Global Research

The United States is preparing for all options to counter the growing threat from North Korea, including launching a “preventive war,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster said in an interview that aired Saturday on MSNBC. The comments come after North Korea carried out two tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the past month and after the president said he has been clear he will not tolerate North Korea’s threats to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons.

The key excerpts (full transcript):

H.H.: Let me switch if I can to North Korea, which is really pressing. And– and remind our audience, at the Aspen Institute ten days ago, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Joe Dunford, said, “There’s always a military– option. It would be horrific.” Lindsey Graham on Today Show earlier this week said– “We need to destroy the regime and their deterrent.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday, I believe, to North Korea, “You are leaving us no choice but to protect ourselves.” And then the Chairman of the Chief of Staff of the Army said, “Just because every choice is a bad choice doesn’t mean you don’t have to choose.” Are we looking at a preemptive strike? Are you trying to prepare us, you being collectively, the administration and people like Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton for a first strike North Korea?

H.R.M. Well, we really, what you’re asking is– is are we preparing plans for a preventive war, right? A war that would prevent North Korea from threatening the United States with a nuclear weapon. And the president’s been very clear about it. He said, “He’s not gonna tolerate North Korea being able to threaten the United States” if they have nuclear weapons that can threaten the United States; It’s intolerable from the president’s perspective. So of course, we have to provide all options to do that. And that includes a military option.

Now, would we like to resolve it short of what would be a very costly war, in terms of– in terms of the suffering of mainly the South Korean people? The– the ability of– of that North– North Korean regime to hold the South hostage to conventional fire’s capabilities, artillery and so forth, Seoul being so close. We’re cognizant of all of that. And so what we have to do is– is everything we can to– to pressure this regime, to pressure Kim Jong-un and those around him such that they conclude, it is in their interest to denuclearize. And there are really I think three critical things, came out of the president’s very successful summit with– President Xi of China that were different– that were different from past efforts to work with China, which has always been, you know, the– the desire, right, to work with China– on the– on the North Korean problem.

How many casualties will there be:

HH: In 1994, when the first North Korean deal with signed, the people who executed it, Gallucci, Dan Poneman, Joe Wit wrote a book. And they quoted a general saying, “If there is a conflict,” called Going Critical, “there will be a million casualties.” A million casualties. Is that still a good estimate of what happens if– preemptive strike unfolds in North Korea, General?

HRM: You know, one thing about war. It’s impossible oftentimes to predict. It’s always impossible to predict the future course of events. Because war is a continuous interaction of opposites, a continuous interaction between your forces and those of the enemy. It involves not just the capability to use force, but also intentions and things that are just unknowable at the outset. And so I think it’s important to– to look at– range of estimates of what could happen, because it’s clear that at war, it’s unpredictable. And so you always have to ask the question, “What happens next? What are the risks? How do you mitigate those risks?” And– and obviously, you know, war is– is– is the most serious decision any leader has to make. And so what can we do to make sure we exhaust our possibilities and exhaust our other opportunities to accomplish this very clear objective of denuclearization of the peninsula short of war?

HH: How concerned should the American people be that we are actually on the brink of a war with North Korea?

HRM: Well, I think it’s impossible to overstate the danger associated with this. Right, the, so I think it’s impossible to overstate the danger associated with a rogue, brutal regime, I mean, who murdered his own brother with nerve agent in an airport. “I mean, think about what he’s done in terms of his own brutal repression of not only members of his regime but his own family,” McMaster added.

On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that the president told him there would be a war with North Korea if the regime continues to try to hit America with an ICBM. Appearing on the Today Show, the South Carolina Republican Senator said that President Trump has indicated to him that the administration is prepared to strike North Korea to prevent an attack against the U.S. Pushed on by Matt Lauer on whether a viable military option exists in the region, Graham responded:

“They’re wrong. There is a military option to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself.”

The Hwasong-14 ICBM seen during its test in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang, July 5 2017.

As reported last Friday, North Korea claimed that its latest missiles can now strike anywhere in the United States, delivering nuclear warheads. Experts have said that the country’s missile program has greatly accelerated in recent months putting it far ahead of previous predictions about when it could launch reliable long-range missiles. Speaking to Newsweek in recent days, several experts said that an attack would be the deadliest the U.S. has ever received and potentially kill more than 100,000 people if it struck in large population centers like New York City or Los Angeles.

“I’m not going to confirm [whether the latest ICBM could reach anywhere in the U.S.] but whether it could reach San Francisco or Pittsburgh or Washington, I mean how much does that matter? It’s a grave threat,” McMaster said.

He added:

“It’s impossible to overstate the danger associated with a rogue, brutal regime.”

McMaster cautioned that he was aware of the fact that any strike against North Korea could bring about a “very costly war” that would cause immense “suffering of mainly the South Korean people.”

Last month, CIA Director Mike Pompeo floated another option for dealing with the North Korea threat, saying that he was “hopeful we will find a way to separate that regime from this system.” North Korea responded by threatening swift and brutal consequences for any attempt to topple Kim.

“Should the U.S. dare to show even the slightest sign of an attempt to remove our supreme leadership, we will strike a merciless blow at the heart of the U.S. with our powerful nuclear hammer, honed and hardened over time,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Still, McMaster did not rule out such an attempt when asked whether it could be a legitimate tool.

“I think it depends on the legal justifications for that. And this goes back to just war theory. And what is the nature of the risk? And does that risk justify acting in defense of your people and your vital interests?”

Last week, the local press reported that South Korea’s military is preparing a “surgical strike” scenario that could wipe out North Korean command and missile and nuclear facilities following an order by S. Korea’s president Moon Jae-In.

The American media specializes in fake news. Indeed, since the Clinton regime the American media has produced nothing but fake news. Do you remember the illegal US bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia? Do you remember “war criminal” Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president branded “the butcher of Belgrade”,  who was compared to Hitler until Hillary passed the title on to the President of Russia? Milosevic, not Bill Clinton, was arrested and placed on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal. He died in prison, some say murdered, before he was cleared of charges by the International Criminal Tribunal. 

Do you remember the destruction of Iraq justified by the orchestrated propaganda, known by the criminal George W. Bush regime to be an outright lie, about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” weapons that the UN arms inspectors verified did not exist? Iraq was destroyed. Millions of Iraqis were killed, orphaned, widowed, and displaced. Saddam Hussein was subjected to a show trial more transparent than Stalin’s trial of Bukharin and then murdered under the pretext of judicial execution.

Do you remember the destruction of Libya based entirely on Washington’s lies and the criminal misuse of the UN no-fly resolution by turning it into a NATO bombing of Iraq’s military so that the CIA-armed jihadists could overthrow and murder Muammar Gaddafi? Do you remember the killer bitch Hillary gloating,

“we came, we saw, he died!”

Do you remember the lies that the criminal Obama regime told about Assad of Syria and the planned US invasion of Syria that was blocked by the UK Parliament and the Russian government? Do you remember that Obama and the killer bitch sent ISIS to do the job that US troops were prevented from doing? Do you remember General Flynn revealing on TV that it was a “willful decision” of the criminal Obama regime to send ISIS to Syria over his objection as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency? This bit of told truth is why Gen. Flynn is hated by the Washington criminals who forced him out as Trump’s National Security Adviser.

Do you remember the US coup in Ukraine against the democratically elected government and its replacement with a neo-nazi regime? Do you remember that Washington’s crime against Ukrainian democracy was quickly hidden behind false charges of “Russian invasion”?

Can you think of any truthful report in the American news in the past two decades?

All of the lies leading to the death of millions told by the criminal Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes were transparent. The US media could easily have exposed them and saved the lives of millions of peoples and saved seven countries from destruction in whole or part. But the presstitutes cheered on the gratuitous and criminal destruction of countries and peoples. Every one of the presstitutes is a war criminal under the standards set by US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials.

We cannot even get a truthful jobs report. Yesterday (Aug. 4) the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported 205,000 new private sector jobs in July and a drop in the unemployment rate to 4.3%. This is fake news.

Christopher Rugaber (Source: @ChrisRugaber / Twitter)

The Associated Press’s Christopher Rugaber rah-rahs the fake news, adding that many economists think “robust hiring could continue for many more months, or even years.” Let’s think about that for a moment. Generally speaking economists regard full employment to be a 5% rate of unemployment. There can never be a zero rate of unemployment because of frictions in the job market. For example, there are people between jobs who have lost or quit a job and are looking for a new one, and there are people who have dropped out of the work force, perhaps to spend more time parenting or to care for an aged and ill parent, and have reentered the work force. Economists also believe that employment cannot go too low without pushing up inflation. 

Assuming economists have not suddenly changed their minds about what rate of unemployment is full employment, if the unemployment rate is currently 4.3%, it is already below the full employment rate. How can the rate continue to fall for years when the economy is already at full employment? Apparently, this question did not occur to the AP reporter or to the “many economists.”

Of course, the 4.3% unemployment rate is fake news. It does not include millions of discouraged workers. When these workers who have not looked for jobs within the last four weeks are included, the unemployment rate jumps to 22-23%.

Now consider the alleged 205,000 July new jobs. Probably about half of these jobs are due to the add-ons from the birth-death model, and the other half from manipulations of seasonal adjustments. John Williams at shadowstats.com will tell us. However, let’s assume the jobs are really there. Where does the BLS tell us the jobs are?

Eighty-nine percent of the jobs are in services, essentially domestic non-tradable services. 

Professional and business services account for 49,000 of the jobs, of which 30,000 are in administrative and waste services (garbage collection) and 14,700 are in temporary help services.

54,000 of the jobs are in education and health services, of which ambulatory health care services, home health care services and social assistance account for 46,900 of the jobs.

62,000 of the jobs are in leisure and hospitality, of which waitresses and bartenders account for 53,100 of the jobs and amusements, gambling, and recreation account for 5,900 jobs.

This picture of American employment has been holding for about two decades. It is a portrait of a third world labor force. The jobs are not in export industries. The jobs are not in high productivity, high value-added occupations that produce a middle class income. The jobs are in lowly paid, often part-time domestic services. 

The jobs do not produce incomes that provide discretionary spending to drive up business profits. So why did the stock market hit new highs? The answer is that corporate executives are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rates to borrow money with which to buy back their companies’ shares in order to drive up their bonuses, the main component of their pay.

But these undeniable facts about employment did not prevent Christopher Rugaber and the other financial presstitutes or newspaper headline writers or “many economists” from asking “How much better can it get?” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution front page, Aug. 5, 2017).

It is not only seven Muslim countries that Washington and its presstitutes have destroyed in whole or part with lies.  Washington’s lies have also destroyed the American economy and the American work force.

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

On Thursday, anti-Bolivarian Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz’s attempt to halt the swearing in of the democratically elected 545-seat body failed.

A court order she sought was denied – based on phony claims of unconstitutionality and voter fraud. She lied claiming “(t)he country is headed toward dictatorship.”

It’s the hemisphere’s model democracy, struggling in the face of US-orchestrated political and economic war, along with CIA-instigated street violence – classic Washington color revolution tactics used to topple independent governments.

On Friday, Constituent Assembly members were sworn in as scheduled. Thousands of Chavistas took to the streets supportively, welcoming the CA’s first working session.

Former Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez was appointed president of the body. Former vice presidents Aristobulo and Isaias Rodriguez were chosen as first and second vice presidents.

Washington, its rogue allies and the Vatican oppose political affirmation of Bolivarian social democracy – notably right wing EU and Latin American countries in lockstep with America’s imperial agenda.

Vatican history isn’t pretty. Pontiffs notoriously meddle where they don’t belong. Liberation theology supporting social justice is verboten.

Pope Francis’ high-minded rhetoric belies papal tradition, supporting wealth and power interests, paying lip service alone to popular needs and welfare.

A Vatican press statement expressed opposition to Venezuela’s CA, saying:

“The Holy See asks that all political actors, and in particular the government, guarantee full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as for the existing Constitution; avoid or suspend ongoing initiatives such as the new Constituent which, instead of favoring reconciliation and peace, foments a climate of tension and confrontation and puts the future at stake” – code language for opposition to Bolivarian social democracy.

Over eight million Venezuelan voters disagreed, participating in CA elections, democracy in action, the way Bolivarian governance works.

Constituent Maria Alejandra Diaz likely spoke for other members, saying

“(w)e have an immense task after the National Constituent Assembly is seated -to implement justice by seeking peace.”

International observers called last Sunday’s process open, free and fair – 545 members chosen from among 6,120 candidates. President Maduro called the CA a way “to bring order, do justice and defend the peace.”

The body is temporary for as long as it takes to complete its work – revising or rewriting Venezuela’s constitution, above all aiming to restore order and serve all Venezuelans equitably.

Article 349 of Venezuela’s constitution states no other power can “in any way impede the decisions of the National Constituent Assembly” – not the president, National Assembly legislators and Supreme Court justices.

When completed, the revised or new constitution will be voted on by national referendum, Venezuelans deciding whether to approve or reject the document.

Depending on what’s in the final text, general elections could follow – for president, National Assembly members, governors, mayors and other public officials, the same process used to establish the Bolivarian Republic under Hugo Chavez in 1999.

As of now, the referendum will be held on December 19, elections for governors on December 10. Chavistas hope to hold onto the presidency and win a National Assembly majority when those elections are held.

CA president Delcy Rodriguez said its mission aims to end political conflict and street violence.

“The Venezuelan people will not turn their fate over to a violent minority. We’ve come to deepen our Constitution,” she stressed.

No easy task given Washington’s call for regime change, Rex Tillerson saying

“(w)e are evaluating all of our policy options as to what can we do to create a change of conditions where either Maduro decides he doesn’t have a future and wants to leave of his own accord or we can return the government processes back to their constitution.”

A previous article explained Washington’s assault on Venezuela is its latest color revolution attempt, adding if it fails, will sending in the Marines be next?

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

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

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.

The ever-so-wise members of the Congress of the United States have just passed one of the most bizarre pieces of legislation in US history. Unilaterally, it makes illegal and severely punishable investments by European companies in international energy projects where Russia is involved. But it does far more. Unlike earlier US sanctions acts, the EU countries were not even consulted on the new act. It may well be that the bill, HR-3364: Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (sic) and its Senate counterpart will mark the irreversible decline of the United States as a global power and forge new ties between Russia, China, Iran and, yes, the major states of the EU including Germany.

What the Act says

First let’s see what the act, HR-3364, actually states.

In Title I, the part of the act dealing with Iran, the legislation states that the US President “shall impose the sanctions described…with respect to any person that the President determines (1) knowingly engages in any activity that materially contributes to the supply, sale, or transfer directly or indirectly to or from Iran, or for the use in or benefit of Iran, of any battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems, as defined for the purpose of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, or related materiel, including spare parts; or (2) knowingly provides to Iran any technical training, financial resources or services, advice, other services or assistance related to the supply, sale, transfer, manufacture, maintenance, or use of arms and related materiel described…”

While this may seem aimed at Iran which is in no cited violation of international law and the fact that recently both US intelligence as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Iran in compliance with the nuclear deal, a main target is also Russia.

With the lifting of US and EU sanctions by the Obama Administration in January 2016, Russia began talks with Teheran to supply up to $10 billion of Russian weapons systems including advanced tanks, artillery systems, planes and helicopters. As well, sanctions removal allowed Russia to legally renegotiate delivery of its advanced anti-missile S-300 missile defense system which was done in August 2016.

The Iran section directly aims to block closer relations, including military, between Russia and Iran, a vital part of the emerging Eurasian economic space that Washington and the US Deep State feel so threatening to its power.

Let’s now look explicitly at the Russian section of the new act.

Title II: The Russian Section

The section on Russia was inserted into the original bill on Iran sanctions. It is called, TITLE II—SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND COMBATING TERRORISM AND ILLICIT FINANCING.

Title II justifies its unprecedented new sanctions against Russia by citing a litany of the already sanctioned Crimea annexation and Russian alleged support of Ukraine separatists following the CIA-instigated February 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, as well as unproven allegations of Russian hacking of Democratic National Committee data files during the 2016 US election campaign. To sweeten the brew, Congress added Russia’s involvement in Syria, legal under international law, aiding the legitimate Assad government fighting ISIS and other terrorists.

Another justification for the unprecedented new Russia sanctions is cited as unnamed “human rights violators in the Russian Federation.” Of course, the “human rights violators” are to be determined as anyone Washington backs in CIA attempts at trying to foment a new NGO Color Revolution to block re-election of President Vladimir Putin in March 2018 elections.

Moreover, in a constitutionally dubious arrogation of power of the Executive, Congress mandates that the President no longer has executive authority to remove any Russian sanctions without first the approval of Congress.

“Oppose Nord Stream II Pipeline”

Source: energypost.eu

This Russian section of the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, among other remarkable provisions, declares in Section 257: Ukranian (sic) Energy Security that,

“It is the policy of the United States…to continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline given its detrimental impacts on the European Union’s energy security, gas market development in Central and Eastern Europe, and energy reforms in Ukraine;”

As the governments of Germany and Austria bluntly pointed out, with whom the EU countries decide to buy their natural gas is their business, not to be decided by Washington.

As reason for this extraordinary trampling on international law, Title II goes on,

“…the United States Government should prioritize the export of United States energy resources in order to create American jobs, help United States allies and partners, and strengthen United States foreign policy.”

The new sanctions act as part of this effort gives the US Treasury the right to sanction or penalize European companies doing business with Gazprom on the proposed Nord Stream II pipeline into Germany.

Oops. Did I read the wrong act? The US President shall impose sanctions in order that the US can stop the EU-Gazprom Nord Stream II second pipeline construction that is soon to be completed, linking Vyborg in Russia with Griefswald in Germany and bypassing existing Soviet-era gas pipelines through the now-hostile US-run Ukraine? He shall do this as part of a US jobs-creation policy? Is this actually part of the current USA strategy, expressed repeatedly by the Trump Administration to “dominate the global energy market” including export of oil, shale gas as LNG, coal exports and nuclear power?

Russian Mining and Railways

Section 233 of the Act specifies the US Treasury may also determine sanctions against “a state-owned entity operating in the railway or metals and mining sector of the economy of the Russian Federation.” US sanctions against domestic Russian railways, mining companies, metals industry? Why not be honest and just proclaim the US Congress hereby declares itself to be absolute dictators over the entire world with power to decide everything everywhere? No questions permitted…

Further the Act,

“prohibits the provision, exportation, or re-exportation… by persons within the United States, of goods, services… or technology in support of exploration or production for new deep-water, Arctic offshore, or shale projects…that have the potential to produce oil…” Sanctions include power to “block…all transactions in all property…of a person determined by the President to be subject to subsection (a)(1).”

Section 232 goes after development of pipelines in the Russian Federation against anyone who

“…knowingly makes an investment…or sells, leases, or provides to the Russian Federation, for the construction of Russian energy export pipelines, goods, services, technology, information…which has a fair market value of $1,000,000 or more; or…an aggregate fair market value of $5,000,000 or more.”

It goes after any foreign investment that “directly and significantly contributes to the enhancement of the ability of the Russian Federation to construct energy export pipelines.” Those could be to China or Germany or Turkey or anywhere.

Countering Russian Influence in Europe and Eurasia

Subtitle B is titled Countering Russian influence in Europe and Eurasia. This section asserts “findings” of Congress, unspecified, that

“The Government of the Russian Federation has sought to exert influence throughout Europe and Eurasia, including in the former states of the Soviet Union, by providing resources to political parties, think tanks, and civil society groups that sow distrust in democratic institutions and actors, promote xenophobic and illiberal views, and otherwise undermine European unity.”

Conveniently ignored are the hundreds of millions of dollars that the US State Department, USAID, the CIA’s civilian NGO front National Endowment for Democracy and other Washington agencies have spent over the past twenty five years to exert US “influence throughout Europe and Eurasia, including in the former states of the Soviet Union, by providing resources to political parties, think tanks, and civil society groups.”

And what is this about “undermine European unity”? Since when is European unity or its undermining the business of Washington? Oh, excuse me sir. I forgot that Washington is now self-proclaimed dictator, Absolute Supreme Ruler, Top Dog, barking its orders to the entire planet…

To counter the alleged Russian exertion of influence in Europe and Eurasia, Section 254 of the bill authorizes $250,000,000 for 2018 and 2019 for its Countering Russian Influence Fund (sic). The countries for US “countering” targets include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (including Republika Srpska), Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Kosovo, Serbia, and Ukraine. The countering actions are described as,

“To build the capacity of civil society, media, and other nongovernmental organizations countering the influence and propaganda of the Russian Federation.”

The new Russian sanctions act explicitly names who shall use this pot of US taxpayer money to interfere in the internal affairs of countries in Europe and Eurasia:

“non-governmental or international organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Black Sea Trust, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the Prague Civil Society Centre, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, the European Endowment for Democracy, and related organizations…”

In brief, the new extraordinary Russian sanctions act openly calls for Color Revolutions, the CIA’s form of “fake democracy” using the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and allied CIA or US State Department front NGOs to massively intervene in the internal affairs of the entire land space from the European Union to Eurasia. This all should not surprise as the key figure in the US Senate credited with forging support for the Russian part of the new sanctions act is the patron saint of the NED and of virtually all US Color Revolutions, John McCain.

Section 257—Ukranian (sic) Energy Security explicitly targets “Russian Federation’s oil and natural gas resources, but also on its state-owned nuclear power and electricity companies.”

In effect, the new US sanctions bill is like a nuclear barrel bomb with sanctions flying in all directions—Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, EU energy companies, even US oil and other companies.

HR-3364: Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act is truly a 2017 bad remake of the classic Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoon series. This time Senator John McCain is in the role of Daffy Duck and the entire gaggle of Senators and Congressmen who bravely marched lockstep behind Daffy rushing to be seen as good American patriots are like so many fevered lemmings marching off the cliff of sanity. Fortunately the Act is so extreme that it will blow up in the faces of its backers. It may be the catalyst to shift the entire world geopolitical balance away from the Washington Superpower run amok.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Featured image is from the author.

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

Special council/former FBI director Robert Mueller is part of a diabolical CIA plot to remove Trump from office.

Accusations of Russian US election hacking and allegations of possible improper or illegal Trump team connections to Russia were fabricated by John Brennan as CIA director – the plot against Trump continuing under Mike Pompeo.

A grand jury impaneled by Mueller issued subpoenas as part of his investigation into Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya – a private citizen unconnected to the Kremlin.

The meeting amounted to much ado about nothing. Yet it became a cause celebre to denigrate and weaken Trump for the wrong reasons.

No evidence suggests any improper or illegal dealings with Russia by Trump, his family members, or team.

Published emails between Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya showed they had nothing to do with Russia. Issues discussed related to adoption of children and related charitable activities.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian government knows nothing about Veselnitskaya. President Trump is correct, calling ongoing Mueller, FBI and congressional investigations “a witch-hunt.”

Grand juries reflect deep-rooted Anglo-American tradition. The process originally served to protect accused defendants from overly-zealous prosecutors.

Though nominally independent, they only hear cases prosecutors choose. They’re lawyers like Mueller, involved in investigating, charging and taking people to trial for alleged offenses.

According to former prosecutor Paul Callan, impaneling a grand jury “is a serious development in the Mueller investigation.”

“Given the (he) inherited an investigation that began months ago, it would suggest that he has uncovered information pointing in the direction of criminal charges. But against whom is the real question.”

Law Professor Stephen Vladeck believes involvement of a grand jury suggests “prosecutions being contemplated and being pursued by” Mueller.

Grand jurors can select witnesses. They can exclude ones they wish exempted, grant discretionary immunity and ask questions after witnesses testify.

Their job is to judge what prosecutors present, deciding whether enough evidence warrants indictments or exonerations.

Proceedings are conducted secretly. No one may disclose what goes on unless judicially ordered or permitted.

Anyone may be subpoenaed, and must answer questions unless a specific privilege is claimed such as lawyer/client confidentiality or self-incrimination.

Lawyers can’t represent their clients while testifying. Double jeopardy doesn’t apply to grand juries.

If prosecutors fail to get indictments, they need Criminal Division Attorney General permission to try again. Targets remain vulnerable. As long as he remains special council, Mueller can pursue Trump, his family and team members until kingdom come if he and dark forces backing him wish.

Zealous prosecutors can charge defendants on rejected charges or new ones, endless harassment if proceedings go on long enough. In Mueller’s case, it can be months, years or in perpetuity as long as he remains on the job.

The ABA asks

“(w)hat protection does a target have against witnesses lying to the grand jury (perhaps for leniency on existing or threatened charges), or against the use of unconstitutionally obtained evidence? None.”

Law Professor Mark Kadish earlier explained

“grand jur(ies) (give) prosecutors extraordinary powers (providing) “incredible pretrial and trial advantages – especially where those powers are otherwise unavailable through authorized civil discovery tools.”

Notably post-9/11, prosecutors zealously sought grand jury indictments, manipulating proceedings to get them.

Is this what Mueller has in store for Trump, his family or team members? In the fullness of time we’ll know.

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 Heavy.com.

The NoWar Network in Rome has issued a declaration, published below, which claims that the current events in Venezuela have been misreported in the mass media and in government declarations of practically all NATO countries.  

The aim is clear, says the NoWar declaration: to present the left-wing Maduro government as dictatorial (or aspiring to become dictatorial) and to present the right-wing opposition as a spontaneous, popular resistance movement, that merits our support.

Similar scenarios were presented before the NATO invasions of Iraq and Libya, before the NATO proxy-war in Syria, and before the NATO backed coup that overturned the Yanukovych government of Ukraine.  Is this selfsame scenario to be played out, once again, in Venezuela?

Press Release

The NoWar Network Condemns the Media’s One-sided Attack Against the Venezuelan Government and Its Silence over the Terrorist Practices of the Right-wing Venezuelan Opposition.

The mass media in practically every NATO country have, for months, dutifully reechoed the U.S. government’s one-sided portrayal of the Venezuelan crisis. This portrayal aims at discrediting the left-wing Maduro government and ushering into power a right-wing opposition that does not hesitate to use terrorist violence to destabilize the country and seize control.

The events currently unfolding in Venezuela are clearly a repeat of the “soft coup” that the international media helped promote last year in Brazil. Then, the media relentlessly backed calls to impeach the left-wing and anti-FMI President Dilma Rousseff on trumped-up charges and substitute her with the right-winger (and pro-FMI) Michel Temer, whose first act in office as President was to freeze all social spending and pay back the international debts that Rousseff had considered usury and thus illegal.

Now, a similar scenario is playing out in Venezuela.

Italy has shamelessly joined in the international media campaign to oust the Maduro government through declarations such as the one recently made by Matteo Renzi, the leader of the Partito Democratico (the party in power in Italy): Maduro, according to Renzi, “is destroying the liberty and well-being of his people who are dying not only from hunger but from all the [government] violence”. This gross misrepresentation of the facts was not challenged by any of the major national newspapers.

As for the current Italian Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, he – along with the media in practically every NATO country – has not hesitated to denounce the “persecution” and arrest of the opposition leaders Ledesma and Lopez, while overlooking the fact that, in Italy or any other NATO country, these two individuals would have been jailed long ago for promoting acts of terrorism. Gentiloni apparently has not noticed the admission by Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, that his agency is involved in the destabilization of Venezuela. Nor does Gentiloni seem to have noticed that it is the Venezuelan oligarchs, not grass roots organizations, that have been recruiting gangs to create havoc in the streets for over 100 days, burning down pro-government neighborhoods, attacking the police with fire bombs – on occasion with roadway bombs – and, in short, bringing the country to a standstill.

The only criticism that Gentiloni and the international media have made so far is of Maduro’s supposed “attempt at creating a dictatorship” through the creation of a Constituent Assembly charged with rewriting the constitution, an Assembly elected by a large part of the population. Indeed, even before the Assembly has convened to formulate changes to the Constitution (following the exact procedures which the Constitution itself has provided for), the U.S., Italy and other NATO countries have declared that they will refuse to recognize whatever document is produced.

Clearly the economic wars that the U.S. and the Venezuelan oligarchs have waged against the living conditions of the lower and middle classes in Venezuela, combined with a century of extractivism and declining oil prices, have left Venezuela in economic chaos. But as we can see from the case of Brazil (which suffers from similar economic chaos), one cannot, in South America, simply oust a left-wing social-spending government – and bring to power the right-wing opposition and their wealthy pro-austerity backers – and hope for greater economic stability. Indeed, as Brazil has shown, this only leads to increased economic chaos and corruption — certainly not to greater social justice and peace.

The NoWar Network in Rome therefore condemns the unilateralism of the Italian government and of the governments of the other NATO countries, as well as that of their mass media, who have chosen to dutifully join in the Washington-led campaign to destabilize Venezuela.

It should be remembered that NATO is the primary cause of wars and political instability in the world today, from Afghanistan to Libya to Syria to Ukraine – wherever a local government refuses to bow to the dictates of Washington.

Indeed, the NoWar Network wishes to express the debt of gratitude that we all owe to Venezuela and to the other countries of the Alba Alliance (Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador) in opposing over the years, in the General Assembly of the United Nations and elsewhere, the NATO wars of aggression and attempts at destabilization. Against the Axis of War, Venezuela, and the other four South American countries just mentioned, constitute a genuine Axis of Peace.

Featured image is from the author.

“American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression,” was the Washington Post headline some 53 years ago, on August 5, 1964.

The front page of that day’s New York Times reported: “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”

Of course, as historians now acknowledge, there was no “second attack” by North Vietnam—no “renewed attacks against American destroyers.”

But as activist, author and FAIR associate Norman Solomon has described, including in the film War Made Easy, US journalists reported those official claims as absolute truths, ignoring countervailing evidence and opening the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War and the deaths of over 50,000 Americans and millions of Southeast Asians.

The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an “unprovoked attack” against the US destroyer Maddox, which was on “routine patrol” in the Tonkin Gulf on August 2—and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a “deliberate attack” two days later, firing 22 torpedoes on the Maddox and another destroyer, Turner Joy.

The USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. (Photo: US Navy)

President Johnson was on television that night, telling Americans that “aggression by terror against the peaceful villagers of South Vietnam has now been joined by open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America,” ordering retaliatory airstrikes representing a momentous escalation of the war, and calling for immediate passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which stated,

“Congress approves and supports the determination of the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”

“It’s like grandmother’s nightshirt. It covers everything,” Johnson quipped.

The House dispensed with hearings and approved in 40 minutes; the Senate took two days, finally voting 88 to 2 to adopt.

But reality was very different from the tale that Johnson and the press told the public.

The New York Times (8/8/64) reporting the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

The Maddox, which fired first in the earlier skirmish, was not on routine patrol; it was engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers—in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.

And as for the second reported attack, the spark for the “retaliatory” airstrikes, it simply never happened. Many historians think the Maddox crew mistook their sonar’s pings off their own rudder for North Vietnamese torpedoes; Johnson later “joked” they might’ve been shooting at whales.

But it shouldn’t surprise you to know that there was plenty of intelligence at the time suggesting that no attack had occurred; it was just overlooked and obscured—intentionally by warmongers in the government, but also by a credulous press. Sound familiar?

Johnson’s late-night speech won editorial praise. The president, said the New York Times, “went to the American people last night with the somber facts.” The LA Times urged Americans to “face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities.”

As Tom Wells, author of The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam, recounts, US media

described the air strikes that Johnson launched in response as merely “tit for tat”—when in reality they reflected plans the administration had already drawn up for gradually increasing its overt military pressure against the North.

The distortion was due to media’s “almost exclusive reliance on US government officials as sources of information”—and their “reluctance to question official pronouncements on ‘national security issues.’”

Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in January of 1971, but that didn’t mean much, since they continued to finance the war. And elite media, evidently, set about a studious forgetting of what columnist Sydney Schanberg called—30 years later, in the midst of another war—the press corps’ “unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.”

Americans, Schanberg said, are “the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”

That’s an innocence of course, that we can ill afford—and that journalists, above all, should fight the impulse to indulge.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated.

Last month, UN war crimes investigators described the situation in Raqqa, Syria resulting from US airstrikes as a “staggering loss of civilian life.” This from the US-led Coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve – which the US has been trying to ‘resolve’ (rather unsuccessfully) since 2014. 

US officials are now claiming that they have only killed around 600 civilians during its ‘anti-ISIS’ operations in Iraq and Syria, but that does not square with data collected by independent groups which brings the total to around 4,354 civilians (conservatively) who have been killed as a result of US-led coalition bombing campaigns since June 2014.

