China, from South Africa to Russia, Syria, Venezuela and the Philippines, people are remembering Iran of 1953, determined to defend their countries and the world against the greatest evil, which is imperialism!

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

Featured image: Police officers speaking next to a rolled over car at the location where police shot dead five terrorists in Cambrils, Spain, 18 August 2017 © Tjerk Van Der Meulen / Global Look Press

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

Numerous earlier incidents in America and Europe reported as terrorism turned out to be false flags.

Was Catalonia violence in Barcelona and Cambrils more of the same? It’s too soon to know, wise to be suspicious.

On Thursday, a white van, traveling at high speed, struck pedestrians and cyclists in Barcelona’s Las Ramlas district, killing a dozen or more, injuring scores of others.

Conflicting reports left unclear if the driver was dead or alive, one report saying he fled on foot, another saying he was killed, regional police chief Josep Lluis Tapero unable to confirm if he was shot dead.

Witnesses described panic and chaos. Hours later in Cambrils, a seaside resort town around 70 miles from Barcelona, a black Audi sedan rammed more pedestrians, one person killed, others injured.

Reports said five attackers were lethally shot by police. The Barcelona attack was the deadliest in Spain since explosions on four Madrid commuter trains left 192 dead, around 1,800 injured, a false flag incident reported as terrorism.

An ISIS statement claiming responsibility for the Barcelona incident remains unverified. Yet it made headlines, likely getting most people to believe it. Anyone can call themselves ISIS and claim responsibility. The statement is meaningless.

Incidents like Barcelona, Cambrils and numerous similar earlier ones are used to stoke fear, erode civil liberties, and justify unjustifiable aggression on targeted nations.

They’re usually strategically timed for an intended purpose, designed to capture world headlines, conceal responsibility of the perpetrator, and point fingers at convenient patsies.

Passports or other IDs are usually found, automatically raising red flag suspicions of something not as reported.

Following an earlier false flag attack, a cartoon on independent media showed an individual dressed in black, a suicide jacket strapped to his chest, his finger on the triggering mechanism, saying “s..t, I forgot my passport” – mocking the absurdity of a criminal leaving identifying documents at the scene of the crime, making capture all the easier.

The 9/11 mother of all false flags revealed a treasure trove of information, showing what happened was other than the official narrative.

Most obvious was how could a handful of terrorists outwit America’s 16 intelligence agencies, including sophisticated NSA eavesdropping on anyone or anything suspicious.

Discussing the Catalonia incidents, Michel Chossudovsky said

“(r)eports concerning the Barcelona attack, reveal exactly the same feature of passports and IDs left behind which occurred in Manchester, Paris, Nice, London, New York, and now Barcelona…”

Suspects are usually lethally shot, not arrested. Dead men tell no tales. The official narrative alone is reported, time and again proven false.

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.

For the first time in five years, Syria has held The Damascus International Fair, the Middle East’s first modern trade fair dating back to 1954.

Below is a video of the fair in 1969.

The fair saw companies from across the world, including from Europe come to the fair to show off their goods to international consumers including big businesses and fellow governments. The primary theme to this years fair was one of national revival and infrastructural renewal.

The big winners of the fair were China, Russia and Iran whose companies took centre state at the fair and will soon take a primary role in rebuilding the parts of Syria that have been damaged by years of war and foreign funded chaos.

For ordinary Syrians who attended, the fair was a symbol that their country is slowly returning to normalcy and that the secular government which provides for equal rights between religious and ethnic sects as well as equality  between men and women is more determined than ever to build a modern country that reflects the real values of the stalwart Syrian people.

In addition to companies demonstrating their products, the fair also featured events displaying Syria’s rich cultural heritage.

Syrian political commentator Afraa Dagher reports,

“Damascus is alive and embraces its visitors again! After a five year cancellation because of the global war launched against Syria since 2011, the Damascus International Fair reopened, launching its 59th session. Forty-five countries have raised their flags in Damascus and joined this historic city in celebration.”

Challenging the war and the sanctions, these 45 countries joined the Damascus international fair. This occasion has the value of being an economic, cultural, social and artistic demonstration.  Among the 23 countries who officially have joined the Fair are Russia, Iran, Iraq, China, and Venezuela.  The Omani Chamber of Commerce paid an early visit to Damascus, on 8 August”.

She continued,

“Prime Minister Emad Khamis started the occasion with his speech stating that his exhibition has a message: ”The will of Syrians for life was and is still stronger than terrorism,” adding that “it’s the victory flag of Life over murder, honesty over treason, right over wrong and sovereignty over dependency.” PM Khamis ended his speech by greeting the sacrifices of our brave army and our allies.

Dr Bouthina Sha’aban the senior presidential advisor in an interview to pan Arabic Almayadeen TV expressed that the re-holding of this exhibition is a symbol to the military and political crisis’ route, and it implies that the war is over and that we defeated the project of others in Syria (meaning the project of destroying Syria). This event is the start of the reconstruction and rebuilding of Syria. However she maintained that this victory doesn’t mean it’s a total victory. Full victory requires more sacrifices”.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban has previously described reconstruction efforts by Syria’s partners as the equivalent of a new Marshall Plan, referring to the funds the United States used to rebuild western and central Europe after the Second World War.

Syrian fashion designer Manal Ajaj

Dagher additionally writes,

“Syria also used to have another international events like Buildex International Building construction and advanced equipment. I have visited this great event once in 2010 before this sabotage war against my country. This war of which their masters aim was to kill the civilization in Syria so that they would stop its life in order to eliminate its cultural identity and history. They directed their savage rebels since the very beginning of the war to destroy the historical locations as well as the modern ones!

In February, the Khallouf Trading Company announced the reopening of its manufacturing plant in Hama, in partnership with the Chinese Dongfeng Motor Company, and the launching of two new vehicles, a sedan and an SUV.

The Damascus International Fair session opened 17 August and continues through  26 August”.

While winning the war against radical Salafist/Wahhabi terrorism is crucial, securing a peace that is based on the future prosperity of the Syrian people is essential. The Syrian government, its state partners and private businesses and entrepreneurs from around the world seem to determined to view the challenges of post war Syria as mutual opportunities.

Below is the video of members of the French delegation celebrating Syrian unity with locals.

Featured image: Bouthaina Shaaban, the political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

The political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the six-year militancy in her country is nearly over as foreign states cut their backing for Takfiri terrorist groups, vowing that government troops would fight against any “illegitimate” forces, whether Turkish or American.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network on Friday, Bouthaina Shaaban said the inauguration of Damascus International Fair and regional participation proves a “U-turn was achieved” in the foreign-sponsored crisis.

She added the war has reached its “penultimate stage” as foreign powers that backed militant outfits are changing their policies.

“The exhibition is a defeat for their project, but it does not mean that we have won the war completely. We are just at the beginning of the road towards reconstruction and rebuilding Syria,” Shaaban commented.

The senior Syrian official later criticized Turkey for sponsoring terrorists, arguing that Ankara government says one thing but does another.

Shaaban accused Turkey of playing with all parties in order to win a major regional role through destruction of Syria.

“The presence of Turkish troops is an attack that we will address in a timely manner,” she said, adding that Damascus rejects Ankara’s role in de-escalation zones as Ankara tries to legitimize its presence.

“Just as we defeated terrorism, we will fight any illegitimate presence on our land, whether it’s the United States or Turkey,” Shaaban said.

Shaaban stressed that the United States will not be able to implement any plan to partition Syria.

The remarks came on the same day that Syria’s official news agency SANA reported that army troops, backed by allied fighters from popular defense groups, have made territorial gains against Daesh extremists in the western-central  province of Hama, and almost entirely surrounded them in Uqayribat town.

Syrian soldiers and their allies also engaged in fierce clashes with Daesh militants in the Tal al-Sawaneh district, killing and injuring scores of them.

Syria has been fighting different foreign-sponsored militant and terrorist groups since March 2011. UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimated last August that more than 400,000 people had been killed until then.

Featured image is from PressTV.

Just one year ago, Director of Europol Rob Wainwright warned Europe of further terror attacks.

A month ago, the same position was shared by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader in Britain. Mr Corbyn also warned about danger of the EU’s policy towards the Middle East. Then Labour leader called such kind of policy as short-sighted. In fact, the British politician predicted what is happening in Europe now.

According to Bloomberg, from 2014 to 2017, the number of terror attacks increased by 8 times. Since the beginning of this year, terror attacks have conducted in France, Britain, Germany and Belgium. Europeans have already forgotten what it is like to feel safe and calm for their relatives and friends.

The new attack wasn’t long in coming. On August 17, at least 12 people were killed and dozens more injured after a van plowed through a crowd on Las Ramblas avenue in Barcelona, Spain.

Of course, a few hours later, police shot dead four people in a van who tried to launch a similar attack in Cambrils, 100km away from Barcelona. A fifth attacker, who was injured, later died. However, no one is better off because of this – people can’t be brought back to life. Wasn’t it easier to properly build a policy in the Middle East and not escalate tense with those who are effectively countering terrorism?

This opinion is also shared by the American analyst Richard Johnson. He insists that the power of states that can successfully fight terrorism is not aimed at counting it.

According to Mr Johnson, constantly escalating relations with other countries, in particular with Syria, Iran and Russia, the U.S. and Europe are impeding cooperation between the international special services in fighting terrorism. For extremists, this situation is a wake-up call, and that is why the geography of their criminal activities is rapidly expanding.

Obviously, nowadays, the world is facing an enormous danger, the consequences of which will be irreparable. Europe and the United States must realize that international terrorism will not stop. Moreover, flirting with terrorists or using them for different political purposes often leads to civilian casualties.

Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center where this article was first published. 

Established in 1997, the Blackwater private security company was not so aged when hired into the US’ lengthiest Afghan war in 2001 and later Iraq war in 2003. Not so later from 9/11 tragedy, the company entered into a contract worth of US$ 5, 4 million with the US government to secure CIA headquarter in Kabul. On the Iraq side, it had earned enough US trust to strike a deal of US$ 27 million with Pentagon to ensure the security of military headquarter in the country.

The Blackwater is not a US-wide but a worldwide giant security company that undertakes critical Pentagon and CIA missions across the world. This security firm, which is notorious for its rebellion, irresponsibility and lack of conscientiousness, has displayed its non-compliance to international and the related nation’s rules and laws in Iraq war.

Afghanistan has its own grim record of the security company’s inappropriate and fatal operations. In 2010, Afghan government unexpectedly stepped forward and disbanded all the national security firms for its inadequacy and risk-posing to the nation. Many years later now, the US is considering putting those bitter experiences back into play.

Once approved, the Blackwater would get the entire responsibility for combat and training missions. The Blackwater and DynCorp security companies have previously led operations in Afghanistan that has left a stain on people’s memories from the US’ military mission. Following the end of US forces’ combat mission in 2014, both companies’ role waned. A possible comeback of an already tasted allied force would bear nothing but grow cynicism and wrath among people against the US government’s military arrangements in Afghanistan.

A switch to the Blackwater as well as mismanagement of Afghan war at its hand as a subsequent case could backfire by wresting any US-favored population into rebel’s embrace. Situation would go from worse to worst, not to mention it would superhumanly outperform in restoring security as the declared goal of the US government.

The Blackwater Company might have barely missed foothold in any territory worldwide where the US has intended intervention. Amid Ukraine crisis, reports gave away about traces of the Blackwater’s footing in the country to fight in favor of the US against Russia. The company’s role in Ukraine’s standoff circulated explosively after Crimea’s annexation to Russia gave rise to new heights of the US-Russia tensions.

The story began when news websites posted a video report about presence of anonymous armed forces in Donetsk, Ukraine. Based on reports, these masked men stormed a pro-Russia rally. While dispersion, the marchers were shouting “Blackwater”.

On September 16, 2017, a Blackwater squad sprayed fires on a bulk of civilians in Nisour Square in Iraq and killed 17 people. The squad claimed the assault was an act of defense to threat posed from people, while investigations and eyewitness accounts found no ground for preemptive attack.

New York Times in one of its earlier issues had revealed that the Blackwater’s agents in concert with CIA led plenty covert operations in Iraq between 2004 and 2006. The report elucidated that then-CIA director Leon Panetta denied involvement in the operations with the private company.

Moving on to Pakistan, the Blackwater drew up and conducted sweeping terrorist operations in 2009, while Musharraf-led government often played down presence of the company in the country. On September 2010, a high-profile American journalist and columnist Wayne Madsen brought out evidences about the Blackwater’s role behind terrorist blasts in Pakistan. He maintained that the Blackwater’s operatives are the leading organizers of terrorist attacks in that country and “Pakistani Taliban” was just a name used to pin these attacks on them.  At the time, relevant Pakistani authorities’ investigation revealed that the Blackwater under its new title “Total Intelligence Solution” was active in Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi.

The long-awaited new US strategy on Afghanistan would be nothing other than doubling the reinforcement as Sen. John McCain declared his own strategy that would clear the path for a likely switch to deployment of private forces. Donald Trump’s advisors who own private security companies insist on shifting Afghanistan’s security job away from the US army to private forces.

Now if we contemplate the White House’s recent discourse on Afghan war from a different viewpoint, it comes out that there is only concentration about war options and no alternative to conflict is imminent. Oil, arms, intelligence and private security experts encircling White House are in command of foreign policies. For certain, all the pronouncements from the White House have something to do with war.

Two of Trump’s advisors including his son-in-law Jared Kushner attempt to hand Afghanistan’s lengthy war over to the Blackwater and the DynCorp private security firms. Although a dramatic cut in military expenditure from US$ 45 billion a year to US$ 10 billion a year as well as a slash in the US troop’s causalities have been presented as supporting reasons by advisors, it is not a matter of a tiny war zone to be handled by an organization when a powerful government [the US] admits failure on the ground. The advisors like Jared Kushner may be serving as a broker between the White House and familiar sources such as Erik Prince founder of the Blackwater who are relatives.

Donald Trump acceded to the White House as a businessman almost completely incognizant of the US’s war operations throughout the world. He unexpectedly didn’t speak a single word about the US’s protracted and costly Afghan war, all because he’s not interested in wars. Even today, he breaks into argument with his advisors about Afghan war and opposes any plan that multiplies the US’s war costs.

Things are running counter to his plans; else the global war games might have gone upside down if he was at the helm of everything. The President Trump also noted that Pentagon is left with no option to continue war in Afghanistan. In a meeting with its national security team, Trump argued that the US is “losing” war in Afghanistan while pointing to a map depicting regions captured by the Taliban. He even suggested that Gen. John Nicholson, the US commander in Afghanistan be fired, NBC news reports.

Reports say in spite of the US defense department’s repeated demands, Trump is unwilling about lasting Afghan war and views it groundless to add in already 9,000 US troops on the ground. Trump disagrees with National Security Advisor McMaster’s roadmap. In a recent US National Security Council’s meeting, although the security advisor resisted with Trump’s refusals, he failed to bring him on the track. The US State Secretary Rex Tillerson also said that Trump is asking tough questions about Afghanistan’s war and is reluctant to see the war continuing as before.

While Trump is likely to accept the private security plan, defense secretary James Mattis and McMaster, among others, disapprove with it. As Trump tends to abolish whatever he regards as unnecessary just to make cuts in expenditures, he may lean on privatization of security efforts in Afghanistan. It would also rid him of mulling over new strategy on Afghanistan. He’s a big taxpayer himself, so he understands the worth of money very well, yet he’s not up to end the war.

Featured image: US Representative Barbara Lee

The scoundrels and misleaders in the Democratic Party are leaving no stone unturned in their effort to escape responsibility for their ignominious defeats. There is no evidence of the Russian government “hacking” the election. Instead evidence points to a leak at the Democratic National Committee which revealed the gory details of their corruption and incompetence.

The lies have fallen apart one by one. After months of repeating that seventeen intelligence agencies agreed on Russian election interference they finally admitted that the number was actually three. The Democratic Party is willing to risk hot war and irreparable damage to the system in order to escape blame for their electoral failures. They have been exposed as little more than a brand management team that does nothing to help the millions of people who are still willing to vote for them.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus such as Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters have been in the forefront of this charade and now they have been joined by others. The Root online magazine announced it is joining this dubious group in doing the business of the bipartisan war party and the discredited democrats. “How Russia Used Racism to Hack White Voters” was the first installment in a new series, Black Guide to Russia. The Root promises that “each story will analyze the latest developments of the Russia investigation with a fresh, black perspective.” What is the black perspective on 21st century McCarthyism, on the craving for endless war or supporting the party which consigns black voters to the losers’ column?

“The Root promises that ‘each story will analyze the latest developments of the Russia investigation with a fresh, black perspective.’”

The answers to these questions are found in the history of The Root itself. It was founded in 2008 by Henry Louis Gates and Donald Graham of the Washington Post family. It is now part of the Gizmodo media group and Gates is still editor. Gates continues in his role as the go-to black man for white people. His influence is confined to cutting deals for himself in exchange for access to white people who are hostile to black interests. The Root takes Russia bashing to a new low, claiming that racist white Americans voted for Donald Trump in part because the Russians tricked them into it.

This media outlet which purports to present news of interest to black readers has chosen fealty to the Democratic Party over all else. If Trump’s victory is to be analyzed it must be through the lens of willful white racism. Republicans traditionally used winks and nudges to make clear their role in the duopoly as the white people’s party. Trump dispensed with code words and dog whistles. He made it clear that he would be the white people’s representative. Everyone from the corporate media to the Republican Party establishment to this columnist missed how much his message resonated with white America.

“Gates continues in his role as the go-to black man for white people.”

But according to The Root, white people were swayed by Russian “hybrid warfare” and fake news into doing what they have always done, support people who promised to put them and their interests first. Peddling this high level of foolishness requires a delicate balancing act, so The Root simultaneously blames white racism but says that the Russian government helped to peddle lies.

“The Root will investigate the social conditions that made the American populace so vulnerable to being played.”

In 2016 white Americans played themselves in the way they always do. Donald Trump proved that they put whiteness first. They don’t care about Russia or traditional right wing ideology as much as they care about being white. They saw themselves in Trump and more than 60 million people gladly voted for him.

The only ones spreading lies are The Root, the Democratic Party and corporate media. If The Root wants to analyze the election results by all means they should. They should analyze how black people are trapped within the confines of the Democratic Party as they try to stave off Republican victory. They should talk about how the resulting risk aversion made Hillary Clinton the nominee and doomed black people to loser status within the loser party. They should look at the millions of black voters motivated only to support Obama who promptly stayed home when his name was no longer on the ballot. The Root might do what the Democratic Party refuses to do, expose the degree of voter suppression which prevents black people from exercising their right to the franchise.

“According to The Root, white people were swayed by Russian ‘hybrid warfare’ and fake news into doing what they have always done, support people who promised to put them and their interests first.”

There is a plethora of worthy subject matter in reporting on the 2016 election but The Root chooses to follow official propaganda instead of giving readers anything worth considering. Black Guide to Russia is nothing more than Propaganda or Not warmed over with a dark face. PropOrNot was a blatant if clumsy effort on the part of the Washington Post and the Democratic Party to keep the media within the confines of manufactured consent on the issue of United States foreign policy. The Black Agenda Report team was on the list of outlets condemned for doing what journalists ought to do, print what powerful people would like to see disappear.

Barack Obama’s babbling about fake news began shortly after election in a desperate attempt to keep the sinking ship afloat. Trump’s talk of rapprochement with Russia and the end of trade deals beloved by the duopoly threatened the established order. Turning Vladimir Putin into a bogeyman is an attempt to right the ship of neo-liberalism and empire. It is sad that The Root has joined corrupt people and institutions to uphold what ought to be torn down.

Hopefully this sham journalism will disappear from public consciousness. If Putin didn’t exist the Democratic Party and its operatives would have had to invent him. They keep going back for more, and make themselves less credible in the process. If a Black Guide to Russia is any indication, the sooner they all disappear the better.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

The animal agriculture industry spends millions on deceptive advertising to persuade consumers that farmed animals roam freely on bucolic pastures. But I’ve been piloting drones over animal agriculture facilities for several years, and the video I’ve captured tells a far different story. Nearly all animals raised and slaughtered for food in the U.S. live in factory farms—facilities that treat animals as mere production units and show little regard for the natural environment or public health. Instead of creating widgets, these factories confine, mutilate and disassemble animals who feel pain and pleasure just like our dogs and cats.

Aerial views of the first factory farms I visited—pig facilities—didn’t capture grass and rolling hills, but instead exposed rows of windowless metal buildings. Each confined thousands of intelligent, sensitive pigs who spent their lives on concrete floors in crowded pens. The footage also reveals what appear to be red lakes but are in fact giant, open-air cesspools. Waste falls through slats in the pigs’ concrete flooring and is flushed into these massive pits, which sometimes have the surface area of multiple football fields. To lower the levels of these cesspools, many facilities spray their contents into the air where they turn into mist and drift into neighboring communities.

In North Carolina, this practice has been associated with spikes in blood pressure among community members and increased asthma symptoms among nearby schoolchildren. I spoke with neighbors who described walking outside and falling down in their own front yards because the stench of these factory farms made it so difficult to breathe.

I recently piloted drones over factory egg farms, perhaps the most industrialized sector of animal agriculture, with each shed confining thousands of hens and some facilities holding over a million. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the 24 sheet-metal buildings were airplane hangars or industrial storage facilities. Mercy For Animals undercover investigations have revealed that hens inside such facilities spend their lives trapped in cages so small the birds can’t even fully spread their wings. Such confinement is so intensive that many hens die and decompose among cagemates still producing eggs to be sold as food.

Mark Devries serves as special projects coordinator for investigations, with a focus on directing short-form documentaries about factory farming and animal rights. Before joining Mercy For Animals, he directed Speciesism: The Movie and conducted the world’s first drone-based investigation of factory farming. The movie is widely used as an introduction to animal rights, and the drone footage has amassed tens of millions of views globally. Mark is also an attorney licensed to practice in Washington, DC.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video by the author.

Charlottesville, VA — The events that unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia this Saturday were tragic, hateful, insidious and even deadly. Saturday will go down in history as the day America’s hate reared its ugly face and proved to the world that this country is being divided — to be conquered. Adding fuel to the fire of hatred and violence were politicians who told police not to intervene and allowed the unchecked carnage to unfold before their eyes.

The stand down was confirmed by the ACLU who quoted a police source saying,

“We’ll not intervene until given command to do so.”

Clash between protesters and counter protesters. Police says "We'll not intervene until given command to do so." #Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/UkRDlNn2mv

— ACLU of Virginia (@ACLUVA) August 12, 2017

There is no shortage of violent footage of clashes between neo-nazi white supremacists and counter protesters from Antifa and the like. Multiple violent battles raged on for several minutes as blood spilled onto the streets of this college town. Only several feet away were police officers — who did nothing to stop it.

As ProPublica reports:

It was a scene that played out over and over in Charlottesville as law enforcement confronted the largest public gathering of white supremacists in decades. We walked the streets beginning in the early morning hours and repeatedly witnessed instances in which authorities took a largely laissez faire approach, allowing white supremacists and counter-protesters to physically battle.

Officials in Charlottesville had publicly promised to maintain control of the “Unite the Right” rally, which is the latest in a series of chaotic and bloody racist rallies that have roiled this college town, a place deeply proud of its links to Thomas Jefferson and the origins of American Democracy.

But the white supremacists who flooded into the city’s Emancipation Park — a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee sits in the center of the park — had spent months openly planning for war. The Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi website, encouraged rally attendees to bring shields, pepper spray, and fascist flags and flagpoles. A prominent racist podcast told its listeners to come carrying guns. “Bring whatever you need, that you feel you need for your self defense. Do what you need to do for security of your own person,” said Mike “Enoch” Peinovich on The Right Stuff podcast.

And the white supremacists who showed up in Charlottesville did indeed come prepared for violence. Many wore helmets and carried clubs, medieval-looking round wooden shields, and rectangular plexiglass shields, similar to those used by riot police.

Clad in a black, Nazi-style helmet, Matthew Heimbach told ProPublica, “We’re defending our heritage.” Heimbach, who heads the Traditionalist Workers Party, a self-declared fascist group, said he was willing to die for his cause and would do whatever it took to defend himself. He was surrounded by a brigade of white supremacists, including members of the League of the South and the National Socialist Movement.

Several members of the militia — armed with AR-15s and who appeared to be neutral in the fight — were recorded on multiple occasions attempting to keep the peace by breaking up fights and tending to the wounded. Their actions proved far more effective than the inaction of the police.

The only thing police seemed to be instructed to do was to break up the lawful assembly which only seemed to add fuel to the violent fire that was stoked throughout the day.

According to ProPublica, Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy defended the police tactics, noting

“I’m not in the business of throwing our police department under the bus, because they’re doing the best job they can,“ said Bellamy. “I don’t think the police officers were just twiddling their thumbs.”

While policing violent crowds, like the ones in Charlottesville on Saturday, is no easy job, we’ve seen police across the country move in and act in situations far less chaotic.

Whatever the reason police were told to stand down, the result of their inaction was the same. Whether deliberate or not, Saturday’s police response served to fuel the already exponentially growing divide.

If ever there were time to call for peace in this country — it is now. The rapid growth of Antifa and white supremacists illustrates the polarizing effects that ‘divide and conquer’ tactics being pushed by the state and media are having.

We must realize that as long as the citizens keep fighting amongst each other, the behemoth state will continue to usurp our freedoms, rob us, divide us and control us to the point of complete despotism or civil war.

In the 16th century, [Niccolò] Machiavelli – in an attempt to get back in the good graces of the powerful – wrote a slim volume called The Prince. In that book he showed the powers that be how to control the people. That book is a statement: separate and rule, divide and conquer. That’s five hundred years ago and it still works, because we allow ourselves to be led around with holes through our noses. – Maya Angelou

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.

Featured image is from the author.

The August 14 New York Times reported that the threat by Donald Trump to use the US military against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has brought together Latin American leaders, divided on other things, in opposition to US intervention.  Along the way, reporter Nicholas Casey cites a regional expert who says, “An often ugly history of US interventions is vividly remembered in Latin America — even as we in the US have forgotten.” Which the Times followed thus:

Under President Barack Obama, however, Washington aimed to get past the conflicts by building wider consensus over regional disputes. In 2009, after the Honduran military removed the leftist president Manuel Zelaya from power in a midnight coup, the United States joined other countries in trying to broker—albeit unsuccessfully—a deal for his return.

There’s a word for that kind of statement, and the word is “lie.”

Zelaya was indeed overthrown in a military coup, kidnapped and flown out of the country via the joint US/Honduran military base at Palmerola.

New York Times (8/14/17)

Now, the US is supposed to cut off aid to a country that has a military coup—and “there is no doubt” that Zelaya’s ouster “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup,” according to a secret report sent by the US ambassador to Honduras on July 24, 2009, and later exposed by WikiLeaks. But the US continued most aid to Honduras, carefully avoiding the magic words “military coup” that would have necessitated withdrawing support from the coup regime.

Internal emails reveal that the State Department pressured the OAS not to support the country’s constitutional government. In her memoir Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton recalled how as secretary of State she worked behind the scenes to legitimate the new regime. In the days following the coup, her book relates:

I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras, and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.

Let’s add, for the record, that with a corrupt, drug-linked regime in place—thanks in large part to US intervention—the murder rate in Honduras soared, rising to fully 50 percent above the pre-coup level. Many of the murders involved criminal gangs, but a great deal was political, with resuscitated death squads targeting journalists, opposition figures, labor activists and environmentalists—of whom indigenous leader Berta Cáceres was only the most famous.

Honduran military suppressing protests after the 2009 coup. (Source: Roberto Breve)

So is it really that we in the US have forgotten what happened in Honduras? Or is that many of us believe falsehoods about that history brought to us by media like the New York Times? The paper may run a correction or a letter to the editor; we’re providing contact information below for readers to contact the Times to encourage them to set the record straight.

But really, how can you see such an outright inversion of reality as a slip-up? “Oops, did we say the US opposed the coup? What we meant to say is that the US, virtually alone in the world, supported it.” The real lesson is, when the US government declares a country an enemy, keep in mind that for corporate press, that basically means—anything goes.

ACTION: Please contact the New York Times and ask it to correct the false claim that the United States tried to restore the democratically elected president of Honduras.

CONTACT: [email protected]

Featured image: Senator Pauline Hanson wears a burqa during question time at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday 17 August 2017. Fedpol. (Photo: Andrew Meares / Great Lakes Advocate)

In few environments could this work. A member of Parliament (barely breathing, but still a parliament) running within a Muslim minority country (a small minority, at that) with mocking intent, dons a burka, sits in the stands, and receives appropriate mind bending outrage when she strips it off.

One thing can be said: Australia’s Pauline Hanson of her self-described One Nation Party was, in the basest way, impressive. She donned the religious garb of a religion she detests, whose injunctions and mores she barely knows how to enunciate. Her ignorance is profoundly encyclopaedic, and she is proud of it.

Her command of the various types of Islamic religious costume also leaves something to be desired, not to mention her awareness of the formalities that attend it. To that end, she is the textbook example of one terrified by the hidden, the unknown, even the invisible. What are they hiding underneath all that, this dress called the burka? “Many Australians are very much in fear of it.”[1]

Never mind the point made by the speaker of the Senate that she was checked, ahead of this display, that she was, in fact, a One Nation Senator, a security screening process that has been in place for years and requires no revision, let alone updating.

And with each attack, each series of inflicted apocalyptic murders by van, gun, and knife, supposedly perpetrated in the name of Islam, she gets more enthused, determined to wind back what she sees as the aspirations of a caliphate in Australia, a dangerous blooming that must be stomped and severed.

The response from various spokespeople of the Islamic faith was one of vigorous head-shaking, more in sorrow than anger. Nail Aykan, executive director of the Islamic Council of Victoria had to “look twice, thinking ‘is this real?’” Then came the dismissive judgment:

“The quote that you can never underestimate the predictability of stupidity, it came to my mind. But this is a new low.”[2]

The theme of foolishness, idiocy, a clown in a hurry, was also expressed by Kazim Ates.

“Australians don’t believe the burka, the wearing of the burka by a handful of women, is jeopardising the security of Australia.”

By wearing it in Parliament, Hanson had merely “made a fool of herself.”

In a world rapidly spinning on the motifs of the next Trump sensation, the next news propulsion of smacking reality (or fake news), the next tweet, this was sensational and less inappropriate than it would have otherwise been. Its foolishness can only be understood in Trumpland’s new code of reality television and the visual stunt.

US President Donald Trump has already been laying the ground, with his daily utterances that demand, not merely a second look but a third and fourth. His executive order placing various Muslim majority countries on a banned list in terms of entering the United States was a Hansonist measure writ large.

Even more notable is the Hanson copyright, her intellectual property, that can be extended to various Australian policies on refugees and asylum seekers. The “Turn Back the Boats” policy of Prime Minister Tony Abbott had its Hanson imprint, a violent response that barely concealed the fact that he was, and remains suspicious, of Muslim arrivals.

Prime Minister John Howard, in an attempt to neutralise her as a threat to the Liberal National Party coalition in the later 1990s, assimilated Hanson’s clumsy intolerance, giving it a visage of political respectability. The Pacific Solution, Manus and Nauru, not to mention third country resettlement are all legacies of the Hanson diatribe, a bureaucratic-military response that has, at its core, deep suspicions, manic fears. Fittingly, Howard had himself been strongly opposed to immigration – of the Asian variety – in the 1980s.

More to the point, caution, maybe disbelief, struck certain members in the Australian Senate. Was this pantomime with an edge, the vulgar panto that can only be carried off in certain settings (an English public school, for instance, with a taste for the inappropriate)? It was clear that those on the government side were hesitant to applaud their own member, the Attorney-General, George Brandis, who gave Hanson what can be mildly described as a tongue-lashing.

Visibly shaken by Hanson’s burka act, Brandis proceeded to answer Hanson’s questions on whether the burka should be banned with suitable authority. In a sense, that was the other fact that added to the panto: an attorney-general who has been indifferent to civil liberties (data retention, secrecy provisions and restrictions on reporting security matters) happy to defend the fundamental entitlement to wear such dress.

“I would caution and counsel you with respect to be very, very careful of the offence you may do to the religious sensibilities of other Australians.”

Working with each director-general of security and the Australian Federal Police had impressed Brandis that a cooperative Muslim community was vital. Deriding them would, effectively, hive off any chance of averting the next attack, or quashing the next plot.

“And to ridicule that community, to drive it into a corner, to mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do and I would ask you to reflect on what you have done.”[3]

In her gesture, the One Nation Party leader got exactly what she bargained for. She is immune to critique, let alone criticism, and no doubt plotting the next display that will grab the headlines. And optimistic observations, such as those of David Borger of the Sydney Business Chamber that Hanson’s “cheap shot” will fail in driving a wedge in communities such as Western Sydney, will have to be tested.

Unalloyed bigotry does sell, even if the returns are modest.

“She was making a point about security,” suggested Western Sydney commuter Bruce Burke to the ABC, “and I’ve gotta agree with her.”

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

Notes

After Donald Trump threatened the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” I spoke to K.J. Noh, a peace activist and scholar on the geopolitics of the Asian continent who writes for Counterpunch and Dissident Voice.

Rehearsing Armageddon

Ann Garrison: North Korea is standing up to the US’s 4800 “locked and loaded” nuclear weapons with an estimated 30 to 60 of its own. Do you think it would still be standing without them?

K.J.Noh: It’s hard to imagine so. North Korea has been in a defensive crouch since the inception of its state. It has been under risk of nuclear attack almost continuously since 1950. Starting during the Korean War (1950-1953), the use of nuclear bombs against North Korea was considered; after the cessation of hostilities in 1953, the US refused to enter into further negotiations, letting the 90-day requirement to negotiate a peace treaty expire. It subsequently refused to remove troops and weapons, and not introduce new weapons systems into the peninsula, as required by the Armistice Agreement (Paragraph 13d).

Starting in 1958, the US placed “Honest John” surface-to-surface nuclear missiles, 280mm atomic cannons, and nuclear cruise missiles on the peninsula, and kept them there until 1991. Then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, ICBM’s pointed at the former Soviet Union were redirected at North Korea.

War Games conducted every year (Key Resolve-Foal Eagle and Ulchi Freedom Guardian) rehearse the attack and occupation of North Korea and decapitation of its leadership. The recent spring war games (Key Resolve-Foal Eagle) have been twice the size of the Normandy Invasion, involving carrier battle group and submarine maneuvers, amphibious landings of mechanized brigades, naval blockade, live fire drills, special forces infiltration, as well as B-1B, B-2, & B-52 nuclear bombing runs. North Korea’s leadership is also well aware of the fact that Clinton’s 1997 Presidential Decision Directive 60 authorizes pre-emptive nuclear war.