21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen spoke to RT International last night about this discrepancy and about the hypocrisy of US officials when conducting their public relations damage control after any said ‘intervention,’ including the use of cynically concocted, militarized politically correct terms like ‘collateral damage.’

He points out in this report,

“What Americans don’t understand, because they haven’t had to face it on their own territory – is that one man’s collateral is another man’s wife and children – and that’s a reality in Syria.”

Watch:

U.S. President Donald Trump has now signed into law what may be considered one of the most insane pieces of legislation ever to come out of the U.S. Congress. While the law itself will not result in major direct actions in terms of immediately attributable effect, it will have far reaching repercussions both at home and abroad. The law, passed almost unanimously in both the House and Senate had sat for days on Trump’s desk awaiting the President’s signature.

The bill is aimed at a number of Russian industries and also takes aim at foreign banks that do business with North Korea. The bill contains a number of provisions implementing sanctions against Iran as well. It also restricts the President’s ability to tamper with the sanctions regime once it is put in place.

While some held out hope that Trump would muster some courage and actually do the right thing, the President, assured by the parasites and puppets in Congress that they would override his veto, signed the bill into law. Trump did issue a signing statement declaring the bill “seriously flawed – particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate.” Trump also said the bill contained “clearly unconstitutional provisions.” Nevertheless, Trump signed the bill saying his doing so was for “national unity.”

Trump’s statement was correct. Except the bill is not just “flawed,” it is horrific. It is the legislative announcement of the march forward in the war against Russia by elements within the U.S. Deep State, and Trump’s signature announces to the world that either the American President is willing to go along with the war or is powerless to stop it.

So this begs the question, if Trump knew the bill was unconstitutional, why did he sign it? Is “national unity” worth World War Three? And how many Americans are unified in their desire to fight it? Only the items in Congress purchased by AIPAC, Wall Street, and the Military Industrial Complex as well as the Deep State apparatus are unified in such an insanity-driven desire.

Trump apologists will no doubt suggest that Trump is continuing to march ahead with his master plan and that, by signing the bill, he is simply moving forward with what was going to happen anyway; i.e. the override of his veto and the implementation of the sanctions. They will suggest he signed the bill in order to move ahead with his agenda in other areas and return to the Russia issue later. Others suggest he will simply allow the measure to be challenged and struck down by the Supreme Court.

Ironically, Trump supporters love their President because he “gets things done” and doesn’t apologize for “being tough.” But he was anything but tough with this incredibly important bill. He didn’t fight at all. Trump claims he could make better deals with Russia than the Congress but, unfortunately, he didn’t. He has shown hints of sanity from time to time only to then launch missiles at Syrian airbases inhabited by Russian forces, by refusing to remove sanctions on Russia, and by signing this monstrous bill. Whenever Trump shows some signs of lucidity, he follows up with falling in line with the elements of his government that are intent on their “Moscow or bust!!” war strategy.

As Paul Craig Roberts points out in his article, there were a number of strategies that could have been taken by Trump. First, he should have vetoed the bill. At worst, if Congress overrode his veto, Congress would bear responsibility for the political fallout or the radioactive fallout if it comes to that.

Second, in the lead up to the veto, Trump could have brought his case to the American people. He could have laid it all out in the open, pointing out that Congress, both misinformed and eaten up with special interest money, was endangering America’s way of life and possibly even life itself the world over. He could have stated plainly that the interests who own Congress and who are working through Congress are now marching the United States to World War Three. He could have even told them to go watch The Day After with their families and ask themselves if they think the potential costs would be worth it. He could have done any number of things explaining why he was vetoing the bill and then he could have vetoed it. But he didn’t. Thus, we now have a situation that Paul Craig Roberts has labeled the “most alarming event of my lifetime.” He wrote,

Now that Washington’s criminally insane have convinced Russia that Russia is in Washington’s war plans, Russia has no alternative but to prepare to strike first.

During the Cold War both sides received numerous false alarms of incoming ICBMs, but because both sides were working to reduce tensions, the alarms were disbelieved. But today with Washington having raised tensions so high, both sides are likely to believe the false alarm. The next false alarm could bring the end of life on earth, and for this there is no one to be blamed but Washington.

Trump’s emphasis on normalizing relations with Russia was a great relief to people sufficiently intelligent to understand the consequences of nuclear war. But none of these people are in Washington, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the military/security complex, or among the presstitutes that pass for a media in America. All of these people want to destroy Trump because he wants to make peace with Russia.

Of the 535 members of the House and Senate, 530 voted in support of a bill that violates the separation of powers and prevents President Trump from removing sanctions on Russia. As the vote is so overwhelming that it is veto proof, the White House has announced that Trump will sign the bill, thus surrendering and giving up on his goal of restoring normal relations with Russia.

The White House believes that as the bill is veto proof, all that Trump could achieve by a veto is to prove the charges that he is a Russian agent and is using his office to protect Russia, and this could easily be turned into an impeachment proceeding.

. . . .

I have been amazed at the stupidity and mendacity of the American liberal-progressive-left, who have fallen in line with the military/security complex’s effort to destroy Trump, because peace with Russia takes away the orchestrated enemy so essential to the budget and power of the military/security complex. Of course, America no longer has a left. The left has been displaced by Identity Politics, a Zionist creation, as Gilad Atzmon explains in his books, that is proving effective in destroying the goyim by teaching them to hate one another. In Identity Politics, everyone is the victim of white heterosexual males, whom Identity Politics defines as misogynist, racist, homophobic gun nuts—Hillary’s “Trump deplorables.” As the “deplorables” voted for Trump, the liberal-progressive-left hate Trump and are helping the military/security complex destroy him even if it means nuclear war.

As I predicted would be the case, Trump had no idea how to appoint a government that would be on his side, and obviously failed completely. He is continually contradicted by his UN ambassador, his Secretary of State, his National Security Advisor, his Secretary of Defense. Trump is alone in his government.

So, he might as well fight. Address the American people. Organize the angry Europeans. Take the fight to criminally insane Washington before the criminals destroy the world in war.

While Roberts’ assertion that this bill will lead to nuclear first strikes may seem hyperbolic, there is a logical flow of events that could very well take the United States and Russia into just this type of situation if some major intervention does not prevent it.

It is also important to point out that, while Trump is clearly embattled by elements within the Deep State, that does not mean he is the political messiah the U.S. has been waiting on. Trump has already slapped sanctions on Venezuela, launched political attacks against Hezbollah, and repeatedly threatened and provoked Iran.

Regardless, this new bill is an escalation rarely seen in international politics if for no other reason than the fact that the Deep State apparatus has begun to tear off its mask and bare its teeth for the world to see. The U.S. Congress has essentially stood up in unison and demanded the destruction of Russia. If Americans can’t see something wrong with this picture, we are in deeper shit than many may have realized.

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

Featured image is from Anti Media.

A federal appeals court on Friday threw out lengthy prison sentences of three former operatives for private mercenary firm Blackwater Worldwide—and ordered a retrial for a fourth operative who had received a life sentence—for their roles in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, which left 14 unarmed Iraqis dead and another 17 wounded.

“The men, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, and Nicholas Slatten, were convicted in October 2014 after years of legal battles,” Common Dreams reported in 2015, when U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Slatten—who the government says fired the first shots—to life in prison and the other three men to “30 years and one day each on charges that included manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and using firearms while committing a felony.”

During the 10-week trial in 2014,

“prosecutors said the four defendants, among 19 Blackwater guards providing security for State Department officials in Iraq, fired machine guns and grenade launchers in a reckless and out-of-control way after one of them falsely claimed their convoy, called Raven 23, was threatened by a car bomber,” the Washington Post reported.

“While defense lawyers have argued that the men were acting in self-defense, federal prosecutors wrote that the men’s ‘crimes here were so horrendous—the massacre and maiming of innocents so heinous—that they outweigh any factors that the defendants may argue form a basis for leniency,'” Common Dreams reported.

The federal appeals court, in a split decision issued Friday, claimed prosecutors misapplied a law during the lower court’s trial, the New York Times reported:

The three-judge panel declared the contractors’ sentences “grossly disproportionate to their culpability for using government-issued weapons in a war zone.” The court ordered the three men to be resentenced, a initial ruling that could significantly reduce their prison terms.

Mr. Slatten’s conviction was thrown out entirely. The appeals court ruled that he never should have been prosecuted in the same trial as his colleagues, one of whom said he—and not Mr. Slatten—fired the first shots.

By overturning his conviction, the court has forced the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute again….Retrying Mr. Slatten will not be easy. Prosecutors tracked down dozens of Iraqi witnesses and flew them to Washington for the first trial and would probably have to do so again.

According to the Post, spokesmen for the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips said Phillips’s office “is reviewing the opinion and has no further comment at this time.”

Paul Dickinson, an attorney who represented the families of six Iraqi massacre victims—including 9-year-old Ali Kinani, who was shot in the back of the head—shared their stories in a long series of tweets on Friday afternoon.

Blackwater murder conviction thrown out, other sentences overturned. I represented 6 victims of these crimes. 1/ https://t.co/gs2I5kHLfS

— Paul Dickinson (@prdickinson) August 4, 2017

The Nisour Square shooting & Ali Kinani's story is explained in this excellent video documentary by @jeremyscahill. https://t.co/6lkbc0Nsry

— Paul Dickinson (@prdickinson) August 4, 2017

Some of Dickinson’s messages were retweeted by journalist Jeremy Scahill, who authored the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. In a piece for The Intercept following the 2014 conviction, Scahill welcomed the ruling, but also outlined the greater issues with U.S. military contractors, particularly Blackwater and its infamous former CEO, Erik Prince. Scahill wrote:

The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince…had deep ties to the Bush administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11….

Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries.

More recently, the Blackwater founder—who is also the brother the Education Secretary Betsy Devos—has been tied to the Trump administration. In April, as Common Dreams reported, government officials told members of the press that Prince “took part in a clandestine meeting with a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication’ between Moscow and the White House.”

In June, Prince penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he outlined five ways he believes U.S. President Donald Trump‘s can “fix our approach in Afghanistan,” including the suggestion that the U.S. deploy an “East India Company approach.” As Common Dreams reported, one critic described Prince’s plan as “sheer 19th century bloodlust and thirst for empire,” and another noted, it is hardly surprising that a “war profiteer sees profit opportunity in war.”

Following the op-ed, it was revealed that two of Trump’s top aides, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner, reportedly solicited advice from Prince “on how to proceed with the 16-year-long war in Afghanistan.”

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

The bloody coup in Kiev in 2014 and the subsequent joining [reunification] of The Crimea to Russia is already becoming history. Currently nobody investigates the true reasons and main characters of this unprecedented US intervention in the affairs of Ukraine and Russia, which has changed the centuries-old character of relations between the two fraternal peoples. This was done in an absolutely cynical way and the guilty party was upheld [by the West] as Russia. Now Russia is presented as an aggressor capturing foreign territories for the whole world. That’s how they rewrite history and twist basic democratic values right in front of your eyes.

I was very happy to find on  “Global Research” two articles by Eric Zuesse “Obama’s Double-Standard on Russia: He Attacks Russia, then Condemns Putin for Defending Russia from His Attack“, Global Research, March, 19, 2015 and “Sweden Joins NATO’s Emerging War Against Russia“, Global Research, July 05, 2016  containing the analysis of events in Kiev in 2013-2014, their causes and the true instigator.

Without dwelling on the historical justice of the reunification of the Crimea and Russia, I would like to say that this step of Vladimir Putin  was effective in preventing bloodshed in The Crimea. Residing in the village of Partenit on the southern coast of the Crimea since November 2013 and often visiting Simferopol, the capital of the Republic of Crimea, and other cities, I witnessed escalation of tensions on the peninsula at the beginning of the events on the “Maidan”. This became especially noticeable starting from the end of December – the middle of January 2014, when the events on the “Maidan” began to turn into bloody massacres.

The attitude of the Ukrainian leadership towards those events was explained by the fact that the Rada went on New Year’s holidays. What is this – criminal negligence or treason?

Clashes in Kiev, Ukraine. Events of February 18, 2014 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

At that time, various nationalists became active, claiming their rights to The Crimea. As events heated up in Kiev, local separatists became active. The events happened simultaneously so that it was obvious that they had the same “customer” [sponsor]. Eric Zuesse [2015] described not only the sponsors, but also specific individuals being responsible for those actions.

Just after the coup, the new government in Kiev decided that the Russian language is no longer an official language. Thus, it provoked the continuation of bloody actions in the Crimea, where almost everybody speaks Russian. The movement of armed young men from the “Maidan” to the border of the Crimea was accompanied by sharp activation of local nationalists. Something terrible was  brewing. The tension in society reached its peak.

And at this moment, Russian military men appear in the Crimea, called “polite people” by the Crimeans for the fact that their appearance and actions are absolutely imperceptible and peaceful. I saw several “polite people” in Simferopol near the Government building; sometimes I met cars with soldiers on the roads. No acts of violence or shooting have been seen or heard anywhere. The appearance of “polite people” immediately calmed tension in society, arose sincere relief and joy in the people. In the referendum, the overwhelming majority voted for joining the Crimea to Russia.

Obama and his followers unleashed “the most blatant coup in history” [Stratfor, Zuesse, 2015], expecting that Putin would protect the Crimeans. So it happened. However coming to the rescue of the Crimea and Crimeans, Putin was portrayed as a world aggressor. As Eric Zuesse noted:

“Obama is the aggressor here, just as Hitler was the aggressor in Poland in 1939. And O’Bomba blames Russia as the aggressor, just as Hitler blamed Poland”.

Summing up, we can say that Obama’s operation cost Ukraine and Russia death and destruction and suffering of millions of people.

The political and military confrontation has intensified in the world. Truly. I hope that Global Research will continue to publish the truth about the situation in the Crimea and the true instigators of the coup in 2014 in Kiev. This will make it impossible to rewrite history, kindle hatred between nations, push the world toward a third world war.

S. S. Tsygantov is a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences

Featured image: Moroccans protest the death of fish seller Mouhcine Fikri (portrait) in the northern city (Source: PressTV)

In nearly every case of a forcible, West-led, regime change in the Middle East or Ukraine, the process began with low level public protests against a real or imagined abuse of power by security forces. Morocco’s current situation appears to follow the same scenario. The killing of Mouhcine Fikri, a fisherman who was crushed by a truck while attempting to retrieve fish that was confiscated by the police in October 2016, had sparked several waves of unrest and civil disobedience initially in the city of Al-Khoseima which later spread to other parts of the Rif region.

These protests quickly produced an informal leader, Nasser Zefzafi, a 39-year-old unemployed man with considerable rhetorical skill and a populist touch. Zefzafi’s demands quickly escalated beyond the initial case of Fikri’s death and included Morocco’s corruption, repressions, absence of investments and subsidies to the Rif region, onerous security forces’ presence, even Morocco’s foreign aid to African countries and the King Mohammed VI’s claim of supreme spiritual authority.

Zefzafi, moreover, demanded to enter into negotiations with the king himself rather than his representatives, a demand that was bound to be rejected due to its unprecedented nature. Interestingly, Zefzafi accused the king of having entered a scheme with Gulf Arab states in order to settle Arabs in Morocco, thus displacing the native Berbers.

Morocco’s government responded by dispatching a delegation with promised 1 billion euro over the course of five years and by accusing the protesters of separatism and, on May 29, arresting Zefzafi and other protest leaders who now stand accused of promoting separatism, encouraging rebellion, obtaining financial support from foreign powers, attempting a forcible regime change, which under Morocco’s criminal code may be punished by death.Ultimately 32 of the key activists were sentenced to 18 months of prison, while others received 2 or 3 month sentences.

Alas, far from tamping down on the unrest, the trial proved a rallying point for a variety of forces which hope to capitalize on the protests and turn them to political advantage. About 600 attorneys representing the vast majority of legal offices in the country expressed willingness to challenge the ruling. In Rabat there was held a solidarity protest with up to 40 thousand participants which included such organizations as the February 11 Movement which appeared during the original Arab Spring, the Istiqlal Party which is now much diminished in spite of having won the country independence in the 1950s, and the Al Adl Wa Al Ihssane (Justice and Spirituality), a semi-legal Islamist association, which is tolerated by the Moroccan authorities. It also took part in protests of the Arab Spring with the slogan of introducing Sharia law in Morocco which refuses to participate in the legitimate political process and has a strong presence in Rif. Mohammed VI, clearly not wishing to see the situation escalate into bloodshed, recognized the right to protest and indicated the need to investigate why the 650 million euro development plan for Rif was not implemented.

Indeed, the economic situation in the Rif region is the reason why so many segments of society jumped on the bandwagon of protest, which is a recurring phenomenon in this part of Morocco. The most important form of economic activity is the…cultivation of cannabis and smuggling of Latin American narcotics from West Africa. Even though this is fairly lucrative trade, little of it trickles down to ordinary citizens, with government officials being accused of skimming off the profits. The poverty also prompted many of the region’s young men to join various terrorist factions in Iraq and Syria, and with the fighting in these two countries slowly coming to a close, these men now pose a threat to the long-term stability of Morocco.

Morocco is fortunate in that, unlike in the other cases of regime change, the wave of protests did not coincide with an effort by the US or other Western powers to overthrow its government. Washington appears pleased with the monarchy and is not calling on Mohammed VI to step down. Morocco’s main strategic rival is Algeria which seeks to wrest away Western Sahara, but is in no position to mount major actions of any kind. The unrest in Morocco did coincide with the Saudi-Qatari confrontation and, considering that various Moroccan factions have ties to either Saudi Arabia or Qatar, the future of this country’s politics will be influenced by the outcome of the Gulf power struggle. Mohammed VI is fairly close to the House of Saud and the UAE which are major investors in Morocco (investments in 2016 France – 22%, UAE – 15,2%, SA – 11,2 %, USA – 9,6%, Qatar – 7,8%).  According to some experts, in this situation, protests could be initiated by Qatar through several religious movements which are under its control.

One of the weakest aspects of royal power is the religious sector. The king has complicated relations with Islamic movements within the country. After the terrorist attack in Casablanca in 2003, Mohammed VI began actively strengthen personal power in religious institutions trying to achieve firm control over the religious sector. During his reign, new Islamic governance bodies were established, and many Islamic research centers were opened. Currently Mohamed 6, being a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohamed, is viewed as the highest religious authority in the country and the commander of the faithful (amir al-muminin). He positions himself as a defender of traditional moderate ‘maliki’ Islam. The Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams, Morchidine and Morchidate, which was established in 2015, annually trains hundreds of imams from Nigeria, Chad, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia and France. Morocco, along with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, is one of the world leaders in the field of Islamic education. This allows the country to influence foreign states. However, the king was not able to substitute fully for his control of the religious sector.

King of Morocco Mohammed VI speak at the UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakech. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

According to some experts, a significant part of Muslims within the country are affected by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar. Qatar’s possible link to Morocco’s politics is the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) which has been pressing the king to relinquish part of its powers by allowing a new constitution. The PJD leader Abdelilah Benkiran for several years (November 2011- april 2017) was the prime minister of Morocco. The current prime minister Saadeddine Othmani is the incumbent PJD Secretary-General. It is known that PJD has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Though PJD didn’t take part in the protests and there is no direct evidence Qatar was involved in stoking the protests, Qatar’s involvement cannot be ruled out. The Moroccan protests would have been advantageous to Qatar as a means of demonstrating the country’s ability to destabilize Morocco and therefore compel the Mohammed VI to stray from his Saudi-friendly position and, indeed, Morocco has not joined the Saudi economic and political blockade of Qatar.

For the moment, Morocco’s political future is not facing any clear threats. The country’s economy is performing reasonably well and the king is popular and has the backing of the army and security forces. The wild card, as usual, is the United States which has been known of turning on its own allies without a moment’s notice in order to achieve its economic objectives. It is possible that Morocco owns a golden share in the current conflict in the Gulf, this may affect the future of Morocco which may yet find itself the battleground for the struggles between the world giants. The Rif protests may have been simply the first volley of that war.

Voiceover by Oleg Maslov

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Now that finally the U.S. government has officially terminated its arming and training of the jihadist gangs that are fighting to overthrow and replace Syria’s government, the neoconservative mainstream U.S. ‘news’ media are disagreeing with each other over how to communicate this fact to the American people without contradicting, or otherwise violating, the false ‘history’ they’ve all been presenting and preserving, throughout the past five years, which has described the U.S. government as being opposed to the jihadists in Syria, instead of as the U.S. government’s arming and training jihadists to overthrow and replace Syria’s government.

That’s a pretty blatant ‘historical’ lie, which they’ve all been maintaining, now, for five years; and, they’re at loggerheads over whether or how they’ll deal with it, now that the program (whose very existence they’ve helped the government to hide from the public) has been so publicly and suddenly ordered to end.

On July 19th, a neoconservative Democratic Party newspaper, the Washington Post, headlined one of their many anti-Trump news-articles, “Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow.” Their angle on this (actually momentous and constructive) action by Trump to abandon ‘the rebels’ (almost all of whom are, in fact, jihadists), was that this Republican President had done that in order to please Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (who defends Syria’s government, which secular government is knee-jerk-vilified in this and all American newspapers), and the WP article quoted neoconservatives who criticized the move by Trump to end the program.

The August 7th issue of a neoconservative Republican Party magazine, The Weekly Standard, headlines “Trump Got This One Right: Shutting down the CIA’s ghost war in Syria,” and doesn’t attack the previous, Democratic, President, for having initiated and run that “ghost war,” and doesn’t make clear what it was, or why it was being waged, but does say hostile things against the leaders both of Russia and of Syria, such as that “Putin … has the blood of many Syrian civilians on his hands,” and allegations also against the Syrian government, such as:

Russian and Syrian jets have indiscriminately and repeatedly bombed civilian targets. The Assad regime has used chemical weapons, which Trump himself objected to, bombing a Syrian airfield in response. The United States cannot endorse these war crimes by allying itself with the perpetrators of mass murder in Syria.

Besides the fact that at least some of those assertions are demonstrably false, the United States government has actually (and often) done such things as that propaganda-article alleges Russia and Syria to have done, but nothing is said in this far-right magazine about that; readers of The Weekly Standard don’t get to see even a mention of this reality. The publication fools its readers, instead of informs them.

What’s even more important to take note of here, however, is that the article does not so much as even just mention the key fact: that Russia’s forces were invited into Syria by Syria’s secular government, in order to defend it against the jihadist gangs America was assisting, and that America’s forces weren’t invited by Syria’s government, but are instead invaders there, trying to overthrow that government, and are not only trying to help to defeat the ISIS jihadists who have also invaded Syria in order to overthrow Syria’s secular government.

The crucial fact, that the Obama Administration was insistent that Russia in Syria not bomb Al Qaeda forces in Syria and that that insistence upon protecting Al Qaeda there was the key reason why Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to reach an agreement with Russia about Syria had failed (they were actually sabotaged by his own boss, President Obama), is ignored by The Weekly Standard. (Also ignored by this far-right magazine is that the U.S. government has the blood of at least as many “Syrian civilians on its hands” there, as does the Russian government or any other participant in the war. That magazine’s playing to this false ‘us’-against-‘them’ prejudice, insults the intelligence of its readers, but is done in order to divert their duped reader’s attention away from the reader’s real enemies, which include the owners of that magazine, who want to manipulate, instead of to inform, their readership, for the benefit of Republican aristocrats. Those aristocrats need these dupes to remain duped.)  

This shows that even when Republican ‘news’ media defend a Republican President who is reversing an imperialistic policy of his Democratic predecessor, it’s done in such a way, so it’s designed to keep the American public still deceived about the actual ugly history, which indicts both of America’s political Parties — indicts the U.S. government itself, at its highest levels, where both Parties are united together, in order to conquer the entire planet (including Syria, including Russia), for the benefit of America’s aristocrats.

Instead of reporting this crucial truth, The Weekly Standard says:

Russia intervened in Syria in September 2015, and the timing was not accidental. Just months earlier, in March, the “Army of Conquest” took over the northwestern province of Idlib. This rebel coalition was no band of moderates. It was led by Nusra and included its closest Islamist and jihadist partners. The Army of Conquest was on the march, threatening the Assad family’s stronghold of Latakia on the coast.

The message the magazine is trying to convey to its conservative American readership, is that Russia there was defending “the Assad family,” and not defending Syria’s sovereignty over Syria’s own territory — not defending the independence of the Syrian government, from the demands of the U.S. aristocracy (which are mainly concerned with building oil and gas pipelines through Syria in order to replace Russia as the main energy-supplier to the world’s biggest energy-market, the EU, by the U.S. and its royal Arab allies as the main energy-suppliers there).

This is an imperialistic war, and the only way for the U.S. aristocracy to win it, is militarily (and/or via coups such as it did in Ukraine) to break apart Russia’s foreign alliances, in order to grab control of Russia’s assets (including that oil and gas) — but the U.S. oligarchs are also going after China’s assets, and Iran’s assets, and the assets of any well-armed government that’s not yet a vassal-nation to the U.S. aristocracy (vassals such as Europe, Japan, and all other U.S. allies).

America (with the assistance of the Sauds, and of the U.S. aristocracy’s other fundamentalist-Sunni business-partners in the Middle East) uses jihadists to serve as those “boots on the ground,” against secular governments such as Syria and Russia, because that’s a lot cheaper to do than to re-institute the U.S. military draft and to send tens of thousands of American soldiers out to overthrow, or at least to weaken, the ‘enemy’ government. It’s much cheaper “boots on the ground,” to grab new territory via these proxies, than via U.S. troops.

The supreme international issue in our time is sovereignty — the independence, or freedom, of nations. It’s international democracy, which is really at stake, in all of this. The alternative (which the U.S. government leads) is international fascism. It’s a vast program, not composed merely of invasions (the ‘Defense’ Department) and of coups (the State Department, etc.).

Now that (after 24 February 1990) the United States has been committed to world-conquest, there is, regarding international news-reporting in the United States, nothing that is fundamentally true that’s reported in the U.S. ‘news’ media, regarding international relations — it’s all based upon a shared lie by both wings of the U.S. aristocracy, Republican and Democratic, saying that the U.S. government supports freedom and democracy around the world, and that the nations which the U.S. government is trying to conquer, do not favor international freedom and democracy. The standard American account (that it supports, instead of opposes, democracy around the world) is the exact opposite of the truth.

For example: How much publicity did the U.S. ‘news’ media provide when twice in one day the Secretary General of the United Nations said that the U.S. President’s insistence upon having a veto-power regarding whom would, and whom would not, be allowed to become Syria’s next President, was “totally unfair and unreasonable” and that instead “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.” No publicity for those statements. None at all. The fact (that the U.S. President refused to accept that “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people”) was shocking. But it wasn’t reported to the American people. Americans never knew about it.

How much publicity did the U.S. ‘news’ media provide when the U.S. government was one of only three governments in the entire world to vote in the U.N. General Assembly against a resolution to condemn racism, fascism, and denial of the Holocaust? None. None at all. The fact was shocking. But it, too, wasn’t reported.

And: How many Americans know that on the night of 24 February 1990, the U.S. President secretly told the Chancellor of West Germany, that all of their statements to Soviet President (soon to become only Russia’s President) Mikhail Gorbachev, saying to him that the U.S. and its alliances would end the Cold War on their side if the Soviet Union and its alliances did on theirs, had been mere lies and that the Cold War would henceforth continue to be waged on the Western side until Russia itself would be conquered?

How can a nation be a ‘democracy’, while its government (and its ‘news’ media) hides the most important parts of history, and pumps instead lies, to its people, regarding international relations? Who is the actual sovereign in the United States — its public, or its aristocracy?

And how many U.S. news-media will carry this article, which is submitted to all of them, to publish free-of-charge? For any of them that has a large audience, to publish it, could precipitate an unprecedented revolution within the U.S. aristocracy itself (a revolution against their lies), because it would, in effect, officially acknowledge that the existing ‘history’ is founded upon lies. But, if this fact is not publicly recognized in the U.S. now, then when will the truth about these matters be allowed to be published here? Or, will it ever? Or will it never.

The Washington Post’s article said that “a current official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity” said: “Putin won in Syria.” The anonymous source didn’t say: “The Syrian people won in Syria.”

Western-sponsored polls in Syria showed that 55% of Syrians wanted Assad to remain as President, and 82% of Syrians blamed America for the presence of jihadists in Syria trying to overthrow Assad.

Are the U.S. ‘news’media hopeless — beyond salvaging? Is democracy in America beyond salvaging? Is 1984 here locked-in? What would that mean for the future of the world?

‘News’media in the countries that are allied with the U.S. are just as trashy. For example, here’s an article from a brilliant blogger ripping to shreds an August 1st article from Britain’s Reuters ‘news’ agency, about the war in Yemen. That Reuters ‘news’-report could just as well have been published by the New York Times or Washington Post.

Maybe ‘news’media now are that rotten all over the world. But any mainstream ‘news’medium in the U.S., or its allied countries, has no realistic basis for criticizing ‘news’media in other nations. Yet they do criticize the press in those nations, constantly. That’s just another lie, from ‘news’media that might as well be pure lies.

The presumption when reading the ‘news’ should therefore be: What are they really trying to sell, and to whom? In a world dominated by lies, the thing that’s actually more important than anything else, is the motives. And nothing should then be believed on the basis of trust. In international relations, everything now is war, and the first victim of war is truth. And that is the reality today.

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

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Modern 9K333 Verba man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADs) have been spotted at positions of the Russian military servicemen in the Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus. The MANPADs were reportedly deployed to protect checkpoints and observation posts established by the Russians from DIY combat drones as well as other threats from the air.

ISIS has reportedly started forceful conscription campaign for males from 20-yo to 30-yo in Deir Ezzor. The goal is to get enough manpower to fight the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in central Syria. The decision is another sign that ISIS faces significant problems in northeastern Palmyra and southern Raqqah and its defense may fall if the terrorist group does not get additional resources.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reportedly established a joint operations room in order to coordinate efforts against ISIS in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa provinces as well as to improve the security situation in Aleppo province.

According to the Lebanese newspaper, Al-Akhbar, the operations room has already been established and this will be officially announced by the two parties soon. The so-called “Turkish threat” in northern Syria was the main reason behind the decision to boost the coordination between the two parties.

Turkey is allegedly ready to launch a large-scale military operation against Kurdish militias in the Afrin area. These Kurdish militias are a core of the SDF and now they seek to boost cooperation with the “Assad regime”. Another reason is tensions between the SDF and other US-backed groups of the Free Syrian Army.

Pro-government sources claimed that a joint operations room that include the SAA and the Manbij Military Council [Arab SDF faction] is currently being prepared in Al-Aryima area near Manbij. Thus, according various sources at least two operations room have been set up in different parts of northern Syria.

If reports are officially confirmed, it would be an important step in boosting cooperation between the two sides. Since the end of the battle of Aleppo, the SDF has decreased a level of the cooperation with the Syrian government and the SAA and directly followed the US approach aimed at indirectly undermining the government efforts against ISIS. However, these tensions have never reached the level when they cannot be solved via diplomatic means and some level of cooperation has been always existed.

In Raqqah city, the SDF has been clearing the remaining ISIS-held area in the southern part of the city. 26 ISIS members were reportedly killed in Hisham Bin Abdul Malik district. 9 other terrorists were killed and 2 VBIEDs were destroyed in Al-Rawdah district. ISIS claimed that 11 SDF fighters were killed the Al-Atiq Mosque in central Raqqah.

The SDF, supported by the US-led coalition’s airpower, artillery and special operations forces, have a upper hand in the battle for Raqqah. However, the ISIS strong has a strong defense inside the city.

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“The people who were at the forefront of the candlelight revolution that ousted Park Geun-hye need to be the driving force of South Korean politics, and for that reason, we need a new party,” said Kim Jong-hoon, an independent South Korean National Assembly member, in a recent interview with Zoom in Korea.

Kim is part of a new movement to re-consolidate progressive forces in South Korea to build a new progressive party tasked with following through on the demands for fundamental systemic change put forth by the candlelight revolution. The preparatory committee of the New People’s Party (Sae-minjung-jeong-dang)–a working title that may change after merging with other existing progressive parties–represents a broad united front of diverse sectors, most notably the Korean Peasants League and sections of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. It plans to launch the new party in late September.