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, ICBM’s pointed at the former Soviet Union were redirected at North Korea.”

Let’s also not forget the fact that North Korea was literally bombed back into the Stone Age during the Korean war, when between 20-30% of its population was exterminated. The country was turned into a moonscape, scorched with napalm, and flooded. Independent reports allege the use of bioweapons. You have to go back to the Punic Wars and the sack of Carthage to imagine destruction of such scale and violence. Even General Douglas MacArthur, no stranger to bloodshed, said in his congressional testimony: “I have never seen such devastation…you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind.”

The current threats by the current president, although a little more off-the-cuff and colorful than usual, are nothing new for the North Koreans. For example, on two occasions, Colin Powell blithely threatened to turn North Korea into charcoal briquette—a chilling statement to a country that for three years had 50,000 gallons of Napalm dropped on it daily.

The North Koreans, having lived through, not merely the threat of Armageddon, but the experience of it, are highly unlikely to let go of nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

Framework of Distrust

There was once a possibility of denuclearizing North Korea, back in the 90s. The North Koreans had agreed to monitoring and dismantling of their nuclear reactor, in exchange for normalization of diplomatic relations, removal of sanctions, fuel oil, and a light breeder reactor, whose byproducts would be more difficult to build a nuclear weapon with. The North Koreans fulfilled the bargain for four years, but the treaty (the 1994 Agreed Framework) was dead on arrival in Washington two weeks after signing, and none of the conditions were upheld by the US side. After eight years of Waiting for Godot, the North Koreans found themselves branded as part of the “Axis of Evil.” The North Koreans read the writing on the wall, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and restarted their nuclear program in 2003.

In 2005, the Chinese negotiated a deal—through the six party talks from 2003-2005—between the US and North Korea, whereby the North Koreans would again dismantle their program, and the US would normalize relations. The very day after the signing, the US charged North Korea with counterfeiting currency and increased sanctions. North Korea withdrew from the deal, and in 2006, tested a nuclear device.

“The North Koreans fulfilled the bargain for four years, but the treaty was dead on arrival in Washington.”

The pattern of distrust is repetitious, going all the way back to the armistice of 1953, which the US announced its intention to abrogate on the day after signing, as it has to the current moment. The current situation, a nuclear armed North Korea, is the result, and it’s unlikely that it can be reversed. Given their own history, not to mention the examples of Libya and Iraq, the North Koreans are unlikely to give up their deterrent, and have said so explicitly. That horse has long left the barn.

The Political Economy of Fear

AG: Does the U.S. have an issue with North Korea aside from the fact that it exists and has a few nuclear weapons?

KJN: The current system is a political economy of fear. From a viewpoint of propaganda, it’s the recycling of the Aristotelian devices of Fear and Pity for the political theater of this current historical moment.

But it’s also the psychology of the political economy: a culture built on individualism lives always in an existential terror of isolation, and has to dominate its way out of its fear. On a national level, this becomes the bad conscience and projected, karmic terror of a system built on genocide.

In reality, most commentators have assessed North Korea’s actual threat as the threat to defend itself in the case of attack by the US. If there is no attack on North Korea, there is little chance of an actual threat to the US. North Korea’s nuclear program is, as Tim Beal put it, a suicidal “Sampson Option,” and a deterrent unlikely to be exercised except under the threat—or perceived threat—of its own annihilation.

Like revolutionary Cuba, the example of North Korea must be extinguished because it poses the threat of a counterexample of resistance to global geopolitical design.

Imagined Resistance, Lethal Force

By way of analogy, we can think, for example, of the policing of African American communities. The history of slavery renders the policing of African American bodies subject to a threshold of compliance and submission so immediate, so absolute, so total, that lethal force is routinely exercised at the first sign of imagined resistance, threat, or non-compliance.

US engagement in Asia, Africa, and America involve a similar paranoid “threat” inflation and a similar exercise of lethal “compliance.” The Korean War itself was referred to as a “police action.”

It’s useful to re-examine the history in this light.

US-Korea relations go back to 1866, when the USS General Sherman forced its way up the Taedong River in Korea, attempting to force open the closed, isolationist state through gunboat diplomacy. The last dynasty of Korea, the 500 year old Chosun dynasty, was steadfastly Confucian and isolationist, and refused to trade and interact with US, European, or Japanese colonial powers, believing that these colonial powers were “totally ignorant of any human morality” and utterly alien to them, and “craved only material goods.” They sent envoys entreating the Sherman to leave, and to leave Korea alone. The Sherman refused to take “No” for an answer, defied entreaties to leave, took the envoys as hostages, and opened fire. It in turn was attacked and burned to the ground, and its troops killed.

“US engagement in Asia, Africa, and America involve a paranoid “threat” inflation and a similar exercise of lethal “compliance.”

Five years later, the US returned to settle scores in 1871 with a full scale marine invasion—5 warships and 24 supporting vessels, and obliterated the Korean defenders. After this, Korea (Chosun) surrendered and opened wide its borders and ports to Western trade, and a “friendship” treaty was eventually signed in 1882. Similar to the treaties that the Native American nations signed with the US, the treaty guaranteed “perpetual peace and friendship,” “a perfect, permanent and universal peace, and a sincere and cordial amity,” and promised to “render assistance and protection” if other powers “deal unjustly or oppressively” with it. Twenty-three years after the signing of this mutual “friendship treaty,” the US went into secret talks with a rising, imperialist Japan, and pawned Korea over to Japan—green lighting the colonial occupation of Japan—in return for Japan’s non-interference in US colonization of the Philippines. This is the infamous “Taft-Katsura memorandum” of 1905, which is widely viewed in South Korea as an abrogation and betrayal of the 1882 treaty.

The Japanese colonial occupation of Korea from 1910-1945 was brutal. Koreans were conscripted by the millions into slave labor, where they died in untold numbers. One out five people killed in atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conscripted Korean slave laborers. The Japanese also kidnapped and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Korean women as military sexual slaves, euphemistically called “comfort women,” in the world’s largest and most violent system of sexual slavery and trafficking. This became the prototype for modern transnational sexual trafficking. Between 75-90% of these women would die during their sexual enslavement.

Manchurian Candidates

To understand this current moment, you have to go to Manchuria of the 1930s. Japanese-colonized Manchuria, the puppet state they called Manchukuo, is where these excesses were the worst. Historian Mark Driscoll compares Manchukuo to the Belgian Congo in terms of its wanton brutality and disregard for human life, and coins the term, “Manchurian Passage,” an Asian “Middle Passage,” to characterize the mass enslavement of Chinese and Koreans to fuel forced industrialization of Manchuria. This became the industrial engine that powered the Japanese imperial war machine that went on to conquer and colonize all of Asia.

Three key figures are associated with Manchuria; all three are key influences on the current situation: Park Chung Hee, a Korean collaborator who served in the Japanese imperial forces smashing anti-Japanese resistance; Kishi Nobusuke, the minister of munitions and development, and Kim Il Sung, a guerrilla leader fighting the Japanese colonization. Kishi, rehabilitated by the US, later becomes Prime Minister of Japan. His grandson, the far right militarist, Shinzo Abe, is the current president of Japan. Park Chung Hee later becomes the president/dictator of South Korea. His daughter is the recently impeached quisling president of Korea. Kim Il Sung, the guerrilla leader fighting Japanese colonization, later becomes the Leader of North Korea. His grandson, Kim Jung Un, is the current Leader of North Korea.

“Historian Mark Driscoll compares Manchukuo to the Belgian Congo in terms of its wanton brutality and disregard for human life.”

Fast forward to 1945, the end of the war. Japan surrenders, Korea is liberated. The liberated Koreans create their own state, the Korean People’s Republic, a democratic, populist state comprised of thousands of people’s committees who had fought the Japanese colonization. Its political economy is an indigenous socialism consisting of thousands of labor and farming cooperatives.

US cold war policy cannot countenance an indigenous, grassroots socialism, especially within the possible orbit of a newly arisen China. It divides Korea in two, much like Vietnam, thwarts national elections, creates a capitalist state in the south by force, and installs an American puppet, Syngman Rhee, as dictator. It also puts Japanese collaborators back into power, and the entire structure of Japanese colonial domination back into place: police, courts, prisons, military, even comfort women. The almost complete reinstallation by the US of this military colonial capitalist system, with the same despotic bloody Japanese collaborators back in power, is the worst nightmare the Koreans can imagine. They fight back, first in mass civil resistance, which is suppressed by mass killings, then guerrilla resistance, which results in scorched earth tactics. The suppression reaches genocidal, atrocity-level proportions in the South: hundreds of thousands are mowed down and murdered by the US-installed Southern dictatorship. Eventually, this crests into a full scale war in 1950.

“Closer than Lips to Teeth”

The Chinese, who fought together with the Koreans against the Japanese in Manchuria, consider the creation of the People’s Republic of China indelibly linked to the efforts of Korean fighters, a blood debt. When the US sends troops into the Korean War, the Chinese, despite being impoverished and weary from their own liberation struggles, send over a million volunteer troops to fight with the North Koreans–just as they had in 1592, when they sent 300,000 troops to repel an earlier Japanese invasion.

“Closer than lips to teeth” is how Chairman Mao characterizes the Korea-China relationship. He sends his own sons to fight in the Korean war; one of them is buried in Korean soil.

The Chinese repel the US and South Korean Army in the early stages of the war. The US reacts with a carpet bombing that takes on the character of a full-blown genocide, a military violence unseen in the annals of warfare. North Korea is razed to the ground, “bombed into the Stone Age” and beyond, napalmed into one long fiery barbecue pit, then flooded as dams are destroyed. Mass slaughter of civilians is routine, and blamed on the North, although later studies indicates that 95% of civilian casualties were caused by the US or the South Korean Army under US control.

In 1953, an armistice is signed, but the key provisions of the armistice are not upheld: to withdraw foreign troops, not to introduce new weapons, and to initiate proceedings to procure a lasting peace within 90 days. No peace treaty is ever signed or pursued; in fact the US announces its intention to let the clock run down on the 90 day provision, covertly introduces new arms the following year, including 166 fighter planes, then dismantles the UN Neutral Nations Inspection Team when they report on these violations. By 1968, there are 950 nuclear weapons on the peninsula threatening North Korea, and the DMZ is routinely punctuated with sporadic raids, border incidents, and firefights.

“By 1968, there are 950 nuclear weapons on the peninsula threatening North Korea.”

US troops still occupy South Korea to this day; all of South Korea’s military and facilities still fall under US Operational Control the moment the US president decides—by declaring Defcon 3. Nuclear weapons have been on the ground or in play since the beginning. Every entreaty on the part of North Korea for negotiations for a peace treaty or a non-aggression pact has been rebuffed or conditioned on non-starter demands such as unilateral disarmament. Instead, the US conducts, twice yearly, the largest military exercises on the planet and recurrently threatens North Korea with annihilation. Donald Trump’s “fire and fury like the world has never seen” is just the most recent threat.

A clear eyed assessment of the history and the situation would conclude that it would be irrational for North Korean survival if it gave up nuclear weapons. They also seem to have been using a calibrated tit-for-tat approach for escalation and de-escalation of threat—the only strategy to prevent war under a situation of deep distrust. However, this capacity for deterrence itself is seen as a threat from the standpoint of the US.

The Chinese Connection

AG: Syria has no nuclear weapons, but they probably wouldn’t be standing without Russia, which got some backup from China. China sent its destroyers and aircraft carriers into the Mediterranean, though I didn’t hear of them actually engaging. Do you think China and Russia can somehow defuse this?

KJN: China is enmeshed with North Korea through culture, history, geography, proximity, propinquity, and consanguinity. It’s also bound to North (and South) Korea through tradition and treaty. There is the 1961 Mutual Defense Treaty between China and North Korea that is still binding, and has never been disavowed: China will come to North Korea’s aid if North Korea is attacked. Recent top level statements have reaffirmed and emphasized this; Chinese party officials who have suggested otherwise have been shown the door. In other words, a war with North Korea, will be a war with China.

It’s also important to remember that Russia also shares a border with North Korea, and has interests in maintaining the current status quo.

“China will come to North Korea’s aid if North Korea is attacked.”

China is currently leveraging all its diplomatic forces to de-escalate the possibility of war. It would rather have a nuclear North Korea than war or chaos on its border, but the US seems to be suggesting that the first will inevitably lead to the others. In 2003, China spearheaded the six-party talks which also attempted to stop a similar escalation. China has also backed the North’s “double freeze”—freeze nuclear programs in exchange for freezing military exercises—although both the Obama and Trump administrations have ignored these proposals. It has also warned the US that if there is any attempt “to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean peninsula,” it will prevent them from doing so. Moreover, it will not do what the US expects it to do: force North Korea to disarm by strong arming it economically or politically. China voted for the recent UN sanctions only in the interest of de-escalation.

China has neither the power nor the inclination to be a subcontractor to US foreign policy; any policy that takes that as a starting point is doomed to fail. However, that may be the point for certain involved parties.

China’s goals in the region are significantly, if not diametrically, opposed to those of the US. China is acutely aware that the US has been pursuing a policy of military and economic encirclement/containment, from the 90s onward, but most overtly since 2011, when Hillary Clinton announced the “Pivot to Asia.” An explicit war doctrine has been mapped out and elements have been progressively implemented vis-a-vis China. Those factions analyzing or proposing war with China have pointed out that it will be less costly to the US if this happens sooner rather than later.

At the Catastrophic Edge of the Eternal Present

AG: Is conventional warfare even imaginable in this situation?

KJN: War is always a failure of the moral imagination. In the case of Korea, it’s also a limit situation of imagination itself. It’s hard to conceive of a “limited” attack that would not spiral into something much more catastrophic. The cascading contingencies are just too complex and unpredictable; the historical trauma vortex is simply too overdetermined.

French mathematician René Thom developed a model of “catastrophic” change where, for example, the axes of fear and rage, of threat of war and its cost, slide the situation incrementally and discretely into an unstable, unpredictable, catastrophic attack. Threat signaling of the type we have seen is not cost-free. It will not bring about de-escalation through tit-for-tat actions, or submission, or escape, but rather push parties deeper into the cusp of the catastrophe, fixing an enraged “war trance,” setting the stage for unpredictable, catastrophic violence.

The last Korean War was beyond imagination, which is why it has been completely forgotten and repressed in the West. For the North Koreans, it is eternally present. They live in the eternal present of that experience, which they cannot, will not, metabolize or release into memory, until a lasting peace and security is created on the peninsula. That’s why all concerned parties have to put their shoulders into negotiations for peace. Otherwise the consequences will be unimaginable. Inside this current crisis, there is a seed of opportunity; the current South Korean president, who is in favor of de-escalation with North Korea, has put forth concrete measures to initiate the process.

Peace is possible on the Korean Peninsula. If the planet is to survive, there is no other choice.

K.J. Noh is a peace activist and scholar on the geopolitics of the Asian continent who writes for Counterpunch and Dissident Voice. He is special correspondent for KPFA Flashpoints on the “Pivot to Asia,” the Koreas, and the Pacific.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Black Agenda Report.

BEIRUT, LEBANON (12:00 P.M.) – According to Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman Talal Silo, the strategic interests of the United States in Syria dictate that its forces will continue to occupy the northern regions of the country, in collusion with Kurdish separatist wishes, for many decades to come.

According to the SDF representative, Washington will continue to develop its strategic policies in SDF-occupied northern Syria via various military and economic cooperation initiatives with Kurdish-dominated political structures that have been established under the Democratic Union Party (PYD) long after ISIS in gone.

In the past, Silo has openly admitted that the SDF is a tool of American foreign policy in Syria and that the alliance group is forbidden by its US handlers from cooperating with either the Damascus government or Russia.

The announcement by Silo comes around the same time British Army representative for Operation Inherent Resolve Major General Rupert Jones said that the US-led coalition (supposedly against ISIS) would not allow “Syrian regime forces” to move north of the Euphrates River (into SDF-occupied regions). In doing so, Jones essential confirmed suspicions long-expressed by pro-Damascus analysts that Western powers (led by US) pursue a second unspoken policy in Syria aimed at preventing government forces from restoring sovereignty in the country’s northern regions.

Featured image is from the author.

Pro-government forces, led by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces and Hezbollah, and supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have delivered a devastating blow to ISIS terrorists in the province of Homs.

According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, pro-government fighters have liberated the Tuweiyan gas factory, the Tuweiyan gas field, the Akram gas field, the Husain gas field, the Ghadur gas field and the Tuweiyan station. The SAA reportedly destroyed 15 armed vehicles of ISIS and removed dozens of IEDs and mines planted in the gas fields.

Separately, pro-government forces liberated Sawwanat Husayyah, Tall Husayyah, Sawwanat al-Qusayr and the nearby points and cut off the only ISIS supply line to the key ISIS-held village of Uqayrabat. According to some pro-government sources, ISIS is now fully encircled there. However, Uqayrabat and nearby villages are located in a stiff terrain that could contribute to a possible delay of the SAA operation in the area.

According to pro-government sources, the liberation of the Uqayrabat area will allow to shorten the frontline and to free between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters and about 200 vehicles and battle tanks for operations across Syria.

Later, the SAA and its allies took control of the Nabij gas gathering station east of Sukhna further contributing to a possible push to encircle the rest of the ISIS-held area north of Palmyra via capturing the Sukhna-Resafa road.

Government troops also seized Talalat Durub near Humaymah further tightening the siege on the ISIS-held village. When Humaymah is liberated, they will likely focus on liberating the T2 pumping station area near the border with Iraq.

Pro-Kurdish sources claim that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have liberated about 60% of the city of Raqqah including over a half of the Old Raqqah area, which is a key ISIS defense point inside the city. The SDF allegedly killed over 100 ISIS members in the recent clashes in the northern and western parts of Raqqah.

The SDF, backed up by the US-led coalition airpower, artillery and military advisers, has a upper hand in the battle against ISIS. However, a high number of propaganda disseminated by the both sides and a lack of video and photo evidence do not allow to provide a precise look at the real military situation in Old Raqqah and the nearby area.

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On August 14–ahead of the 72nd anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule–Korean Americans across the United States rallied to demand the U.S. government stop war provocations against North Korea and start talks towards peace. Korean Americans and other anti-war peace activists in New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles held coordinated protest actions in their respective regions.

Following the impeachment of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye and the election of liberal Moon Jae-in, Korean people around the world had high hopes for the resumption of North-South engagement. Many had expected North, South, and overseas Koreans to come together for a joint conference in Pyongyang or Seoul on August 15 in commemoration of Korea’s liberation. Just as Korea’s liberation was cut short by the arrival of U.S. occupying troops in 1945, however, the prospect of peace on the peninsula is once again thwarted, this time by Trump’s threats of “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

In New York, Korean American and other progressive peace activists protested outside the UN headquarters to protest UN sanctions against North Korea and demand the U.S. stop war-provoking military exercises.

In Washington DC, Korean American activists gathered in front of the White House to call on the U.S. to take the path of peace talks over military action.

In Los Angeles, 15 different peace groups rallied in Koreatown with drumming and a liberation dance performance.

The coordinated actions also released a joint statement calling on the Trump administration to stop war provocations aimed at North Korea. The statement draws attention to the long history of U.S. war provocations in the form of economic sanctions and military exercises:

[The] on-going state of suspended war, in addition the decades of US-South Korea joint military exercises and threats of nuclear war have pushed North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM)… We strongly urge the U.S. government to actively take the path toward dialogue and peace instead of continuing on the current path of sanctions and war.

More Calls for Peace

Other Korean American organizations issued statements denouncing the U.S. government’s war war threats in Korea. New York-based Nodutdol for Korean Community Development called on the U.S. to de-escalate and denounced the U.S. State Department’s recent ban preventing U.S. citizens from traveling to North Korea:

Such isolation — the end goal being regime collapse — is often put forth as the only possible option for dealing with a country the UN has described as guilty of crimes against humanity. But there are growing number of people, including diplomats and foreign policy experts, who say that US policy toward North Korea has simply not worked and that talks are the only way forward.

Read the full statement here.

The Korea Policy Institute (KPI) released an open letter on August 9, calling on Trump to start bilateral negotiations immediately:

The D.P.R.K.’s… offer of a freeze and the U.S. State Department’s recent offer to open dialog with the D.P.R.K., should it hold off on further testing of its nuclear weapons, indicates that there is will on both sides to pull back from the brink of war. That is sufficient ground for diplomacy to take root. Indeed, where other U.S. presidents have failed, you have the rare opportunity to succeed in achieving a durable peace with North Korea.

KPI called on the U.S. government to start the process by cancelling the upcoming Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises scheduled to start on August 21:

On the heels of highly inflammatory threats being hurled back and forth between your administration and North Korea, the Ulchi Freedom Guardian war game, starting August 21, 2017, is fraught with danger. A miscalculation on either side could set us on an irreversible path to war, possibly nuclear war in which millions are projected to perish in the first hours of fighting, and which would turn much of the region into an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland.

Read the full letter here.

All images in this article are from Zoom in Korea.

Featured image: King Felipe VI of Spain (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Barcelona, 17 August, 5 PM – a white van plows with 70 km/h into a mass of pedestrians, many of them tourists, on the famous Las Ramblas, in the heart of Barcelona. The death toll, 13 plus more than 100 injured. In an adjacent event, the police kill one alleged perpetrator. The main suspect flees and is still at large. Or is he? – Maybe he has already been killed.

All the recent truck killings were carried out by white vans. Does it mean anything? Maybe not. But importantly ISIS has already claimed responsibility, through their news agency Amaq, so say the presstitute media. Does anybody other than the mainstream media check? – Probably not. Doesn’t matter. When ISIS claims responsibilities, it puts hearts and minds at ease. The culprit has been found. It’s always the bloody Islamists-jihadists. We can rest in peace. And life goes on.

Indeed, life must go on and being prepared for more and increasing terror attacks is what the Mayor of London and Mr. Macron, the novice French President, already predicted. They must know a thing or two we don’t. OK, let’s brace ourselves. Much else we can’t do anyway – or can we?

The French head of the conservative Republican Party, François Fillon, a losing contender of the recent Presidential elections, said with regards to the French tourists who died in the Barcelona attack: “We must assume our responsibility…” referring to the fact that he was not elected President – as he, Monsieur Fillon, would have done away with this Islamist terror. How low-low can you sink? There are no words, no comments.

***

Fortunately, the alleged chief perpetrator leaves, as usual and conveniently, an ID behind in the cabin of the white van. So, he can be traced to Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Morocco. In a related event, in a small town, Alcanar, some 250 km south of Barcelona, where on Wednesday night – well before the deadly Ramblas run, a massive explosion took place in a residence, leaving one person dead and 7 insured. One person was arrested by police. One of the injured persons was suspected to be the driver of the white Rambla van.

In the early morning hours of Friday, hours after the Barcelona van-ram in the beach town of Cambrils, some 120 km south of Barcelona, another van runs a police barricade, attempting to embark on a similar terror attack against a tourist-packed pedestrian strip. Apparently one pedestrian was killed. The police however, so the ‘news’, killed all five alleged terrorists in the van. The police now say they suspect one of them was the driver of the white van that rammed the Rambla. Dead men can’t talk.

Source: LondonlovesBusiness.com

All has – sadly but predictably – the putrefied smell of another false flag. And the ‘system’, the deep-deep dark state, again, gets away with it.

The mix of information, is seemingly incoherent and purposely very confusing. Connections must be fabricated. Let chaos reign. Keep people confused. Keep them in the belief that police are on top of it and on the guard. You people must not think. Indeed, shopping, according to RT is almost back to normal. There is a candle vigil going on in plain daylight – and a bit of a somber ambiance – and a crowd is holding an anti-islamisation rally in the center of Barcelona. All the while the Rambla is overflowing with tourists as usual. That’s the way it should be. Shopping is first. Put police in charge. They will protect us henceforth. In case they can’t handle it, the military are right at hand.

In the meantime – and foremost – and immediately after the horror massacre, messages of condolences poured in from such illustrious personalities, like Theresa May, Madame Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Sweden’s PM Stefan Löfven, from Belgium, Denmark…. Sorrow, no end.

Let’s not forget, in the last year the Ram-Truck-Terror, now a convenient tool of horror, fear and killing, has hit Nice, France – 14 July 2016, Promenade des Anglais, 86 killed, almost 500 injured; Berlin, 19 December 2016, Christmas Market, 12 people dead, 56 injured; England twice, 22 March 2017, Westminster Bridge, 5 dead, more than 50 injured; London Bridge, June 2017, 7 dead; Stockholm, 8 April 2017, the city’s busiest shopping street – 4 died, 15 injured. And now Barcelona Spain.

The condolences of these leaders sound hollow and so hypocritical because they, the very leaders, are at the heart of the problem. If not the direct instigators of this simply patterned string of terror attacks, they are utterly complicit, allowing the strings being pulled on their secret services by order of the Master Global Deep State, whose goal it is to subdue Europe, to convert her into a police – military state, chaos, possibly civil war. A civil war not as bad as to curtail essential consumption. But civil strife all the same. Give corporate finance enough room to escalate their debt and profit spiral, but leave the populace poor enough to produce a Europe that is devoid of thinking; no time to reflect, no time to protest – as people will struggle for their sheer survival.

You don’t believe it? Look at Greece and elsewhere, what’s going on around you. Militarization slow motion. Macron is fully committed to it – and doesn’t shy from saying so. The French have understood, and Macron’s popularity has sunk from 66% after the “election” to less than 35% today. Never mind. He is there to stay for 5 years. The French Constitution says so. A (people’s) miracle would have to happen to remove him.

On another occasion, I have mentioned the sophisticated hundreds of millions of euros worth ghost town being built in a German military camp in Saxony-Althaus – for the very purpose of training urban warfare – just in case, you and your fellow protesters, when you can’t take it anymore, you may take to the streets and go on the barricades – that’s when the urban trained forces of power come in to oppress you, even kill you, if necessary. What you saw in Hamburg at the G20 Meeting in early July was just a benign precursor of what’s to come.

Yes, that’s what’s expecting us Europeans – the US is already there, they are always a few notches ahead of us, they are doing the trial run for us. – Barcelona is just a little stone in the mosaic, in the Big Picture of “Full Spectrum Dominance” – the ultimate goal of the PNAC (Plan for a new American Century) – the Washington’s and the Deep-Dark One-Eyed State’s Bible, written and periodically updated by the ultimate One-Eyed Anglo-Zionists on top of the echelon. We are almost there.

Why now Spain? – Spain has been spared of major terror attacks since the 11-M (11 March 2004) attack, when a few explosions at Madrid’s Atocha train station killed 192 people and injured over 2000, three days ahead of Presidential elections. This had nothing to do with Jihadism. Though the terror was immediately blamed on Al Qaeda, no proof was ever found. It was the work of the right-wing government under PP (Partido Popular) in power at the time, blaming the Socialist Party (PSOE), hoping to defeat it. It backfired. The socialists won and stayed in power for two terms, a total of 8 years. But in the second term neoliberal might descended also on the socialists in Spain, as it did and does everywhere in Europe. The Socialists became and still are to this day, traitors to the people.

Today, Spain, with a smooth Parliamentary coup in 2016 that went almost unnoticed, has quietly slipped back to the neoliberal Rajoy Government. So, Spain is supposed to be safe for the system. It also followed the strict rules of the IMF, today reaching 100% debt to GDP, up from about 66% before the neoliberal manufactured crisis hit Europe and the western world in 2007 / 2008.

That’s exactly what the system wants. Spain is ready for another economic collapse, orchestrated in connivance with her leadership. Ready for another round of rent taking – more privatization, pension and base salary cuts – the usual. Again, look at Greece and you see the pattern. Wall Street’s appetite is never satisfied. It’s the fraudulent dollar (and euro) economy we are enslaved to that makes this human tragedy possible – and people don’t seem to even notice who and what is behind the planned misery.

Source: Nation Multimedia

Spain is on track for further ‘milking’. So, why more suffering now? – Spain is an important NATO country with three naval and military bases. The majority of the population hates NATO, would like to get rid of it. What better way of convincing the people that the forces of NATO are useful defenders against Islamist attacks. Yes, weak and with fear you accept (almost) anything. Actually, you call for your hangman to protect you – in fact, it’s the collective Stockholm syndrome.

Therefore, let’s not get sidetracked by the hollow and hypocritical words of sorrow of the chief vassal-leaders (sic) of our three most powerful European countries which are meant to lead the way for the people of the European Continent to become gradually but surely enslaved into mere hapless and powerless serfs, deprived of civil and human rights. We are well on the way there. Have you noticed?

It’s called Fascism with a smile. It’s a slow-moving soft but deadly fascism that fascinates you at every corner, pulling you deeper and deeper into the hole of no return. It’s the neoliberal fascism, that has abrogated and done away with every law, every regulation that may have protected you and your hard-earned savings and public assets; it conveyed everything to the market. Even your pensions and your saving. They are no longer yours. The market decides. Don’t believe it? – Just look at Greece. – “Hasn’t happen yet to me” – Well it will, I guarantee it, if you don’t take over your nation and make her again YOUR sovereign country. Act rather sooner than later. Time is running out.

Naturally, the situation will become unbearable to the point where you can’t take it anymore, and you will want to take to the street. It’ll be too late. Urban warfare will be ready against you.

Fascism with a smile has brought you to the point where there is no going back. It’s a new fascism. It’s not Hitler’s fascism. It’s soft, sophisticated and deadly, if you oppose it. You are manipulated by a blue-managed matrix, encircled by police and military, ready to fire – but you will be fine and get fed as long as you nod, as in agreement.

Barcelona, Nice, London, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm – and whatever else is to come, are mere little pebbles in a growing mosaic. You better look ahead what the picture, the mosaic may look like when its finished – the Big Picture is nasty, very nasty.

Think about the message of sorrow Mr. Putin sent to King Felipe VI of Spain:

“We strongly condemn this brutal and cynical crime against civilians. What has happened once again emphasizes the need for the global community to join efforts to fight against the forces of terror.”

Mr. Putin has not mentioned Islam. He knows that he talks to western leaders who are in bed with terror, that getting them out of bed is a pipe dream. They are bought or threatened – with promises of heaven – to lead this system of terror all the way to a One World Order, or as India’s President Modi said so eloquently in a recent RT interview – until the world is eventually one happy family. Bingo.

But it is not the end. There are alternatives. The western world is like a sinking ship. It’s a slow sinking ship, slow and smiling as the fascism that drives it. We may not notice it. But look all around you, the massive killing, the fraud, the lawlessness at every step, up to the highest levels of government. Forget the msm presstitute, they are lying.

Most everybody knows this today. The next few centuries or more, are the Age of the East – Russia and China are opening the gates for an Economy of Peace, led by President Xi Jinping’s initiative, the enormous multi-pronged OBI – One Belt Initiative, formerly the OBOR – One Belt One Road; a new Silk road that stretches from Shanghai to Hamburg and from Vladivostok to Lisbon and connecting Syria and Iran in the South.

Be brave! Dare to detach. Detach from the lie and fraud we have been living for the last two millennia, all the way back to the Roman Empire and which may be reaching soon a peak, a fiery and bloody peak which may end life as we know it in a nuclear all-annihilating holocaust. Because the dying beast may not want to leave survivors on this planet of ours.

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

“Three fatal incidents believed to be linked to terrorism occur over a 24-hour period and a 190-mile stretch of north-east Spain” 

“Fourteen people have been confirmed killed in two attacks in Spain on Thursday. Thirteen died when a van was driven in to crowds on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, and one person was killed by a car in Cambrils, a coastal town 75 miles (120km) to the the south. The horrific events appear to have begun the night before, in another town 120 miles south of Barcelona.” (Guardian) 

UPDATE (Saturday, August 19, 13.40pm local time, 07.40am ET) 

Moussa Oukabir is dead. And now the police reports say we made a mistake, he was not the driver. There is another guy that we are going after. In the meantime two suspected drivers have been killed. One of them, according to police reports was not involved in the attacks. 

How many innocent “suspects” have been killed by the police. 

According to the latest media reports:

“The driver in Thursday’s van attack that killed 13 people in a tourist area of Barcelona may still be alive and on the run, Spanish police say.” (BBC) His name is Moroccan born Younes Abouyaaqoub, now named by Spanish media as the suspected driver.”

Abouyaaqoub, 22, lived in the town of Ripoll to the north of Barcelona. Three people have been arrested in Ripoll and one person in Alcanar.Oukabir had previously been seen as the main suspect – but late on Friday police chief Josep Trapero told local TV that the theory that he was the driver now “had less weight”.

A police manhunt to arrest Younes is ongoing. Will he be arrested or killed like all the other suspects

According to police sources (EARLIER REPORTS FRIDAY), the alleged suspect driver of the van Moussa Oukabir, 17 years old (18 in some news reports) in the Las Ramblas attack was shot dead by police on Friday.

Latest reports:

“In the early hours of Friday police shot dead five attackers, including Oukabir, in Cambrils after the men drove a car into pedestrians, killing one woman and injuring six other people.

The attackers’ vehicle overturned and when the men got out they were quickly fired upon by police. One was reportedly brandishing a knife. Police chief Trapero said one officer killed four of the attackers single-handedly (BBC, August 19, 2017)

This act by police was gratuitous. One alleged suspect brandishes a knife and then you kill all of them rather than arrest them.

***

It is worth noting that two hours after the Barcelona terror attack, a suspect “was shot dead” after driving through a roadblock in outskirts of Barcelona. According to police reports, he was killed by mistake: “He is now not believed to be linked to the attack.”

Moussa’s brother Driss Oukabir had initially been identified as a suspect when his ID was found at the scene of the Barcelona attack. Following the press reports concerning his ID, Driss went voluntarily to the police station saying that his ID had been stolen and he was not in any way involved in the attacks.

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The CIA Torture Case: On Eve of the Trial, Psychologists Agree to Settlement in ACLU Case on Behalf of Three Torture Victims

By American Civil Liberties Union, August 18, 2017

A jury trial was scheduled to begin on September 5, after the plaintiffs successfully overcame every attempt by the psychologists to have the case dismissed.

South Korea: There Will Be No War on the Korean Peninsula

By Alahednews, August 18, 2017

There will be no war on the Korean peninsula, South Korean President Moon Jae-In stated Thursday, adding that Seoul effectively had a veto over US military action in response to the North’s nuclear and missile programs.