Formerly a member of the Democratic Labor Party and the Unified Progressive Party, Kim currently serves in the National Assembly as an independent and is the standing representative of the New People’s Party (tentative name). He represents the district of Ulsan, South Korea’s industrial powerhouse and home to the world’s largest automobile assembly plant operated by the Hyundai Motor Company and the world’s largest shipyard operated by Hyundai Heavy Industries. As a student activist, he participated in the series of militant labor strikes that later came to be known as the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987, a milestone in the fight for democratic labor unions in South Korea.

Zoom in Korea asked Kim to discuss the impetus behind the formation of the new progressive party, as well as the role of South Korean progressives vis a vis the liberal Moon Jae-in administration and the intensifying war threats on the Korean peninsula. The following is Part 1 of the interview:

ZoominKorea: Congratulations on the formation of the New People’s Party (tentative name). Please tell us about the new party. What forces are coming together to form this party? Why form this party at this particular moment?

Kim: The South Korean people have ousted the previous Park Geun-hye administration through people power and laid the groundwork for creating a new society. The people who were at the forefront of the candlelight revolution need to be the driving force of South Korean politics. For that to happen, we need a new party. All who share this belief–the Korean Peasants League (KPL), Korean Alliance of Progressive Movements (KAPM), and the Korean Youth Alliance, among others–came together on July 9 to launch the preparatory committee of the New People’s Party (tentative name).

ZoominKorea: How does this new progressive party distinguish itself from not only the liberal democratic party (The Minjoo Party) but also other progressive parties already in existence?

Kim: The existing political parties are solely focused on partisan politics based on their own party interests. The aim of the New People’s Party (tentative name) is to serve the broader interests of the people and create a new political force to fundamentally transform the political order of South Korean society. “Toward a society that respects workers” is our slogan, and as such, our goal is to liquidate inequality and fight for self-determination, peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula, the world’s only divided country under constant threat of war. We will demonstrate that the most competent political leaders are the people themselves.

ZoominKorea: You had said in a previous interview elsewhere that you were deeply affected by the death of farmer Baek Nam-gi as you identified with his life and struggle. Tell us about your personal background and how you became involved in politics.

Kim: When Farmer Baek Nam-gi passed away, I went to his hospital bed every night even though it was in the middle of the national audit season. Baek was hit by a water cannon during a people power demonstration in 2015 and was in a coma for a year before finally passing. This seventy-year old man got up at the break of dawn and traveled all the way from Boseong, South Jeolla Province to Seoul to demand a raise in the price of rice. It broke my heart to think about what must have been going through his mind that day. A world where workers and farmers have to risk their lives just to survive — don’t you think it’s cruel?

It’s been thirty-odd years since I first vowed to work for a better world for workers and farmers. I attended university in Ulsan and became a student activist. I was imprisoned for supporting the 128-day labor strike at Hyundai Heavy Industries in 1989. When a worker I met through that struggle said to me, “Won’t your politics change after you graduate and become successful?” I said, “No, I will always fight on the side of workers.” My current political work is part of my effort to honor that pledge.

In 1990, I became the representative of a workers’ cultural organization in Ulsan Dong-gu. The following year, I became the cultural secretary of the Hyundai Group Labor Unions Alliance. In 2002 — after the formation of the Democratic Labor Party in 2000 — I was elected a member of the Ulsan City Council, and I became active in legislative politics for the first time. In 2011, I was elected the Commissioner of the Ulsan Dong-gu district, where I gained administrative experience. Then in the 2016 general election, I was elected into the National Assembly, where I currently fight for the rights of workers, the urban poor, and the socially-disenfranchised.

ZoominKorea: You represent the district of Ulsan, where Hyundai Heavy Industries is based. Tell us about the history of labor and democracy movements in Ulsan. How is your personal story tied to this history?

Kim: In 1987, from July to September, South Korean workers, demanding the right to organize democratic labor unions and improvements in wages and working conditions, carried out a militant mass struggle for democracy — now known as the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987.

The first sparks of the Great Workers’ Struggle started at the Hyundai Group Labor Union Alliance, then spread like wildfire throughout Masan and the huge industrial plants in Changwon, as well as Busan and Geoje. On August 17-18, 30,000 workers of the Hyundai Group Labor Union Alliance in Ulsan took to the streets and turned the entire city into a liberated zone. My heart still pounds when I think back on the militant spirit of the workers, who chanted, “Let us live with dignity,” and the sight of endless rows of workers as they marched over Nammok Hill in Dong-gu and headed towards Ulsan City Hall. This year, on July 5, we held a commemoration to mark the 30th anniversary of the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987 in Ulsan. That was also the day that workers at Hyundai Engine formed their union thirty years ago.

ZoominKorea: What are the living/working conditions of working-class people in your district today? Tell us about your efforts to improve their conditions.

Kim: The primary demands of the workers during the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987 were: an 8-hour work day, revision of unjust labor laws, guarantee of basic labor rights, right to freely organize labor unions, elimination of blacklists, and improvement of working conditions and wages. Thirty years later, these are still the basic demands of workers. We have a long way to go to achieve democratization of the economy and the workplace.

Former President of ROK Park Geun-hye

I represent Ulsan Dong-gu, where workers are struggling due to the massive restructuring of the shipbuilding industry by the previous Park Geun-hye administration. Shifting the burden of poor corporate management by the primary contractor to workers has caused serious problems, such as mass layoffs and backwages.

Therefore, I have called on the Ministry of Employment and Labor as well as the Fair Trade Commission to make systemic changes to root out unfair contracts and practices in the subcontracting system, and I continue to support the workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries in their struggle to defend their jobs.

I am also fighting to increase the national minimum wage to 10,000 won, abolish unjust labor laws and make systemic changes to create a society that respects the dignity of workers. As a member of the Trade, Industry and Energy Committee of the National Assembly, I also advocate worker-centered industrial policies.

ZoominKorea: The South Korean people recently ousted the former president through people power. What lessons do you draw from the mass candlelight protests and how will the new party build on that movement?

Kim: The main lesson of the candlelight revolution is that people demand direct democracy. Through direct action, the people, who are the true sovereigns of this nation, challenged a system in which electoral democracy is actually distorting and constraining true democracy. The candlelight revolution demonstrated that Article 1 of the South Korean constitution, which states, ”All state authority shall emanate from the people,” should be reinterpreted as, “All state authority shall emanate from the struggling people.”

The New People’s Party (tentative name) will carry forward the spirit of the candlelight revolution to advance direct and participatory democracy. Through people power, we can uproot corruption and follow through on the systemic change that was demanded by the candlelight revolution. And this will be the main task of the new party.

ZoominKorea: It has been thirty years since the pro-democracy uprising of 1987, which marked the end of decades-old military dictatorship in South Korea and the entry of progressives in the political arena. The historic formation of the Democratic Labor Party in 2000 was a milestone that brought together progressives in a united front for political power. That era came to an end with the forced dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party by former President Park Geun-hye. What lessons do you draw from this experience, and how will this inform the politics/practice of the new party?

Kim: The Democratic Labor Party stood for national sovereignty, democracy, peaceful reunification and a world based on equality determined by the people. The experience of the past thirty years of progressive participation in the political arena confirmed that workers, farmers, and the urban poor are the main forces for social progress and should be the main protagonists in South Korea’s politics. What we learned, more than anything, is that there can be no democracy without sovereignty, and the party cannot progress without progress in mass organization.

The New People’s Party (tentative name) will be a party that advocates sovereignty and equality and is led by the people–workers, farmers, and the urban poor. Our aim is nothing less than the fundamental transformation of South Korean society.

This article was originally published by Zoom in Korea.

Featured image is from Zoom in Korea.

“This is very dangerous precedent which can lead to same moves in countries like UAE etc. where government control access to internet.” Star VPN, Twitter, Jul 30, 2017

Caving in for the profit margin; stripping a function for the sake of the state rather than the customer. That’s the Apple approach, nudged along by political expediency and the heckling of the police state. In China, the company has pruned back its virtual private networks. It would have delighted the party hacks in Beijing, suspicious of any effort to subvert the censorship regime which has come to be called the Great Firewall.

As Emily Parker dourly notes,

“Doing business in China requires playing by Chinese rules, and American tech companies have a long history of complying with Chinese censorship.”[1]

Apple has just been more enthusiastic than their counterparts. Earlier this year, it went as far as to remove New York Times apps from its Chinese store. How good of them to do so.

Tim Cook (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The words from Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, have been discouraging for the technology battlers and those keen to run rings around authoritarian regimes. Cook, in fact, would rather get into bed with them.

“We would obviously rather not remove the apps,” he explained earlier in the week. “But like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business.”[2]

The law, it would seem, good or bad.

As for the Chinese Communist Party, action on VPN technology has been placed at the top of the agenda ahead of the party congress. Operating such services now verges between inconvenience and hazard, given that authorities must approve them.

Such actions on the part of Apple further dispel the idea that accessing the Internet remains a sacred right and, it can be said, rite of passage into the digital age. The United Nations went so far as to declare it as such last year, highlighting the importance of “applying a comprehensive human rights-based approach when providing and expanding access to the internet for the internet to be open, accessible and nurtured.”

Countries may well be happy to front a view that accords with this, but states are far from happy permitting their public untrammelled use. Bollards are needed; security measures required. A free using public, in short, cannot be trusted by what it can find.

To the relief of such states, Cook is happy to comply. As, in fact, are other companies wishing to sacrifice the liberties of their users for their profit margins. Notoriously, Google bowed to the wishes of Chinese authorities in 2006 to censor search results, conduct which naturally gave the VPN drive a boost.

In 2005, by way of a dire utilitarian example, Yahoo furnished Chinese authorities with information on a journalist, Shi Tao, that led to a 10 year prison sentence.[3] The sin there was sending an anonymous post to a website located in the US that contained, so it was claimed, state secrets.

In what was something of a dark year, Microsoft similarly got into line in censoring its Chinese-language wed portal. Business, after all, was business, and the tech giant wasn’t going to miss out on a vast market. As global sales and marketing director at the time, Adam Sohn, explained, the company was cooperating with its Chinese business partner to police inappropriate language.

When queried about what this entailed, Sohn ducked.

“I don’t have access to the list at this point so I can’t really comment specifically on what’s there.”[4]

A clue about the list came in a report from Agence France-Presse claiming that bloggers were not permitted to post such terms as “human rights” or “democracy” on MSN spaces.

Sohn’s Mephistophelian explanation was simple. The company could still do business in China, despite the shackles, while helping the very populace they were complicit in hoodwinking. It all came down to how the services were used. “Even with the filters, we’re helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here.” Be safe, innocuous, non-political and insipid.

In 2006, the major giants doing business in the rich pearl of Cathay faced the music in a Congressional hearing. As California Democrat and house representative Tom Lantos claimed at the time, directing his comments to Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco,

“I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.”[5]

What such conduct betrays, sleepless or otherwise, is that standards of resistance from these companies varies. Apple has been clamouring against efforts made in the US to unlock its iPhone technology. The FBI faced a defiant response when its order to access the phone of the San Bernardino shooter was frustrated. It is worth noting, as matter or proportion, that the shooter was behind the slaying of 14 people.

Cook would have none of this, seeing any comparisons as needlessly fatuous.

“In the US case, the law in the US supported us.”

Rather weakly, he suggested that the company had “to abide by [the law] in both cases. That doesn’t mean we don’t state our point of view in the appropriate way, we always do that.” Well, not always, and certainly not when it is inappropriate to sales. Dissidents, be wary.

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

Notes

Petro Poroshenko has been knocking on Washington’s door asking for arms ever since he became President of Ukraine in 2014. Meanwhile, for Germany and France, the prospect has been nothing less than a nightmare, Deutschlandfunk radio reported.

Obama rejected Kiev’s requests for arms, sending only military instructors and “non-lethal” equipment including, radar arrays, night vision goggles and other gear. Poroshenko complained that it was not enough to win the war in Donbass.

“Poroshenko and his defense minister Stepan Poltorak have since been asking for more weapons from the West,” Deutsdchlandfunk wrote on its website.

Kurt Volker, the recently-appointed US special representative to Ukraine, was more attentive to Kiev’s pleas, hinting that this time around, America could possibly decide differently.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon and the State Department had devised a plan to supply lethal arms to Ukraine, including Javelin man-portable anti-tank missiles.

Europeans are as worried by possible US arms supplies to Kiev as Russia is, Deutschelandfunk continued.

“To Germany and France, the mere thought of more weapons being sent into a region, which is already neck-deep in arms is nothing short of a nightmare, because even without this, all attempts to agree to any protracted truce have fallen flat.”

In an interview with Sputnik, Igor Shatrov, deputy director of the National Institute of Modern Ideology, said that the German journalists’ opinion reflected that of millions of Europeans.

“Faced with Washington’s interference in European affairs, including US-imposed restrictions on their participation in the Nord Stream 2 project, the Europeans have started to realize the possible consequences of such restrictions, including in the military field. The militarization of Europe, which the US could start without asking its European NATO partners, is becoming real. Ukraine is not a NATO member, yet the US is pursuing its own policy there, which means that with the situation permitting, it could interfere with military force,” Shatrov noted.

“I think that neither Germany nor any other European country will welcome this kind of US interference in Ukraine. As the main driving forces behind the ‘Normandy format,’ Germany and France are ready to accept US assistance, but only in the form of diplomatic efforts. That’s why I believe that the opinion voiced by the German media reflects the sentiment now prevailing among the European political class,” Shatrov said.

A violent military conflict in Ukraine started in 2014 after the residents of the eastern Donbass region refused to recognize the Ukrainian government which took over after the Maidan coup, during which the president of the country was forced into exile. that came to power after what they perceived to be a coup.

In February 2015, the parties to the Ukrainian conflict signed the Minsk peace accords to end the fighting in the crisis-torn region.

Featured image is from the author.

While the US claims recent sanctions targeting Russia are based on alleged Russian interference in last year’s US elections, a careful examination of US policy post-Cold War reveals a systematic campaign aimed at undermining Moscow, encircling Russia and attempting to overturn the current, prevailing political order there in favor of one dominated by US interests.

At each step, various excuses are concocted, mainly to mesh with current political narratives embedded within public perception at any given time. Currently, playing left and right-leaning Americans against one another regarding the 2016 election and still-unproven allegations that Russia played a hand at tipping the election in President Donald Trump’s favor helps sell this most recent move made toward undermining Russia.

Under US President Barrack Obama, accusations that Russia instigated violence in Ukraine after a NATO-backed coup overthrew the elected government in Kiev served as justification for various rounds of sanctions targeting Moscow.

Betrayal 1: NATO Expansion 

The expansion of NATO itself is a violation of commitments made to Russia post-Cold War. While publications from policy think-tanks like the Brookings Institution attempt to claim otherwise, it is clear that Russia was opposed to NATO’s continued eastward expansion post-Cold War, and was willing to cooperate with the US and Europe on a variety of issues as long as NATO didn’t do so.

Brookings, in a piece penned by Steven Pifer titled, “Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No”,” claims that promises made to Russia about limiting NATO expansion were made only in regards to Germany after reunification.

The piece claims:

The agreement on not deploying foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR [German Democratic Republic] was incorporated in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which was signed on September 12, 1990 by the foreign ministers of the two Germanys, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. Article 5 had three provisions:

1. Until Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the former GDR, only German territorial defense units not integrated into NATO would be deployed in that territory.

2. There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.

3. Once Soviet forces had withdrawn, German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR, but foreign forces and nuclear weapons systems would not be deployed there.

Pifer claims that,

“it is clear that the secretary general’s comments referred to NATO forces in eastern Germany, not a broader commitment not to enlarge the Alliance.”

Pifer’s conclusion is repeated on NATO’s website itself under the title, “NATO enlargement and Russia: myths and realities,” but fundamentally and very intentionally omits a very important point: if it was so important to Russia that additional NATO forces were not deployed in Germany and that no foreign forces could be deployed to the former GDR, why would Russia find it acceptable for other former territories to host foreign troops as part of NATO expansion? The answer is obvious. Russia would not find it acceptable.

That the US and NATO agreed on this arrangement regarding Germany illustrates that US and European policymakers understood wider NATO expansion would also be perceived as a provocation. Since the reunification of Germany however, many more nations would be infiltrated by NATO-backed opposition fronts, their pro-Russian governments overthrown and subsequently made NATO members. This includes Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Montenegro. Nations like Georgia and more recently, Ukraine, have had their governments overturned and are on a path toward NATO membership.

Featured image: Rachel Corrie was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Photograph by Denny Sternstein. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The acclaimed production of ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ by London’s Young Vic Theatre Group will be performed at the end of this September under a Director who has stated that Rachel Corrie’s legacy “is our inheritance”.

At the time, the deliberate killing of this young, female American, human rights activist by the IDF, was a cause célèbre that demolished the Israeli claim to be ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ and contributed to an upsurge of anti-Zionist feeling throughout Europe.

However, the Israeli government refused to heed that lesson, with the result that just seven years later, on May 31st 2010, the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish registered vessel carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, was attacked by Israeli commandos in international waters, who then killed nine of its civilian passengers. The Israeli government was subsequently forced to pay compensation of $20 million.

Six months earlier, the Israeli government assassinated a Palestinian politician in a Dubai hotel, by a gang using forged passports from various EU member states.

The Israeli government clearly has no compunction in using violence to achieve its political aims and Rachel Corrie was tragically just one of its civilian victims.

Which again ‘begs the question’: why does the British government ally itself to a regime that is so totally foreign to British (and European) standards of morality, humanity and legal process?

Israel’s neo-colonialism – condemned by both the UN and the EU – is only made possible by its international trading links. Break these links, and Israel can be forced to end its occupation and its illegal settlements, and to agree to a negotiated peace settlement for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Amid reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expanding his probe into alleged Russian interference in the US elections and possible collusion and obstruction of justice by the Trump White House, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference Friday to announce a crackdown on leaks of classified and sensitive information.

Sessions, who was joined by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, raised the threat of reprisals against reporters who publish leaked information. In recent days, President Trump has publicly disparaged Sessions for failing to aggressively counter the almost daily flow of media reports, coming from intelligence sources or from within the administration itself, exposing details of contacts between Trump aides and Russian officials and other information embarrassing to the White House.

One day before the Friday press conference, the Washington Post published transcripts of Trump telephone calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last January in which Trump tried to bully his foreign counterparts into lining up behind his “America First” immigration and trade policies.

Trump’s battle with the press is part of the raging factional warfare within the ruling class and the state centering on differences over imperialist foreign policy. The “liberal” press, spearheaded by the New York Times, the Washington Post and most of the TV news outlets, is aligned with sections of the intelligence establishment opposed to Trump’s efforts to improve relations with Russia and determined to affect an escalation of the confrontational policy initiated by the Obama administration. This is the reactionary basis of the Democratic Party’s opposition to Trump, not the administration’s overall militarism, its attacks on immigrants, social programs and democratic rights, its staff of billionaires, generals and neo-fascists, and its open appeal to the most reactionary social forces.

The corporate-controlled media, for its part, has discredited itself with wide swaths of the public by serving as a conduit for government propaganda and lies, the most notorious example being the claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction used to justify the 2003 invasion. And the official narrative of Russian meddling in the US election, for which no serious evidence has been provided, has evoked broad public skepticism.

At the press conference, Sessions said that his Justice Department had already tripled the number of active leak investigations over the Obama administration. He boasted that in the first six months following Trump’s inauguration there were nearly as many criminal referrals concerning leaks of classified information as there were in the previous three years combined.

Sessions said four people had been charged under Trump with leaking classified information or concealing contacts with foreign intelligence officials, and that the FBI was creating a new counterintelligence unit to oversee leak investigations and prosecutions. He indicated that his department would likely investigate the leaking of Trump’s conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia, declaring,

“No government can be effective when its leaders cannot discuss sensitive matters in confidence or to talk freely in confidence with foreign leaders.”

The irony of this statement coming from a country that has been caught bugging the offices of the United Nations, NATO and the European Union and tapping the personal telephones of leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel evidently escaped the attorney general and the other officials on the podium.

Raising the threat of criminal prosecutions to force reporters to reveal confidential sources, Sessions said,

“One of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas.”

He continued:

“We respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited.”

Reporters, he declared, “cannot place lives at risk with impunity… We must balance their role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in our intelligence community, the armed forces and all law-abiding Americans.”

Official portrait of Rod Rosenstein as Deputy Attorney General (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Rosenstein, who took questions from the press, said the new FBI unit would focus on investigating leaks to reporters. He said he would meet with media representatives to discuss the leak crackdown next week, but evaded a reply when asked if prosecutors would rule out bringing criminal charges against reporters for doing their jobs.

Coats was even more menacing. All but equating leaking and publishing leaked information with treason, he said,

“Anyone who engages in these criminal acts is betraying the intelligence community and the American people.”

Directing his threats in part to intelligence agency personnel, he added,

“If you improperly disclose classified information, we will find you, we will investigate you and we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. You will not be happy with the result.”

In response to the press conference, Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union said,

“Every American should be concerned about the Trump administration’s threat to step up its efforts against whistleblowers and journalists. A crackdown on leaks is a crackdown on the free press and on democracy as a whole.”

The announcement of a crackdown on leakers and the media followed reports on Thursday that Special Counsel Mueller was using a grand jury in Washington DC to conduct his investigation as well as a previously reported grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia. The Washington panel has reportedly issued subpoenas for documents concerning the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump, Jr., Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner, his then-campaign director Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections as well as other Russian officials. Recent reports based on leaked information say that Trump personally dictated a misleading statement initially released by his son concerning the meeting.

Mueller’s use of a Washington DC grand jury indicates that his probe is encompassing the White House itself, possibly including the president, and that it will continue indefinitely. In addition, bipartisan measures have been introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate designed to block Trump from firing Mueller.

Under these conditions, Trump has over the past two weeks sought to base his administration even more directly on the military and the police while directly appealing to far-right social elements through anti-immigrant and anti-minority racism, law-and-order demagogy and anti-gay prejudice. (See: “Trump makes an appeal to the fascistic right”).

The Democrats will not oppose this appeal to ultra-right forces. On the contrary, they are seeking bipartisan talks with the Republicans on ways to shore up the insurance markets at the expense of health care for workers, cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and provide more profit windfalls for business under cover of an infrastructure program.

In attacking press freedom, moreover, Trump is building on the foundation laid by Obama. During his tenure, Obama prosecuted twice as many journalists and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act as all previous administrations combined. The Obama administration’s attack on the press included the jailing of Chelsea Manning for revealing US crimes and intrigues in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world, the imprisonment of ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou for exposing CIA torture of detainees in a television interview, and the secret seizure of the phone records of Associated Press reporters.

The Solidarity Peace Delegation, concluding their July 23-28 visit to South Korea, calls for immediate US-South Korean action to de-escalate growing military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The delegation was composed of Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, Reece Chenault of US Labor Against the War, Will Griffin of Veterans for Peace, and recent Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

It was sponsored by The Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation and the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific (STIK).

The delegation issued the following statement:

The Korean Peninsula is rapidly approaching the boiling point. On the last day of our visit, July 28, North Korea conducted a missile test, and the US-South Korean governments launched another set of warning missiles. South Korean President Moon announced he would allow the United States to deploy four additional launchers to complete the controversial THAAD anti-missile system unit, reversing his previous position. In light of these escalations and the likelihood of more aggressive measures, urgent actions are needed in order to de-escalate tensions.

North Korea has repeatedly offered to suspend its nuclear weapons development in exchange for a freeze in US-South Korean joint war exercises. It’s time for the US and South Korea to respond to this offer as a jumping off point for definitive negotiations towards a peaceful, sovereign, nuclear-free Korean peninsula, free from the conflicts of competing global powers that have been so harmful to the region.

North and South Korea have lived in a perpetual wartime mobilization for decades, with the presence in the South of 83 US bases and nearly 30,000 US troops. Provocations are being made with increasing frequency by both North Korea and the United States. Each time North Korea conducts an additional nuclear or missile test, the potential severity of hostilities escalates, and the more difficult it becomes to defuse tensions and avert the outbreak of conflict on the Peninsula.

Given the proximity of North Korea to Seoul, a metropolitan area of 25 million people, any outbreak of hostilities would be devastating. In a North Korean attack with conventional weapons, it’s estimated that 64,000 South Koreans would be killed in the first day alone. Even a limited exchange using nuclear weapons risks causing “nuclear winter”, a disruption of the climate due to the reduction of sunlight from airborne dust and debris. This, in turn, could drastically reduce global agricultural production, leading to worldwide famine and hundreds of millions of deaths.

Since Seoul would be caught in the crossfire of any hostilities, it is essential that the conflict be handled through diplomacy. The sooner diplomatic action is launched, the more likely it will succeed.

Therefore, we call for immediate diplomatic action to reduce threats that push North Korea towards the development of nuclear weapons. Foremost among these threats are the US-South Korean joint war exercises against North Korea, which include dropping mock nuclear bombs on North Korea. In addition, the United States has long held a “ nuclear first strike” policy towards North Korea. This frightening threat of a pre-emptive US nuclear attack gives North Korea good reason to want a nuclear arsenal as the sole means for deterring such an attack.

Fortunately, tensions can be defused through actions that are diplomatic, strategic, just and long overdue. Specifically, the Peace Delegation calls for the following actions:

• Declare an end to the unethical and hyper-aggressive, nuclear first strike position held by the US towards North Korea.
• Declare an immediate moratorium on US-South Korean war games, including the dropping of mock nuclear bombs on North Korea. This would be a first step towards a formal agreement ending US-South Korean war games in exchange for North Korea freezing its weapons and nuclear program. The US government should respond to North Korea’s long-standing offer by inviting North Korea to begin serious negotiations for such an agreement now.
• Withdraw THAAD, the misnamed missile “defense” system recently installed by the US in Seongju,South Korea despite vigorous and ongoing protests by local residents. THAAD is not actually capable of defending against incoming missiles under real world conditions with multiple missiles and decoys. Its powerful radar system is widely believed to have been deployed for the purpose of spying on China, provoking dangerous tensions in the region.
• Begin negotiating a peace treaty to finally bring closure to the Korean War. The Korean War, in which nearly 20% of North Korea’s population was killed, has never been formally ended with a peace treaty.
• The South Korean government should lift travel bans on peace activists, like the ban that prevented our Korean-American trip leader Juyeon Rhee from accompanying our tour.

Delegates also call for more peace delegations so that the US peace movement can build stronger solidarity with their counterparts in the South, and learn firsthand about the negative consequences of U.S. military bases on Korean soil.

In the coming weeks, the coalition will help launch a campaign to mobilize citizen pressure for a peaceful resolution of the volatile conflict on the Korean peninsula.

Peace Delegation Members:

Jill Stein, Green Party 2016 presidential candidate

Reece Chenault, US Labor Against War

Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK

Will Griffin, Veterans for Peace

Featured image is from the author.

The dangers of nuclear war are not an object of debate and analysis by the mainstream media.

Public opinion is carefully misled. ” All options on the table”.  Nuclear weapons are portrayed as peace-making bombs.

Did you know that tactical nuclear weapons or so-called mininukes with an explosive capacity between one third and six times a Hiroshima bomb are considered, according to scientific opinion, on contract to the Pentagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”.

It’s a lie.

The US has a vast nuclear arsenal capable of blowing up the planet several times.

The World commemorates the 72nd anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6, 9, 1945)

Did you know that  Hiroshima was a “military base”, and that when the first atomic bomb was dropped on two of Japan’s heavily populated area in August 1945, the objective was, according to president Truman was to save the lives of innocent civilians.

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..”(President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman’s radio speech to the Nation]

(Listen to Audio of Truman’s speech, Hiroshima audio video)

Unpunished crimes against humanity, “collateral damage”.

In the words of President Harry Truman:

“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark…. This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. …  The target will be a purely military one… It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.”

(President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945)

To this date, the US government has not apologized to the people of Japan, nor has the mainstream media acknowledged that Harry Truman was a liar and a criminal.

Truman’s July 25 diary entry (see above), suggests that he was not aware that Hiroshima was a city. Had he been misled by his advisers that Hiroshima was a military base and that it was ok to bomb, or was he lying to himself? Was he stupid and uneducated? Everybody in the high ranks of the military knew that Hiroshima was a populated urban area with approximately 350,000 inhabitants (1945).

The complete text of the radio address entitled Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference is contained in the  Harry Truman Library and Museum Public Papers of Harry S. Truman, University of Missouri. 

It should be noted that the reference to Hiroshima and the atomic bomb was mentioned by Truman at the very end of a long radio address largely focussing on Germany and the Potsdam Conference. It is worth noting that the US chose to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the height of peace negotiations in Berlin. The second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki upon Truman’s return to Washington.

(Listen to Audio of Truman’s speech, Hiroshima audio video)

Here is the full excerpt of Truman’s radio address pertaining to the atomic bomb (emphasis added):

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.

I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.

Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first.

That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production.

We won the race of discovery against the Germans.

Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.

We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.

The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world. That is why Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction.

As far back as last May, Secretary of War Stimson, at my suggestion, appointed a committee upon which Secretary of State Byrnes served as my personal representative, to prepare plans for the future control of this bomb. I shall ask the Congress to cooperate to the end that its production and use be controlled, and that its power be made an overwhelming influence towards world peace.

We must constitute ourselves trustees of this new force–to prevent its misuse, and to turn it into the channels of service to mankind.

It is an awful responsibility which has come to us.

We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.  

…

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We, the undersigned, represent a coalition of concerned peace organizations and citizens of the United States who are advocating the importance of abolishing nuclear weapons globally, toward a more peaceful world. We are gathering here, in front of the office of the Consulate General of Japan in New York, with a bouquet of flowers to express our sincere regrets and apologies for the deaths of those killed by our nation’s atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a war crime and crime against humanity, although our government has never apologized. We wish to extend our deep condolences and apology to those atomic bomb survivors (Hibakusha) who have endured great mental and physical hardships for over seven decades as a result of the horrific bombings.

First, we appeal to Japan to play a leadership role in supporting and promoting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the UN on July 7, 2017 with overwhelming support from 122 member states. It states clearly the prohibition from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. We urge that the Japanese government act in a timely fashion to complete the domestic legislative process, so that Japan can sign and ratify the treaty soon after it opens for signature at the UN in New York this September.

After more than seven decades of nuclear deterrence policy, the global consensus undeniably agrees that the world has become more dangerous under such a policy. 122 member states clearly showed their common ground that peace cannot be achieved by the existence of nuclear weapons. We promise to keep raising our voices to press our own government, and call for signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, agreeing to begin to remove all the existing nuclear weapons from operational status and destroy them in accordance with this international document.

In addition, we are deeply troubled by the security implications of Japan’s stockpile of 48 tons of separated plutonium in conjunction with the start-up of Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, scheduled for late 2018, which will have an estimated capacity to separate up to an additional 8 tons of plutonium annually. Such a large stockpile of separated plutonium is a proliferation threat as well as a target to nuclear terrorism and could become a grave environmental disaster if another nuclear accident happens.

Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel requires excessive costs. It has serious environmental concerns and safety risks to workers and local citizens, as we have seen at the Hanford Nuclear Site in the United States.

On July 17, 2018, the US-Japan Nuclear Energy Cooperation Agreement will mature. It will be automatically extended unless either the US or Japan notifies the other country six months prior to termination. We are deeply worried about the extending of this Agreement, and its impact on the security of the Northeast Asian region and the rest of the world.

Instead of extending the US-Japan Nuclear Energy Cooperation Agreement, we propose the US and Japan jointly cooperate to:

(1) Discuss alternative energy policies;

(2) Implement nuclear-free policies;

(3) Review issues associated with Japan’s existing stockpile of 48 tons of separated plutonium and analyze ways to store them safely and securely with independent third-party experts and all stakeholders, including those whose lands and waters are being put at risk;

(4) Conduct risk assessment and comprehensive reviews on reprocessing spent fuel in Japan; and,

(5) Supply and exchange information and technology on how to contain and monitor Japan’s plutonium stockpile and radioactive waste materials from nuclear facilities and nuclear accidents in order to keep them out of the food, water, air, and land of local citizens for future generations.