‘Economic War with China Is Everything,’ North Korea a ‘Sideshow’: White House Chief Strategist

By Telesur, August 18, 2017

Bannon indicated that the current tensions and threats surrounding the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea, are just a “sideshow” for the battle for global hegemony with China. He said he is pressuring within the Trump administration to use the tensions in Korea as a way to impose economic pressure on China.

Syria: As the War Continues, WMD Lies Linger. Chemical Weapons in the Hands of Al Qaeda

By Tony Cartalucci, August 18, 2017

The Syrian government – perhaps in an effort to head off another round of accusations, threats, and direct military aggression carried out by the US – is leveling accusations against the United States itself and terrorist organizations it has funded, armed, and backed for the past 6 years of using chemical weapons – primarily to create a pretext for wider war.

Air Force Chief: Israel Has Attacked Syrian Arms Convoys Nearly 100 Times in 5 Years

By Jason Ditz, August 18, 2017

Maj. Gen. Eshel appeared to offer a hint at this discrepancy, bragging that many of Israel’s strikes had managed to “go under the radar,” and while he insisted Israel acts “irrespective of the risks,” he also appeared quite keen on Israel carrying out such attacks without getting into an overt war over them.

Washington Pushes the World Towards the New Cuban Missile Crisis

By Goran Lompar, August 18, 2017

The US officials point at Russia while the Pentagon has been violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty since the early 2000s.

Barcelona, Manchester, Berlin, Paris, Nice, London, New York: Passports and IDs Mysteriously Discovered in the Wake of Terror Attacks

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 18, 2017

A Spanish passport of “a person of Moroccan origin was found at the scene of the attack” according to Britain’s Daily Express.  The Spanish media reports confirm that the suspect is Spanish from the autonomous city of Melilla which has borders with Morocco. Police sources state that his identity is being used in the investigation.

There is increasing chatter among mostly European diplomats that their nations’ displeasure about President Donald Trump would best be shown by staging a diplomatic boycott, namely, recalling ambassadors in Washington and leaving only chargés d’affaires in charge. This type of measure has been used in the past to show opposition to the domestic and foreign policies of foreign governments. Recently, Saudi Arabia led such a boycott, albeit for spurious reasons, against Qatar. Many nations have recalled their ambassadors to Israel following moves by that country against Palestinians.

The disgust and frustration by Europeans over Trump’s defense of neo-Nazism and Ku Klux Klan protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, is evident on the front cover of The Economist, a magazine that has wide readership among the diplomatic and business communities in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. A Trump caricature is shown with a bullhorn in the shape of a KKK hood.

Currently, there are 23 chargés in Washington, but very few of these have been left running their missions because of political problems. Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Belarus withdrew their ambassadors some time ago amid diplomatic rifts with the United States. Other nations, including Uganda, the Philippines, Gambia, St. Lucia, Zambia, Hungary, and Argentina just have not gotten around to naming new ambassadors, which has nothing to do with Trump. However, the absence of a European Union ambassador in Washington may have something to do with Trump’s repeated criticism of the organization.

Ambassadors do not carry the clout that they once wielded in Washington under previous presidents. If nations decide to withdraw their ambassadors for “consultations,” diplomatic-speak for a subtle downgrading of relations, the functions of the embassies—issuing visas, conducting intelligence gathering, attending receptions, and lobbying Congress—would carry on with little overall impact on operations.

When Trump signaled his willingness to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, some Arab leaders called for the closure of all Arab embassies in Washington. Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament and president of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union, called for such a boycott if Trump carried out his promise. However, the Trump administration put off its plan and the boycott never materialized.

The aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War saw several Arab nations sever diplomatic relations with the United States.

If a diplomatic boycott of the Trump emerges, expect it to start with the Nordic and Benelux blocs in Europe, perhaps followed by Germany, France, Ireland, and Greece. Trump’s support for the KKK activists in Charlottesville could also see a negative reaction from Africa, with South Africa being the most likely to join in a diplomatic boycott of Trump.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

Featured image: Drs. James Mitchell (left) and John Bruce Jessen (right)

NEW YORK — In a first for a case involving CIA torture, the American Civil Liberties Union announced a settlement today in the lawsuit against the two psychologists who designed and implemented the agency’s brutal program. A jury trial was scheduled to begin on September 5, after the plaintiffs successfully overcame every attempt by the psychologists to have the case dismissed.

The lawsuit was brought by the ACLU on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, who froze to death in a secret CIA prison. The three men were tortured and experimented on using methods developed by the CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen.

“This is a historic victory for our clients and the rule of law,” said ACLU attorney Dror Ladin. “This outcome shows that there are consequences for torture and that survivors can and will hold those responsible for torture accountable. It is a clear warning for anyone who thinks they can torture with impunity.”

The full terms of the settlement agreement are confidential.

“We brought this case seeking accountability and to help ensure that no one else has to endure torture and abuse, and we feel that we have achieved our goals,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement praising the settlement. “We were able to tell the world about horrific torture, the CIA had to release secret records, and the psychologists and high-level CIA officials were forced to answer our lawyers’ questions. It has been a long, difficult road, but we are very pleased with the results.”

Mohamed Ben Soud

Until now, every lawsuit trying to hold people accountable for the CIA torture program has been dismissed at initial stages because the government successfully argued that letting the cases proceed would reveal state secrets. But unlike previous cases, this time the Justice Department did not try to derail the lawsuit. The defendants attempted to dismiss the case multiple times, but the court consistently ruled that the plaintiffs had valid claims.

“Government officials and contractors are on notice that they cannot hide from accountability for torture,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “Our clients’ groundbreaking case has changed the legal landscape. It showed that the courts are fully capable of handling lawsuits involving abuses committed in the name of national security.”

The case was filed in October 2015, basing its legal claims on the declassified facts in the executive summary of the Senate report on CIA torture. During the lawsuit’s discovery process, dozens of new documents detailing the torture program were unearthed, and the case forced former senior CIA officials Jose Rodriguez and John Rizzo — in addition to Mitchell and Jessen themselves — to testify about torture during depositions.

“Thanks to our clients’ commitment and bravery their stories are public, as are new details about the design and implementation of the CIA torture program,” said ACLU attorney Steven Watt. “This settlement is a testament to their perseverance and will help them heal.”

In the court’s ruling earlier this month sending the case to trial, the judge wrote,

“The evidence would support a finding Defendants designed the [enhanced interrogation techniques] to be used on detainees, and thus they clearly had knowledge they would be so used.”

In addition to torturing prisoners themselves, Mitchell and Jessen trained other CIA personnel in their methods. In 2005, they founded a company that the CIA contracted with to run its entire torture program, including supplying interrogators for the agency’s secret “black site” prisons. The government paid the company $81 million over several years.

“I am so glad to help our clients make a difference through this case,” said Lawrence Lustberg of the law firm Gibbons PC. “We have long partnered with the ACLU in torture transparency and accountability litigation, and it is deeply satisfying to have come this far.”

Suleiman-Abdullah

The plaintiffs sued Mitchell and Jessen under the Alien Tort Statute — which allows federal lawsuits for gross human rights violations — for their commission of torture; cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; nonconsensual human experimentation; and war crimes.

As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs and defendants agreed to the following joint statement:

“Drs. Mitchell and Jessen acknowledge that they worked with the CIA to develop a program for the CIA that contemplated the use of specific coercive methods to interrogate certain detainees.

“Plaintiff Gul Rahman was subjected to abuses in the CIA program that resulted in his death and in pain and suffering for his family, including his personal representative Obaidullah. Plaintiffs Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud were also subjected to coercive methods in the CIA program, which resulted in pain and suffering for them and their families.

“Plaintiffs assert that they were subjected to some of the methods proposed by Drs. Mitchell and Jessen to the CIA, and stand by their allegations regarding the responsibility of Drs. Mitchell and Jessen.

“Drs. Mitchell and Jessen assert that the abuses of Mr. Salim and Mr. Ben Soud occurred without their knowledge or consent and that they were not responsible for those actions. Drs. Mitchell and Jessen also assert that they were unaware of the specific abuses that ultimately caused Mr. Rahman’s death and are also not responsible for those actions.

“Drs. Mitchell and Jessen state that it is regrettable that Mr. Rahman, Mr. Salim, and Mr. Ben Soud suffered these abuses.”

The attorneys representing the plaintiffs are Shamsi and Ladin of the ACLU National Security Project and Watt of the ACLU Human Rights Program; Emily Chiang of the ACLU of Washington; Lustberg, Kate Janukowicz, Daniel McGrady, and Avram Frey of the law firm Gibbons PC; Paul Hoffman of Schonbrun, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman LLP, Los Angeles; Anthony DiCaprio of the Law Office of Anthony DiCaprio; and Jeffry Finer of the Center for Justice, Spokane, Washington.

All images in this article are from ACLU.

When Paul Robeson belted out the lyric “I’m tired of living, and scared of dying,” he stumbled on to a paradox of emotional dissonance that could easily define the geo-strategic cognitive dissonance that the US exhibits when dealing with its fellow superpowers Russia and China.

Time and again the United States has shown that it does not want war with either of those countries, and these feelings are of course mutual. However, the US has a strange penchant for conducting provocative measures that inexorably harm relations with both Russia and China in mind-blowingly close proximity in time to moves suggesting rapprochement or, at minimum, de-escalation of tensions.

The most recent example is the Pentagon signing an agreement to open lines of direct communication with the commanders of the People’s Liberation Army to avoid “miscalculations” in areas ranging from the Korean Peninsula to the South and East China Seas.

In a rational environment, this would be seen as a US climb-down over actions China finds unacceptable in Korea and in its maritime waters. But in the current environment, while the US has signed an agreement that would ideally reduce tensions between the Chinese and US armed forces, the US president has also authorized his government to open an investigation into Chinese trade practices. While the proximate issue is US intellectual-property rights in China, the phrase “anti-Chinese sanctions” is on the tip of everyone’s lips.

Far from being out of character, the dichotomy of cooperating with China and engaging in a would-be pre-emptive trade war that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has warned could be deeply dangerous is actually par for the course under the Trump administration.

On July 7, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met for the first time. The most meaningful outcome of the meeting was the agreement jointly to police a ceasefire and accompanying de-escalation zone in southwestern Syria, along with Jordan.

Less than a month later, Trump signed a sanctions bill against Russia that Moscow remains furious about. Détente 2.0 officially lasted from July 7 to August 3, 2017.

In respect of Iran, the Trump administration has quietly but officially stated that Tehran has not violated a single clause of the 2015 nuclear deal, but US officials continue to sanction Iran and continue to speak of Iran as though it has violated every agreement ever signed in history.

This has the aggregate effect of making the United States appear tired of warring but scared of cooperating.

In reality, neither Russia, China nor Iran wants war with the United States. One could also add North Korea, Mexico, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe or just about every other country on the planet to that list.

Therefore, while moves to de-escalate military tensions are positive developments no matter where they happen, the mixed signals the US is sending will only serve as a demonstration that the US is not serious about proper de-escalation and cooperation and therefore it is only natural for the wider world to assume the worst about the United States, which far too often translates into “the tense status quo hasn’t changed”.

What’s more is that while pundits argue over whether this is part of a larger American geo-strategic plan to sow confusion or is simply an inexperienced Trump administration that cannot decide if it is coming or going, the wider world is more concerned with the effect than the cause.

In this sense, the US is less like the longing voice of “Old Man River” than it is like the author of a future worst-seller, “How to Lose Friends and Influence Nothing”.

Adam Garrie is a geopolitical expert with an emphasis on Eurasia. He is managing editor at theduran.com and weekly host of Digital Divides with Nedka Bablkku.

Tensions have soared on the peninsula in recent months, with Pyongyang carrying out its first successful tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM], bringing much of the US within range.

Last week it threatened to send a salvo of rockets towards the US territory of Guam – although it appears to have backed off for now – while US President Donald Trump promised “fire and fury” and said that Washington’s weapons were “locked and loaded.”

The intense rhetoric on both sides raised fears of a miscalculation leading to catastrophic consequences – Pyongyang has vast artillery forces deployed within range of Seoul, where millions of people live.

But Moon stressed:

“I will prevent war at all cost.”

“I want all South Koreans to believe with confidence that there will be no war,” he told a press conference marking his first 100 days in office.

The US has been the South’s security guarantor since the end of the Korean War in 1953, which left the peninsula divided and technically still in a state of conflict with no peace treaty signed.

Washington has 28,500 troops stationed in the country to protect it from the North.

Moon, however, said Seoul effectively had a veto on military action by the US.

Washington and Trump had agreed that “no matter what option they take about North Korea, all decisions will be made after consulting with and getting agreement with the Republic of Korea.”

Trump’s rhetoric raised alarm among observers but Moon, who visited Washington at the end of June, declined to criticize his choice of words.

The US leader was “trying to pressure North Korea by showing a firm resolution,” he said.

Featured image is from the author.

The United States is currently engaged in an “economic war” with China to maintain its position as the world’s top hegemon, and appears to be losing it, White House Strategist and former editor of the right-wing publication Breitbart News, Steve Bannon said in an unexpected interview published Wednesday.

“We’re at economic war with China. It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and its gonna be them if we go down this path,” Bannon said to author and professor Robert Kuttner.

“The economic war with China is everything. And we have have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover,” he continued.

Bannon indicated that the current tensions and threats surrounding the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea, are just a “sideshow” for the battle for global hegemony with China. He said he is pressuring within the Trump administration to use the tensions in Korea as a way to impose economic pressure on China.

“We’re going to run the tables on these guys [China]. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us,” he said.

Although Trump has repeatedly engaged in beligerant rhetoric toward the DPRK, saying that the U.S.’s arsenal is “locked and loaded” and that the North Korean people will face “fire and fury,” Bannon directly rejected the potential for a military confrontation on the peninsula.

“There’s no military solution [to the DPRK’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us,” Bannon said.

The DPRK has continued its program to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons in spite of pressure and threats demanding that they halt the efforts. They claim that the weapons act as a deterrent to a potential U.S. invasion or regime change attempt.

Bannon went on to explain how he was acting withing the Trump administration to push anti-China economic policies, such as the recently announced Section 301 complaint from the 1974 Trade Act targeting China’s alleged “unfair” trade practices. His struggle is within the administration also, where he said he fights “every day” against the “apparatus” to pressure those within the administration to follow his line and sideline those who don’t.

China has been pushing for a “double freeze” plan, which would involve the U.S. halting its military exercises on the Korean Peninsula, which is a key demand of the DPRK, in exchange for Pyongyang stopping its missile tests. On Tuesday, U.S. Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert scoffed at the idea that such a deal would take place. Bannon however, indicated he might consider such a deal, but that such prospects were remote.

Trump is currently embroiled in criticism domestically and internationally for placing the blame for violence on “both sides” of the recent neo-Nazi and white-nationalist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in a death and numerous injuries when a white-nationalist drove a car into a group of counter-protesters.

Bannon however, dismissed white nationalists as “a collection of clowns.”

“Ethno-nationalism – it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much,” he said.

While he rejected “ethno-nationalism” in the interview, he made clear that he was embracing economic nationalism, as embodied in his anti-China crusades. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats,” he said. “I want them to talk about racism every day.”

As a former editor of the far-right wing publication Breitbart News, Bannon is considered to be a major figure within the U.S. far-right, and a major ideological force within the Trump administration as the White House Chief Strategist.

US President Donald Trump told the media on August 10 that he would not “rule out “military options” for dealing with what he has described as the “Maduro dictatorship” in Venezuela.

His comments represent the latest ratcheting up of threats on the government of democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro that have come in the wake of the country’s July 30 vote for a National Constituent Assembly (ANC) and its subsequent inauguration on August 4.

Proposed by Maduro as a way to find a peaceful and democratic solution to months of political turmoil in the country, the ANC will have plenipotentiary powers to deal with the current economic and political crisis. It will also discuss proposals to reform the constitution, though any official amendments will have to be put to a referendum.

The ANC has been opposed by the opposition who boycotted the elections and attempted to stop the July 30 vote going ahead.

In response to Trump’s latest threats, a mass demonstration was held in Caracas on August 14.

To get a better sense of the situation on the ground in Venezuela, Green Left Weekly’s Federico Fuentes interviewed Steve Ellner a well-known analyst of Venezuelan and Latin American politics and a retired professor at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente.

***

In our previous interview you referred to the situation in Venezuela as a stand-off. What were Maduro’s objectives in calling for elections for the ANC on July 30? Can you describe the situation leading up to the elections?  

Yes indeed, Maduro’s decision to call elections for the ANC was designed to break a deadlock.

For exactly four months prior to the elections, the opposition had engaged in illegal and sometimes violent protests (known in Venezuela as guarimbas), disrupting traffic and clashing with security forces. There were over 100 fatal casualties, more than double the number of those produced by the protests during nearly the same lapse of time in 2014.

But this time the situation was not exactly the same. In the first place, the protesters gathered in smaller units to completely paralyse larger areas, sometimes entire cities. Roadblocks very often consisted of just a handful of protesters, from 3 to 10.

The violent protesters were bolder and more aggressive than in 2014 and they even attacked military bases. They evidently had some degree of training and their weapons, although apparently home-made, were in some cases fairly sophisticated.

In addition, the protesters counted on more international support. Almost all of South America has gone from left to right and even though those governments are discredited – with the popularity of presidents at 20% or less, and in the case of Brazil less than 5% – that hasn’t held them back from playing an active role in condemning the Maduro government for supposed violation of human rights.

Finally, the protests in 2014 were concentrated almost exclusively in wealthy municipalities whose mayors belonged to the opposition. Now in addition to that, there were roadblocks in the middle class areas of Chavista municipalities.

But the deadlock was due to the fact that just like in 2014, the protests did not resonate in the barrios, nor did they trigger a positive response in the military.

The attack on the military base in Valencia on August 6 was hardly a military uprising as some of the corporate media claimed. The perpetrators were non-military mercenaries, except the guy who led it who had been discharged from the military some time ago.

In short, the ANC elections were basically an initiative designed to introduce a new element in order to change the scenario and avoid a prolonged armed confrontation with no end in sight.

What about the opposition? It seems that street protests have diminished, at least compared to before the ANC vote, and there is talk of participation in the regional elections. What do you see happening?

For the first time in two years, it can be said that the Chavista movement has gained the upper hand vis-a-vis the opposition. But it’s a very fragile upper hand.

The calling of the ANC was a calculated risk. There was the possibility that the opposition could successfully rally behind rejection of the ANC. They attempted to achieve that objective by putting forward the argument that Maduro should have called a referendum to obtain popular approval for his ANC proposal.

I personally believe that that argument was weak. What is important is that Maduro is committed to submitting the ANC’s final document to a referendum.

Furthermore, how many times throughout history has the convening of a constituent assembly been approved by popular vote? That was the case in 1999, but it certainly wasn’t the case with the previous constitution of 1961, nor in 1946 when delegates were elected to a constitutional assembly but there was no referendum. And in what other countries has such a referendum been called?

The guarimba protests more or less terminated following the July 30 vote, in spite of the opposition’s empty threat of a “zero hour.” This occurred because the guarimbas were not sustainable over time, just as was the case in 2014. And in both cases – as well as in the case of the general strike of 2002-2003 – the opposition lacked a fall-back plan, a “plan B,” in order to save face.

The protests were also discontinued because opposition parties now want to participate in the gubernatorial elections to be held in December. Opposition leaders are thus in the embarrassing position – “embarrassing” to say the least – of claiming that electoral fraud was committed on July 30, while participating in new elections.

The parties that participate in those elections cannot easily question the legitimacy of the electoral council, the CNE, because if they do their people will not go out and vote. People will say, and they do say, if you don’t believe that the referee is impartial, you have no reason to participate in the game. That’s true with sports and its true with politics. You can’t have it both ways.

For these reasons, I say that the Chavistas have the upper hand for the time being. The opposition is evidently divided over participation in the electoral process. Some people are loath to vote in the elections because doing so is a tacit recognition that the guarimbas was a mistake. Participation delegitimises the decision to have engaged in the guarimba. That’s a very emotional point because of the number of deaths and injuries resulting from the protests.

Finally, the calling of the ANC is an initiative that allows the Chavistas to rein in numerous sceptics within their movement who now say, “let’s give this a chance”. It sure beats the uncertainty and violence of the last four months.

Were the parties of the opposition grouped in the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition calling the shots during the guarimbas? 

It is true that the protesters, who were overwhelmingly young people who called themselves “the Resistance”, were characterised by an anti-party attitude. But the parties of the opposition obviously encouraged their actions and were thus partly responsible for the violence.

Day after day, MUD leaders such as Henrique Capriles issued calls for protest marches to reach downtown Caracas, even though they knew full well that the government would not allow it. The government feared a repetition of April 11, 2002 (when violence erupted after an opposition march headed to downtown Caracas, leading to the coup). But beginning on April 1, opposition leaders called the marches anyway, resulting in violent clashes with security forces on a daily basis.

The fact that the guarimbas ceased practically overnight shows that there was a political decision that was made, obviously by the leaders of the MUD. This shows that the guarimbas was hardly leaderless and spontaneous. And it shows that there was an articulation between the MUD leaders and the protesters, both the peaceful and the violent ones.

You say the decision to convoke the ANC was a calculated risk. Does this mean you’re not sure of the outcome? Some view the ANC vote which, with its 8 million votes, as a reinvigoration of Chavismo and its popular class base?

As I said, the Chavista advantage over the opposition at this moment is tenuous.

It is true that in the months leading up to the ANC, the Chavistas demonstrated a mobilisation capacity. Their mobilisation capacity is impressive not only because of the numbers but because the mobilisations have been ongoing over such a considerable period of time, actually 20 years since it dates back to the 1998 presidential campaign.

This has been one of Maduro’s strong points. Unlike Lula and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil in 2016, Maduro mobilised the Chavista rank and file as a response to the challenge posed by the guarimbas. The very calling of the ANC elections is an example of the mobilisation.

But Maduro’s hard core backing stands at about 20% of the voting population. There is an even greater number of people who supported [late president Hugo] Chavez but have become disillusioned under Maduro and many of them (about two million) decided not to vote in the National Assembly elections of December 2015, and as a result the opposition won by a large margin.

These people (the “light Chavistas”) participated on July 30 for three reasons: rejection of the guarimbas; rejection of foreign interference in Venezuelan politics, which under Trump has been more blatant or “indiscrete” than Obama; and because they want to see if something will come of the ANC.

If the ANC fails to deliver, these people will be alienated even more so than before and it’s hard to predict how their disappointment may get expressed. It will be especially intense because Maduro and the other Chavista leaders have been touting the ANC practically as a panacea for the nation’s urgent problems.

How do you explain the disillusionment?

I asked Jorge Arreaza, the current Foreign Minister, about a month ago what the key factor is that explains the contraction of the size of the Chavista movement. He claimed with a great amount of certainty that the fundamental problem has to do with the pressing economic problems such as scarcity of basic commodities and triple-digit inflation. The economic situation in Venezuela is quite difficult, particularly for the non-privileged sectors but also the middle class.

Thinking about Arreaza’s statement, I have drawn the conclusion that while economic problems are the primary concern of the broad base of the Chavista movement, the issue of corruption and bureaucracy is what most undermines the commitment and zeal of the movement’s activists. At least that’s been my impression. The activists are key players for any political or social movement

Will the ANC deal with the problem of corruption and bureaucracy?

I’m not at all sure. Up to now the ANC delegates seem more inclined to clamp down on those who engaged in and were responsible for the illegal protests as well as the “economic war” consisting of hoarding and speculation.

Corruption is a thorny issue. I am surprised at how little discussion there was about it during the campaign for the ANC. The opposition’s discourse places the blame exclusively on Chavistas and their allies in the private sector.

But the fact of the matter is that much of the blame for the notorious sale of preferential dollars for bogus imports falls on the shoulders of businesspeople who belong to the traditional bourgeoisie, which for the most part opposes the Chavista government, as well as the multinationals. But needless to say government officials are also involved.

You wrote an important article in response to those on the left who have taken a “plague on both your houses” approach to the Venezuelan opposition and Maduro government, pointing to areas of convergence and disagreement. Why do you feel it is so important that the left take a side in this dispute?

I believe that failure to recognise the positive aspects of the Maduro presidency undermines efforts at international solidarity, which is very much needed at this moment of such intense hostility and threats on the part of European, North American and South American governments.

Leftists who support the “plague on both your houses” position deny this assertion and claim that they fully support the defence of Venezuelan sovereignty. However the facts as well as common sense demonstrate that harsh criticism of a government interferes with solidarity in defence of that nation’s sovereignty.

It’s hard to imagine someone working with enthusiasm and zeal in defence of a regime that they despise. Consider the difference between the Vietnam War movement in the US and elsewhere and opposition to the war in Afghanistan. Ho Chi Minh was a hero for the New Left that spearheaded the anti-war movement in the 60s. Is there a comparable movement in opposition to US intervention in Afghanistan? Certainly the Taliban does not inspire people to go out and protest, notwithstanding the absurdity of US involvement in that nation and the fact that it is by far the longest war in US history.

***

Steve Ellner taught economic history and political science at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente from 1977 to 2003. His latest article is “Implications of Marxist State Theories and How They Play Out in Venezuela,” published in Historical Materialism (2017). Another article, tentatively titled “Venezuela’s Chávez Experience: The Knotty Issues and the Lessons,” will appear in the October issue of Monthly Review.

Despite the now historical lies exposed in the wake of the devastating US invasion and occupation of Iraq beginning in 2003, the United States has attempted to use similar lies regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) repeatedly as a pretext for similar wars including in neighboring Syria.

The Syrian government – perhaps in an effort to head off another round of accusations, threats, and direct military aggression carried out by the US – is leveling accusations against the United States itself and terrorist organizations it has funded, armed, and backed for the past 6 years of using chemical weapons – primarily to create a pretext for wider war.

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad stated at a press conference that the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun, Idlib chemical attack was staged by US-backed militants, including members of the so-called “White Helmets,” a US and European funded front posing as humanitarian workers but who serve as auxiliaries for listed terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda and its various Syrian affiliates.

As the Syrian military retakes territory from foreign-backed militants, munition warehouses and stockpiles, including those used for the production and deployment of chemical weapons for staged attacks, are being systematically uncovered. In them, chemical weapons – both lethal and nonlethal – provided by the United States and its allies are being discovered.

Mekdad would also point out that the use of chemical weapons by foreign-backed militants did not serve any sort of tactical purpose, but was instead being used as a form of blackmail.

While Western-dominated “international” institutions will likely not accept any evidence provided by the Syrian government – the Syrian government’s narrative emerges as a far more logical explanation for the last 6 years of conflict and accusations made regarding chemical weapon use.

Chemical Weapons are Political, Not Tactical 

Despite claims by the Western media made in an attempt to enhance US lies regarding WMDs, chemical weapons are particularly ineffective on the battlefield – with conventional weapons being many times more effective.

This was revealed in detail by a study produced by the United States itself, conducted by the US Marine Corps regarding the devastating Iran-Iraq War fought between 1980-1988 which saw the extensive use of chemical weapons.

It goes without saying that gas masks were a must during the Iran-Iraq war of the mid 80s

The document titled, “Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War” under “Appendix B: Chemical Weapons,” provided a comprehensive look at the all-out chemical warfare that took place during the 8 year conflict. Several engagements are studied in detail, revealing large amounts of chemical agents deployed mainly to create areas of denial.

The effectiveness and lethality of chemical weapons is summarized in the document as follows (emphasis added):

Chemical weapons require quite particular weather and geographic conditions for optimum effectiveness. Given the relative nonpersistence of all agents employed during this war, including mustard, there was only a brief window of employment opportunity both daily and seasonally, when the agents could be used. Even though the Iraqis employed mustard agent in the rainy season and also in the marshes, its effectiveness was significantly reduced under those conditions. As the Iraqis learned to their chagrin, mustard is not a good agent to employ in the mountains, unless you own the high ground and your enemy is in the valleys.

We are uncertain as to the relative effectiveness of nerve agents since those which were employed are by nature much less persistent than mustard. In order to gain killing concentrations of these agents, predawn attacks are best, conducted in areas where the morning breezes are likely to blow away from friendly positions.

Chemical weapons have a low kill ratio. Just as in WWl, during which the ratio of deaths to injured from chemicals was 2-3 percent, that figure appears to be borne out again in this war although reliable data on casualties are very difficult to obtain. We deem it remarkable that the death rate should hold at such a low level even with the introduction of nerve agents. If those rates are correct, as they well may be, this further reinforces the position that we must not think of chemical weapons as “a poor man’s nuclear weapon.” While such weapons have great psychological potential, they are not killers or destroyers on a scale with nuclear or biological weapons.

According the US military’s own conclusions, the use of chemical weapons only enhance conventional warfare, but are not suitable for wiping out large swaths of enemy troops. Conventional weapons are deemed far more suitable for waging modern war.

The effectiveness of chemical weapons is such that the Syrian government could never justify their use, balancing their limited benefits against the knowledge the US was specifically seeking to use their use as a pretext for direct military intervention.

Thus, neither the Syrian government nor the foreign-backed militants it is fighting would benefit from their use in turning the tide of any specific battle, but should the US use chemical weapon deployments as a pretext, could intervene directly against the Syrian government, delivering victory to foreign-backed militants.

In essence, the only beneficiary of chemical weapon use by any side in Syria would be special interests in the US seeking regime change in Damascus.

Not only are outright lies regarding WMDs a known tactic repeatedly abused by the United States government worldwide, it has been caught repeatedly using this tactic in Syria. The number of ambiguous, unsubstantiated, or proven-false accusations made by the United States as it seeks a pretext for wider and more direct military intervention have multiplied over time as US-backed militants are pushed off the battlefield.

US Provocations, Lies, and Chemical Weapons 

Suspicious circumstances and familiar propaganda and diplomatic tactics were used by the US to rush the world to war – first in 2013 when an alleged chemical attack was carried out at the edge of Damascus. The attack followed multiple claims in 2012 by the US that the Syrian government was preparing such an attack, followed by threats of direct military intervention if the Syrian government did so.

This came at a time when it became apparent that quick regime change in Syria similar to that carried out by the US in Libya in 2011 was not possible and that only through direct military intervention would the US be able to topple the Syrian government.

In response, Syria relinquished its chemical weapons under a Russian-brokered deal, confirmed by UN inspectors. Despite this, chemical weapons continued turning up on the battlefield – followed by repeated attempts by the US to expand direct military intervention within Syrian borders each and every time.

No logical explanation has ever been provided by the United States – either by its politicians or its policymakers – as to why the Syrian government would repeatedly use ineffective chemical weapons in battles it was already winning with far more effective conventional weapons – and risk US military intervention.

Conversely, many of these attacks are carried out in areas held by terrorist organizations with direct access to the borders of their foreign sponsors. The more recent April 2017 alleged attack in Khan Shaykhun took place within the Idlib Governorate, directly on the border with NATO-member Turkey who has armed, supplied, and provided direct military support for Al Qaeda and its affiliates since the conflict began in 2011.

Consider the Source

The city of Idlib occupied by radical Islamists

Idlib has been controlled by Al Qaeda for years with even the New York Times and LA Times finally admitting as much.

The New York Times in a piece titled, “In a Syria Refuge, Extremists Exert Greater Control,” would admit:

“Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11,” Brett H. McGurk, the United States envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, said last month. “Idlib now is a huge problem.”

The LA Times in a piece titled, “Humanitarian groups fear aid is being diverted to terrorist group after militant takeover of Syrian province,” would reveal that torrents of supplies provided by the US, Europe, and their regional allies are still being poured into a city quite literally occupied by Al Qaeda, stating (emphasis added):

The recent takeover of the Syrian province of Idlib by an extremist organization has created a dilemma for the United States and other countries that send humanitarian aid to civilians and military aid to various rebel factions fighting the Syrian government. 

It has become impossible to provide assistance without inadvertently supporting Al Nusra Front, a former affiliate of Al Qaeda that has been deemed a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

In reality, Al Qaeda’s domination of a region allegedly held by “rebels” provided billions in supplies, weapons, vehicles, training, and even direct military support by the West could only happen if Al Qaeda itself was receiving even more in state sponsorship – or were the recipients of this aid all along.

Both the New York Times and the LA Times in their articles, lace it with language meant to disarm readers from truly understanding the full scope of what the US has done in Syria. Claiming that the Al Nusra Front is a “former affiliate of Al Qaeda,” for instance, is supposed to create in the minds of readers the notion that they are no longer Al Qaeda, or terrorists when they are in fact very much still both.

The LA Times would even go as far as suggesting Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front would provide Western-backed organizations with “independence and neutrality.”

The LA Times also claims:

But cutting off the aid could spur a humanitarian disaster among the estimated 2 million civilians who live in Idlib and derail efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Efforts to “topple Syrian President Bashar Assad,” however, can only be done with an armed opposition – and as both the New York Times and LA Times admit, the only armed militants left in Syria are Al Qaeda.

What both newspapers are actually saying is that Al Qaeda has been cornered in Idlib where the US and its allies are still flooding with support, and that support quite literally for Al Qaeda will continue in an effort to topple the Syrian government.

This means that the process of fabricating chemical weapon attacks and using it as a pretext to directly intervene – on behalf of Al Qaeda – will continue as well, either to topple the government outright, or create a safe-haven protected by the US military for Al Qaeda in Idlib.

It is in this context then, that “humanitarian organizations” in Al Qaeda-held Idlib are claiming they are being targeted by chemical weapons allegedly deployed by the Syrian government.

The Syrian government and its allies have all but won the conflict and they have done so using conventional military weapons. They are also attempting in every way to expose these lingering and repetitive lies regarding WMDs wielded by the US, by inviting UN inspection teams to further explore newly liberated Syrian territory and further confirm that the Syrian government did indeed give up its chemical weapons as it agreed to in 2013.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

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

Numerous accusations by Washington and its rogue allies about Syria using chemical weapons were fabricated.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia was caught red-handed supplying terrorists in Syria with Chemical Weapons (CWs). So was Turkey, discovered shipping toxic sarin gas cross-border. Perhaps Jordan and Israel supplied CWs. Both countries support ISIS and other terrorist groups.

Syrian forces never used them at any time throughout years of war. No credible evidence suggests it. Claims made were phony.

On August 6, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said US and UK-made CWs were found in liberated Syrian areas, noting:

“The consequences of the war that has been raging in Syria for many years are now being analyzed and material evidence has started to emerge. It has been mentioned many times at various levels.”

“The fact is that the western states and regional countries have directly or indirectly supplied banned poisonous substances to militants, terrorists and extremists active in Syria” – along with Western weapons and other material support.