Victimized by the use of atomic bombs, Japan has also been a victim of the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident since Chernobyl, suffering from massive radiation leaks that have spread well into the Pacific Ocean; the evacuation of more than 150,000 people, most of whom haven’t yet been able to return home; and a rise in thyroid cancer among children, among some of the known adverse effects. The use of nuclear technology, whether military or civilian, comes with enormous risks and incalculable consequences. Effective global nuclear disarmament will not be possible as long as we allow commercial uses of plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

Finally, your constitution has an inspiring introduction clause which recognizes that “all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.” Japan has learned the benefits of a strong culture of peace, while the U.S. increasingly moves toward the economy of war. Article 9 of your peace constitution is more powerful and honorable than the possession of nuclear weapons. It is more persuasive than the policy of nuclear deterrence or a reliance on a “nuclear umbrella.”

Thus, our coalition calls on Japan to protect its peace constitution, discard its military reliance on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and say NO to the extension of the US-Japan Nuclear Energy Cooperation Agreement in order to build a more humane and safer world, one free from the terror and fear of nuclear weapons.

NO MORE HIROSHIMA
NO MORE NAGASAKI
NO MORE WAR
NO MORE HIBAKUSHA
NEVER AGAIN!

August 4, 2017

Co-signed by:
Brooklyn for Peace, Catholic Worker NYC, Coalition Against Nukes, Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy (CIECP), Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space , Granny Peace Brigade, International Action Network on Small Arms, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, NYC War Resisters League, Pax Christi Metro NY, Peace Action Fund of New York State, Peace Boat US, Radiation Exposure AwarenessCrusaders for Humanity-Marshall Islands, The Ribbon International, Veterans for Peace (National), Veterans for Peace – Chapter 34 (NYC), The NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, The NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security, Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World, Beyond Nuclear

Endorsed by:
Cora Weiss (UN Representative of the International Peace Bureau), Carol Reilley Urner (Emerita, national DISARM/End War Issue Committee of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section), Norma Field (Author and emeritus professor of East Asian studies at the University of Chicago), Ann Wright (retired United States Army colonel), Barry Ladendorf (president of Veterans for Peace), Tarak Kauff (board member of Veterans for Peace), Bruce K. Gagnon (Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space), Regis Tremblay (independent filmmaker), Will Griffin (Peace Report, board member of Veterans for Peace), Mariko Bender (Child Advocate, WNSCR, Westport for Japan), Anthony Donovan (author/filmmaker), David McReynolds (former chairperson of WRL International), Priscilla Star (Coalition Against Nukes), Desmond Narain Doulatram (Radiation Exposure Awareness Crusaders for Humanity-Marshall Islands)

Contact info:
Veterans For Peace-Chapter 34 (NYC), P.O. Box 8150, New York, NY 10116-8150

SINCHON COUNTY, North Korea–Over the past few years the Korean people have been able to expose the truth about a number of atrocities by Washington’s military forces during the 1950–53 Korean War. Many others, however, remain covered up and receive virtually no mention outside the Korean peninsula. One such massacre took place in Sinchon, a city located in what is today North Korea.

During the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists leadership delegation’s visit to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), we toured the Sinchon Museum, which documents what north Koreans consider the worst atrocity to have taken place in the north during the war.

Along with revelations of other massacres by U.S. forces, the museum helps to highlight the fact that in their assault on Korea five decades ago the imperialists waged a total war on the population and infrastructure of the country.

In the aftermath of Tokyo’s defeat in World War II, revolutionary upheaval spread throughout the Korean peninsula. Washington enforced the division of the country at the 38th parallel and sent in troops to crush uprisings in the south, establish a military regime, and prepare to launch a war to bring the rest of Korea back under imperialist domination.

In September 1950, four months after the outbreak of the Korean War, tens of thousands of U.S. troops poured into Korea and began a northward offensive. Sinchon County was occupied for 52 days in the closing months of that year. Dozens of photographs and artifacts documenting the roundups and executions of Korean patriots and indiscriminate killings of men, women, and children are on display at the museum.

One of the historical sites marks mass graves where the slaughtered were buried. According to Ri Song Jin, a witness to the massacre, imperialist forces tortured many Korean patriots in the basement of the Sinchon church at the beginning of the occupation, then buried the dead and near-dead bodies in a trench.

We also visited an area that was bombed and learned that as U.S. forces marched out of town they destroyed most of the homes, factories, farm implements, and arable land.

More massacres exposed 

The Sinchon massacre was one of many atrocities carried out by Washington and its subservient regime in south Korea in their systematic attempt to bring the Korean masses under the imperialist boot.

In face of revelations by U.S. soldiers, former president William Clinton was pressured to acknowledge for the first time in 2001 that Washington’s troops shot down Koreans fleeing the war zone in the village of No Gun Ri, south Korea, one month into the Korean War.

After U.S. Army officers ordered villagers to walk on railroad tracks at No Gun Ri, warplanes hailed bombs and bullets on the area where peasants had been resting. Scores of people were killed, while others scrambled for cover under the nearby railroad bridge. For three nights and four days, July 26–29, U.S. troops poured bullets into the tunnel where the peasants, many of them women and children, were trying to hide.

“People pulled dead bodies around them for protection,” recalled survivor Chung Koo Ho.

The air assault killed 100 refugees, while soldiers killed another 300.

In the lead-up to the Korean War, as the revolution was deepening in the north, social unrest bubbled throughout the south. In an attempt to buffer the resistance, Washington urged its puppet regime in Seoul to hold an election in May 1948 to try to give a “democratic” face to the dictatorship.

People in two districts of Jeju island boycotted the election, drawing outrage from U.S. military commanders. After a series of incidents, the south Korean government launched a bloody assault on the island, burning villages and carrying out widespread executions and torture. By February 1949, more than 30,000 people had been killed, about one tenth of the island’s population.

The south Korean government, which remains a semicolony of the United States, only investigated the massacre two years ago.

“Until a decade ago,” reported Howard French in the New York Times, “the Jeju massacres were ascribed both officially and in textbooks to North Korean infiltrators.”

In the course of the Korean War, the U.S. rulers also conducted saturation bombing, especially of the northern cities, factories, and mines. They dropped more than 428,000 bombs on Pyongyang, a city whose prewar population was only 400,000, and used 717 million pounds of napalm on the country’s people.

In spite of attempts by Washington and Seoul to cover up the atrocities, many Koreans who survived from both sides of the border have refused to stay quiet. In north Korea, the Sinchon Museum stands as a symbol of what imperialism has to offer humanity. Schools from across the country take students to the museum on field trips to learn more about the Korean War and the odds the Korean people fought against to defeat U.S. imperialism.

In July, the White House and Pentagon requested authority from Congress to build further “temporary intermediate staging facilities” inside Syria in order to combat ISIS more effectively. This request, it must be noted, comes in the wake of devastating ISIS defeats in Syria, mostly by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied forces.

Shortly afterward, the Turkish state-owned Anadolu news agency revealed previously unknown details and locations of ten U.S. bases and outposts in northern Syria, several of them with airfields. These are in addition to at least two further U.S. outposts already identified in southern Syria, on the Iraqi border.

When asked about these military bases, a CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) spokesman told me:

“We don’t have bases in Syria. We have soldiers throughout Syria providing training and assist to the SDF (the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the north of the country).”

How many soldiers?

“Roughly 1,200 troops,” says CENTCOM.

Yet when questioned about the international law grounds for this U.S. military presence inside Syria, CENTCOM didn’t have a response on hand. They referred me to the Office of the Secretary of Defense whose spokesman obstinately cited U.S. domestic law—an issue quite irrelevant to Syrians. He, in turn, referred me to the White House and State Department on the international-law angle. The State Department sent me back to the Department of Defense, the White House pointed me in the direction of the National Security Council (NSC), and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel blankly ignored my repeated requests.

It isn’t hard to conclude that official Washington simply doesn’t want to answer the “international law” question on Syria. To be fair, in December 2016, the Obama administration offered up an assessment on the legalities of the use of force in Syria, but perhaps subsequent ground developments—the SAA and its allies defeating ISIS and Al Qaeda left, right, and center—have tightened some lips in the nation’s capital.

U.S. military bases and outposts in Syria identified by media and independent sources as of July 26. (Commissioned by the author from M. Fahd and Z. Adra.)

The map of U.S. bases in Syria is confusing. For starters, it reveals that many of the US outposts—or “staging facilities”—are nowhere near ISIS-controlled areas. This has generated some legitimate suspicion about U.S. motives in Syria, especially since American forces have begun to attack Syrian military targets with more frequency. This summer saw U.S. strikes against Syrian allied forces, drones, and a fighter jet all in the space of a few weeks. And most memorably, in September 2016, Coalition fighters killed over 100 SAA troops fighting ISIS in Deir Ezzor, paving the way for a brief ISIS takeover of strategic points in the oil-rich province.

It appears that U.S. intentions may go beyond the stated objective of fighting terrorism in Syria—and that Washington’s goals are also territorial and political and seek to retain post-conflict zones of influence within the country: in the south, north, and along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Former Obama White House and NSC senior legal official Brian Egan believes the coming challenge for U.S. policymakers—in terms of international law—will be to justify clashes with Syrian forces and their allies.

“I think the harder international law question to defend is with respect to use of force against the [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime,” warns Egan. “For example, the U.S. strike in response to the [alleged] chemical weapons attack. There’s no self-defense justification, there’s no UN Security Council resolution. It’s an open question what the U.S. depends on in terms of international law.”

“Theories that might be applicable against terrorist groups like ISIS don’t appear to apply for U.S. military ops against Syrian forces. The more that U.S. forces are in-theater in Syria, the greater the chance of conflict between the U.S. and Syrian forces, which makes it essential that [this administration] explains its justification for potential operations in Syria,” emphasizes Egan.

But it’s not only Syrian forces and military targets that have come under American fire. In a stream of letters to the UN Security Council this year, the Syrian government asserts U.S. air strikes have also “systematically” destroyed vital infrastructure and economic assets throughout the country for months, and complains that the attacks are “being carried out outside the framework of international legality.” The Syrians claim that these infrastructure targets include the Ghalban oil collection branch station, Umar oilfield, wells and facilities, electrical transformer stations, Tanak oil field and facilities, Izbah oil field and installations—all in Deir Ezzor governorate—a gas plant and bridges and structures of the Balikh Canal in Raqqa, buildings and facilities belonging to the General Establishment of Geology and Mineral Resources in Homs, Furat and Baath Dam facilities, the Euphrates Dam, the Tishrin Dam and their reservoirs, irrigation and power generation facilities, and many other vital sites across the country.

With U.S. legal arguments supporting military presence in Syria unravelling, the Pentagon’s untenable position has become noticeable, even within its own ranks.

“Here’s the conundrum,” explained U.S. Special Operations Command Chief Army General Raymond Thomas to an Aspen gathering last week, in response to a question about whether U.S. forces will stay in Syria, post-ISIS:

“We are operating in the sovereign country of Syria. The Russians, their stalwarts, their back-stoppers, have already uninvited the Turks from Syria. We’re a bad day away from the Russians saying, ‘Why are you still in Syria, U.S.?’”

The Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and other allied Syrian forces are in Syria legally, at the invitation of the UN-recognized state authority. The United States and its coalition partners are not.

At the moment, the latter are trying hard to ignore that elephant in the room. But as ISIS collapses, the question “why are you still here?” is going to rise in volume.

When the U.S.-led coalition first launched overt military operations inside Syria in September 2014, various western governments cited both the recently-passed UNSC Resolution 2249 and Article 51 (Iraq’s invitation for “collective self-defense”) as their legal justification for doing so.

Neither of these justifications provided legal grounds for use of force in Syria, however. There are basically only three clear-cut international law justifications for use of force: a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution providing Chapter 7 authority, self-defense against an act of aggression by a territorial state, and an invitation by the legitimate authority of a sovereign state for foreign troops to act within its borders—“consent of a territorial state.”

While UNSC Res. 2249 called upon member states to “take all necessary measures” against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, it explicitly stated that any such measures must be “in compliance with international law, in particular with the UN Charter”—which requires consent of a territorial state, in this case, the Syrian government.

And while Iraq did invite the Coalition to militarily engage ISIS within its territory, its “collective self-defense” argument does not justify the use of force inside Syrian territory—because Syria did not attack Iraq.

To make up for the gaping holes in its international-law arguments, the U.S.-led Coalition performed some legal acrobatics. The “unwilling and unable” theory posits that the Coalition could engage militarily in Syria because the legitimate government of Syria was either unable or unwilling (or both) to fight ISIS.

An onslaught of media articles and carefully-framed narratives were employed to set the scene for this theory. Recall, if you will, the slew of articles claiming that ISIS controlled around 50 percent of Syria—areas which were outside of Syrian state control—all meant to guide us to the conclusion that Syria was “unable” to fight ISIS. Or the narratives that insisted, until ground evidence proved otherwise, that the Syrian government aided ISIS, that it never fought the terror group, that it only targeted “moderate rebels”—all intended to persuade us that Syria was “unwilling” to target ISIS.

In fact, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have fought ISIS throughout this conflict, but were often distracted by more urgent battles against U.S., Turkish, British, French, Saudi, UAE and Qatari-backed Islamist militants in the western corridor of the country, where Syria’s main population and infrastructure hubs are located. ISIS-controlled territories, it should be noted, were mostly in the largely barren, sparsely populated and desert regions in the north-east and east of Syria.

The NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council strategy appears to ping-pong Syrian troops from east to west, north to south, wearing them down, cleverly diverting them from any battle in which they were making gains. And it was working, until the Russians stepped into the fray in September 2015 and sunk the Coalition’s “unwilling and unable” theory.

As Major Patrick Walsh, associate professor in the International and Operational Law Department at the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Virginia, wrote that October:

“The United States and others who are acting in collective defense of Iraq and Turkey are in a precarious position. The international community is calling on Russia to stop attacking rebel groups and start attacking ISIS. But if Russia does, and if the Assad government commits to preventing ISIS from attacking Syria’s neighbors and delivers on that commitment, then the unwilling or unable theory for intervention in Syria would no longer apply. Nations would be unable to legally intervene inside Syria against ISIS without the Assad government’s consent.”

The UK’s leading security and defense analyst firm IHT Markit observed in an April 2017 report that during the time period in which ISIS suffered its most crippling defeats, Syrian allied forces fought the terror group two and a half times as often as U.S.-backed ones. With the Russian air force providing Syrian allied troops with game-changing air cover, the battle against ISIS and other terror groups began to turn decisively in Syria’s favor. And, with that, out went even the “theoretical” justification for U.S. military intervention in Syria.

As ISIS and Al Qaeda are beaten back in Syria, the American conversation about what comes next is missing a most critical point. In terms of international law, Washington has gone rogue in Syria. Will the world take notice?

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut.

Featured image is from unlu/Shutterstock.

The US submarine captain says, “We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know when it’s coming. Well, now we do know and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

He says he will be dead by September. It will take about a week to die, though no one can be sure. Animals live the longest.

The war was over in a month. The United States, Russia and China were the protagonists. It is not clear if it was started by accident or mistake. There was no victor. The northern hemisphere is contaminated and lifeless now.

A curtain of radioactivity is moving south towards Australia and New Zealand, southern Africa and South America. By September, the last cities, towns and villages will succumb. As in the north, most buildings will remain untouched, some illuminated by the last flickers of electric light.

 This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper   

These lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men appear at the beginning of Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach, which left me close to tears. The endorsements on the cover said the same.

Published in 1957 at the height of the Cold War when too many writers were silent or cowed, it is a masterpiece. At first the language suggests a genteel relic; yet nothing I have read on nuclear war is as unyielding in its warning. No book is more urgent.

Some readers will remember the black and white Hollywood film starring Gregory Peck as the US Navy commander who takes his submarine to Australia to await the silent, formless spectre descending on the last of the living world.

I read On the Beach for the first time the other day, finishing it as the US Congress passed a law to wage economic war on Russia, the world’s second most lethal nuclear power. There was no justification for this insane vote, except the promise of plunder.

The “sanctions” are aimed at Europe, too, mainly Germany, which depends on Russian natural gas and on European companies that do legitimate business with Russia. In what passed for debate on Capitol Hill, the more garrulous senators left no doubt that the embargo was designed to force Europe to import expensive American gas.

Their main aim seems to be war – real war. No provocation as extreme can suggest anything else. They seem to crave it, even though Americans have little idea what war is. The Civil War of 1861-5 was the last on their mainland. War is what the United States does to others.

The only nation to have used nuclear weapons against human beings, they have since destroyed scores of governments, many of them democracies, and laid to waste whole societies – the million deaths in Iraq were a fraction of the carnage in Indo-China, which President Reagan called “a noble cause” and President Obama revised as the tragedy of an “exceptional people”. He was not referring to the Vietnamese.

Filming last year at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, I overheard a National Parks Service guide lecturing a school party of young teenagers.

“Listen up,” he said. “We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom.”

A U.S. B-66 Destroyer and four F-105 Thunderchiefs dropping bombs on North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

At a stroke, the truth was inverted. No freedom was defended. Freedom was destroyed. A peasant country was invaded and millions of its people were killed, maimed, dispossessed, poisoned; 60,000 of the invaders took their own lives. Listen up, indeed.

A lobotomy is performed on each generation. Facts are removed. History is excised and replaced by what Time magazine calls “an eternal present”. Harold Pinter described this as “manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universal good, a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis [which meant] that it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”

Those who call themselves liberals or tendentiously “the left” are eager participants in this manipulation, and its brainwashing, which today revert to one name: Trump.

Trump is mad, a fascist, a dupe of Russia. He is also a gift for “liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics”, wrote Luciana Bohne memorably. The obsession with Trump the man — not Trump as a symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of us.

While they pursue their fossilised anti-Russia agendas, narcissistic media such as the Washington Post, the BBC and the Guardian suppress the essence of the most important political story of our time as they warmonger on a scale I cannot remember in my lifetime.

On 3 August, in contrast to the acreage the Guardian has given to drivel that the Russians conspired with Trump (reminiscent of the far-right smearing of John Kennedy as a “Soviet agent”), the paper buried, on page 16, news that the President of the United States was forced to sign a Congressional bill declaring economic war on Russia.

Unlike every other Trump signing, this was conducted in virtual secrecy and attached with a caveat from Trump himself that it was “clearly unconstitutional”.

A coup against the man in the White House is under way. This is not because he is an odious human being, but because he has consistently made clear he does not want war with Russia.

This glimpse of sanity, or simple pragmatism, is anathema to the “national security” managers who guard a system based on war, surveillance, armaments, threats and extreme capitalism. Martin Luther King called them “the greatest purveyors of violence in the world today”.

They have encircled Russia and China with missiles and a nuclear arsenal. They have used neo-Nazis to instal an unstable, aggressive regime on Russia’s “borderland” – the way through which Hitler invaded, causing the deaths of 27 million people.  Their goal is to dismember the modern Russian Federation.

In response, “partnership” is a word used incessantly by Vladimir Putin — anything, it seems, that might halt an evangelical drive to war in the United States. Incredulity in Russia may have now turned to fear and perhaps a certain resolution. The Russians almost certainly have war-gamed nuclear counter strikes. Air-raid drills are not uncommon. Their history tells them to get ready.

The threat is simultaneous. Russia is first, China is next. The US has just completed a huge military exercise with Australia known as Talisman Sabre. They rehearsed a blockade of the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea, through which pass China’s economic lifelines.

The admiral commanding the US Pacific fleet said that, “if required”, he would nuke China. That he would say such a thing publicly in the current perfidious atmosphere begins to make fact of Nevil Shute’s fiction.

None of this is considered news. No connection is made as the bloodfest of Passchendaele a century ago is remembered. Honest reporting is no longer welcome in much of the media. Windbags, known as pundits, dominate: editors are infotainment or party line managers. Where there was once sub-editing, there is the liberation of axe-grinding clichés. Those journalists who do not comply are defenestrated.

The urgency has plenty of precedents. In my film, The Coming War on China, John Bordne, a member of a US Air Force missile combat crew based in Okinawa, Japan, describes how in 1962 – during the Cuban missile crisis – he and his colleagues were “told to launch all the missiles” from their silos. 

Nuclear armed, the missiles were aimed at both China and Russia. A junior officer questioned this, and the order was eventually rescinded – but only after they were issued with service revolvers and ordered to shoot at others in a missile crew if they did not “stand down”.

At the height of the Cold War, the anti-communist hysteria in the United States was such that US officials who were on official business in China were accused of treason and sacked. In 1957 – the year Shute wrote On the Beach – no official in the State Department could speak the language of the world’s most populous nation. Mandarin speakers were purged under strictures now echoed in the Congressional bill that has just passed, aimed at Russia.

The bill was bipartisan. There is no fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. The terms “left” and “right” are meaningless.  Most of America’s modern wars were started not by conservatives, but by liberal Democrats.

When Obama left office, he presided over a record seven wars, including America’s longest war and an unprecedented campaign of extrajudicial killings – murder – by drones.

In his last year, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study, Obama, the “reluctant liberal warrior”, dropped 26,171 bombs – three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.  Having pledged to help “rid the world” of nuclear weapons, the Nobel Peace Laureate built more nuclear warheads than any president since the Cold War.  

Trump is a wimp by comparison. It was Obama – with his secretary of state Hillary Clinton at his side – who destroyed Libya as a modern state and launched the human stampede to Europe. At home, immigration groups knew him as the “deporter-in-chief”.

 One of Obama’s last acts as president was to sign a bill that handed a record $618billion to the Pentagon, reflecting the soaring ascendancy of fascist militarism in the governance of the United States. Trump has endorsed this.

Buried in the detail was the establishment of a “Center for Information Analysis and Response”. This is a ministry of truth. It is tasked with providing an “official narrative of facts” that will prepare us for the real possibility of nuclear war – if we allow it.

On Wednesday, the Syrian Arab Army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) began a direct storm of the ISIS—held town of Sukhna at the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway.

Government forces captured the ISIS fortifications south and west of the town, stormed the southwestern entrance of the town, and captured several buildings. Syrian and Russian warplanes and attack helicopters supported the advance.

According to reports, a majority of the ISIS fighters withdrew from Sukhna last week, but dozens of them decided to stay in the town to defend it.  Most of these fighters are suicide bombers and snipers.

On Thursday, clashes in the area continued as government forces made additional efforts towards securing the town.  If the SAA and NDF are able to fully control the Sukhna area, government forces will be able to cut off supply lines leading to a collapse of the entire ISIS defense in the eastern Hama countryside.

The ISIS-linked News Agency Amaq claimed on Thursday that 32 Syrian soldiers were killed as a result of an attack on SAA positions east of Salamyah.  According to Amaq, ISIS fighters captured 6 SAA checkpoints near Al-Mafkar village and an SAA HQ in the Olive Press.  During the attack, ISIS fighters also managed to capture a tank, two bulldozers, two 23mm guns, two cars loaded with ammunition, and several vehicles.

Opposition sources claimed that ISIS attacked an SAA position south of Ithryiah with a VBIED, killing 30 Syrian soldiers.  Pro-government sources denied these claims.

The Syrian Defense Ministry announced that 330 vehicles, 3 battle tanks, 11 artillery pieces, 5 machine guns, 12 headquarters, and 3 weapons and munition depots belonging to ISIS were destroyed during the recent operations near the Euphrates River in the southern Raqqah countryside.  Government forces are now developing momentum in an attempt to consolidate the recent gains and to take control over additional important points in the area.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) announced that its special operations forces infiltrated the Mallah area in western Aleppo and killed some 20 pro-government fighters, injured 10 others, and damaged a BMP vehicle.  According to pro-government sources, the SAA and NDF repelled the infiltration attempt and inflicted heavy casualties upon the terrorists.

The Syrian government has reportedly disbanded the Desert Hawks Brigade (Liwa Suqur al-Sahara). The decision followed a series of the questionable events linked to the group.  The Desert Hawks Brigade had been temporarily deployed to the eastern Hama countryside for a widely-expected operation to liberate the ISIS-held town of Uqayribat.  However, the brigade withdrew from the area after a few days of fighting. According to local sources, tensions with the SAA and other pro-government units were the reason behind the decision.

Members of the Desert Hawks Brigade will reportedly have an opportunity to join the SAA 5th Assault Corps, the Qalamoun Shield Forces, or other pro-government units.  The Desert Hawks Brigade’s commander, Colonel Mohammad Jaber allegedly left Syria and is now in Russia where he and his brother, Aymen al-Jaber, have some property.

Voiceover by Harold Hoover

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“I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would never have made. It is an embarrassment to the United States of America and you can say it just the way I said it.” – Donald J. Trump to Malcolm Turnbull, Jan 28, 2017

It acts as a Rorschach test on policy making in the United States, upon which we can project a range of quizzed perceptions and feather headed notions. And it took a conversation between Donald Trump of the United States and Malcolm Turnbull of Australia to realise how cruelty can become sovereign in the age of the reality television mogul.

The first part of the January chat was the sort of terrain Trump felt most comfortable on. There were the congratulations, and then the personal touches. “And I guess our friend Greg Norman, he is doing very well?”[1]

Then the temperature beings to rise, approaching boiling point, notably on the proposed Obama-Turnbull refugee swap between the US and Australia.

“Really it looks like 2,000 people that Australia does not want and I do not blame you by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground.”

The crucified here, as they have been for a good decade in these matters, were refugees. Trump was in a banning mood and throwing food to the anti-immigration lobby. Ban Muslims from travelling; strike countries off the list of suitable providers for arrivals to the US.

“We have allowed so many people into our country that should not be here.”

Trump’s interest, as ever, was why the US should abide by arrangement to begin with. He insisted on calling it “rotten”, “stupid” and “ridiculous”. By going through with such an arrangement,

“I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week by these people. This is a killer.”

There were also points of bafflement for the new arrival to the White House. What was, inquired Trump, this mania about boat arrivals? “Why do you discriminate against boats?” Presumably it was the regions producing such refugees.

“No, I know, they come from certain regions. I get it.”

Turnbull ventured his reasons, ones that have become the blood-dry rationale for a ruthless policy that, in its application, is erroneous and dangerous.

“The problem with boats is that you are basically outsourcing your immigration program to people smugglers and also you get thousands of people drowning at sea.”

“Suppose,” inquired Trump on a phone call that has now been minted in infamy, “I vet them closely and I do not take any?”

Turnbull then clarifies the posturing element in the show:

“That is the point I have been trying to make.”

It would not matter if they were not accepted into the United States, as long as it was understood that Australia could never have them.

“The obligation,” explained Turnbull, “is only to go through the process.”

What of the quality of the people in question?

“It is not because [the refugees] are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers we had to deprive them of the product.”

This supreme commodification, this reduction of the historical legacy of shuffling and moving desperate human “cargo” across borders to flee desperate conditions, is one of the more striking points in the conversation. Damn the ethics and the rights, and observe the transaction. Forget the credentials.

Indeed, even if there was a “Nobel Prize-winning genius” who arrived by boat, he would not find home in Australia. This point by Turnbull is near staggering, suggesting more than a minor case of philistinism. (A future advertisement: Nobel Prize-winner fleeing persecution heading to Australia by boat never to settle in the country.)

In what can only be described as a perverse turn, Trump then praises Turnbull and Australia’s refugee policy. To deny even the most gifted because of the means they travel to a country was sound stuff.

“That’s a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”

Turnbull’s own picture of the refugee situation remains as formed as any reactionary. Rather than being tormented and tortured in what Trump himself called prisons (Nauru and Manus Island), these “are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

The impression here is that they would have been let in if appropriately matched to the refugee criteria. But the point is clear enough: the form of arrival determines everything.

“If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa they would be here.”

Almost obscenely, Turnbull suggests that economic migrants are permitted to stay in Australia, provided they take the plane.

The prime minister attempted, at points, to be suitably obsequious, insisting that a generous exchange was being offered. Surely the United States had its own share of the unwanted which Australia might assist in processing?

“We will take more. We will take anyone that you want us to take.”

Just, of course, keep in mind that iron-clad caveat:

“The only people that we do not take are people who come by boat.”

Some in the Australian press corps have claimed that Turnbull came out better in this scuffle. That’s hardly saying much. One leader was transactional, procedural and indifferent to international law; the other was indifferent to the very fact that his administration was bound by anything that had been done by the Obama administration. Ultimately, both leaders were obsessed by the same thing: appearances are everything.

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

Note

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-04/donald-trump-malcolm-turnbull-refugee-phone-call-transcript/8773422

President Trump has been defeated by the military/security complex and forced into continuing the orchestrated and dangerous tensions with Russia. Trump’s defeat has taught the Russians the lesson I have been trying to teach them for years, and that is that Russia is much more valuable to Washington as an enemy than as a friend.

Do we now conclude with Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that Trump is washed up and “utterly powerless?” I think not. Trump is by nature a leader. He wants to be out front, and that is where his personality will compel him to be. Having been prevented by the military/security complex, both US political parties, the presstitute media, the liberal-progressive-left, and Washington’s European vassals from being out front as a leader for peace, Trump will now be the leader for war. This is the only permissible role that the CIA and armaments industry will permit him to have.

Losing the chance for peace might cost all of us our lives. Now that Russia and China see that Washington is unwilling to share the world stage with them, Russia and China will have to become more confrontational with Washington in order to prevent Washington from marginalizing them. Preparations for war will become central in order to protect the interests of the two countries. The situation is far more dangerous than at any time of the Cold War.

The foolish American liberal-progressive-left, wrapped up as they are in Identity Politics and hatred of “the Trump deplorables,” joined the military/security complex’s attack on Trump. So did the whores, who pretend to be a Western media, and Washington’s European vassals, not one of whom had enough intelligence to see that the outcome of the attack on Trump would be an escalation of conflict with Russia, conflict that is not in Europe’s business and security interests.

Washington is already raising the violence threshhold. The same lies that Washington told about Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi, Assad, Iran, Serbia and Russia are now being told about Venezuela. The American presstitutes duly report the lies handed to them by the CIA just as Udo Ulfkotte and Seymour Hersh report. These lies comprise the propaganda that conditions Western peoples to accept the coming US coup against the democratic government in Venezuela and its replacement with a Washington-compliant government that will permit the renewal of US corporate exploitation of Venezuela.

As the productive elements of American capitalism fall away, the exploitative elements become its essence. After Venezuela, there will be more South American victims. As reduced tensions with Russia are no longer in prospect, there is no reason for the US to abandon its and Israel’s determination to overthrow the Syrian government and then the Iranian government.

The easy wars against Iraq, Libya, and Somalia are to be followed by far more perilous conflict with Iran, Russia, and China.

This is the outcome of John Brennan’s defeat of President Trump.

Featured image is from HardDawn.com.

Seventy-two years now, the people around the world together with the victims remember the egregious act of the US in dropping the first ever atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Washington had categorized Hiroshima as “a military base”. The stated objective was “humanitarian”, minimize collateral damage, avoid the deaths of innocent civilians. In the words of President Truman:

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.”(President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

“The bombs of August are an ominous reminder that what happened to Japan can repeat whenever lunatics in Washington believe its to their advantage. Humanity may not survive their madness.” (Stephen Lendman)

Read our selected articles below.

*     *     *

Secret Meeting on the Privatization of Nuclear War Held on Hiroshima Day 2003

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 04, 2017

According to a leaked draft of the agenda, the secret meeting included discussions on “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” bombs with nuclear war heads “for possible use against rogue states”.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Gratuitous Mass Murder, Nuclear War, “A Lunatic Act”

By Stephen Lendman, August 04, 2017

Called by some “the father of the atomic bomb,” Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita saying: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Hiroshima – A Criminal Enterprise From Which Nothing Has Been Learned

By Felicity Arbuthnot, August 03, 2017

80,000 people were killed or mortally injured instantly. The main area targeted was “the city’s principal residential, commercial and military quarters.”

Remember Hiroshima: “Collateral Damage” and The “Pre-emptive” First Strike Use of Nuclear Weapons

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 31, 2017

As in the case of the first atomic bomb, which in the words of President Harry Truman “was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base”, today’s “mini-nukes” are heralded as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

By Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, July 28, 2017

The firestorm in Hiroshima ultimately destroyed 13 square kilometres (5 square miles) of the city. Almost 63% of the buildings in Hiroshima were completely destroyed after the bombing and nearly 92% of the structures in the city had been either destroyed or damaged by blast and fire.

The Myth of Hiroshima

By Peter Van Buren, June 18, 2017

To try and force the Japanese government to surrender (and no one in 1945 knew if the plan would work) by making it watch mass casualties of innocents, and then to hold the nation hostage to future attacks with the promise of more bombs to come, speaks to a cruelty previously unseen.

*     *     *

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Google announced changes to its algorithm search in April, aiming to surface “more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content, fake news and conspiracy theories.”

Andre Damon of the World Socialist Web Site joins RT America’s Natasha Sweatte to explain why he believes his site and other progressive sources are being unfairly targeted.

A note to our readers. Global Research is also affected by the Google algorithm.

In a press briefing on Monday, ending China’s July Presidency of the UN Security Council, Chinese Ambassador Liu stated the firm Chinese position that the United Nations resolutions sanctioning the DPRK require all parties, not only the DPRK, to refrain from threats exacerbating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and require all parties to engage in dialogue and negotiations to resolve the inflammatory situation in Northeast Asia.

The new U.S. travel ban, which takes effect on September 1, preventing U.S. citizens from traveling to the DPRK, is in direct and flagrant violation of the sanctions resolution requiring all parties to engage in dialogue: this unconstitutional U.S. travel ban intends precisely the opposite – escalating hostility and crushing the rich opportunity for understanding provided by direct person-to-person exchanges, which reduce deadly fear and prejudice between peoples. It is not only the DPRK that is allegedly violating U.N. resolutions by testing nuclear weapons, it is also the U.S. that is in violation of these resolutions by aggressively prohibiting dialogue between U.S. citizens and the citizens of North Korea. Resolution 1718 explicitly “encourages further the efforts by all States concerned to intensify their diplomatic efforts, to refrain from any actions that might aggravate tension.”

Repeated U.S. threats that: “all options are on the table” obviously referring to military intervention, greatly exacerbate tensions, and are provocations motivating the DPRK to increase its efforts to protect itself militarily, especially with advanced nuclear weapons. U.S. threats provoke a vicious spiral of violence, and the possibility cannot be excluded that this is intentional. The U.S. placement of THAAD missiles in the Republic of Korea destabilizes China and Russia, and is a thinly disguised assault on the national security of both these countries. And the US-ROK military exercises this month constitute an existential threat to the survival of North Korea, and raise the level of tension in the area to a tipping point intolerable to the DPRK.

Aside from the fact that this U.S. travel ban is also a brazen violation of the United States Constitution, an infringement upon the First Amendment right of freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, this prohibition of United States citizens’ right to travel has no justification, whatsoever, and is intended deliberately to tighten the noose strangling the economy of the DPRK.

Last week the New York Times quoted numerous U.S. citizens who had traveled to the DPRK and attested to the complete safety of travel to North Korea. As usual, the U.S. will exploit the tragic death of Otto Warmbier in an effort to claim that its travel ban is intended to protect U.S. citizens. This is preposterous. United States tourists, businessmen, journalists, politicians traveling in various countries throughout the world, have occasionally (and in some places frequently) been arrested, kidnapped, tortured or murdered , and no travel ban has been enacted to prevent U.S. citizens from traveling to these often perilous areas.

There is no travel ban against any country in the Middle East or Africa, where there has been great danger to American citizens. Many American citizens, including James Foley and Steven Soloff, have been beheaded by ISIS in the Middle East, but U.S. citizens continue to enjoy unrestricted travel there. The U.S. frequently tries to justify its acts of aggression with the rationalization that it is “protecting U.S. citizens,” such as during the invasion of Grenada, which Ronald Reagan attempted to justify as “protecting” U.S. medical students studying in Grenada, despite the fact that these medical students publicly stated they were in no danger, and did not want U.S. military protection.

Any attempt to exploit the death of Otto Warmbier as “justification” for this unconstitutional travel ban is deceitful.  In early 2016 the DPRK had repeatedly sought peace talks with the United States. President Obama repeatedly refused to meet with North Korea to discuss matters of urgent mutual concern. In March, 2016 Otto Warmbier was at trial in Pyongyang. If the Obama administration was sincerely concerned with Warmbier’s life, they could have urged his release during peace talks with the DPRK. They failed to do so. The DPRK was so anxious for this meeting, to discuss substantive matters, such as the sanctions and efforts to normalize relations between the US and the DPRK, that they would have undoubtedly agreed to release Warmbier, whose detention was of less significance in a much larger crisis, the ongoing war between the two countries, locked in and frozen by the “armistice.” By contrast, Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea, and successfully obtained the release of two Americans detained there.

China is correct in stating that the “problem” of North Korea can only be resolved between the United States and the DPRK, and only a peace treaty finally agreed to by these two nations will accomplish this.

Too often, Americans and Europeans fail to place current crises in historic context. One hundred years after the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Turks, Armenians still feel the rage and the raw wounds of that horror. “Operation Nemesis” by Eric Bogosian describes the masterminds of the assassination of the Turkish leaders who commanded the massacre. All the assassins were ultimately acquitted of the murders, which were acknowledged as a form of justice. Seventy years after World War Two, Jews and citizens of the former Soviet Union still remember the terror of the monstrous atrocities inflicted upon them by the nazi scourge. And the Nuremberg trials imposed the death sentence upon many of the naziwar criminals. But these are Europeans and Americans.

Why have no war crimes tribunals been established to hold to account the soldiers who perpetrated massacres against the North Korean people between 1950-1953?

It is obligatory that the horror suffered by North Koreans, the murders and tortures inflicted upon them by American soldiers be acknowledged and compensated for.

Between 3 to 4 million Koreans died during the U.S. invasion between 1950-1953. Every town in North Korea was reduced to ashes, as a result of saturation bombing, napalm and germ warfare. Korean prisoners were used as human guinea pigs to test new forms of germ weaponry, in complete violation of the Geneva conventions. (See: Thomas Powell, Biological Warfare in the Korean War: Allegations and Cover-up, Socialism and Democracy April 2017)

The massacre at Sinchon county is only one example of the savage obliteration of North Korea, and can never be forgotten.

Where is there a tribunal offering justice to the people of North Korea?

Why have no war reparations been made to the North Korean victims?

And how can they ever forget this agony inflicted upon them by American and South Korean soldiers, with UN collusion?

Citizens of the DPRK live with the foreboding terror of a repetition of the atrocity they were forced to endure between 1950-1953.

Ironically, on August 1, The New York Times op-ed section featured an editorial stating:

“Mr. Trump should drop the bluster and dispatch Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or some other high level envoy to explore whether there is any basis for negotiations. In May, the president raised the possibility of meeting the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, himself “under the right circumstances” to defuse tensions…..The North’s program is advanced and its leadership deeply distrustful. Talks should begin without preconditions…Are the North Koreans even interested in talks? American experts who study the issue say there have been repeated signals in recent weeks that they are. That can’t be known, however, unless someone goes and asks them.”

And ironically, more than 10 years ago, in an astoundingly moving exercise of the Right of Reply at the UN Security Council, on Saturday, October 14, 2006, North Korean Ambassador Pak Gil Yon answered every conceivable question, regarding the DPRK’s position [including nuclear weapons]:

“The delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea expresses its disappointment over the fact that the Security Council finds itself incapable of saying even a word of concern to the United States, which threatens the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with a nuclear pre-emptive attack and aggravates tension by reinforcing armed forces and conducting large-scale joint military exercises near the Korean peninsula… The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear test was entirely attributable to the United States nuclear threat, sanctions and pressure. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has exerted every possible effort to settle the nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations, prompted by its sincere desire to realize the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The Bush Administration, however, responded to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s patient and sincere effort and magnanimity with a policy of sanctions and blockade. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was compelled to substantially prove its possession of nukes to protect its sovereignty and the right to existence from the daily increasing danger of war from the United States.”

“Although the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea conducted the nuclear test due to the United States, it remains unchanged in its will to denuclearize the peninsula through dialogue and negotiations. The denuclearization of the entire peninsula was President Kim Il Sung’s last instruction and is the ultimate goal of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  …

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has clarified more than once that it would feel no need to possess even a single nuclear weapon once it was no longer exposed to the United States threat and after that country had dropped its hostile policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and confidence had been built between the two countries…..The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ready for both dialogue and confrontation. If the United States persistently increases pressure upon the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, my country will continue to take physical countermeasures, considering such pressure to be a declaration of war.” (emphasis added)

North Korea’s commitment to peace was flawlessly expressed in Ambassador Pak’s statement, on behalf of the people and  government of the DPRK. He presented a peace initiative both to US and the UN Security Council. Their failure to address and discuss this initiative eleven years ago was irresponsible, and has jeopardized the stability of Northeast Asia. As a result, today  the fate of the world depends upon the United States’ cooperation and respect for the right of the people of the DPRK to live securely in an economic system of their own choosing.

The first step will be dialogue and engagement. And this requires person-to-person encounters at the highest levels of government, as well as “citizen diplomacy.” It is imperative that the unconstitutional United States travel ban perpetuating groundless fear and prejudice must be immediately removed.

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

In a press briefing on Monday, ending China’s July Presidency of the UN Security Council, Chinese Ambassador Liu stated the firm Chinese position that the United Nations resolutions sanctioning the DPRK require all parties, not only the DPRK, to refrain from threats exacerbating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and require all parties to engage in dialogue and negotiations to resolve the inflammatory situation in Northeast Asia.

The new U.S. travel ban, which takes effect on September 1, preventing U.S. citizens from traveling to the DPRK, is in direct and flagrant violation of the sanctions resolution requiring all parties to engage in dialogue: this unconstitutional U.S. travel ban intends precisely the opposite – escalating hostility and crushing the rich opportunity for understanding provided by direct person-to-person exchanges, which reduce deadly fear and prejudice between peoples. It is not only the DPRK that is allegedly violating U.N. resolutions by testing nuclear weapons, it is also the U.S. that is in violation of these resolutions by aggressively prohibiting dialogue between U.S. citizens and the citizens of North Korea. Resolution 1718 explicitly “encourages further the efforts by all States concerned to intensify their diplomatic efforts, to refrain from any actions that might aggravate tension.”

Repeated U.S. threats that: “all options are on the table” obviously referring to military intervention, greatly exacerbate tensions, and are provocations motivating the DPRK to increase its efforts to protect itself militarily, especially with advanced nuclear weapons. U.S. threats provoke a vicious spiral of violence, and the possibility cannot be excluded that this is intentional. The U.S. placement of THAAD missiles in the Republic of Korea destabilizes China and Russia, and is a thinly disguised assault on the national security of both these countries. And the US-ROK military exercises this month constitute an existential threat to the survival of North Korea, and raise the level of tension in the area to a tipping point intolerable to the DPRK.

Aside from the fact that this U.S. travel ban is also a brazen violation of the United States Constitution, an infringement upon the First Amendment right of freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, this prohibition of United States citizens’ right to travel has no justification, whatsoever, and is intended deliberately to tighten the noose strangling the economy of the DPRK.

Last week the New York Times quoted numerous U.S. citizens who had traveled to the DPRK and attested to the complete safety of travel to North Korea. As usual, the U.S. will exploit the tragic death of Otto Warmbier in an effort to claim that its travel ban is intended to protect U.S. citizens. This is preposterous. United States tourists, businessmen, journalists, politicians traveling in various countries throughout the world, have occasionally (and in some places frequently) been arrested, kidnapped, tortured or murdered , and no travel ban has been enacted to prevent U.S. citizens from traveling to these often perilous areas.

There is no travel ban against any country in the Middle East or Africa, where there has been great danger to American citizens. Many American citizens, including James Foley and Steven Soloff, have been beheaded by ISIS in the Middle East, but U.S. citizens continue to enjoy unrestricted travel there. The U.S. frequently tries to justify its acts of aggression with the rationalization that it is “protecting U.S. citizens,” such as during the invasion of Grenada, which Ronald Reagan attempted to justify as “protecting” U.S. medical students studying in Grenada, despite the fact that these medical students publicly stated they were in no danger, and did not want U.S. military protection.

Any attempt to exploit the death of Otto Warmbier as “justification” for this unconstitutional travel ban is deceitful.  In early 2016 the DPRK had repeatedly sought peace talks with the United States. President Obama repeatedly refused to meet with North Korea to discuss matters of urgent mutual concern. In March, 2016 Otto Warmbier was at trial in Pyongyang. If the Obama administration was sincerely concerned with Warmbier’s life, they could have urged his release during peace talks with the DPRK. They failed to do so. The DPRK was so anxious for this meeting, to discuss substantive matters, such as the sanctions and efforts to normalize relations between the US and the DPRK, that they would have undoubtedly agreed to release Warmbier, whose detention was of less significance in a much larger crisis, the ongoing war between the two countries, locked in and frozen by the “armistice.” By contrast, Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea, and successfully obtained the release of two Americans detained there.

China is correct in stating that the “problem” of North Korea can only be resolved between the United States and the DPRK, and only a peace treaty finally agreed to by these two nations will accomplish this.

Too often, Americans and Europeans fail to place current crises in historic context. One hundred years after the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Turks, Armenians still feel the rage and the raw wounds of that horror. “Operation Nemesis” by Eric Bogosian describes the masterminds of the assassination of the Turkish leaders who commanded the massacre. All the assassins were ultimately acquitted of the murders, which were acknowledged as a form of justice. Seventy years after World War Two, Jews and citizens of the former Soviet Union still remember the terror of the monstrous atrocities inflicted upon them by the nazi scourge. And the Nuremberg trials imposed the death sentence upon many of the naziwar criminals. But these are Europeans and Americans.

Why have no war crimes tribunals been established to hold to account the soldiers who perpetrated massacres against the North Korean people between 1950-1953?

It is obligatory that the horror suffered by North Koreans, the murders and tortures inflicted upon them by American soldiers be acknowledged and compensated for.

Between 3 to 4 million Koreans died during the U.S. invasion between 1950-1953. Every town in North Korea was reduced to ashes, as a result of saturation bombing, napalm and germ warfare. Korean prisoners were used as human guinea pigs to test new forms of germ weaponry, in complete violation of the Geneva conventions. (See: Thomas Powell, Biological Warfare in the Korean War: Allegations and Cover-up, Socialism and Democracy April 2017)

The massacre at Sinchon county is only one example of the savage obliteration of North Korea, and can never be forgotten.

Where is there a tribunal offering justice to the people of North Korea?

Why have no war reparations been made to the North Korean victims?

And how can they ever forget this agony inflicted upon them by American and South Korean soldiers, with UN collusion?

Citizens of the DPRK live with the foreboding terror of a repetition of the atrocity they were forced to endure between 1950-1953.

Ironically, on August 1, The New York Times op-ed section featured an editorial stating:

“Mr. Trump should drop the bluster and dispatch Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or some other high level envoy to explore whether there is any basis for negotiations. In May, the president raised the possibility of meeting the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, himself “under the right circumstances” to defuse tensions…..The North’s program is advanced and its leadership deeply distrustful. Talks should begin without preconditions…Are the North Koreans even interested in talks? American experts who study the issue say there have been repeated signals in recent weeks that they are. That can’t be known, however, unless someone goes and asks them.”

And ironically, more than 10 years ago, in an astoundingly moving exercise of the Right of Reply at the UN Security Council, on Saturday, October 14, 2006, North Korean Ambassador Pak Gil Yon answered every conceivable question, regarding the DPRK’s position [including nuclear weapons]:

“The delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea expresses its disappointment over the fact that the Security Council finds itself incapable of saying even a word of concern to the United States, which threatens the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with a nuclear pre-emptive attack and aggravates tension by reinforcing armed forces and conducting large-scale joint military exercises near the Korean peninsula… The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear test was entirely attributable to the United States nuclear threat, sanctions and pressure. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has exerted every possible effort to settle the nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations, prompted by its sincere desire to realize the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The Bush Administration, however, responded to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s patient and sincere effort and magnanimity with a policy of sanctions and blockade. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was compelled to substantially prove its possession of nukes to protect its sovereignty and the right to existence from the daily increasing danger of war from the United States.”

“Although the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea conducted the nuclear test due to the United States, it remains unchanged in its will to denuclearize the peninsula through dialogue and negotiations. The denuclearization of the entire peninsula was President Kim Il Sung’s last instruction and is the ultimate goal of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  …

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has clarified more than once that it would feel no need to possess even a single nuclear weapon once it was no longer exposed to the United States threat and after that country had dropped its hostile policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and confidence had been built between the two countries…..The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ready for both dialogue and confrontation. If the United States persistently increases pressure upon the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, my country will continue to take physical countermeasures, considering such pressure to be a declaration of war.” (emphasis added)

North Korea’s commitment to peace was flawlessly expressed in Ambassador Pak’s statement, on behalf of the people and  government of the DPRK. He presented a peace initiative both to US and the UN Security Council. Their failure to address and discuss this initiative eleven years ago was irresponsible, and has jeopardized the stability of Northeast Asia. As a result, today  the fate of the world depends upon the United States’ cooperation and respect for the right of the people of the DPRK to live securely in an economic system of their own choosing.

The first step will be dialogue and engagement. And this requires person-to-person encounters at the highest levels of government, as well as “citizen diplomacy.” It is imperative that the unconstitutional United States travel ban perpetuating groundless fear and prejudice must be immediately removed.

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

Featured image: The “two horsemen of US regime change,” US Senator’s John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, appear and surround the US proxies of choice ahead of any US-backed attempt to destabilize and overthrow a sovereign nation. Here they lend support to Yingluck Shinawatra ahead of her anticipated ousting from power in 2014. Efforts are now underway to have her and the party she represents placed back into power. (Source: Land Destroyer Report)

Ahead of a pivotal court case in Thailand, US interests – both political and across the media – are preparing the grounds for the next round of foreign-backed destabilization.

Efforts to reinstall US proxies into power in Thailand is part of a larger effort to transform Southeast Asia into a united front against a rising China in an attempt to reassert American “primacy” over the region. US support for the Shinawatra family dates back to Thaksin Shinawatra‘s time as adviser to US-based equity firm, the Carlyle Group, and continues to present day.

Ousted Thai prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, faces charges of negligence regarding a vote-buying rice scheme in which above market prices were promised to farmers if they put her political party, Pheu Thai, into power during 2011 elections.

As a global leader in rice production and exports for decades, Thailand’s markets were immediately disrupted as funds quickly ran dry, quality plummeted, and regional competitors found favor with the nation’s traditional trading partners instead.

In 2014 when Shinawatra was finally ousted from power after months of street protests and a military coup, government warehouses were overflowing with unsold, mold-infested rice.

Billions were lost in the program, and the provisional military-led government that took power has since spent years repaying farmers and attempting to mend the nation’s agricultural industry.

It was a clear-cut case of a vote-buying scheme riddled with corruption and incompetence that ended with the nation’s rice farmers more dependent on political handouts and more vulnerable to the realities of national and global economics.

What the West is Saying: The Lies 

Despite these facts, the West through its various lobbyists and the media outlets that host them, are attempting to frame this current political juncture in an entirely different light.

Opposition lobbyist and Shinawatra confidant, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, who poses and is presented by the Western media as an impartial “academic” based at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, recently posted a summary of the latest talking points being used by US and European special interests and their political proxies in Thailand.

The op-ed published by Reuters and republished by Japan Times titled, “Trial of Yingluck sparks deeper crisis for Thailand,” claims:

Yingluck won a landslide victory in the 2011 election, riding on her party’s populist platform inherited from the government of her brother, Thaksin, who had been in power from 2001 to 2006. Thaksin implemented policies designed to empower rural residents of the north and northeast regions. They subsequently served as strong power bases for Thaksin’s party. Yingluck initiated the rice-pledging scheme, which resulted in purchasing rice from farmers at above-market rates, distorting global prices. This proved highly popular among her supporters in the rural provinces.

He also claims:

Therefore, if the junta decides to get rid of her through legal means, street protests are a possibility and political violence might be inevitable. Imprisoning Yingluck would not be the end of the political game, however. Already her supporters are comparing her with Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had to live under house arrest for 14 years over a 20-year period. Suu Kyi’s incarceration earned her the title of a democratic icon and she became the symbol of struggle against Myanmar’s military rule.

While Pavin admits that the scheme distorted global prices, virtually everything else is an intentional, well-rehearsed lie.

His attempted comparison between Yingluck Shinawatra and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi is apt – however not in the way Pavin likely intended. Suu Kyi – like the Shinawatras – is a decades-long recipient of US and European political backing – her political party and the Western-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) serve as an extension of foreign interests abroad.

Her “saintly” image has been carefully constructed through Western propaganda for years, so carefully that even the genocide she complicity presides over regarding Myanmar’s Rohingya minority has failed to tarnish her image in the eyes of many, including – apparently – Pavin.

What the West Isn’t Saying: The Truth 

The 2011 Thai election was far from a “landslide.” In reality, only 35% of all eligible voters voted for Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party (PTP), and among Thais who voted, PTP failed to garner even a popular majority.

Pavin omits that during the 2011 election, Yingluck Shinawatra openly ran as a proxy for her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a convicted criminal who fled abroad evading a 2 year jail sentence for corruption. The PTP campaign slogan for 2011 was literally, “Thaksin Thinks, PTP Does,” openly admitting that a convicted criminal and fugitive was running PTP from a hotel room in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, not those in Thailand on the actual ballots people were casting.

 A 2011 PTP campaign sign reads, “Thaksin Kit.. Pheu Thai Tom,” which when translated means, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Does,” openly acknowledging that a convicted criminal and fugitive evading a 2 year jail sentence is running the opposition party in direct contradiction to the law. Because of Shinawatra’s immense wealth and foreign backing, he and his followers have enjoyed this sort of  flagrant impunity for years.

Pavin also claims between 2001-2006, Thaksin Shinawatra’s policies “empowered rural residents.” In reality, they were unsustainable handouts provided in exchange for political support – the only real “empowerment” was of Shinawatra’s political machine in the nation’s rural northeast.

Pavin conveniently omits Shinawatra’s 2003 “war on drugs” in which nearly 3,000 innocent people were mass murdered in the streets over the course of 90 days. He also omits systematic abuses between 2001-2006, including abductions, intimidation, and assassinations of Shinawatra’s political opponents.

Vote-buying “populism” destroyed Thailand’s rice industry, including an international reputation it has built up over decades. Even as the country attempts to repair the damage, those responsible for it are attempting once again to claw their way back into power – with Western backing. 

Pavin also omits throughout his lengthy op-ed the street mobs Shinawatra and his Western backers created after being ousted from power in 2006, the “United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship” (UDD or “red shirts), who have – since 2006 until present – carried out attacks, murder, terrorism, and even wide-scale armed riots and insurrections.

In 2010, Thailand got a taste of US-backed “peaceful pro-democracy activists” – “red shirts” – who carried out Arab Spring-style violence in an attempt to trigger nationwide Libyan or Syrian-style conflict. Luckily for Thailand, these attempts failed. 

This includes violence in 2010 that claimed nearly 100 lives and culminated in citywide arson in Bangkok, terrorism carried out against anti-Shinawatra protesters between 2013-2014 that left over 20 dead including women and children, and a bombing spree this year that included a hospital.

Pavin omits all of this, because if readers understood the actual context of Yingluck Shinawatra’s trial or the true nature of the “opposition” he is lobbying for, they would realize just how much Thailand’s current political order is attempting to compromise with the opposition – an opposition whose crimes if committed anywhere in the West would have been long ago labelled terrorism, prompting the opposition’s judicial – and if necessary – martial eradication.

Pavin envisions at the end of his op-ed a scenario that might lead to protests and even violence in the streets, similar to 2010. It is the same sort of scenario that US and European interests are trying to implement in Venezuela, and have already ignited and left to burn in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

In addition to dishonest paid-placements in the media,  the US Embassy and others are busy at work on the ground in Thailand – funding and directing fronts posing as NGOs, including Prachatai, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), Thai Netizen, the New Democracy Movement, and many more – posing as impartial rights advocates – but who are in fact working behind such advocacy to protect and propel a US-backed client regime back into power.

Similar efforts were underway across North Africa and the Middle East before the US-engineered “Arab Spring” was “sprung.” The same sort of concerted subversion and propaganda being spread in Thailand today, was quietly used in places like Syria before brutal warfare grabbed international headlines.

Seeing it unfolds now in Thailand means that potential headline-grabbing conflict later will take no analysts by surprise, and provide them with a clear picture of what really led up to any wider conflict that may erupt.

All images in this article are from the author.

It takes a lot for anything anybody in the Insane Clown Trump administration says to get my attention these days. The longtime Exxon-Mobil CEO and current United State Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did the trick with these 48 words two days ago:

“We are evaluating all of our policy options as to what can we do to create a change of conditions where either Maduro decides he doesn’t have a future and wants to leave of his own accord or we can return the government processes back to their constitution.”

That is the United States’ top “diplomat” saying that a democratically elected head of sovereign state, Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, must leave office or “we” – the U.S. government that is – will reserve the right to remove him (absurdly described as “return[ing]” the Venezuelan government “back to their constitution.”)  It is a declaration of the United States’ presumed entitlement to conduct internationally criminal regime change, confident that it is exempt from global sanction or prosecution.  Because we own the world and what we say goes – especially in our hemisphere. Capisce?

Nobody should doubt that Tillerson is signaling Washington’s willingness to carry out a coup in Venezuela. The Bush administration tried and failed to do precisely that in April of 2002 – and Washington has never stopped waiting for its next best moment to depose the democratically elected socialist government there. That moment is now, perhaps, with Venezuela weakened by low oil prices and years of economic poaching and sanctions, and with U.S-fueled street protests led by a fanatical right wing racist and upper-class opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution.

Latin Americans know all too well about Uncle Sam’s penchant for regime change and other forms of interference in their not-so sovereign political “processes.” Here are just some of the worst highlights of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America over the last six plus decades:

1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup removed the democratically elected Guatemalan and Left government of Jacobo Arbenz. Over the next four decades, U.S.-backed right-wing Guatemalan regimes killed tens of thousands of peasants, workers, students, and activists.

The U.S. responded to the 1959 Cuban Revolution with what historian David Boring called “years of futile covert programs under three different American presidents to depose Castro. U.S. efforts included every arrow in the covert quiver, from organizing and supporting a proxy exile invasion to economic and political destabilization, from sabotage and propaganda to psychological warfare and assassination plots.”

In 1973, a CIA-engineered coup overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Chilean president Salvador Allende and replaced him with the fascist butcher and close U.S. ally General Augusto Pinochet.  Pinochet’s regime killed 30,000 workers, students, peasant, intellectuals and activists killed while introducing U.S.- (University of Chicago-) imported economic policies during the 1970s and 1980s.

A U.S.-sponsored and U.S.-assisted fascist regime and allied death squads in Argentina killed as many 30,000 workers, students, intellectuals, and activists in that country between 1974 and 1983.

US-sponsored authoritarian and death-squad regimes in Central America killed over 300,000 people during Ronald Reagan’s two terms. Lavish funding, training and equipment from Washington fueled this epic bloodshed. Victims were murdered and maimed as punishment for—and warnings against—participation in popular struggles to redistribute land and improve working and social conditions for peasants and workers in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

In the early summer of 2009, the right-wing Democratic Party presidency of Barack Obama, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the lead, helped the Honduran business and military elite carry out a coup against Honduras’ democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya had angered Washington by joining with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador in advocating social democratic reforms and national independence from U.S. direction in Latin America. Thousands have been killed since by the right-wing Honduran regime.

Why does the U.S. want to overthrow the Maduro government in Caracas, threatening now to do so by direct military force? Washington’s claim of concern for hardship and oppression in Venezuela should not be taken seriously. Uncle Sam has been fueling poverty in Venezuela with economic sanctions and coordinated political disruption for years.  Washington has just cut another in its long line of giant arms deals with its longtime oil-rich client and ally Saudi Arabia, the single most reactionary government on Earth. The United States’ alliance with the Saudis, other absolutist Persian Gulf oil monarchies, and numerous other authoritarian rulers and regimes around the world gives the lie to its pretense of worry for the causes of democracy and justice. When will Tillerson call for the departure of the rotten right-wing rulers of Honduras, Columbia, and now Brazil, not to mention those of the Persian Gulf, Indonesia, the Philippines, Ukraine?

“The situation from a humanitarian statement is already becoming dire” in Venezuela, Tillerson said.

Right – as if the Trump administration or Washington more broadly could care less about people’s lives in other countries. An ongoing U.S.-funded and assisted Saudi-led bombing campaign has recently devastated much of Yemen’s basic infrastructure, putting seven million Yeminis at risk of famine. A 19th century disease, cholera, has gone epidemic there, thanks to the collapse of water sanitation. Cholera has already killed nearly 2000 Yemini civilians; 300,000 Yeminis are currently infected. A child dies from preventable causes on the average of once every ten minutes in Yemen now. Wolfgang Jamann, head of the human rights organization CARE, recently took a five-day trip to Yemen.

“We are now in the 21st century and the current situation is an absolute shame on humanity,” Jamann told reporters.

The Trump administration has increased direct U.S. attacks on Yemen and has affiliated Washington more directly with the Saudis’ war on Houthi rebels there.

U.S. troops will not be heading anytime soon down to Honduras to overthrow the vicious government that stands atop a nation where nearly two-thirds of the rural populace lives in abject poverty and where :

“Too many… children live on the streets because their families cannot provide for them. Their homes – often made of cardboard and tin pieced together – offer no space or running water, and little hope of a better future. Usually it is just one room, sometimes with a wood burning stove in the middle, which of course, adds smoke and pollution to the room. There may be a latrine outside but not necessarily close by. The latrine may be shared by several families. There may be only one bed with other family members sleeping on the floor. There is little, if any, furniture. Despite the many children who may be living there, one rarely sees any toys or books. Some homes do have electricity in the form of bare bulbs and exposed wires hanging overhead often covered with duct tape.”

The U.S. considers the regime that enforces this misery in Honduras part of the democratic and “free world.” Honduras’ mass of brown-skinned poor are technically unworthy victims in the reigning U.S. media-politics culture.  Not so the wealthy and lighter-skinned Venezuelan elite, who are enraged by the Venezuelan revolution’s effort to raise millions out of poverty.

In Washington’s view, Venezuela’s left government must be punished for the twin sins of national independence and egalitarian social-democracy – the same transgressions that doomed Arbenz, Allende, and allied left leaders and forces across Latin America and the world (think Lumumba, Sukarno, Mossaddegh) in past episodes of U.S. “democracy promotion.”

How perfect is it that RExxon Tillerson is the petro-imperial mouthpiece for the threat of regime change in Venezuela? The climate-wrecking transnational super-corporation he headed for many years has sought through a World Bank Tribunal to extract $1.6 billion as compensation for properties nationalized when the great Venezuelan populist Hugo Chavez (the man Bernie F-35 Sanders dismissed last year as “just a dead communist dictator”) acted to take back control of Venezuela’s oil wealth to (imagine) channel the profits into social programs at home rather than profits for multinational companies.

Nobody should be surprised by Tillerson’s chilling message given this history and Tillerson’s statement during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of State:

“If confirmed, I would urge close cooperation with our friends in the hemisphere, particularly Venezuela’s neighbors Brazil and Colombia, as well as multilateral bodies such as the OAS, to seek a negotiated transition to democratic rule in Venezuela,”

The translation for “transition to democratic rule”: overthrow of the Bolivarian socialist Revolution and the restoration of the U.S.-friendly Venezuelan business elite to oligarchic power.

Washington is irked by Maduro’s call for a Constituent Assembly to re-draft the Venezuelan constitution. How ironic. The ancient and explicitly un- and even anti-democratic U.S. Constitution of how and why the United States itself is a corporate oligarchy. The United States itself is in dire need of a revolutionary movement that must demand among other things a Constituent Assembly to draft a new U.S. Constitution consistent with the ideal and practice of the U.S. Founders’ ultimate nightmare – popular sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan crisis may provide a useful yardstick for helping sort out those who understand the need for such a movement from those who don’t. If you want to know the dividing line between actual Leftists and the neoliberal Resistance masquerading as a Left in the Age of Trump, take statements or non-statements on Venezuela as a litmus test. Venezuela can help us expose the U.S. fake Left, showing us the richly imperialism that lurks behind the label of Resistance.

Featured image is from UNC – CFC – USFK | CC BY 2.0.

When the U.S.A. wanted a regime change it used to be done in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially when that country had a democratically elected government such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980’s), Haiti (2006), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014) and Syria, where the bloody project is still raging, the body count mounting, and millions of refuges are homeless.

In the last few decades the U.S. has grown bolder in its regime change projects. What used to be done secretly is now unabashedly done in plain sight.

The 2017 Venezuela regime change project has gone public.