Clear evidence shows ISIS, al-Nusra and other terrorist groups were aided by nations:

“claim(ing) their commitment to democratic principles and international law, but in fact, they supply militants with things necessary to continue military activities on the territory of an independent state.”

Information was “handed over to the United Nations and even made public during bilateral talks, particularly between Russia and the United States,” Zakharova explained.

Separately on Facebook, she said

“(h)ere you can see all their commitment to international law and the triumph of democracy. Supplying chemical agents to terrorists and using photos of killed children as a pretext is beyond one’s comprehension.”

On Wednesday, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused Washington and Britain of supplying terrorists in Syria with CWs, explaining evidence was found in liberated areas by government forces.

Munitions filled with toxic agents were discovered – produced by the US Federal Laboratories and NonLethal Technologies, as well as Britain’s Cherming Defence.

Russian lower house State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky responded to the evidence, saying:

“Syria now has all the reasons and the right to address the United Nations over western-produced chemical weapons found on the territories liberated from terrorists.”

“The information released by the Syrian Foreign Ministry once more demonstrates in full the hypocrisy of the members of the western US-led coalition, and proves that the entire goal of the entire operation is to remove the regime of President Bashar Assad.”

They support the terrorist scourge they claim to oppose, what’s been well known all along, something I stress repeatedly in my articles on Syria.

Washington, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies want endless war and regime change, not peace and stability, notions anathema to their diabolical agenda.

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.

Providing the most specific details yet on Israel’s ongoing series of military strikes inside war-torn Syria, Air Force Chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel revealed today that Israel has carried out nearly 100 distinct military actions over the last five years specifically related to what they believed were Hezbollah-bound arms convoys.

This comes less than a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was caught on an open microphone admitting to “dozens” of strikes in Syria, though obviously this is far greater, because many Israel strikes on Syria clearly were not Hezbollah related.

Indeed, recently reported Israeli strikes in Syria have almost always been the result of stray artillery shells landing in empty territory inside the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and Israel responding by attacking Syrian military bases in the area.

Maj. Gen. Eshel appeared to offer a hint at this discrepancy, bragging that many of Israel’s strikes had managed to “go under the radar,” and while he insisted Israel acts “irrespective of the risks,” he also appeared quite keen on Israel carrying out such attacks without getting into an overt war over them.

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from the author.

In between reports about Charlottesville, race war, and Donald Trump, the Western media is also mourning the loss of several members of its terrorist PR brigade known as the White Helmets. Falsely labeled the Syria Civil Defense (the real Syria Civil Defense is a completely different organization), the White Helmets are a documented wing of al-Nusra Front.

Resting assured that its regular readers are unaware of the White Helmets’ Nusra connections, Western corporate press outlets are parading the dead White Helmets as if they are an example of the “war on humanitarian personnel” in Syria which it disingenuously portrays as being the agenda of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Seven White Helmets members were shot and killed on Saturday by “unknown assailants” in Sarmin, Idlib near the Turkish border. All through rebel-held territory, propaganda vigils were held for the dead White Helmets, with participants carrying signs saying “Save White Helmets” and “The men of civil defense are used to saving civilian lives, but found none to save theirs.”

Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets and notorious terrorist sympathizer, stated that

 “Every one of you has a story with the wounded and you have given your blood to save others. I hold all those who claim leadership responsible. You must uncover the criminals who carried out this heinous crime.”

The White Helmets claimed that the attackers were masked and that they stole two vans from the group.

Interestingly enough, most of the articles in the corporate press insinuate (though never actually claim) through clever sentence structuring that the Assad government is responsible. Of course, if it was true, the Syrian government would not have been killing aid workers but al-Nusra terrorists. This fact has been documented repeatedly in my articles and those of Vanessa Beeley of 21st Century Wire.

Source: 21st Century Wire

What is most notable, however, is that Idlib is terrorist territory and it is also where all the terrorists who have agreed to “population swaps” with the Syrian government have flocked. As a result, it is an area that has a high density of religious fanatics; and we all know religious fanatics cannot play nice with others, particularly other religious fanatics. After all, terrorist groups have been fighting one another in Idlib for quite some time, with battles picking up intensity in recent weeks.

With this in mind, the deaths of the White Helmets terrorists are clearly the work of inter-terrorist squabbling and, since the group is essentially the public relations wing of al-Nusra, one need only look to the groups battling Nusra in Idlib to look for the culprits.

Or, we could simply move on and take comfort in the fact that terrorists killing terrorists reduces the net amount of terrorists as well as the workload on the Syrian military when the battle for Idlib inevitably begins. Personally, I’ll take the latter strategy.

If there was any doubt about the true nature of the White Helmets, I suggest reading my previous articles on the group as well as Vanessa Beeley’s excellent work on the same topic.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of “fake news.” These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.

An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question. This was the case with “The Lie That Wasn’t Shot Down,” the title of a January 18, 1988, Times editorial referring to a propaganda claim of five years earlier that the editors had swallowed and never looked into any further. The lie—that the Soviets knew that Korean airliner 007, which they shot down on August 31, 1983, was a civilian plane—was eventually uncovered by congressman Lee Hamilton, not by the Times.

Mainstream media fake news is especially likely where a party line is quickly formed on a topic, with any deviations therefore immediately dismissed as naïve, unpatriotic, or simply wrong. In a dramatic illustration, for a book chapter entitled “Worthy and Unworthy Victims,” Noam Chomsky and I showed that coverage by Time, Newsweek, CBS News, and the New York Times of the 1984 murder of the priest Jerzy Popieluzko in Communist Poland, a dramatic and politically useful event for the politicized Western mainstream media, exceeded all their coverage of the murders of a hundred religious figures killed in Latin America by U.S. client states in the post-Second World War years taken together.¹ It was cheap and safe to focus heavily on the “worthy” victim, whereas looking closely at the deaths of those hundred would have required an expensive and sometimes dangerous research effort that would have upset the State Department. But it was in effect a form of fake news to so selectively devote coverage (and indignation) to a politically useful victim, while ignoring large numbers whose murder the political establishment sought to downplay or completely suppress.

Fake news on Russia is a Times tradition that can be traced back at least as far as the 1917 revolution. In a classic study of the paper’s coverage of Russia from February 1917 to March 1920, Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz found that

“From the point of view of professional journalism the reporting of the Russian Revolution is nothing short of a disaster. On the essential questions the net effect was almost always misleading, and misleading news is worse than none at all…. They can fairly be charged with boundless credulity, and an untiring readiness to be gulled, and on many occasions with a downright lack of common sense.”²

Lippmann and Merz found that strong editorial bias clearly fed into news reporting. The editors’ zealous opposition to the communists led the paper to report atrocities that never happened, and to predict the imminent collapse of the Bolshevik regime no fewer than ninety-one times in three years. Journalists uncritically accepted official statements and relied on reports from unidentified “high authority.” This was standard Times practice.

The Soviet delegation arrives at Brest-Litovsk. Lev Trotsky is in the center surrounded by German officers. David King Collection. (The Bolsheviks in Power, p. 152)

This fake news performance of 1917–20 was repeated often in the years that followed. The Soviet Union was an enemy target up to the Second World War, and through it all, Times coverage was consistently hostile. With the end of the war and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a military rival, and soon a competing nuclear power, the Cold War was on. In the United States, anti-communism became a national religion, and the Soviet Union was portrayed in official discourse and the news media as a global menace in urgent need of containment. With this ideology in place and with U.S. plans for its own global expansion of power established, the Communist threat would help sustain the steady growth of the military-industrial complex and repeated interventions to counter purported Soviet aggressions.³

An Early Great Crime: Guatemala

One of the most flagrant cases in which the Soviet threat was exploited to justify U.S.-sponsored violence was the overthrow of the social democratic government of Guatemala in 1954 by a small proxy army invading from U.S. ally Somoza’s Nicaragua. This action was provoked by government reforms that upset U.S. officials, including a 1947 law permitting the formation of labor unions, and plans to buy back (at tax-rate valuations) and distribute to landless peasants some of the unused property owned by United Fruit Company and other large landowners. The United States, which had been perfectly content with the earlier fourteen-year-long dictatorship of Jose Ubico, could not tolerate this democratic challenge, and the elected government, led by Jacobo Arbenz, was soon charged with assorted villainies, based on an alleged Red capture of the Guatemalan government.⁴

In the pre-invasion propaganda campaign, the mainstream media fell into line behind false charges of extreme government repression, threats to its neighbors, and the Communist takeover. The Times repeatedly reported these alleged abuses and threats from 1950 onward (my favorite: Sidney Gruson’s “How Communists Won Control of Guatemala,” March 1, 1953). Arbenz and his predecessor, Juan Jose Arevalo, had carefully avoided establishing any embassies with Soviet bloc countries, fearing U.S. reprisals—to no avail. Following the removal of Arbenz and the installation of a right-wing dictatorship, court historian Ronald Schneider, after studying 50,000 documents seized from Communist sources in Guatemala, found that not only did Communists never control the country, but that the Soviet Union “made no significant or even material investment in the Arbenz regime,” and was at the time too preoccupied with internal problems to concern itself with Central America.⁵

Árbenz, Jorge Toriello (center), and Francisco Arana (right) in 1944. The three men formed the junta that ruled Guatemala from the October Revolution until the election of Arévalo. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The coup government quickly attacked and decimated the new social groups that had formed in the democratic era, mainly peasant, worker, and teacher organizations. Arbenz had won 65 percent of the votes in a free election, but the “liberator” Castillo Armas quickly won a “plebiscite” with 99.6 percent of the vote. Although this is a result familiar in totalitarian regimes, the mainstream media had by then lost interest in Guatemala, barely mentioning this electoral outcome. The Times had claimed in 1950 that U.S. Guatemala policy “is not trying to block social and economic progress but is interested in seeing that Guatemala becomes a liberal democracy.”⁶ But in the aftermath, the editors failed to note that the result of U.S. policy was precisely to “block social and economic progress,” through the installation of a regime of reactionary terror.

In 2011, more than half a century after 1954, the Times reported that Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom had apologized for that “Great Crime,” the violent overthrow of the Arbenz government, “an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring.”⁷ The article mentions that, according to president Colom, the Arbenz family is “seeking an apology from the United States for its role” in the Great Crime. The Times has never made any apology or even acknowledgement of its own role in the Great Crime.

Another Great Crime: Vietnam

Fake news abounded in the Times and other mainstream publications during the Vietnam War. The common perception that the paper’s editors opposed the war is misleading and essentially false. In Without Fear or Favor, former Times reporter Harrison Salisbury acknowledged that in 1962, when U.S. intervention escalated, the Times was “deeply and consistently” supportive of the war policy.⁸ He contends that the paper grew steadily more oppositional from 1965, culminating in the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. But Salisbury fails to recognize that from 1954 to the present, the Times never abandoned the Cold War framework and vocabulary, according to which the United States was resisting another nation’s “aggression” and protecting “South Vietnam.” The paper never applied the word aggression to this country, but used it freely in referring to North Vietnamese actions and those of the National Liberation Front in the southern half of Vietnam.

The various pauses in the U.S. bombing war in 1965 and after, in the alleged interest of “giving peace a chance,” were also the basis of fake news as the Johnson administration used these temporary halts to quiet antiwar protests, while making it clear to the Vietnamese that U.S. officials demanded full surrender. The Times and its colleagues swallowed this bait without a murmur of dissent.⁹

A US tank convoy during the Vietnam War (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Furthermore, although from 1965 onward the Times was willing to publish more reports that put the war in a less favorable light, it never broke from its heavy dependence on official sources, or from its reluctance to confront the damage wrought on Vietnam and its civilian population by the U.S. war machine. In contrast with its eager pursuit of Cambodian refugees from the Khmer Rouge after April 1975, the paper rarely sought testimony from the millions of Vietnamese refugees fleeing U.S. bombing and chemical warfare. In its opinion columns as well, the new openness was limited to commentators who accepted the premises of the war and would confine their criticisms to its tactical problems and domestic costs. From beginning to end, those who criticized the war as an immoral campaign of sheer aggression were excluded from the debate.¹⁰

The 1981 Papal Assassination Attempt

The mainstream media gave a further boost to Cold War propaganda in reporting on the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in Rome in May 1981. At a time when the Reagan administration was seeking to demonize the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” the shooting of the pope by Turkish fascist Ali Agca was quickly tied to Moscow, helped by Agca’s confession—after seventeen months of imprisonment, interrogations, threats, inducements, and access to the media—that the Bulgarians and Soviet KGB were behind it all. No credible evidence supported this connection, the claims were implausible, and the corruption in the process was remarkable. (Agca also periodically claimed to be Jesus Christ.) The case against the Bulgarians (and implicitly the KGB) was lost even in Italy’s extremely biased and politicized judicial framework. But the Times bought it, and gave it prolonged, intense, and completely unquestioning attention, as did most of the U.S. media.

Source: Fatima Crusader

During the 1991 Senate hearings on the nomination of Robert Gates to head the CIA, former agency officer Melvin Goodman testified that the CIA knew from the start that Agca’s confessions were false, because they had “very good penetration” of the Bulgarian secret services. The Times omitted this statement in its reporting on Goodman’s testimony. During the same year, with Bulgaria now a member of the “free world,” conservative analyst Allen Weinstein obtained permission to examine Bulgarian secret service files on the assassination attempt. His mission was widely reported, including in the Times, but when he returned without having found anything implicating Bulgaria or the KGB, several papers, including the Times, found his investigations no longer newsworthy.

Missile Gap

From roughly 1975 to 1986, much of the reporting on the purported “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union was little more than fake news, with Times reporters passing along a steady stream of inflammatory official statements and baseless claims. An important case occurred in the mid-1970s, as right-wing hawks in the Ford administration were trying to escalate the Cold War and arms race. A 1975 CIA report had found that the Soviets were aiming only for nuclear parity. This was unsatisfactory, so CIA head George H. W. Bush appointed a new team of hardliners, who soon found that the Soviets were achieving nuclear superiority and preparing to fight a nuclear war. This so-called Team B report was taken at face value in a Times front page article of December 26, 1976, by David Binder, who failed to mention its political bias or purpose, and made no attempt to consult experts with differing views. The CIA finally admitted in 1983 that the Team B estimates were fabrications. But throughout this period, the Times supported the case for militarization by disseminating false information, much of it convincingly refuted by Tom Gervasi in his classic The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy, a book never reviewed in the Times.

Yugoslavia and “Humanitarian Intervention”

The 1990s wars of dismantlement in Yugoslavia succeeded in removing an independent government from power and replacing it with a broken Serbian remnant and poor and unstable failed states in Bosnia and Kosovo. It also provided unwarranted support for the concept of “humanitarian intervention,” which rested on a mass of misrepresentations and selective reporting. The demonized Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević was not an ultra-nationalist seeking a “Greater Serbia,” but rather a non-aligned leader on the Western hit list who tried to help Serb minorities in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo remain in Yugoslavia as the United States and the European Union supported a legally questionable exodus by several constituent Yugoslav Republics. He supported each of the proposed settlements of these conflicts, which were sabotaged by Bosnian and U.S. officials who wanted better terms or the outright military defeat of Serbia, ultimately achieving the latter. Milošević had nothing to do with the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serbs took revenge on Bosnian Muslim soldiers who had been ravaging nearby Bosnian Serb villages from their base in Srebrenica under NATO protection. The several thousand Serb civilian deaths were essentially unreported in the mainstream media, while the numbers of Srebrenica’s executed victims were correspondingly inflated.¹¹

The Putin Era

The U.S. political establishment was shocked and delighted by the 1989–91 fall of the Soviet Union, and its members were similarly pleased with the policies of President Boris Yeltsin, a virtual U.S. client, under whose rule ordinary Russians suffered a calamitous fall in living standards, while a small set of oligarchs were able to loot the broken state. Yeltsin’s election victory in 1996, greatly assisted by U.S. consultants, advice, and money, was, for the editors of the Times, “A Victory for Russian Democracy.”¹² They were not bothered by either the electoral corruption, the creation of a grand-larceny-based economic oligarchy, or, shortly thereafter, the new rules centralizing power in the office of president.¹³

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Source: Strategic Culture Foundation)

Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, gradually abandoned the former’s subservience to Western interests, and was thereby perceived as a menace. His reelection in 2012, although surely less corrupt than Yeltsin’s in 1996, was castigated in the U.S. media. The lead Times article on May 5, 2012, featured “a slap in the face” from Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers, claims of no real competition, and “thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in Moscow square to chant ‘Russia without Putin.’”¹⁴ There had been no “challenges to legitimacy” reported in the Times after Yeltsin’s tainted victory in 1996.

The demonization of Putin escalated with the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and subsequent Kiev warfare in Eastern Ukraine, Russian support of the East Ukraine resistance, and the Crimean referendum and absorption of Crimea by Russia. This was all declared “aggression” by the United States and its allies and clients, and sanctions were imposed on Russia, and a major U.S.-NATO military buildup was initiated on Russia’s borders. Tensions mounted further with the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over southeastern Ukraine—promptly, but almost surely falsely, blamed on the “pro-Russian” rebels and Russia itself.¹⁵

Anti-Russian hostilities were further inflamed by the country’s escalated intervention in Syria from 2015 on, in support of Bashar al-Assad and against rebel forces that had come to be dominated by ISIS and al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaeda. The United States and its NATO and Middle East allies had been committing aggression against Syria, in de facto alliance with al-Nusra and other extremist Islamic factions, for several years. Russian intervention turned the tide, frustrating the U.S. and Saudi goal of regime change against Assad, and weakening tacit U.S. allies.