Most of the U.S. public cannot see the forest for the trees of propaganda that has the public confused about what is behind the chaos in Venezuela today. Mostly what is behind it is U.S. funding millions of dollars to the political parties of the oligarchs. Without that money the opposition political parties would be more divided than they already are and weaker. The mainstream media spreads the propaganda that President Nicolas Maduro is a dictator, and that

• Maduro is repressive and killing his own people of peaceful demonstrators.
• the Venezuelan Supreme Court judges are his cronies and exceeded their constitutional powers.
• the Constituent Referendum called by Maduro was illegal.
• the elections have been a fraud.
• the opposition are patriots who are demanding democracy.
• Maduro has singlehandedly destroyed Venezuela’s economy.
• the press and television media is censored by Maduro.
• the reason President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Venezuela is because it is a national security threat to the U.S.
• President Trump has imposed additional sanction because he is upset about democracy, freedom and the rule of law in Venezuela.

None of the above is true.

Yet the main stream media keeps repeating it: New York Times , Washington Post , Guardian , Fox News , CNBC , and CNN . Members of Congress keep repeating these lies, a word I rarely use. Not since the mainstream media was a co-conspirator for the Bush-Cheney administration’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 has the mainstream media fallen so low and been so guilty of collusion to spread false propaganda supporting illegal U.S. foreign policy aggression.

Anyone who still has illusions that the U.S. mainstream media is free and independent should be dispelled of that belief by what it is misinforming us about Venezuela today.

The co-opting of the mainstream media is not new. Here is a New York Times editorial the day after Hugo Chavez was kidnapped by a military coup government that was installed in 2002:

Uprising In Venezuela: The Government; Venezuela’s Chief Forced To Resign; Civilian Installed

By Juan Forero April 13, 2002

A transitional government headed by a leading businessman replaced President Hugo Chavez today, hours after military officers forced him to resign. It was a sudden end to the turbulent three-year reign of a mercurial strongman elected on promises to distance his country from the United States while uprooting Venezuela’s old social order—

Pedro Carmona Estanga, the head of Venezuela’s most important business association, was installed as interim president at a ceremony at 6 p.m. He promised that the new government would adhere to ”a pluralistic vision, democratic, civil and ensuring the implementation of the law, the state of law.”

Elections will be held within a year, officials said.

The Bush administration laid the blame for Mr. Chavez’s overthrow firmly with the ousted leader. Officials portrayed the ouster as a victory for democracy—

Pedro Francisco Carmona Estanga is a former Venezuelan trade organization leader who was briefly installed as President of Venezuela in place of Hugo Chávez, following the attempted military coup on April 2002. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The next day the New York Times was forced by circumstances to reverse itself, kind of a non-retraction retraction. Notice that the “prominent businessman”, Pedro Carmona Estanga is not quite so “prominent” after he “dismantled the National Assembly, fired the ministers of the Supreme Court, repealed the constitution, arrested high-level members of the Chavez government and sent others into hiding. He sounds more like the kind of right-wing fascist that the U.S. prefers to be in charge. And exactly who was it that “installed” him as the interim president, the New York Times does not say. It sure made Bush happy thought. Neither the Times nor the U.S. react the way democracy lovers would be expected to after a military coup d’état. How is that a victory for democracy?

Popular Uprising Allows Chavez to Reclaim Venezuelan Presidency

By Ginger Thompson And Juan Forero April 14, 2002

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 14 — Two days after one huge political movement forced President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela out of power, a countervailing uprising that swept like wildfire through the slums surrounding the capital carried the populist leader back to the presidency today.

Once in power, the short-lived interim government, led by a prominent businessman, Pedro Carmona Estanga, dismantled the National Assembly, fired the ministers of the Supreme Court, arrested high-level members of the Chavez government and sent others into hiding.

The new government announced that Mr. Chavez had resigned from power. But word began to spread mostly through international television news reports that Mr. Chavez had not resigned. His followers in slums and poor towns across the country began to worry for his safety. They took to the streets to demand that Mr. Chavez be freed. And they won.

[The Bush administration showed no remorse in its attempt to violently overthrow Chavez, a coup which cost the lives of dozens of people.]

The New York Times went on:

The Bush administration, which showed little regret with Mr. Chavez’s apparent ouster on Friday, said it supported the O.A.S. [endorsing Chavez’s return to power] resolution. But it called on Mr. Chavez to change his policies.

“I hope that Hugo Chavez takes the message that his people sent him, that his own policies are not working for the Venezuelan people, that he’s dealt with them in a high-handed fashion,” , President Bush’s national security adviser, said today on the NBC news program “Meet the Press.”

The Bush Administration, the New York Times and the mainstream media showed no remorse or shame—the U.S. government continued to watch and undermine the Chavista movement, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Socialism, in any way that it can. The U.S. continues to be involved and fund a long-term regime change project. The Empire never gives up.

The U.S. has been perfecting its regime change techniques, camouflaging them as “democracy promotion”, which is funding subversion through the Agency for International Development (AID), the United States Information Service (USIS), and the Congressional funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI) and co-opted non-governmental organizations (NGO). Covertly the CIA and US military continue to this day to undermining democracy in Venezuela.

Regime change is being perfected by sophisticated public relations techniques using marketing strategies, constant repetition, image control, word selection, negative campaigns, mass media, false propaganda and mind shock. The public justification for ousting a democratically elected head of state, such as today’s Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, is cynically said to be democracy promotion and human rights. The real U.S. foreign policy motivation is to recruit a compliant head of state; but that is not what one will hear from the mainstream media propaganda machine cabal, as the New York Times demonstrated after the U.S. backed military coup in 2002.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. has been on a mission of global hegemony, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine:

“To prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power”.

Brzezinski and fellow former National Security Advisers meet with President Obama in the Situation Room. September 1, 2010. (Photo: CSIS: Center for Strategic & International Studies / FlickrPhotos)

And the Grand Chessboard master Zbigniew Brzezinski:

“The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from— [anywhere in the world] —or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role.”

The U.S. is imposing world hegemony by military might, political arm twisting and economic domination.

The military might of the U.S. is unquestionable with its trillion dollar annual budget, 1000 foreign outposts in every region of the world, interlocking military alliances such as NATO, and its apparatus of covert special para-military forces and cyber surveillance.

Economic hegemony requires controlling world organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, mega-international corporations and maintaining world financial transactions in the U.S. dollar. The raw economic power of the U.S. is regurgitated by the false theory of neoliberal economics, which has deservedly been labeled Voodoo Economics for good reasons.

Nothing and nobody takes preference ahead of U.S. military and economic world hegemony. To maintain it requires a cadre of academia, mass media, bureaucrats, politicians, and a servant class that is willing to sell their soul for prestige and remuneration. One of the most important functions of this cadre is to manufacture the consent of the majority of the population of the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. will not hesitate to kill millions of people to maintain every link in the chain of hegemony. As the Grand Chess Master Zbigniew Brzezinski himself said:

“It is now harder to control, but easier to kill, a million people“.

Brzezinski’s words were not the idle musing of an intellectual, political scientist or philosopher. He was dead serious. The number of people who have been killed directly and indirectly for U.S. hegemony since 1991 is in the millions. Those millions could not be controlled so they were killed or they became collateral damage, for the benefit of the U.S. Empire. The number of people the U.S. has killed for the sake of democracy and human rights is zero.

The U.S. public has become controllable by a security state apparatus of spies, militarized police, incarceration on an industrial scale, rigged elections, policies to dumb down the population, keep them literally fat and lazy, constantly preoccupy them with meaningless sensationalism, create a consumer culture, entertain them with mindless saturations of sex and violence, and keep them obedient with propaganda from a network of willing corporate mass media.

Gaining the implied consent of the public for an astronomical military budget, foreign wars, military campaigns, and regime change projects has been perfected to a degree that makes George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four look like a child’s primer. Despite the trillions of dollars spent on empire, the public has been convinced that the U.S. cannot afford investments in human resources such as healthcare, education, affordable housing, antipoverty programs, mass transportation and needed infrastructure maintenance and improvement.

Nor will the U.S. sit idle while another country invests in its human capital. The U.S. has been on a campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez. Chavez broke with the neoliberal neocolonial mold of being compliant to the U.S. Among Venezuela’s natural resources is the world’s largest proven oil reserve. That is a resource that the U.S. wants to dominate.

Chavez committed the unforgivable crime, in the eyes of the hegemonic U.S., by rejecting neoliberal economics, using Venezuela’s oil wealth for the benefit of the Venezuelan people, nationalizing the oil operations in its country, adopting a socialist economic model, entering into a friendship with Cuba, and setting an example for South America that openly defied U.S. domination. Hugo Chavez, his Bolivarian Socialism and his successor Nicolas Maduro are unacceptable to the U.S., and it has been attempting to eradication them.

In 2002 the George W. Bush administration was caught red handed in a plot with the wealthy and upper middle class of Venezuela to overthrow Chavez in a coup d’état. Chavez was briefly kidnapped, held at a U.S. military facility, and the U.S. immediately recognized the legitimacy of the coup government.

To the U.S. surprise, and Bush’s befuddlement, the people of Venezuela turned out in mass demanding Chavez’s return as their democratically elected president. The coup government and the U.S. were left with no choice but to comply. But that did not stop the U.S. from continuing to demonize Chavez and attempting to overthrow his democratic socialist government.

After Chavez’s death in 2013 his democratically elected Vice President Nicolas Maduro assumed the office of president, according to constitutional law. New elections were held and Maduro again was democratically elected president. The U.S. refused to recognize the legitimacy of the election and together with the wealthy upper class of Venezuela immediately cried election fraud.

The U.S. continued to villainize Maduro, labeling him a dictator and a human rights abuser. The U.S. did not letup on its regime change project. The U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on so-called “democracy promotion” by USAID, USIS, NED, IRI, NGO’s and numerous front organizations in Venezuela to overthrow Maduro and Bolivarian Socialism, either in elections, street violence or by a military coup. To the increasing frustration and anger of the U.S. they have so far failed.

We are now witnessing today a U.S. intensive phase of the regime change project in Venezuela. It is a coup in the making in plain sight. It is following the textbook example used in Ukraine, Honduras and elsewhere over the decades. The people of Venezuela like their democracy the way it is. But no one in the US would know it from the mainstream media propaganda.

President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and Congress are supporting the wealthy coup plotters in Venezuela. Many of the coup plotters are the same ones that backed the kidnapping and attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002.

The U.S. is financing the opposition, leading international diplomatic pressure against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro, imposing sanctions, and encouraging the Venezuelan military to overthrow the government. The U.S. rhetoric and Fake News propaganda is full of outright lies, there is no nice way to say it. There is no polite word for lies. The regime change artists and coup plotters know exactly what the truth is. Here are just a few examples of the outrageous statements:

“As President Trump has made clear, the United States will not ignore the Maduro regime’s ongoing efforts to undermine democracy, freedom, and the rule of law”, said Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.

[The truth: Venezuela is a democracy, with the best voting system in the world as certified by the Carter Foundation and the Organization of American States (OAS). Maduro is lawfully following the Constitution of Venezuela and he is not a dictator.]

Here is what CIA director Mike Pompeo had to say,

“At any time you have a country as large and with the economic capacity of a country like Venezuela, America has a deep interest in making sure that it is stable, as democratic as possible. And so, we’re working hard to do that.”

[Truth: Venezuela is more democratic and has a better human rights record than the compliant governments of Mexico, Columbia and Brazil that are joining the U.S. in criticizing Maduro for allegedly being a dictator. Pompeo let it slip that the CIA’s interests in Venezuela is its “economic capacity”. He must mean oil.]

The Fake News is a co-conspirator to the U.S. regime change project. They pound away that Maduro is a “dictator”, that Sunday’s referendum for a Constituent Assembly, which had one of the largest voter turnouts in the history of Venezuela, was fraudulent. That Maduro’s security forces are the ones responsible for the deaths and violence which is untrue; the opposition has caused most of the deaths. The Fake News keeps repeating the numbers killed without revealing who is doing the killing, leaving it as if Maduro is largely responsible. It is another lie by omission.

Those deadly mysterious snipers, which we saw in Ukraine, have shown up again. The agent provocateurs have mostly killed innocent bystanders and their own opposition demonstrators, as in Ukraine. It is cold blooded murder for oil.

The U.S. is not concerned about democracy and human rights. If it were it would be waging a campaign and imposing sanctions against Saudi Arabia, which is on a head-chopping spree since the beginning of the year. The U.S. would be concerned with the obscene number of journalists that have been murdered in Mexico, that Honduras overthrew a democratic government with a military dictatorship (and U.S. help), that Columbia has some of the most dirty politics in South America, where 60% of Columbian voters do not even turn out, that Brazil is mired in scandal and corruption and a recession and that lest than 5% of the population gives President Michel Temer a favorable rating.

The American people have to internalize that the U.S. does not care about democracy, human rights, justice, political prisoners, torture, journalists or millions of people killed and maimed in U.S. wars of aggression, instigation of chaos and perpetration of regime changes. Of twenty South American countries, Venezuela comes in 7^th in the United Nations Index of Human Development. The Fake News propaganda will not mention that fact.

In the 2012 elections of Hugo Chavez as president, the international humanitarian and election observer President Jimmy Carter certified the results and called Venezuela’s voting system “the best in the world“. The opposition and the U.S., which before the elections promised to honor Carter’s certification, were crying fraud no sooner than the results were announced. Only the U.S. because of its supposed exceptionalism gets to decide who wins elections, who is democratically elected president and who is a dictator.

Venezuela does not need “democracy promotion” (i.e. subversion) from USAID, USIS, NED, IRI and any of the phony NGOs. Venezuela could teach the rest of South America and the U.S. about democracy and human rights. There is only interest in Venezuela “economic capacity”, as CIA director Mike Pompeo admitted, meaning mostly oil. And Venezuela has the largest oil reserves Worldwide (See graph below)

Source Energy BC

Source Lets Talk Royalties Canada

The U.S. wants Venezuela to embrace neoliberalism so that international mega-corporations can exploit its oil, which is the largest proven reserve in the world.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon, wants to see his former employer get in on the profits, instead of profits being invested in Venezuela’s people.

When is the public ever going to get it that the U.S. does not care about democracy, human rights, the deaths of innocent civilians and those widowed, orphaned and made homeless by U.S. stoked wars? They want the oil.

David William Pear is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The Greanville Post, The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Russia Insider, Pravda, and many other publications.

All images in this article are from Flickr / Wikimedia Commons.

Last week I wrote an article and did an interview explaining that in my reading of the new Russia sanctions bill just signed by President Trump, there is a measure opening the door to a US government crackdown on some of the non-mainstream media. In particular, Section 221 of the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” would punish “persons” who are “engaging in transactions with the intelligence or defense sectors of the Government of the Russian Federation.” 

At first one might think this is reading too much into the text, however as a twelve year Capitol Hill veteran bill-reader I can assure you that these bills are never written in a simple, expository manner. There is always a subtext, and in this case we must consider the numerous instances where the Director of Central Intelligence and other senior leadership in the US intelligence community have attempted to establish the idea that foreign news channels such as RT or Sputnik News are not First Amendment protected press, but rather tools of a foreign intelligence organization.

You can see in the current atmosphere, where anti-Russia hysteria has spread like typhoid, how readily-accepted such a notion would be by many. The reds are under our beds and the Russkies have taken over our airwaves.

I don’t think the crackdown will stop at Russian government funded news organizations like RT and Sputnik, however. Once the initial strike is made at the lowest hanging fruit, the second wave will target Russia-focused organizations not funded by governments but that challenge the official US government line that Russia is our number one enemy and its government must be overthrown. Popular private alternative websites like The Duran and Russia Insider will likely be next on the list for prosecution.

Sound far-fetched? Think of it this way (I can assure you the neocons do): if the Russian government and RT are opposed to sanctions and you operate a website that also takes a line in opposition to Russia sanctions are you not doing the work of Russian intelligence? Are you not seeking to influence your readers in a manner that Russian intelligence would want? Are you not “engaging in transactions” even over the airwaves?

And after this second wave you can be sure there will be a push to move on other alternative media that has nothing to do with Russia but that opposes US interventionist foreign policy: ZeroHedge, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul Institute, ConsortiumNews, etc.

Crazy, you say? Don’t forget: this war against us already started last year when the Washington Post ran a front page article accusing all of the above of being Russian agents!

What would be next? Do you read any of these alternative news sites? Do you pass along articles that oppose US sanctions policy toward Russia? You are engaging in transactions. You will be subject to “sanctions” as described in the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” which is now the law of the land.

This would never happen, you might say. The government would never compile, analyze, and target private news outlets just because they deviate from the official neocon Washington line.

Perhaps not yet. But some US government funded “non-governmental” organizations are already doing just that.

Source: The German Marshall Fund of the United States

The German Marshall Fund has less to do with Germany these days than it did when founded after WWII as a show of appreciation for the US Marshall Fund. These days it’s mostly funded by the US government, allied governments (especially in the Russia-hating Baltics), neocon grant-making foundations, and the military-industrial complex. Through its strangely Soviet-sounding “Alliance for Securing Democracy” project it has launched something called “Hamilton 68: A New Tool to Track Russian Disinformation on Twitter.”

This project monitors 600 Twitter accounts that the German Marshall Fund claims are “accounts that are involved in promoting Russian influence and disinformation goals.” Which accounts does this monitor? It won’t tell us. How does it choose which ones to monitor? It won’t tell us. To what end? Frighteningly, it won’t tell us.

How ironic that something called the German Marshall Fund is bringing Stasi-like tactics to silence alternative media and opinions in the United States!

So what does the “Hamilton 68” project do? In its own words it firstly “shows tweets from official Russian propaganda outlets in English, and a short post discussing the themes of the day. This is Russia’s overt messaging.”

But it goes further than that. It tracks and stores information about others who have no connection to Russia but who “on their own initiative reliably repeat and amplify Russian themes.” This is what the German Marshall Fund calls a “network” of second tier disinformation distributors.

What does this “network” of people with no connection to Russia but who amplify Russian “themes” do?

It “reflects Russian messaging priorities, but that does not mean every name or link you see on the dashboard is pro-Russian. The network sometimes amplifies stories that Russia likes, or people with like-minded views but no formal connection to Russia.”

So, according to the self-proclaimed alliance for securing democracy you might not even know it when you are pushing Russian state propaganda!

Do you see what they are doing here? They are using US and other government money in an effort to eliminate any news organization or individual who deviates from the official neocon foreign policy line on Russia, Syria, Ukraine, etc. They are trying to eliminate any information that challenges the neocon line. To criminalize it.

In fact they admit that they are seeking to silence alternative viewpoints:

Our objective in providing this dashboard is to help ordinary people, journalists, and other analysts identify Russian messaging themes and detect active disinformation or attack campaigns as soon as they begin. Exposing these messages will make information consumers more resilient and reduce the effectiveness of Russia’s attempts to influence Americans’ thinking, and deter this activity in the future by making it less effective.

The very Soviet-sounding “Alliance for Securing Democracy” project description ends with a suitably authoritarian warning, ripped from the pages of 1984, Darkness at Noon, or Erich Honecker‘s “how-to” guide:

We are not telling you what to think, but we believe you should know when someone is trying to manipulate you. What you do with that information is up to you.

Chilling, no? And much of it is being done with your money by your government and in your name.

That is why the neocons and their myriad think tanks (government-funded in many cases) would like nothing more than to shut down our upcoming Peace and Prosperity 2017 Conference, to be held right at their front door!

They cannot stand an open debate about Washington’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy. They don’t want to talk about all their failed wars — and they really don’t want to talk about the wars they have planned and are pushing.

We are not the anti-Americans. They are. They hate the First Amendment. They hate debate. They hate us.

How can we fight back? One very easy way is to show them a full house at our conference! Just by showing up you are poking a neocon in the eye.

Can you imagine how furious they were when last year’s Peace and Prosperity Conference was broadcast on CSPAN?

Thanks to the support of our very generous Host Committee we can keep the ticket price as low as possible. We want to see all of you there! You will get a full day of fantastic and insightful speakers, the opportunity to network and plot with like-minded individuals, and a very nice luncheon with plenty of coffee and tea to boot! We also managed to get a great rate at the hotel to save you some money!

And you’ll drive the neocons nuts! What are you waiting for! Book your ticket today!

Featured image is an illustration from “Hamilton 68” project website.

“The head of forensics that I met with in November on my third visit to Aleppo said in the past four-plus years 11,000 civilians …in Aleppo have been killed by these different mortar gas canister, explosive bullets and sniping attacks by militant factions….yet not one that I’ve ever heard in Western media, because it doesn’t support their narrative.”  – Eva Bartlett (from this week’s program)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

In the last few weeks of 2016, messages were being broadcast across both broadcast and social media declaring that the Syrian Armed Forces in collaboration with Russian air support were mercilessly attacking civilians in the city of Aleppo. [1]

The citizenry of Western countries were shown pictures of injured Syrians being rescued by the ‘non-partisan’ group of volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets. Appeals from Amnesty International went out critiquing Russia and the Syrian government for their violence against civilians. Médecins Sans Frontières had accused the pro-government forces of destroying a hospital in Al-Quds.

All the while, media ignored the Western-backed opposition militants decimating Aleppo among other cities.

In this media climate, truly independent journalists have proven to be a liability. Portrayals of the six year old Syrian conflict as dictatorial barbarism against a pro-democratic resistance begin to unravel when testimonies from the general population under siege get exposure.

Eva Bartlett is one such independent journalist. A Canadian who had visited Syria six times since 2014, Bartlett has debunked a lot of the myths and documented how the Western-backed militants including the Islamic State and the Al-Nusra Front are the principal architects of the violence in Syria currently.

In late January of 2017, Bartlett commenced a Canadian speaking tour in which she relayed her Syria experiences to a curious public.

Utilizing a slide presentation and some video footage available online, Eva Bartlett addressed the false narrative around the White Helmets, the unreliability of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights as a source, opposition militants sniping humanitarian corridors out of Aleppo, and the fabricated legend of all doctors leaving Aleppo, among other propaganda. She also confronts the criticisms directed at her reporting, including the accusation of being an employee of ‘pro-Russian’ news agencies and an ‘Assad apologist.’

On February 2, she gave two talks in Winnipeg. This week’s Global Research News Hour airs for the first time, audio from one of those talks. It took place in the evening at Winnipeg’s Millennium Library in the Carol Shields Auditorium.

Video footage from the Montreal leg of Bartlett’s tour is available here:

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip, where she lived a cumulative three years (from late 2008 to early 2013), arriving by boat as a part of the Free Gaza missions. She documented the 2008/9 and 2012 Israeli war crimes and attacks on Gaza while riding in ambulances and reporting from hospitals. Eva accompanied Palestinian fishers and farmers as they came under intensive fire from the Israeli army. She has been to Syria four times since April 2014 and works to convey the voices of a people suffering under the foreign war on Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog: In Gaza.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in everyThursday at 6pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

Notes:

1. Kareem Shaheen (Dec. 13, 2016), ‘Children trapped in building under attack in Aleppo, doctor tells UN’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/13/red-cross-urgent-plea-to-save-civilians-aleppo-syria

Chait Purnima morning. The essentials for our day’s work are assembled before guest workers arrive on our doormats. A five gallon pot of kodo (millet beer) is fermenting inside the house; we also have six bottles of raxsi, the clear gin-like drink distilled from fermented kodo. Kodo is generally not for sale but produced (in every home) for family consumption. (A better quality is made and reserved for special occasions.) Danamaya had only a week to prepare this stock so it is coarser (and less potent). It will have to do. The bottled raxsi is not as refined a quality –sweet and aged for months in cool, sealed pots–as we would have liked. Danamaya sells me three bottles of passable quality, and we add to these another three bottles purchased from a neighbor glad to have extra cash before market day. (She can sell the rest of her stock then by the glass.)

Liquor production and sale is a pivotal item in this culture. First it’s an essential medium by which to pay workers, in this case compensation to the assembly of women who will fashion my necklace. Second, Limbu alcohol facilitates warm memories of times spent together, occasions like this Purnima. Third, sale of liquor in the market is an important source of cash, the foundation of women’s independent economic experience. Exclusive brewers of this highly popular product, these women and most other hill people refine their brewing skills and compete for the cash rewards.

From a young age Limbu women own jewelry. Their attachment to jewelry derives though their family membership and their own contribution to the household economy. Her nose-ring is a girl’s first acquisition; she may be hardly ten when she has her first band of gold. Year by year, as she grows, twirls of gold leaf purchased from her own earnings are added to it. From childhood a girl is allowed to keep what she earns from the goats she’s given to care for. Thus, by the age of 18, a young Limbu woman may be able to purchase her own gold earrings.

The naugiri is a different matter. It is acquired with womanhood and marriage. A gift from her family at the time of her betrothal.

Five women from our household begin the day’s work on my naugiri. Danamaya takes charge at the outset by anchoring a nylon rope to her body. (She has clearly done this many times.) Rubbing the loosened rope ends in her palms, she separates it into individual strands. Forty-five threads spread on her lap, secured at one end by a single knot between her toes. Each of us takes a single strand and arranges ourselves in a crescent becoming a human loom around Danamaya who coordinates the entire enterprise. She takes up each beaded string after we’ve filled it with tiny green glass drops; in exchange she offers us an empty one to continue our threading.

Watching Danamaya manage us I remember how efficiently she organizes our entire household. I noted this because I know Danamaya doesn’t legally reside here. True, this is her natal home, her maitighar. But like any married woman, Danamaya gave up many of her rights here when she married and moved to her husband’s family house taking her dowry with her. Here, Danamaya is a visitor with Deepa, her baby girl. In Limbu culture, it’s not uncommon for women to bring their children on a visit to the maitighar and stay for several months. Meanwhile their husbands are away as well. (They travel to India and Malaysia for work. Danamaya’s husband, for example, is serving in a Gurkha regiment in India.) I could never ascertain what she thought about this separation, or what her mother-in-law might feel about her absence. But Danamaya’s own family in Kobek is delighted to have her around and they let her run the house. (How her sisters-in-law feel about this, I never knew.)

We begin stringing the beads after our morning meal. Soon, Laxmi, Danamaya’s neighbor and friend arrives and she grasps a nylon thread like the rest of us, joining this circular-loom. She holds it taut and silently feeds the tiny glass beads, one after another. Kobek is also Laxmi’s maitighar. Unlike Danamaya however, she doesn’t intend to return to her marriage house. She remained there only until her baby was born, she explains. The infant is here and she has no intention of their returning to her husband. She doesn’t like him, she offers matter-of-factly.

A woman once married cannot normally rejoin her maitighar, so Laxmi is fortunate to be welcome here. As long as her maiti is willing to have her, a Limbu woman can divorce her husband. She may also remarry. With no apparent anxiety about her future Laxmi joins in our Chait Purnima project, beads sliding from her fingers onto a thread.

Danamaya coordinates our work, maintaining the tension in each thread until we have filled each with three inches of beads. “Enough, give it to me. Good, now take this one.”

After only an hour, Danamaya’s left hand holds only a few unadorned strings. In her right hand she grips a bunch of completed clusters of dense beads. We rush to complete the remaining threads. Then it’s time to add a gold knob. First the cluster of threads is squeezed together and fed through the opening in the red cloth ring, (what I call a washer). We sit back as Danamaya proceeds to assemble the elements: red felt ring, gold, red again. We watch the soft golden jewel shimmering down the rope and secured by another ring of red. Since the gold is pure, it’s very soft and needs careful handling. Danamaya grips the threaded strings against the red-haloed golden nugget and signals us to reassemble. We are handed a new thread to bead and we resume work, feeding the beads down the string until each of us has completed another three inches.

The seven of us have established a rhythm together and proceed independent of Danamaya’s instructions.

Another hour and I begin to discern an emerging pattern in the necklace. Sparkling, green glass, then a soft red flare against the dull luster of gold, another red flare, then sparkling glass, red again flanking the next knob of gold. Time for a rest.

Originally published on Heresies, A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, Jan/Feb, 1978.

All images in this article are from the author.

First published on August 6, 2015

The atomic age began on August 6, 1945 in real time – after its July 16 pre-dawn open-air birth in successful Alamogordo, NM testing.

At the time, perhaps prophetically General Thomas Farrell said “(w)e were reaching into the unknown, and we did not know what might come of it.”

Called by some “the father of the atomic bomb,” Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita saying: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

August 6 marks the 70th anniversary of one of history’s great crimes, followed three days later by incinerating Nagasaki.

At least 200,000 died, many others scarred for life, future generations to this day harmed by radiologically caused birth defects and other serious health problems.

Big Lies still claim bombing both cities hastened war’s end and saved many lives. Truman informed the public deceitfully saying bombing Hiroshima “destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.”

It was to spare the Japanese people from (further) utter destruction…If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.

Nuclear bombing both cities were two of numerous American genocides – beginning with a conquering the new world from sea to shining sea, ravaging and destroying one country after another ever since, endless wars of aggression continuing today.

Japan was defeated ready to surrender when Truman authorized testing America’s new toy in real time – twice, not once. Not to win a war already won. To show Soviet Russia America’s new might, what its leadership already knew, what might follow against its cities if Washington decided to attack its wartime ally.

US leaders always considered human lives expendable. Many thousands of Japanese victims were considered a small price to pay.

Terror bombing is an international high crime. Article 25 of the Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention) states:

The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or building which are undefended is prohibited.

Post-WW II Geneva IV protects civilians in time of war – prohibiting violence of any type against them, requiring sick and wounded be treated humanely.

The 1945 Nuremberg Principles forbid “crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” including “inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war,” – notably indiscriminate killing and “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”

In his book, “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II,” the late Studs Terkel explained its good and bad sides through people experiencing it.

The good was America “was the only country among the combatants that was neither invaded nor bombed. Ours were the only cities not blasted to rubble,” said Terkel.

The bad was it “warped our view of how we look at things today (seeing them) in terms of war” and the notion that they’re good or why else fight them. This “twisted memory….encourages (people) to be willing, almost eager, to use military force” to solve problems, never mind how they exacerbate them.

Wars are never just or good. In the nuclear age they’re “lunatic” acts – horrific by any standard.

On February 24, 1945, Japan wanted surrender, asking only to retain its emperor. Roosevelt wanted war continued. So did Truman after his April 1945 death.

The late Howard Zinn said “(t)he bombing of Hiroshima remains sacred to the American Establishment and to a very large part of the population in this country.”

It’s been falsely portrayed as an expeditious way to end war and save lives – a myth believed to this day by most Americans, ignoring appalling gratuitous mass murder by any standard.

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unforgivable atrocities,” Zinn explained – “perpetrated on a Japan ready to surrender…a wanton act of gargantuan cruelty (not) an unavoidable necessity.”

What “could be more horrible than the burning, mutilation, blinding, irradiation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women, and children?”

And yet it is absolutely essential for our political leaders to defend the bombing because if Americans can be induced to accept that, then they can accept any war, any means, so long as the war-makers can supply a reason.

Endless US wars of aggression from summer 1945 to this day killed countless millions from conflict, subsequent violence and chaos, starvation, untreated wounds and diseases, as well as overall deprivation.

“There is endless room for more wars, with endless supplies of reasons” justifying the unjustifiable, said Zinn.

Before bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Secretary of War Henry Stimson briefed Dwight Eisenhower on their imminent use, saying: “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.”

After its use, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral William Leahy called the atom bomb “a barbarous weapon. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

In mid-July, four days before Truman, Churchill and Stalin met in Potsdam to discuss post-war issues (two months after Nazi Germany’s defeat), a Japanese Foreign Minister Togo telegram to ambassador Sato in Moscow discussing negotiated surrender terms said:

“It is his Majesty’s heart’s desire to see the swift termination of the war.” Washington intercepted the message. Japanese codes were broken before war began.

At least from summer 1940, US intelligence began reading Japan’s diplomatic messages. Earlier in 1945, Japan sent peace feelers.

Two days before the February Yalta conference, General Douglas MacArthur sent Roosevelt a 40-page summary of its terms.

They were nearly unconditional. The Japanese would accept an occupation, cease hostilities, surrender its arms, remove all troops from occupied territories, submit to criminal war trials, let its industries be regulated, asking only that their Emperor be retained.

Roosevelt categorically refused. So did Truman. They wanted war continued followed by unconditional surrender.

America “was determined to drop those bombs,” said Zinn. Churchill advisor PMS Blackett called using them “the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.”