The Times has covered these developments with unstinting apologetics—for the February 2014 coup in Kiev—which it has never labeled as such, for the U.S. role in the overthrow of the elected government of Victor Yanukovych, and with anger and horror at the Crimea referendum and Russian absorption, which it never allows might be a defensive response to the Kiev coup. Its calls for punishment for the casualty-free Russian “aggression” in Crimea is in marked contrast to its apologetics for the million-plus casualties caused by U.S. aggression “of choice” (not defensive) in Iraq from March 2003 on. The paper’s editors and columnists condemn Putin’s disregard for international law, while exempting their own country from criticism for its repeated violations of that same law.¹⁶

In the Times‘s reporting and opinion columns Russia is regularly assailed as expansionist and threatening its neighbors, but virtually no mention is made of NATO’s expansion up to the Russian borders and first-strike-threat placement of anti-missile weapons in Eastern Europe—the latter earlier claimed to be in response to a missile threat from Iran! Analyses by political scientist John Mearsheimer and Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen that noted this NATO advance were excluded from the opinion pages of the Times.¹⁷ In contrast, a member of the Russian band Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina, was given op-ed space to denounce Putin and Russia, and the punk rock group was granted a meeting with the Times editorial board.¹⁸Between January 1 and March 31, 2014, the paper ran twenty-three articles featuring Pussy Riot and its alleged significance as a symbol of Russian limits on free speech. Pussy Riot had disrupted a church service in Moscow and only stopped after police intervened, at the request of church authorities. A two-year prison sentence followed. Meanwhile, in February 2014, eighty-four-year-old nun Sister Megan Rice was sentenced to four years in prison for having entered a U.S. nuclear weapons site in July 2012 and carried out a symbolic protest. The Timesgave this news a tiny mention in its National Briefing section, under the title “Tennessee Nun is Sentenced for Peace Protest.” No op-ed columns or meeting with the Times board for Rice. There are worthy and unworthy protesters, just as there are victims.

In Syria, with Russian help, Assad’s army and allied militias were able to dislodge the rebels from Aleppo, to the dismay of Washington and the mainstream media. It has been enlightening to see the alarm expressed over civilian casualties in Aleppo, with accompanying photographs of forsaken children and stories of civilian suffering and deprivation. The Times‘s focus on those civilians and children and its indignation at Putin-Assad inhumanity stands in sharp contrast with their virtual silence on massive civilian casualties in Fallujah in 2004 and beyond, and more recently in rebel-held areas of Syria, and in the Iraqi city of Mosul, under U.S. and allied attack.¹⁹ The differential treatment of worthy and unworthy victims has been in full force in coverage of Syria.

A further phase of intensifying Russophobia may be dated from the October 2016 presidential debates, in which Hillary Clinton declared that Donald Trump would be a Putin “puppet” as president, a theme her campaign began to stress. This emphasis only increased after the election, with the help of the media and intelligence services, as the Clinton camp sought to explain their electoral loss, maintain party control, and possibly even have the election results overturned in the courts or electoral college by attributing Trump’s victory to Russian interference.

A major impetus for the Putin connection came with the January 2017 release of a report by the Office of Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Background of Assessing Russian Activities and Intention in Recent US Elections. More than half of this short document is devoted to the Russian-sponsored RT news network, which the report treats as an illegitimate propaganda source. The organization is allegedly part of Russia’s “influence campaign…[that] aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect.” No semblance of proof is offered that there was any planned “campaign,” rather than an ongoing expression of opinion and news judgments. The same standards used to identify a Russian “influence campaign” could be applied with equal force to U.S. media and Radio Free Europe’s treatment of any Russian election—and of course, the U.S. intervention in the 1996 Russian election was overt, direct, and went far beyond any covert “influence campaign.”

Regarding more direct Russian intervention in the U.S. election, the DNI authors concede the absence of “full supporting evidence,” but in fact provide no supporting evidence at all—only speculative assertions, assumptions, and guesses. “We assess that…Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2015,” they write, designed to defeat Mrs. Clinton, and “to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process,” but provide no proof of any such order. The report also contains no evidence that Russia hacked the communications of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or the emails of Clinton and former Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, or that it gave hacked information to WikiLeaks. Julian Assange and former British diplomat Craig Murray have repeatedly claimed that these sources were leaked by local insiders, not hacked from outside. Veteran intelligence experts William Binney and Ray McGovern likewise contend that the WikiLeaks evidence was leaked, not hacked.²⁰ It is also notable that of the three intelligence agencies who signed the DNI document, the National Security Agency—the agency most likely to have proof of Russian hacking and its transmission to WikiLeaks, as well as of any “orders” from Putin—only expressed “moderate confidence” in its findings.

But as with the Reds ruling Guatemala, the Soviets outpacing U.S. missile capabilities, or the KGB plotting to assassinate the pope, the Times has taken the Russian hacking story as established fact, despite the absence of hard evidence. Times reporter David Sanger refers to the report’s “damning and surprisingly detailed account of Russia’s efforts to undermine the American electoral system,” only to then acknowledge that the published report “contains no information about how the agencies had …come to their conclusions.”²¹ The report itself includes the astonishing statement that “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” Furthermore, if the report was based on “intercepts of conversations” as well as on hacked computer data, as Sanger and the DNI claim, why has the DNI failed to quote a single conversation showing Putin’s alleged orders and plans?

The Times has never cited or given op-ed space to William Binney, Ray McGovern, or Craig Murray, leading dissident authorities on hacking technology, methodology, and the specifics of the DNC hacks. But room was found for Louise Mensch’s op-ed “What to Ask about Russian Hacking.” Mensch is a notorious conspiracy theorist with no relevant technical background, described by writers Nathan Robinson and Alex Nichols as best-known for “spending most of her time on Twitter issuing frenzied denunciations of imagined armies of online ‘Putinbots,’” making her “one of the least credible people on the internet.”²² But she is published in the Times because, in contrast with the informed and credible Binney and Murray, she follows the party line, taking Russian hacking of the DNC as a premise.

The CIA’s brazen intervention in the electoral process in 2016 and 2017 broke new ground in the agency’s politicization. Former CIA head Michael Morell announced in an August 2016 op-ed in the Times: “I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton,” and former CIA boss Michael Hayden published an op-ed in the Washington Post just days before the election, entitled “Former CIA Chief: Trump is Russia’s Useful Fool.” Morell had yet another op-ed in the Times on January 6, now openly assailing the new president. These attacks were unrelievedly insulting to Trump and laudatory to Clinton, even portraying Trump as a traitor; they also made clear that Clinton’s more pugnacious stance toward Syria and Russia was preferable by far to Trump’s leanings toward negotiation and cooperation with Russia.

This was also true of the scandal surrounding former Trump Defense Intelligence nominee Michael Flynn’s telephone call with the Russian ambassador, which may have included a discussion of the incoming administration’s policy actions. The political possibilities of this interaction were quickly grasped by outgoing Obama officials, security personnel, and the mainstream media, with the FBI interrogating Flynn and with widespread expressions of horror at Flynn’s action, which could have allegedly exposed him to Russian blackmail. But such pre-inauguration meetings with Russian diplomats have been a “common practice” according to Jack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to Russia under Reagan and Bush, and Matlock had personally arranged such a meeting for Jimmy Carter.²³ Obama’s own ambassador to the country, Michael McFaul, admitted visiting Moscow for talks with officials in 2008, even before the election. Daniel Lazare has made a good case not only that the illegality and blackmail threat are implausible, but that the FBI’s interrogation of Flynn reeks of entrapment. “Yet anti-Trump liberals are trying to convince the public that it’s all ‘worse than Watergate.’”²⁴

The political point of the DNI report thus seems to have been, at minimum, to tie the Trump administration’s hands in its dealings with Russia. Some analysts outside the mainstream have argued that we may have been witnessing an incipient spy or palace coup that fell short, but still had the desired effect of weakening the new administration.²⁵ The Times has not offered a word of criticism of this politicization and intervention in the election process by intelligence agencies, and in fact the editors have been working with them and the Democratic Party as a loose-knit team in a distinctly un- and anti-democratic program designed to undermine or reverse the results of the 2016 election, on the pretext of alleged foreign electoral interference.

The Times and the mainstream media in general have also barely mentioned the awkward fact that the allegedly hacked disclosures of the DNC and Clinton and Podesta emails disclosed uncontested facts about real electoral manipulations on behalf of the Clinton campaign, facts that the public had a right to know and that might well have affected the election results. The focus on the evidence-free claims of a Russian hacking intrusion have helped divert attention from the real electoral abuses disclosed by the WikiLeaks material. Here again, official and mainstream media fake news helped bury real news.

Another arrow in the Russophobia quiver was a private intelligence “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent working for Orbis Business Intelligence, a private firm hired by the DNC to dig up dirt on Trump. Steele’s first report, delivered in June 2016, made numerous serious accusations against Trump, most notably that Trump had been caught in a sexual escapade in Moscow, that his political advance had been supported by the Kremlin for at least five years, under Putin’s direction, in order to sow discord within the U.S. political establishment and disrupt the Western alliance. This document was based on alleged conversations by Steele with distant (Russian) officials: that is, strictly on hearsay evidence, whose assertions, where verifiable, are sometimes erroneous.²⁶ But it said just what the Democrats, the mainstream media, and the CIA wanted to hear, and intelligence officials accordingly declared the author “credible,” and the media lapped it up. The Times hedged somewhat on its own cooperation in this tawdry campaign by calling the report “unverified,” but nevertheless reported its claims.²⁷

The Steele dossier also became a central part of the investigation and hearings on “Russia-gate” held by the House Intelligence Committee starting in March 2017, led by Democratic Representative Adam Schiff. While basing his opening statement on the hearsay-laden dossier, Schiff expressed no interest in establishing who funded the Steele effort, the identity and exact status of the Russian officials quoted, or how much they were paid. Apparently talking to Russians with a design of influencing an American presidential election is perfectly acceptable if the candidate supported by this intrusion is anti-Russian!

The Times has played a major role in this latest wave of Russophobia, reminiscent of its 1917–20 performance in which, as Lippmann and Merz noted in 1920, “boundless credulity, and an untiring readiness to be gulled” characterized the news-making process. While quoting the CIA’s admission that it had no hard evidence, relying instead on “circumstantial evidence” and “capabilities,” the Times was happy to describe these capabilities at great length and to imply that they proved something.²⁸ Editorials and news articles have worked uniformly on the false supposition that Russian hacking was proved, and that the Russians had given these data to WikiLeaks, also unproven and strenuously denied by Assange and Murray.

The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy’s “Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,” February 20, 2017.²⁹ But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper’s regular columnists accept as a given the CIA’s assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and “non-partisan” investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this “fake news” threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.

The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post‘s piece by Craig Timberg, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” which featured a report by a group of anonymous “experts” entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the “experts” refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being “targeted by legions of skilled hackers.” As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, “You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won’t put your name to your claims? Take a hike.”³⁰ But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)

On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise. It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.) Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their own notions of fake news and propaganda.

The success of the war party’s campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration’s speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad’s guilt beyond their government’s claims.³¹ The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well.

But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities believe the current case is equally problematic.³² Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war.

Notes

1. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman,Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 2008), chapter 2.

2.Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz,A Test of the News (New York: New Republic, 1920).

3. On the Grand Area framework, see Noam Chomsky, “The New Framework of Order,” inOn Power and Ideology (Boston: South End, 1987).

4. Edward S. Herman, “Returning Guatemala to the Fold,” in Gary Rawnsley, ed.,Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s (London: Macmillan, 1999).

5. Ronald Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (New York: Praeger, 1959), 41, 196–97, 294.

6. Editorial Board, “The Guatemala Incident,”New York Times, April 8, 1950.

7. Elisabeth Malkin, “An Apology for a Guatemalan Coup, 57 Years Later,”New York Times, October 11, 2011.

8. Harrison Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor (New York: Times Books, 1980), 486.

9. Richard Du Boff and Edward Herman,America’s Vietnam Policy: The Strategy of Deception (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, 1966).

10. See Chomsky and Herman,Manufacturing Consent, chapter 6.

11. Editorial Board, “A Victory for Russian Democracy,”New York Times, July 4, 1996.

12. Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia,”Monthly Review 59, no. 5 (October 2007); Herman and Peterson, “Poor Marlise: Her Old Allies Are Now Attacking the Tribunal and Even Portraying the Serbs as Victims,” ZNet, October 30, 2008, http://zcomm.org.

13. Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (New York: Norton, 2000).

14. Ellen Barry and Michael Schwartz, “After Election, Putin Faces Challenges to Legitimacy,”New York Times, March 5, 2012.

15. Robert Parry, “Troubling Gaps in the New MH-17 Report,” Consortium News, September 28, 2016, http://consortiumnews.com.

16. Paul Krugman says, “Mr. Putin is someone who doesn’t worry about little things like international law” (“The Siberian Candidate,”New York Times, July 22, 2016)—implying, falsely, that U.S. leaders do “worry about” such things.

17. A version of Mearsheimer’s article appeared as “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,”Foreign Affairs, September 10, 2014. The paper likewise rejected Stephen Cohen’s 2012 article “The Demonization of Putin.”

18. “Sochi Under Siege,”New York Times, February 21, 2014.

19. Michael Kimmelman, “Aleppo’s Faces Beckon to Us, To Little Avail,”New York Times, December 15, 2016. Above this front-page article were four photographs of dead or injured children, the most prominent one in Syria. The accompanying editorial, “Aleppo’s Destroyers: Assad, Putin, Iran,” omits some key actors and killers. See also Rick Sterling, “How US Propaganda Plays in Syrian War,” Consortium News, September 23, 2016.

20. William Binney and Ray McGovern, “The Dubious Case on Russian ‘Hacking,’” Consortium News, January 6, 2017.

21. David Sanger, “Putin Ordered ‘Influence Campaign’ Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says,”New York Times, January 6, 2017.

22. Nathan J. Robinson and Alex Nichols, “What Constitutes Reasonable Mainstream Opinion,”Current Affairs, March 22, 2017.

23. Jack Matlock, “Contacts with Russian Embassy,” Jack Matlock blog, March 4, 2017, http://jackmatlock.com.

24. Daniel Lazare, “Democrats, Liberals, Catch McCarthyistic Fever,” Consortium News, February 17, 2017.

25. Robert Parry, “A Spy Coup in America?” Consortium News, December 18, 2016; Andre Damon, “Democratic Party Floats Proposal for a Palace Coup,” Information Clearing House,” March 23, 2017, http://informationclearinghouse.info.

26. Robert Parry, “The Sleazy Origins of Russia-gate,” Consortium News, March 29, 2017.

27. Scott Shane et al., “How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump,”New York Times, January 11, 2017.

28. Matt Fegenheimer and Scott Shane, “Bipartisan Voices Back U.S. Agencies On Russia Hacking,”New York Times, January 6, 2017; Michael Shear and David Sanger, “Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds,”New York Times,January 7, 2017; Andrew Kramer, “How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar,”New York Times, December 30, 2016.

29. Robert Parry, “NYT’s Fake News about Fake News,” Consortium News, February 22, 2017.

30. Matt Taibbi, “The ‘Washington Post’ ‘Blacklist’ Story Is Shameful and Disgusting,”Rolling Stone, November 28, 2016.

31. Adam Johnson, “Out of 47 Media Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Only One Opposed,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 11, 2017, http://fair.org.

32. Scott Ritter, “Wag the Dog—How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump and The American Media,” Huffington Post, April 9, 2017; James Carden, “The Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria: Is There a Place for Skepticism?”Nation, April 11, 2017.

General Paul Selva, the vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Russia of deploying a land-based cruise missile that violated the “spirit and intent” of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) and posed a threat to the US European allies. “The system itself presents a risk to most of our facilities in Europe and we believe that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO and to facilities within the NATO area of responsibility,” he said during a House armed services committee hearing March 8, 2017.

Gen. Selva did not say if the missile carried a nuclear weapon.

General Paul Selva

It was the first public accusation of the prohibited weapons deployment after The New York Times said earlier this year that Russia had secretly deployed the ground-launched SSC-8 cruise missile. SSC-8 is believed to be a land version of the SS-N-30 3M14 missile complex “Caliber-NK” for the first time used by Russian navy against targets in Syria in 2015.

In 2014, the United States made a similar accusation. The State Department concluded in the control report that Russia was in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty. Russia accused Washington of conducting “megaphone diplomacy” after the accusation was repeated by the State Department in 2015.

That time Moscow denied it had violated the treaty, which helped end the Cold War. So the Russians did this time. Russia is committed to its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said March 9, 2017.

Hera missile

The accusations from Washington high-ranking officials take place while the Pentagon used Hera missiles with operational range of 684 miles (1,100 kilometers) as targets during missile defense tests since 2002. This fact constitutes blatant violation of the INF Treaty because all these vehicles were to be destructed by 1991 and manufacturing of new ones was prohibited under the terms of the Treaty.

War hawks add fuel to the fire. The Congress is moving to make the Pentagon begin developing medium-range missiles banned by the 1987 nuclear arms agreement, Politico.com announces August 2.

These steps of American legislators along with ongoing North Korean nuclear standoff do not make the world safer. Confrontation between nuclear powers which the INF Treaty abolition will potentially lead to is even the worst scenario.

Goran Lompar is a free journalist and postgraduate at University of Donja Gorica, Montenegro.

All images in this article are from the author.