The bombs of August are an ominous reminder that what happened to Japan can repeat whenever lunatics in Washington believe its to their advantage. Humanity may not survive their madness.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

This article was first published on November 26, 2016 in the immediate wake of the 2016 US presidential elections

The mainstream media (MSM) has declared war on alternative media websites labeling them “Fake News” ever since Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump. The New York Times editorial board expressed their frustration in an article calling for the censorship of alternative and social media‘Facebook and the Digital Virus Called Fake News’ which claimed both social media platforms (Facebook and Google) has not been aggressive enough in blocking fake news sites:

Most of the fake news stories are produced by scammers looking to make a quick buck. The vast majority of them take far-right positions. But a big part of the responsibility for this scourge rests with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users and have been slow to block it from their sites

Some of the websites named in a fake news list by Melissa “Mish” Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts including 21st Century Wire, Activistpost.com, Globalresearch.ca, Lewrockwell.com, Naturalnews.com and Project Veritas (who released undercover videos of the DNC attempting to rig the elections) and others have exposed the lies by MSM propaganda. The MSM has lost its credibility and at the same time lost viewers at unprecedented levels. on April 17, 2016, the Associated Press reported on how the U.S. population viewed the MSM ‘Poll: Getting facts right key to Americans’ trust in media’ said that “Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.” Now they want to stop the alternative media from becoming a credible source for news. The New York Times is calling for the censorship of the alternative and social media by blocking “misinformation”:

Blocking misinformation will help protect the company’s brand and credibility. Some platforms have suffered when they have failed to address users’ concerns. Twitter users, for instance, have backed away from that platform because of abusive trolling, threatening posts and hate speech, which the company hasn’t been able to control.

Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can help improve society. In a 2012 letter to investors, he said it could “bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.” None of that will happen if he continues to let liars and con artists hijack his platform

Just to be clear, there are a number of websites that do spread misinformation including those in the alternative media, but it is fair to say that they never have caused the deaths of millions of people like The New York Times when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. A recent example is the U.S. led war against Iraq in 2003. After the September 11th attacks, the George W. Bush administration made a false accusation that the Iraq government had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) which led to a U.S. invasion eventually toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The U.S. led war turned out to be a calculated plan by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank who wrote the secretive blueprint called ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century’ to remove Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath party from power. The blueprint was originally written for the neocon lunatics who served under then-President George W. Bush including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to establish an “international Security order” dominated by the United States. According to the document:

In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests

PNAC was founded by neoconservatives William Kristol, a political analyst, media commentator (Fox News, ABC News) and the founder and editor of The Weekly Standard and Robert Kagan, an author, columnist, and foreign-policy commentator who is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kagan is also the husband of Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs appointed by President Obama who helped orchestrate a coup against the Ukrainian government of the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The blueprint for regime change in Iraq was planned way before George W. Bush became President in 2001:

Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein

However, Judith Miller (who is currently an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute) and The New York Times played a crucial role for the Bush administration. Miller wrote one of the main articles on Iraq’s “WMDs” that justified the Bush administration’s agenda to topple Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath party. The article was not just “fake” news telling a lie that deceived the public, it destroyed a sovereign nation. The U.S. war against Iraq killed more than 1.4 million Iraqis (according to www.justforeignpolicy.org estimates) and more than 4,400 U.S. troops and tens of thousands permanently injured. The Iraq War also displaced millions of Iraqis thus creating a refugee crisis in neighboring countries including Syria. The destabilization of Iraq has also created a terrorist recruiting base that has spread throughout the Middle East including Syria.

The New York Times published Miller’s article on April 21st, 2003 ‘AFTER EFFECTS: PROHIBITED WEAPONS; Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, An Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert’ which claimed that an Iraqi scientist confirmed that the Iraqi government had WMDs:

They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990′s, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said.

The Americans said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein’s government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990′s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq’s giant weapons plants

On April, 22, 2003, Miller appeared on the PBS News hour and spoke about her evidence on what she described as a “Silver Bullet” from an Iraqi scientist who allegedly worked on Saddam’s weapons program:

RAY SUAREZ: The task of finding that definitive proof falls in part to specialized teams within the U.S. Military. New York times” correspondent Judith Miller is reporting on the search conducted by units of the 75th exploitation task force. And she joins us now by phone south of Baghdad. Judith Miller, welcome back to the program. Has the unit you’ve been traveling with found any proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

JUDITH MILLER: Well, I think they found something more than a “smoking gun.” What they’ve found is what is being called here by the members of MET Alpha– that’s Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha– what they found is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual, a scientist, as we’ve called him, who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand, and who has led MET Team Alpha people to some pretty startling conclusions that have kind of challenged the American intelligence community’s under… previous understanding of, you know, what we thought the Iraqis were doing.

RAY SUAREZ: Does this confirm in a way the insistence coming from the U.S. government that after the war, various Iraqi tongues would loosen, and there might be people who would be willing to help?

JUDITH MILLER: Yes, it clearly does. I mean, it’s become pretty clear to those of us on the ground that the international inspectors, without actually controlling the territory and changing the political environment, would never have been able to get these people to step forward. I mean, you can only do that when you know there is not going to be a secret policeman at your door the next day, and that your family isn’t going to suffer because you’re talking. And that’s what the Bush administration has finally done. They have changed the political environment, and they’ve enabled people like the scientists that MET Alpha has found to come forth. Now, what initially the weapons hunters thought they were going to find were stockpiles of kind of chemical and biological agents. That’s what they anticipated finding. We now know from the scientist that, in fact, that probably isn’t what we’re going to find. What they will find, and what they have found so far, are kind of precursors; that is, building blocks of what you would need to put together a chemical or a biological weapon.

But those stockpiles that we’ve heard about, well, those have either been destroyed by Saddam Hussein, according to the scientists, or they have been shipped to Syria for safekeeping. And what I think the interpretation of the MET Alpha people is, is why he did this. They believe that Saddam Hussein wanted to destroy the evidence of his unconventional weapons programs, and that’s what he has done– not only since 1995, but also in the weeks and months that led up to the war itself. There was mass destruction. And the scientist who has been cooperating with MET Alpha has actually said that he participated in… he kind of watched, you know, a warehouse being burned that contained potentially incriminating biological equipment. So clearly what Saddam Hussein wanted to do was cover his weapons of mass destruction tracks. And that means that the whole shape of the hunt here on the ground for unconventional weapons is changing

The problem with Miller’s assertion that Iraq had WMDs is that it relied on an Iraqi exile named Ahmed Chalabi who wanted “regime change” against Saddam Hussein’s government. James Moore of The Guardian wrote ‘How Chalabi and the White House held the front page: The New York Times has burned its reputation on a pyre of lies about Iraq’described Chalabi as a convicted criminal who embezzled millions from his Petra Bank in Amman, Jordan. Moore said the following:

Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and authority on the Middle East for the NYT, appears to have been the most reliant on Chalabi. In an email exchange with the NYT’s Baghdad bureau chief John Burns, Miller said Chalabi “had provided most of the front page exclusives for our paper”. She later said that this was an exaggeration, but in an earlier interview with me, Miller did not discount the value of Chalabi’s insight. “Of course, I talked with Chalabi,” she said. “But he was just one of many sources I used.”

Miller refused to say who those other sources were but, at Chalabi’s behest, she interviewed various defectors from Saddam Hussein’s regime, who claimed without substantiation that there was still a clandestine WMD programme operating inside Iraq. US investigators now believe that Chalabi sent these same Iraqi expatriates to at least eight Western spy agencies as part of a scheme to convince them to overthrow Saddam

Mr. Moore mentioned Miller’s article which was co-written with Michael R. Gordon and published by The New York Times on September 8th, 2002 titled ‘THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE IRAQIS; U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS’ claiming that Saddam was “building a uranium gas separator to develop nuclear material”:

If spies wanted a trophy to show what happens when their craft is perfectly executed, it would be a story written by Judith Miller on the front page of the New York Times on a Sunday morning in September 2002. She wrote that an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes, to be used for centrifuges, was evidence that Saddam was building a uranium gas separator to develop nuclear material.

The story had an enormous impact, one amplified when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state Colin Powell and vice-president Dick Cheney all did appearances on the Sunday-morning talk shows, citing the first-rate journalism of the liberal NYT. No single story did more to advance the neoconservative cause

Here is the original excerpt from Miller’s original September 8th 2002 New York Times article:

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped

According to Moore (and many other journalists, researchers and alternative media outlets), Judith Miller’s story was completely false and that the “the aluminum tubes were covered with an anodised coating, which rendered them useless for a centrifuge, according to a number of scientists who spoke publicly after Miller’s story.” Moore continued“the tubes, in fact, were almost certainly intended for use as rocket bodies.” Lastly, Moore quoted what Miller had told him about her sources which lead to the WMD hoax:

“I had no reason to believe what I reported was inaccurate,” Miller told me. “I believed the intelligence I had. We tried really hard to get more information and we vetted information very, very carefully.” A few months after the aluminum tubes story, a former CIA analyst explained to me how simple it had been to manipulate the correspondent and her newspaper.

“The White House had a perfect deal with Miller,” he said. “Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated. She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi. Too bad Judy didn’t spend a little more time talking to those of us who had information that contradicted almost everything Chalabi said.”

The New York Times was clearly embarrassed by Miller’s articles after the fact that Miller was wrong all along about the WMDs that led up to the invasion of Iraq. Nothing was ever found. On May 26th, 2004, the editorial board admitted their wrongdoing. The article ‘FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq’ stated that “We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq’s weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists” which blames U.S. and other intelligence agencies (which do share the blame to an extent). The editorial piece continued “We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.” Well, they do turn the light on themselves, sort of:

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on ”regime change” in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.)

Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations – in particular, this one

The New York Times admittance that their journalistic principals had failed was too little and too late. The MSM in particular The New York Times relied on “fake” evidence from Ahmad Chalabi for years (since 1991 to be exact). The MSM failed the Iraqi people who suffered enormously under a pack of lies that destroyed their country. When Washington uses “propaganda” or fake news reports against a sovereign nation, the outcome is always “regime change” that sometimes leads to an all-out war. The MSM has time and time again been guilty of perpetrating fake news stories to assist in Washington’s Imperial agenda. The Iraq War was the biggest lie of the 21st century. What other fake news stories will appear on the MSM websites and newspapers in the future regarding Syria, Russia, China, Iran, the Palestinians, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and even the U.S. President-elect, Donald Trump? To answer that, we just don’t know, but it is up to the alternative media to decipher the “fake” stories and bring out the truth. It is just a matter of time that the MSM will falsify another story; let’s just hope it won’t lead to another war in the process.

This 2004 article by award winning author, peace activist  and Vietnam war veteran Brian Willson brings to light the process of demonization directed against the people of North Korea. 

In the words of General Curtis Lemay who led the bombing raids during the Korean war:  “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.” 

According to Brian Willson:

“It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerance of another.”

Let us carefully analyze the current context of confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang. Since the end of the Korean War, the DPRK has repeatedly put forward a proposal involving  a peace treaty, the reunification of North and South Korea,  the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea, the end of the conduct, on a yearly basis of  a month-long U.S-South Korean war games.

This year’s US-South Korea war games in mid March involve a “hypothetical” US nuclear attack against the DPRK.  The war games constitute a deliberate act of provocation by the World’s foremost military power.

The media consensus –which nobody dare to challenge–  is that North Korea rather than the US  is a threat to global security. 

Where is the threat, North  Korea or the US?

A pre-emptive nuclear war against North Korea has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for over half a century.

Lets ask ourselves: Who is the Killer State? Who Possesses the WMDs? Who has the money and military hardware to pursue a global military agenda, in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East?

How could a small country of 25 million which lost 30 percent of its population as a result of US bombings in the 1950s constitute a threat to global security.

Why is this impoverished country –which has been the object of economic sanctions for the past sixty years– being threatened? 

Since the end of the Korean war the threat of a US led nuclear has been relentless, for more than half a century. 

Is Washington committed to world peace? 

Recent history suggests that countries which are opposed to US expansionism are routinely the object of acts of aggression.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 5, 2013, July 5, 2017

[This article was first published by Global Research in April 2004]

North Korea and the “Axis of Evil”

by S. Brian Willson

The demonization of North Korea by the United States government continues unrelentlessly. The wealthy oil and baseball man who claims to be president of the United States, used his first State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 to brand perennial enemy North Korea, along with former allies Iran and Iraq, as “the world’s most dangerous regimes” who now now form a threatening “axis of evil.” Unbeknown to the public, because it was intended to have remained a secret (whoops!), was the fact that this claimed president presented a “Nuclear Posture Review” report to Congress only three weeks earlier, on January 8, which ordered the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons. The first designated targets for nuclear attack were his newly identified members of the “axis of evil,” along with four other lucky nations as well – Syria, Libya, Russia, and China. That this is nothing short of a policy of ultimate terror remains unaddressed in the U.S. media.

That Koreans are deeply concerned is an understatement. However, they understand the context in which their “evil” is being portrayed, not an altogether new threat levelled at them. However, the dangerous escalation of policy rhetoric following the 9-11 tragedy now boldly warns the world of virtual total war. Vice-president Richard Cheney, another oil man from Texas, declares that the U.S. is now considering military actions against forty to fifty nations, and that the war “may never end” and “become a permanent part of the way we live.”1 The Pentagon has declared that the widening gap between the “Haves” and “Have-nots” poses a serious challenge to the U.S., requiring a doctrine of “full spectrum dominance.” Thus, the U.S. demands total capacity to conquer every place and its inhabitants in and around the Earth, from deep underground bunkers, including those in North Korea and Iraq, through land, sea, and air, to outer space. All options for achieving global and spatial hegemony are now on the table. Already, the U.S. military is deployed in 100 different countries.2 Total war, permanent war. Terror!

Addiction to use of terror by the United States is nothing new. The civilization was founded and has been sustained by use of terror as a primary policy. For example, in 1779, General George Washington ordered destruction of the “merciless Indian savages” of upstate New York, instructing his generals to “chastize” them with “terror.” The generals dutifully carried out these orders. In 1866, General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered “extermination” with vindictive earnestness of the Sioux. They were virtually exterminated. Secretary of War Elihu Root (1899-1904) under President’s McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, justified the ruthless U.S. military conduct in the Philippines that savagely killed a half-million citizens by citing “precedents of the highest authority:” Washington’s and Sherman’s earlier orders.3

War against nations around the world is not new either. The U.S., over its history, has militarily intervened over 400 times, covertly thousands of times, in over one hundred nations.4 Virtually all these interventions have been lawless. It has bombed at least eighteen nations since it dropped Atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. It has used chemical warfare against Southeast Asia, and has provided chemical warfare agents for use by other nations such as Iraq. It has used biological warfare against China, North Korea, and Cuba. The Koreans are quite aware of most of this history. Most U.S. Americans are not. But now the U.S. has declared a unilateral terrorist war on the whole world.5

Two of the interventions in the Nineteenth Century were inflicted against Korea, the first in 1866. The second, larger one, in 1871, witnessed the landing of over 700 marines and sailors on Kanghwa beach on the west side of Korea seeking to establish the first phases of colonization. Destroying several forts while inflicting over 600 casualties on the defending Korean natives, the U.S. withdrew realizing that in order to assure hegemonic success, a much larger, permanent military presence would be necessary. The North Korean people regularly remark about this U.S. invasion, even though most in South Korea do not know of it due to historic censorship. Most in the U.S. don’t know about it either, for similar reasons, even though in all of the Nineteenth Century, this was the largest U.S. military force to land on foreign soil outside of Mexico and Canada until the “Spanish American War” in 1898.

I believe it important for U.S. Americans to place themselves in the position of people living in targeted countries. That North Korea, a nation of 24 million people, i.e., one-twentieth the population of the U.S., many of them poor, a land slightly larger in area than the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, continues to be one of the most demonized nations and least understood, totally perplexes the Korean people. It is worthwhile to seek an understanding of their perspective.

I recently visited that nation and talked with a number of her citizens. I travelled 900 ground miles through six of North Korea’s nine provinces, as well as spending time in Pyongyang, the capital, and several other cities. I talked with dozens of people from all walks of life. Though times have been hard for North Koreans, especially in the 1990s, they long ago proudly rebuilt all of their dozens of cities, thousands of villages, and hundreds of dykes and dams destroyed during the war.

U.S. interference into the sovereign life of Korea immediately upon the 1945 surrender of the hated Japanese, who had occupied the Korean Peninsula for forty years, is one of the major crimes of the Twentieth Century, from which the Korean people have never recovered. (SEE “United States Government War Crimes,” Spring 2002 – issue # 1 of Global Outlook). From a North Korean’s perspective they (1) have vigorously opposed the unlawful and egregious division of their country from day one to the present, (2) were blamed for starting the “Korean War” which in fact had been a struggle between a minority of wealthy Koreans supporting continued colonization in collaboration with the U.S. and those majority Koreans who opposed it, (3) proudly and courageously held the U.S. and its “crony U.N. allies” to a stalemate during the “War,” and (4) have been tragically and unfairly considered a hostile nation ever since. They have not forgotten the forty years of Japanese occupation that preceded the U.S. imposed division and subsequent occupation that continues in the South. They deeply yearn for reunification of their historically unified culture.

Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war, especially from the continuous bombing, much of it incendiary and napalm, deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country. “Every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village” was ordered bombed by General MacArthur in the fall of 1950. It never stopped until the day of the armistice on July 27, 1953. The pained memories of people are still obvious, and their anger at “America” is often expressed, though they were very welcoming and gracious to me. Ten million Korean families remain permanently separated from each other due to the military patrolled and fenced dividing line spanning 150 miles across the entire Peninsula.

Let us make it very clear here for western readers. North Korea was virtually totally destroyed during the “Korean War.” U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s architect for the criminal air campaign was Strategic Air Command head General Curtis LeMay who had proudly conducted the earlier March 10 – August 15, 1945 continuous incendiary bombings of Japan that had destroyed 63 major cities and murdered a million citizens. (The deadly Atomic bombings actually killed far fewer people.) Eight years later, after destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”6 It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerance of another.

Virtually every person wanted to know what I thought of Bush’s recent accusation of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” Each of the three governments comprising Bush’s “axis of evil” of course immediately condemned the remarks, North Korea being no exception. I shared with them my own outrage and fears, and they seemed relieved to know that not all “Americans” are so cruel and bellicose. As with people in so many other nations with whom the U.S. has treated with hostility, they simply cannot understand why the U.S. is so obsessed with them.

Koreans were relieved to learn that a recent poll had indicated eighty percent of South Koreans were against the U.S. belligerant stance against their northern neighbors. The North Korean government described Bush as a “typical rogue and a kingpin of terrorism” as he was visiting the South in February, only three weeks after presenting his threatening State of the Union address.7 It was also encouraging that the two Koreas resumed quiet diplomatic talks in March just as the U.S. and South Korea were once again conducting their regular, large-scale, joint military exercises so enraging to the North, and to an increasing number of people in the South among the growing reunification movement there.8

In the English-language newspaper, The Pyongyang Times, (February 23, 2002) there were articles entitled “US Is Empire of the Devil,” Korea Will Never Be a Threat to the US,” and “Bush’s Remarks Stand Condemned.” Quite frankly, all three of these articles relate a truth about the U.S. that would draw a consensus from many quarters around the world.

While in country, together we listened to Bush’s March 14 Voice of America (VOA) radio chastizement of North Korea. First, he stated that the North’s 200,000 prisoner population was proof of terrible repression. Though I had no way of knowing the number of prisoners in the North, any more than Bush did, I do know that the United States has 2 million prisoners which is similar in per-capita detention rate to that of North Korea if the 200,000 figure is accurate. Furthermore, the U.S. has a minimum of 3 million persons, mostly minority and poor, under state supervision of parole and probation. The U.S. sweeps its class and race problems into prison.

Second, Bush declared that half the population was considered unreliable and, as a result, received less monthly food rations. The Koreans are a proud people living in a Confucian tradition, having rebuilt their nation from virtual total destruction during the Korean war. I did not notice any obvious display of dissent. That some Koreans are desperate due to lack of food, water, and heat, especially in some rural areas, does not necessarily translate into dissent, though some are seeking relief by travel to neighboring countries.9

Third, Bush claimed that Koreans who listen to foreign radio are targeted for execution. Together we regularly listened to U.S.VOA radio broadcasts and they freely discussed the content of the broadcasts without fear of reprisals.

Fourth, Bush condemned the DPRK for spending too much on its military, causing food shortages for the people. Note: Again it must be remembered that it was the U.S. that unilaterally divided Korea following the Japanese surrender in August 1945, and subsequently ruled with a military occupation government in the south, overseeing the elimination of virtually the entire popular movement of (majority) opposition to U.S. occupation, murdering hundreds of thousands of people. The consequent Korean civil war that openly raged in 1948-1950 was completely ignored when the U.S. defined the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. The U.S. remains at war with the DPRK, never having signed a peace treaty with her. The war has left a deep scar in the Korean character with a memory that is regularly provoked by continued belligerance directed at the DPRK. The U.S. regularly holds joint military exercises with South Korean military forces aimed at the DPRK. The U.S. retains 37,000 military troops at 100 installations south of the 38th parallel. The U.S. has its largest Asian bombing range where it practices bombs five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, despite opposition from many South Koreans. And now Bush has identified North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” targeted for nuclear attack. This is no remote idea to North Koreans. The U.S. possesses nuclear weapons on ships and planes in the Pacific region surrounding North Korea. Virtually every nation in this perilous position would be concerned about their defense.

It is worth noting that the United States is the leading military spender in the world resulting in substantial underfunding of its own indispensable social programs.

Fifth, Bush accused the DPRK of selling weapons to other nations. That is like the pot calling the kettle black. The U.S. is by far the largest manufacturer of conventional, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in the world. It is also the largest seller of these weapons, and has used conventional (against dozens of nations), biological (Cuba, China, Korea, perhaps others), chemical (Southeast Asia), and nuclear (Japan, and threatened to use them on at least 20 other occasions) weapons. In addition it has armed other nations with these weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq, one of those countries now identified as part of the “axis of evil.” In the year 2000, international arms sales were nearly $37 billion, with the U.S. being directly responsible for just over half of those sales. South Korea was the third largest buyer of weapons from the United States with $3.2 worth of military hardware.10  And in January 2002, South Korea was seriously contemplating purchasing an additional $3.2 billion worth of 40 F-X fighter jets from U.S. arms giant Boeing.

At the conclusion of this VOA radio broadcast, Koreans and I looked at each other in disbelief. But we also knew that we were in solidarity with each other as part of the human family. When I said goodbye to my new friends we embraced knowing that we live in a single world made up of a rich diversity of ideas and species. We know that we are going to live or die together, and hope that the arrogant and dangerous rhetoric and militarism of the United States will soon end so we can all live in peace. However, for that to happen, there will need to be a dramatic awakening among the people and a corresponding expression of massive nonviolent opposition that will make such threatening behavior impossible to carry out.

Notes

1. Bob Woodward, “CIA Told To Do ‘Whatever Necessary’ to Kill Bin Laden,” The Washington Post, October 21, 2001.

2. Bradley Graham, “Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S. Four Star Officer, Would Over See Homeland Defense,” The Washington Post, January 26, 2002.

3. Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building. New York: Schocken Books, 1990, p. 329.

4. B.M. Blechman and S.S. Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces As A Political Instrument. Wash., D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1978, Appendix B; Congressional Research Service (Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division), Instances of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1993. Wash., D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 1993; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995; John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1991.

5. William Blum, Rogue State. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000; Stephan Endicott and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets From the Early Cold War and Korea. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.

6. Richard Rhodes, “The General and World War III,” The New Yorker, June 19, 1995, p. 53.

7.”North Korea Calls Bush ‘Kingpin of Terrorism,” Reuters wire story, February 23, 2002.

8.”South Korea Envoy to Travel North,” BBC News Online: World: Asia-Pacific, March 25, 2002. Retrieved March 26, 2002, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1891000/1891457.stm

9. Ji-Yeon Yuh, “North Korean Enemy Should Be Made Friend,” The Baltimore Sun, February 27, 2002.

10. Thom Shanker, “Global Arms Sales Rise Again, and the U.S. Leads the Pack, ” The New York Times, August 20, 2001.

S. Brian Willlson is a Vietnam veteran, long-time peace activist, and writer. He has visited a number of countries studying the impacts of U.S. policy. His essays are posted on his website, brianwillson.com. He published a small autobiography, On Third World Legs (Charles Kerr, 1992), which describes his ordeal of having been intentionally run over by a U.S. Government munitions train accelerating to over three times the 5 mph legal speed limit during a peaceful protest in California in 1987. He now walks on two prostheses after losing each leg below the knee. Brian Willson possesses two honorary Ph.D.s and a Juris Doctor degree.

È stato lanciato ieri dalla Guyana francese, con un razzo Vega dell’Agenzia spaziale europea costruito in Italia dalla Avio, il satellite Opsat-3000 del ministero della Difesa italiano. Il satellite non è però italiano, ma israeliano. È stato acquistato nel 2012 nel quadro di un accordo di cooperazione militare tra Roma e Tel Aviv, in base al quale Alenia Aermacchi (azienda di Finmeccanica, ora Leonardo) ha fornito a Israele 30 velivoli militari da addestramento avanzato M-346 e le Israel Aerospace Industries hanno fornito all’Italia l’Opsat-3000 e un primo aereo G550 Caew (vedi il manifesto, 31 luglio 2012).

L’Opsat-3000, collocato in orbita bassa (450 km di altitudine), serve non a una generica «osservazione della Terra», ma a fornire dettagliate immagini ad altissima risoluzione di «qualsiasi parte della Terra» per operazioni militari in lontani teatri bellici. Le immagini raccolte da Optsat-3000 arrivano a tre centri in Italia: il Centro interforze di telerilevamento satellitare di Pratica di Mare (Roma), il Centro interforze di gestione e controllo Sicral di Vigna di Valle (Roma) e il Centro spaziale del Fucino di Telespazio (L’Aquila).

L’Opsat-3000 è collegato allo stesso tempo a un quarto centro: la Mbt Space Division delle Israel Aerospace Industries a Tel Aviv. Ciò conferma che l’accordo militare italo-israeliano prevede non solo la collaborazione tra le industrie militari, ma una sempre più stretta cooperazione strategica tra i due paesi.

Nel quadro dello stesso accordo del 2012, le Israel Aerospace Industries hanno consegnato all’aeronautica italiana, nel dicembre 2016, il primo dei due aerei G-550 Caew: sono Gulfstream 550, jet di lusso per executive made in Usa, che le Israel Aerospace Industries trasformano in sofisticatissimi aerei da guerra. Dotati dei più avanzati sistemi radar, di spionaggio e comunicazione adeguati agli standard Nato, questi aerei costituiscono la punta di lancia di un sistema di comando e controllo per l’attacco in distanti teatri bellici.

Tutto questo costa. L’Opsat-3000 viene pagato dall’Italia 182 milioni di dollari, cui si aggiungono gli ingenti costi per la messa in orbita e la gestione del satellite, la cui «vita» è prevista in circa 7 anni. I due aerei G-550 Caew, con relativi centri di comando e controllo, costano circa 800 milioni di dollari. Complessivamente oltre un miliardo di dollari pagato con denaro pubblico. Il miliardo di dollari, ricavato dalla vendita a Israele dei 30 velivoli da addestramento M-346, entra nelle casse di Leonardo SpA, nuova denominazione sociale di Finmeccanica, in cui il Tesoro detiene una quota del 30%.

Viene in tal modo realizzato il «Libro Bianco per la sicurezza internazionale e la difesa» a firma della ministra Pinotti, trasformato lo scorso febbraio in disegno di legge che delega al governo «la revisione del modello operativo delle Forze armate». Modello in cui l’industria militare assume il ruolo di «pilastro del Sistema Paese», in cui le Forze armate hanno il compito di difendere «gli interessi vitali del Paese», intervenendo nelle aree prospicienti il Mediterraneo – Nordafrica, Medioriente, Balcani – e, al di fuori di tali aree, in Afghanistan e ovunque nel mondo siano in gioco gli interessi dell’Occidente rappresentati fondamentalmente dalla Nato sotto comando Usa.

L’acquisizione di sistemi militari quali il satellite-spia Opsat-3000 e gli aerei G-550 Caew non lascia dubbi che la via tracciata, demolendo i pilastri costituzionali della Repubblica italiana, è sempre più quella della guerra.

Manlio Dinucci

Kautilya (also called “Chanakya”) was a royal advisor thousands of years ago in ancient India. His writings are considered an important precursor to much modern thought. Wikipedia notes:

He is considered the pioneer of the field of political science and economics in India, and his work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics.

2,300 years ago – in the 4th century B.C. – Kautilya advocated the use of false flag attacks:

The brother of a seditious minister may put forward his claim for inheritance. While the claimant is lying at night at the door of the house of the seditious minister or elsewhere, a fiery spy … may murder him and declare “Alas! the claimant for inheritance is thus murdered (by his brother).” Then taking the side of the injured party, the king may punish the other (the seditious minister).

***

The king may send a seditious minister with an army of inefficient soldiers and fiery spies to put down a rebellious wild tribe or a village, or to set up a new superintendent of countries or of boundaries in a locality bordering upon a wilderness, or to bring under control a highly-rebellious city, or to fetch a caravan bringing in the tribute due to the king from a neighboring country. In an affray (that ensues in consequence of the above mission) either by day or at night, the fiery spies, or spies under the guise of robbers … may murder the minister and declare that he was killed in the battle.

While marching against an enemy or being engaged in sports, the king may send for his seditious ministers for an interview. While leading the ministers to the king, fiery spies with concealed weapons shall, in the middle enclosure of the king’s pavilion, offer themselves to be searched for admittance into the interior, and, when caught, with their weapons by the door-keepers, declare themselves to be the accomplices of the seditious ministers. Having made this affair known to the public, the door-keepers shall put the ministers to death, and in the place of the fiery spies, some others are to be hanged.

While engaged in sports outside the city, the king may honor his seditious ministers with accommodation close to his own. A woman of bad character under the guise of the queen may be caught in the apartment of these ministers and steps may be taken against them as before.

A sauce-maker or a sweetmeat-maker may request of a seditious minister some sauce and sweetmeat by flattering him–“thou alone art worthy of such things.” Having mixed those two things and half a cup of water with poison, he may substitute those things in the luncheon (of the king) outside the city. Having made this event known to the public, the king may put them (the minister and the cook) to death under the plea that they are poisoners.

***

When there arises a quarrel among seditious persons, fiery spies may set fire to their fields, harvest-grounds, and houses, hurl weapons on their relatives, friends and beasts of burden, and say that they did so at the instigation of the seditious; and for this offense others may be punished.

Spies may induce seditious persons in forts or in country parts to be each other’s guests at a dinner in which poisoners may administer poison; and for this offense others may be punished.

500 years ago, Machiavelli wrote:

In order to keep the power, one has to use terror sometimes.

Machiavelli and the father of the Neo-Conservative movement – Leo Strauss – advocated false flag terror as a political tool.

Strauss, an admirer of Machiavelli, believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:

A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured.

(Background.)

Leaders throughout history have also acknowledged the political “benefit” of false flags:

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
– Plato

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
– U.S. President James Madison

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph Hitler

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin

These are not just idle words …  presidents, prime ministers, congressmen, generals, spooks, soldiers and police from around the world have admitted to false flag terrorism.

Featured image: Film director Andrei Nekrasov, who produced “The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes.” (Source: Consortiumnews)

Why is the U.S. mainstream media so frightened of a documentary that debunks the beloved story of how “lawyer” Sergei Magnitsky uncovered massive Russian government corruption and died as a result? If the documentary is as flawed as its critics claim, why won’t they let it be shown to the American public, then lay out its supposed errors, and use it as a case study of how such fakery works?

Instead we – in the land of the free, home of the brave – are protected from seeing this documentary produced by filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov who was known as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin but who in this instance found the West’s widely accepted Magnitsky storyline to be a fraud.

Instead, last week, Senate Judiciary Committee members sat in rapt attention as hedge-fund operator William Browder wowed them with a reprise of his Magnitsky tale and suggested that people who have challenged the narrative and those who dared air the documentary one time at Washington’s Newseum last year should be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

It appears that Official Washington’s anti-Russia hysteria has reached such proportions that old-time notions about hearing both sides of a story or testing out truth in the marketplace of ideas must be cast aside. The new political/media paradigm is to shield the American people from information that contradicts the prevailing narratives, all the better to get them to line up behind Those Who Know Best.

Nekrasov’s powerful deconstruction of the Magnitsky myth – and the film’s subsequent blacklisting throughout the “free world” – recall other instances in which the West’s propaganda lines don’t stand up to scrutiny, so censorship and ad hominem attacks become the weapons of choice to defend “perception management” narratives in geopolitical hot spots such as Iraq (2002-03), Libya (2011), Syria (2011 to the present), and Ukraine (2013 to the present).

But the Magnitsky myth has a special place as the seminal fabrication of the dangerous New Cold War between the nuclear-armed West and nuclear-armed Russia.

In the United States, Russia-bashing in The New York Times and other “liberal media” also has merged with the visceral hatred of President Trump, causing all normal journalistic standards to be jettisoned.

A Call for Prosecutions

Browder, the American-born co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management who is now a British citizen, raised the stakes even more when he testified that the people involved in arranging a one-time showing of Nekrasov’s documentary, “The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes,” at the Newseum should be held accountable under FARA, which has penalties ranging up to five years in prison.

Browder testified:

“As part of [Russian lawyer Natalie] Veselnitskaya’s lobbying, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Chris Cooper of the Potomac Group, was hired to organize the Washington, D.C.-based premiere of a fake documentary about Sergei Magnitsky and myself. This was one the best examples of Putin’s propaganda.

“They hired Howard Schweitzer of Cozzen O’Connor Public Strategies and former Congressman Ronald Dellums to lobby members of Congress on Capitol Hill to repeal the Magnitsky Act and to remove Sergei’s name from the Global Magnitsky bill. On June 13, 2016, they funded a major event at the Newseum to show their fake documentary, inviting representatives of Congress and the State Department to attend.

“While they were conducting these operations in Washington, D.C., at no time did they indicate that they were acting on behalf of Russian government interests, nor did they file disclosures under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. United States law is very explicit that those acting on behalf of foreign governments and their interests must register under FARA so that there is transparency about their interests and their motives.

“Since none of these people registered, my firm wrote to the Department of Justice in July 2016 and presented the facts. I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests.”

Browder’s Version

Hedge-fund executive William Browder in a 2015 deposition.

While he loosely accused a number of Americans of felonies, Browder continued to claim that Magnitsky was a crusading “lawyer” who uncovered a $230 million tax-fraud scheme carried out ostensibly by Browder’s companies but, which, according to Browder’s account, was really engineered by corrupt Russian police officers who then arrested Magnitsky and later were responsible for his death in a Russian jail.

Browder’s narrative has received a credulous hearing by Western politicians and media already inclined to think the worst of Putin’s Russia and willing to treat Browder’s claims as true without serious examination. However, beyond the self-serving nature of Browder’s tale, there are many holes in the story, including whether Magnitsky was really a principled lawyer or instead a complicit accountant.

According to Browder’s own biographical description of Magnitsky, he received his education at the Plekhanov Institute in Moscow, a reference to Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, a school for finance and business, not a law school.

Nevertheless, the West’s mainstream media – relying on the word of Browder – has accepted Magnitsky’s standing as a “lawyer,” which apparently fits better in the narrative of Magnitsky as a crusading corruption fighter rather than a potential co-conspirator with Browder in a complex fraud, as the Russian government has alleged.

Magnitsky’s mother also has described her son as an accountant, although telling Nekrasov in the documentary “he wasn’t just an accountant; he was interested in lots of things.” In the film, the “lawyer” claim is also disputed by a female co-worker who knew Magnitsky well. “He wasn’t a lawyer,” she said.

In other words, on this high-profile claim repeated by Browder again and again, it appears that presenting Magnitsky as a “lawyer” is a convenient falsehood that buttresses the Magnitsky myth, which Browder constructed after Magnitsky’s death from heart failure while in pre-trial detention.

But the Magnitsky myth took off in 2012 when Browder sold his tale to neocon Senators Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, and John McCain, R-Arizona, who threw their political weight behind a bipartisan drive in Congress leading to the passage of the Magnitsky sanctions act, the opening shot in the New Cold War.

A Planned Docudrama

Browder’s dramatic story also attracted the attention of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, a well-known critic of Putin from previous films. Nekrasov set out to produce a docudrama that would share Browder’s good-vs.-evil narrative to a wider public.

Nekrasov devotes the first half hour of the film to allowing Browder to give his Magnitsky account illustrated by scenes from Nekrasov’s planned docudrama. In other words, the viewer gets to see a highly sympathetic portrayal of Browder and Magnitsky as supposedly corrupt Russian authorities bring charges of tax fraud against them.

Sergei Magnitsky

However, Nekrasov’s documentary project takes an unexpected turn when his research turns up numerous contradictions to Browder’s storyline, which begins to look more and more like a corporate cover story. For instance, Magnitsky’s mother blames the negligence of prison doctors for her son’s death rather than a beating by prison guards as Browder had pitched to Western audiences.

Nekrasov also discovered that a woman who had worked in Browder’s company blew the whistle before Magnitsky talked to police and that Magnitsky’s original interview with authorities was as a suspect, not a whistleblower. Also contradicting Browder’s claims, Nekrasov notes that Magnitsky doesn’t even mention the names of the police officers in a key statement to authorities.

When one of the Browder-accused police officers, Pavel Karpov, filed a libel suit against Browder in London, the case was dismissed on technical grounds because Karpov had no reputation in Great Britain to slander. But the judge seemed sympathetic to the substance of Karpov’s complaint.

Browder claimed vindication before adding an ironic protest given his successful campaign to prevent Americans and Europeans from seeing Nekrasov’s documentary.

“These people tried to shut us up; they tried to stifle our freedom of expression,” Browder complained. “[Karpov] had the audacity to come here and sue us, paying high-priced libel lawyers to come and terrorize us in the U.K.”

The ‘Kremlin Stooge’ Slur

A pro-Browder account published at the Daily Beast on July 25 – attacking Nekrasov and his documentary – is entitled “How an Anti-Putin Filmmaker Became a Kremlin Stooge,” a common slur used in the West to discredit and silence anyone who dares question today’s Russia-hating groupthink.

The article by Katie Zavadski accuses Nekrasov of being in the tank for the Kremlin and declares that

“The movie is so flattering to the Russian narrative that Pavel Karpov — one of the police officers accused of being responsible for Magnitsky’s death — plays himself.”

But that’s not true. In fact, there is a scene in the documentary in which Nekrasov invites the actor who plays Karpov in the docudrama segment to sit in on an interview with the real Karpov. There’s even a clumsy moment when the actor and police officer bump into a microphone as they shake hands, but Zavadski’s falsehood would not be apparent unless you had somehow gotten access to the documentary, which has been effectively banned in the West.

Russian police officer Pavel Karpov (right) meets the actor who portrays him in the docudrama portions of “The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes.”

In the documentary, Karpov, the police officer, accuses Browder of lying about him and specifically contests the claim that he (Karpov) used his supposedly ill-gotten gains to buy an expensive apartment in Moscow. Karpov came to the interview with documents showing that the flat was pre-paid in 2004-05, well before the alleged hijacking of Browder’s firms.

Karpov added wistfully that he had to sell the apartment to pay for his failed legal challenge in London, which he said he undertook in an effort to clear his name. “Honor costs a lot sometimes,” the police officer said.

Karpov also explained that the investigations of Browder’s tax fraud started well before the Magnitsky controversy, with an examination of a Browder company in 2004.

“Once we opened the investigation, a campaign in defense of an investor started,” Karpov said. “Having made billions here, Browder forgot to tell how he did it. So it suits him to pose as a victim. … Browder and company are lying blatantly and constantly.”

However, since virtually no one in the West has seen this interview, you can’t make your own judgment as to whether Karpov is credible or not.

A Painful Recognition

Yet, in reviewing the case documents and noting Browder’s inaccurate claims about the chronology, Nekrasov finds his own doubts growing. He discovers that European officials simply accepted Browder’s translations of Russian documents, rather than checking them independently. A similar lack of skepticism prevailed in the United States.

In other words, a kind of trans-Atlantic groupthink took hold with clear political benefits for those who went along and almost no one willing to risk the accusation of being a “Kremlin stooge” by showing doubt.

As the documentary proceeds, Browder starts avoiding Nekrasov and his more pointed questions. Finally, Nekrasov hesitantly confronts the hedge-fund executive at a party for Browder’s book, Red Notice, about the Magnitsky case.

The easygoing Browder of the early part of the documentary — as he lays out his seamless narrative without challenge — is gone; instead, a defensive and angry Browder appears.

“It’s bullshit,” Browder says when told that his presentations of the documents are false.

But Nekrasov continues to find more contradictions and discrepancies. He discovers evidence that Browder’s web site eliminated an earlier chronology that showed that in April 2008, a 70-year-old woman named Rimma Starova, who had served as a figurehead executive for Browder’s companies, reported the theft of state funds.

Nekrasov then shows how Browder’s narrative was changed to introduce Magnitsky as the whistleblower months later, although he was then described as an “analyst,” not yet a “lawyer.”

As Browder’s story continues to unravel, the evidence suggests that Magnitsky was an accountant implicated in manipulating the books, not a crusading lawyer risking everything for the truth.

A Heated Confrontation

In the documentary, Nekrasov struggles with what to do next, given Browder’s financial and political clout. Finally securing another interview, Nekrasov confronts Browder with the core contradictions of his story. Incensed, the hedge-fund executive rises up and threatens the filmmaker.

“I’d be very careful going out and trying to do a whole sort of thing about Sergei [Magnitsky] not being the whistleblower, it won’t do well for your credibility on this show,” Browder said. “This is sort of the subtle FSB version,” suggesting that Nekrasov was just fronting for the Russian intelligence service.

In the pro-Browder account published at the Daily Beast on July 25, Browder described how he put down Nekrasov by telling him, “it sounds like you’re part of the FSB. … Those are FSB questions.”

But that phrasing is not what he actually says in the documentary, raising further questions about whether the Daily Beast reporter actually watched the film or simply accepted Browder’s account of it. (I posed that question to the Daily Beast’s Katie Zavadski by email, but have not gotten a reply.)

The documentary also includes devastating scenes from depositions of a sullen and uncooperative Browder and a U.S. government investigator, who acknowledges relying on Browder’s narrative and documents in a related case against Russian businesses.

Financier William Browder (right) with Magnitsky’s widow and son, along with European parliamentarians.

In an April 15, 2015 deposition of Browder, he, in turn, describes relying on reports from journalists to “connect the dots,” including the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which is funded by the U.S. government and financial speculator George Soros. Browder said the reporters “worked with our team.”

While taking money from the U.S. Agency for International Development and Soros, the OCCRP also targeted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych with accusations of corruption prior to the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that ousted Yanukovych, an overthrow that was supported by the U.S. State Department and escalated the New Cold War with Russia.

OCCRP played a key role, too, in the so-called Panama Papers, purloined documents from a Panamanian law firm that were used to develop attack lines against Russian President Vladimir Putin although his name never appeared in the documents.

After examining the money-movement charts published by OCCRP about the Magnitsky case, Nekrasov notes that the figures don’t add up and wonders how journalists could “peddle these wooly maths.” He also observed that OCCRP’s Panama Papers linkage of Magnitsky’s $230 million fraud and payments to an ally of Putin made no sense because the dates of the Panama Papers transactions preceded the dates of the alleged Magnitsky fraud.

The Power of Myth

Nekrasov suggests that the power of Browder’s convoluted story rested, in part, on a Hollywood perception of Moscow as a place where evil Russians lurk around every corner and any allegation against “corrupt” officials is believed. The Magnitsky tale “was like a film script about Russia written for the Western audience,” Nekrasov says.

But the Browder’s narrative also served a strong geopolitical interest to demonize Russia at the dawn of the New Cold War.

In the documentary’s conclusion, Nekrasov sums up what he had discovered:

“A murdered hero as an alibi for living suspects.”

He then ponders the danger to democracy:

“So do we allow graft and greed to hide behind a political sermon? Will democracy survive if human rights — its moral high ground — is used to protect selfish interests?”

But Americans and Europeans are being spared the discomfort of having to answer that question or to question their representatives about the failure to skeptically examine this case that has pushed the planet on a course toward a possible nuclear war.

Instead, the mainstream Western media has hurled insults at Nekrasov even as his documentary is blocked from any significant public viewing.

Despite Browder’s professed concern about the London libel case that he claimed was an attempt “to stifle our freedom of expression,” he has sicced his lawyers on anyone who might be thinking about showing Nekrasov’s documentary to the public.

The documentary was set for a premiere at the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016, but at the last moment – faced with Browder’s legal threats – the parliamentarians pulled the plug. Nekrasov encountered similar resistance in the United States. There were hopes to show the documentary to members of Congress but the offer was rebuffed. Instead a room was rented at the Newseum near Capitol Hill.

Browder’s lawyers then tried to strong arm the Newseum, but its officials responded that they were only renting out a room and that they had allowed other controversial presentations in the past.

“We’re not going to allow them not to show the film,” said Scott Williams, the Newseum’s chief operating officer. “We often have people renting for events that other people would love not to have happen.”

In an article about the controversy in June 2016, The New York Times added that

“A screening at the Newseum is especially controversial because it could attract lawmakers or their aides.”

One-Time Showing

So, Nekrasov’s documentary got a one-time showing with a follow-up discussion moderated by journalist Seymour Hersh. However, except for that audience, the public of the United States and Europe has been essentially shielded from the documentary’s discoveries, all the better for the Magnitsky myth to retain its power as a seminal propaganda moment of the New Cold War.

After the Newseum presentation, a Washington Post editorial branded Nekrasov’s documentary Russian “agit-prop” and sought to discredit Nekrasov without addressing his many documented examples of Browder’s misrepresenting both big and small facts in the case.

Instead, the Post accused Nekrasov of using “facts highly selectively” and insinuated that he was merely a pawn in the Kremlin’s “campaign to discredit Mr. Browder and the Magnitsky Act.”

Like the recent Daily Beast story, which falsely claimed that Nekrasov let the Russian police officer Karpov play himself, the Post misrepresented the structure of the film by noting that it mixed fictional scenes with real-life interviews and action, a point that was technically true but willfully misleading because the fictional scenes were from Nekrasov’s original idea for a docudrama that he shows as part of explaining his evolution from a believer in Browder’s self-exculpatory story to a skeptic.

Donald Trump Jr., speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

But the Post’s deception – like the Daily Beast’s falsehood – is something that almost no American would realize because almost no one has gotten to see the film.

The Post’s editorial gloated:

“The film won’t grab a wide audience, but it offers yet another example of the Kremlin’s increasingly sophisticated efforts to spread its illiberal values and mind-set abroad. In the European Parliament and on French and German television networks, showings were put off recently after questions were raised about the accuracy of the film, including by Magnitsky’s family.

“We don’t worry that Mr. Nekrasov’s film was screened here, in an open society. But it is important that such slick spin be fully exposed for its twisted story and sly deceptions.”

The Post’s arrogant editorial had the feel of something you might read in a totalitarian society where the public only hears about dissent when the Official Organs of the State denounce some almost unknown person for saying something that almost no one heard.

It is also unlikely that Americans and Europeans will get a chance to view this blacklisted documentary in the future. In an email exchange, the film’s Norwegian producer Torstein Grude told me that

“We have been unsuccessful in releasing the film to TV so far. ZDF/Arte [a major European network] pulled it from transmission a few days before it was supposed to be aired and the other broadcasters seem scared as a result. Netflix has declined to take it. …

“The film has no other release at the moment. Distributors are scared by Browder’s legal threats. All involved financiers, distributors, producers received thick stacks of legal documents (300+ pages) threatening lawsuits should the film be released.” [Grude sent me a special password so I could view the documentary on Vimeo.]

The blackout continues even though the Magnitsky issue and Nekrasov’s documentary have become elements in the recent controversy over a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth.”]

So much for the West’s vaunted belief in freedom of expression and the democratic goal of encouraging freewheeling debates about issues of great public importance. And, so much for the Post’s empty rhetoric about our “open society.”

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

All images in this article are from the author.

The United States has killed, maimed, displaced, and otherwise harmed an astonishing number of people (according to Ward Churchill) in its 241-year record of murder and mayhem – including more than 20 million killed in 37 nations since 1945.

Direct Assault

A distinction exists between those Uncle Sam has directly assaulted and those he has more indirectly attacked. Examples of direct assault are numerous and horrible to contemplate.

The history of direct U.S.-military mass killing since 1945 includes:

* The firebombing of Tokyo: roughly 100,000 Japanese civilians incinerated when U.S. bombers created the greatest firestorm in history.

* Hiroshima (146, 000 killed with a single bomb – what U.S. president Harry Truman called “the greatest thing in history”) and (80,000) Nagasaki: savagely unnecessary and arch-criminal atom-bombings carried out even though the U.S. high command knew that Japan was defeated and ready to accept U.S. surrender terms).

* Four million killed in Korea to prevent national unification under Left and Soviet-allied power there between 1950 and 1953.

* The “crucifixion of Southeast Asia” (Noam Chomsky’s term at the time): the U.S. and its allies killed at least 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians between 1962 and 1975. (Operation Phoenix, a CIA and military operation, alone killed 40,000 Vietnamese – more than wo-thirds the total U.S. body count in the so-called Vietnam War)

*Iran Air Flight 655: on July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes crossed into Iranian waters and shot down an Iranian civilian plane, blowing 290 people out of the sky. (The Vincennes’ commander was granted an award for “exceptionally meritorious conduct.”)

*The “Highway of Death”:  U.S. fighter jets engaged in a frenzied slaughter of tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops in 1991. (The Lebanese-American journalist Joyce Chediac testified that “U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions…. The victims were not offering resistance…it was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend.”)

*Fallujah: the U.S. Marines waged chemical warfare and used radioactive ordnance in the process of leveling a great Iraqi city in April and November of 2004.

*Bola Boluk: an Afghan village where U.S. bombers blew 113 civilians (including dozens of children) to bits in May of 2009.

* The U.S. drone war  program (2001 to present), aptly described by Noam Chomsky as “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports a minimum number of U.S. 3,734 drone strikes with nearly 10,000 killed, including 1,427 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen “since the Bureau began collecting data.”  (Chomsky’s description referred to Obama’s drone record; Trump has dramatically increased drone strikes).

* Bayda Province, Trump’s first blood: US Navy special forces carried out a raid – planned under the Obama administration and handed off to the incoming Trump team – that killed 25 civilians, including 10 children in the mountainous Yakla region of Yemen’s Bayda province. One of the children killed was an eight-year-old girl, Nawar al-Awlaki, daughter of the Islamist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed on the order of Barack Obama in a September 2011 US drone strike in Yemen. Nawar’s older brother, 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, was killed in a second drone strike soon afterwards. The continued U.S.  slaughter of akl-Awlaki’s children was consistent with Trump’s campaign claims that he would kill the relatives of terrorist suspects – a war crime. The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump pronounced on  Fox News in December 2015.

Proxy Killing

Dreadful as such moments of direct imperial butchery may be, the United States may well have killed, maimed, and displaced more people indirectly, through proxies and clients.

In 1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup removed the democratically elected Guatemalan and Left government of Jacobo Arbenz. Over the next four decades, U.S.-backed right-wing Guatemalan regimes killed tens of thousands of peasants, workers, students, and activists.

In 1960, the CIA killed the Congo’s first independent head of state, the Left anti-colonialist leader Patrice Lumumba. The United States subsequently backed the brutal Congolese dictator Joseph Mobuto, who killed hundreds of thousands. (The U.S. has since been significantly responsible for as many 3 million deaths in that resource-rich country ever since. It sponsors and protects the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, whose body count in his own country and Congo runs into the tens of thousands.)

In 1965 and 1966, the United States worked with Britain and Australia to help orchestrate the overthrow the democratically elected Left government of Indonesia and the subsequent massacre of somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Indonesian peasants, workers, intellectuals, and activists. Coup General Suharto received rich military and economic assistance from the U.S. over three decades of subsequent authoritarian rule.

In December of 1975, Suharto got a green light from his sponsors in Washington to invade East Timor. The Indonesian military received advanced weaponry from the United States and the U.S. client Israel as it brutally annexed the poor island nation and killed at least 180,000 of its inhabitants.

In 1973, a CIA-engineered coup overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Chilean president Salvador Allende and replaced him with the fascist butcher and close U.S. all General Augusto Pinochet.  Pinochet’s regime killed 30,000 workers, students, peasant, intellectuals and activists killed while introducing U.S.- (University of Chicago-) imported economic policies during the 1970s and 1980s.

A U.S.-sponsored and U.S.-equipped fascist regime in Argentina and allied death squads killed as many 30,000 workers, students, intellectuals, and activists in that country between 1974 and 1983.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Washington, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan created the extremist Islamo-Wahhabist forces that became al Qaeda and the Taliban as part of the U.S. Cold War with the Soviet Union and to destabilize a pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan. These Sunni jihadist forces have killed hundreds of the thousands of people in Southwest Asia and the Middle East ever since.

U.S.-sponsored authoritarian regimes in Central America killed over 300,000 people during Ronald Reagan’s two terms. Lavish funding, training and equipment from Washington fueled this epic bloodshed. Victims were murdered and maimed as punishment for—and warnings against—participation in popular struggles to redistribute land and improve working and social conditions for peasants and workers in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Tens of thousands of Iranians were executed with U.S. economic, political, and military assistance and sponsorship by the Iranian dictator Mohammad Reza Shah Palevi, who was installed into power after a CIA-engineered coup overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Left government in 1953.

Between 1980 and 1988, the U.S. backed Iraq in an epic war with Iran. This horrific conflict produced at least 1 million Iranian casualties, including 300,000 soldiers killed and untold thousands still suffering from Iraqi chemical weapons developed with U.S. assistance.

The U.S.-sponsored and U.S.-armed Israeli government has killed hundreds of thousands if not millions (estimates vary) of Palestinians. It is a major recipient of U.S. military assistance as it continues to impose its vicious apartheid and settlement regime on the Palestinians with an iron fist.

An estimated 465,000 Syrians have been killed or gone missing in the ongoing Syrian Civil War, a conflict that has been significantly fueled by the U.S. and allied powers including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia, the most reactionary government on Earth, has slaughtered untold tens of thousands of dissenters and ethnic (Shia Muslim) minorities with U.S. arms, economic assistance, and diplomatic cover. It is home to the extreme Sunni-Wahabbist ideology that has fueled mass-murderous jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda and Islamic State, which have received lavish funding from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi kingdom is a prized U.S. ally that has been visited by both President Obama and Trump in recent years. Trump went to Riyadh last May to seal a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis.

Untold tens of thousands of Black Africans died at the at hands of the U.S. supported apartheid regime of South Africa during the Cold War era.

U.S.-backed regimes and paramilitary forces (especially the UNITA armies that waged war on socialist Angola in the 1970s and 1980s) have killed many hundreds of thousands if not millions more in Africa since 1945. (Many hundreds of thousands of Congolese have died at the hands of the U.S.-sponsored Rwandan regime and related Congolese death squads in the post-Mobuto era. The current significantly U.S.-instigated South Sudanese civil war has killed an estimated 300,000.)

This is a very partial list. For a more comprehensive record, see William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Common Courage, 2005) and Ward Churchill, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Arrogance and Criminality (AK Press, 2003).

Given this record, it is hardly surprising that the United States has long been the nation that is most viewed by people the world over as the greatest threat to peace and security on the planet. This while the imperial homeland’s reigning media and politics culture claims that the United States is an exceptionally noble and democratic force for good and liberty the world over, leaving untold millions of U.S. Americans childishly clueless about the eternally and absurdly asked question: “why oh why do they hate wonderful us?”

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in history. (Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc)

A trove of Monsanto’s internal records released on Tuesday raises serious concerns about company efforts to influence media reports and scientific research related to risks posed by is popular weedkiller, Roundup.

As the New York Times reported:

Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes‘s website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment.

A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, “I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.” He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: “We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.”

A Monsanto official said the comments were the result of “a complete misunderstanding” that had been “worked out,” while Mr. Acquavella said in an email on Tuesday that “there was no ghostwriting” and that his comments had been related to an early draft and a question over authorship that was resolved.

The dozens of documents include text messages and emails among Monsanto employees discussing Roundup’s safety, as well as their communications with writers and researchers. They were released by one of the law firms representing a group of gardeners, farmers, and agricultural workers who are suing Monsanto over allegations that glyphosate, a key chemical in Roundup, caused them to develop cancer. These documents follow records released in March that, among other things, revealed company ties to an official at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), prompting an investigation into possible collusion between Monsanto and the EPA staffer.

“This is a look behind the curtain,” Brent Wisner, an attorney from the firm that released the documents, toldjournalist Carey Gillam, who is also the research director for U.S. Right to Know. “These show that Monsanto has deliberately been stopping studies that look bad for them, ghostwriting literature and engaging in a whole host of corporate malfeasance. They (Monsanto) have been telling everybody that these products are safe because regulators have said they are safe, but it turns out that Monsanto has been in bed with U.S. regulators while misleading European regulators.”

“This trove marks a turning point in Monsanto’s corporate life,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., another attorney involved with the class action suit, told Gillam. “They show Monsanto executives colluding with corrupted EPA officials to manipulate and bury scientific data to kill studies when preliminary data threatened Monsanto’s commercial ambitions, bribing scientists and ghostwriting their publications, and purchasing peer review to conceal information about Roundup’s carcinogenicity, its toxicity, its rapid absorption by the human body, and its horrendous risks to public health and the environment….We can now prove that all Monsanto’s claims about glyphosate’s safety were myths concocted by amoral propaganda and lobbying teams.”

Glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, is the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in history. Although the popular weed-killer has been approved by U.S. regulators for decades, glyphosate is often condemned by environmentalists and food safety advocates, who worry about hormone disruption, and the contentious debate over whether glyphosate causes cancer—as well as its role in the “pesticide treadmill.” It was deemed a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015, and in June California announced it would add glyphosate to the state’s list of known cancer-causing chemicals.

More than 700 pages of documents also reveal Monsanto’s efforts to discredit the WHO classification, which was issued by the agency’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). As Splinter reported:

Earlier this year Reuters published a supposedly damning story which posited that the academic who led IARC’s inquiry into glyphosate mislead the organization about his findings.

Though, as Carey Gillam of the Huffington Post noted, the journalist who authored the story, Kate Kelland, relied on documents that were likely given to her by Monsanto. The documents Kelland cited were unavailable to the public at the time, but Monsanto had copies. Kelland’s story also relied on a paid consultant and scientist for Monsanto, Bob Tarone.

Monsanto’s continuous effort to discredit WHO’s research, as revealed the numerous published documents, only serves to taint its own insistence that Roundup isn’t toxic. If glyphosate was truly harmless, Monsanto would not have bribe, pressure, or persuade academics to say otherwise.

The release of Monsanto’s “secret documents” was widely supported and circulated by environmentalists and food safety advocates online:

Just Released Docs Show Monsanto 'Executives Colluding With Corrupted EPA Officials to Manipulate Scientific Data'https://t.co/aCYVEIWPSn

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 1, 2017

New #MonsantoPapers add to questions of regulatory collusion, scientific mischief https://t.co/LdA7TwsBri via @careygillam of @USRightToKnow

— Gary Ruskin (@garyruskin) August 1, 2017

New court docs show how @MonsantoCo controls regulatory agencies, buying off scientists & blocking negative studies. https://t.co/S8pq5gM5Hz

— Organic Consumers (@OrganicConsumer) August 1, 2017

Released docs show @MonsantoCo execs colluding with EPA officials to manipulate scientific data. https://t.co/xz6hrrFSjS

— Friends of the Earth (@foe_us) August 1, 2017

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

Featured image: CNE President said Venezuela voted “massively” for the National Constituent Assembly. | Photo: EFE

The U.S. government slapped sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro one day after the South American country saw record turnout in National Constituent Assembly (ANC) elections amid deadly opposition violence. 

On Monday, the US Treasury Department labeled the elected Venezuelan leader a “dictator” and froze his alleged assets in the United States. The measure was legally authorized under Executive Order 13692, which was signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 and brands Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security.

For his part, Maduro fired back at the White House, calling the move an “expression of impotence [and] desperation”.

“They [the US] see Latin America as a lapdog that wags its tail and nods yes. It’s an irate reaction because the Venezuelan people and its president disobeyed [the US’] order to suspend the National Constituent Assembly,” he declared.

“I don’t obey imperial orders and moreover [I am] against US imperialism,” the head of state continued.

Mixed reactions

The sanctions come on the heels of ANC elections that saw 8,089,4320 Venezuelans turn out to vote, a figure that surpasses the 7,587,579 votes Maduro received in his narrow 2013 election victory.

In the lead-up to the elections, Washington sanctioned 13 top Venezuelan officials and threatened “strong and swift economic actions” if the initiative to redraft Venezuela’s constitution went ahead.

Despite the high turnout, the US State Department has refused to recognize election and several close US allies have followed suit, including Canada, Spain, the UK, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and Panama. The European Union similarly expressed “grave doubts as to whether the election result can be recognized”.

For its part, Russia dismissed the international chorus rejecting the result as “destructive”.

“We hope that those members of the international community who want to reject the results of the Venezuelan elections and increase the economic pressure on Caracas, show restraint and renounce these destructive plans that can sharpen the polarization of Venezuelan society,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, regional leftist governments, including Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, congratulated Venezuela on the successful election.

Bolivian President Evo Morales (Source: Global Risk Insights)

In particular, Bolivian President Evo Morales hit out at Mexico and Colombia, whom he said would do well to “have their own constituent assembly… to change their capitalist system, their imperialist system”.

Within Venezuela, the result sparked condemnation from the country’s right-wing opposition coalition, the MUD, as well as Attorney General Luisa Ortega.

The MUD, which boycotted the elections despite repeated overtures from the government to participate, has raised allegations of voter fraud, but has yet to provide evidence to back its claims.

“We do not recognize this fraudulent process, for us it is null and void,” declared Miranda Governor Henrique Capriles.

As the MUD candidate against Maduro in 2013 presidential elections, Capriles refused to recognize his narrow defeat, calling on his supporters to “vent their anger” in the streets. Eleven people were killed in the ensuing post-election violence.

International electoral observers, for their part, reported that the electoral process was transparent.

“[Venezuelans] have concurred in a civic and peaceful manner to exercise their right to vote in a free, universal, direct, and secret election as expressed in Article 63 of the Bolivarian Constitution,” stated the Council of Electoral Specialists of Latin America, which is composed of ex-presidents and electoral monitoring officials from throughout the region.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council announced the preliminary results on Sunday evening, but it has yet to release the state-by-state vote breakdown as well as the full list of candidates elected. On Monday, the electoral body was the target of a cyber attack by opposition hackers that shut down its website for a number of hours, together with that of Venezuela’s state television network.

Violent unrest claims 10 lives 

Sunday’s vote was rocked by deadly anti-government violence aimed at preventing the election from taking place.

On the eve of the vote, an ANC candidate for the communes sector was assassinated in Bolivar state. Children’s rights activist and community organizer Felix Pineda Marcano (39) was gunned down in his home in Ciudad Bolivar on Saturday evening. Authorities are actively investigating the murder, which they believe could be politically motivated.

Meanwhile, over the course of the day, 200 voting stations were besieged by opposition militants across the country, according to Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

In Tachira state, National Guard Second Sergeant Ronald Ramirez was shot in the head and killed near a military installation in La Grita.

The Public Prosecution (MP) has reported 9 other deaths over the course of the day’s events.

In addition to Ramirez, two unnamed adolescents and a third man by the name of Jose Cardenas were killed in Tachira state. In Merida, Angelo Mendez and Eduardo Olave were killed in the early hours of the morning before voting began, while Jose Sanchez also lost his life under unknown circumstances.

In Lara state, Luis Zambrano (43) was reportedly shot dead in an anti-government protest in Barquisimeto. Elsewhere in Sucre state, the MP confirmed the death of Democratic Action youth leader Ricardo Campos during an opposition protest in the early hours of the morning.

A man by the name of Haidar Ocando was likewise killed in Zulia state, though no further details are yet known concerning the cause of death. The MP has dispatched state district attorneys to investigate all of the fatalities.

Meanwhile, the heavily pro-opposition Altamira neighborhood of eastern Caracas was the scene of another roadside bomb attack targeting a Bolivarian National Police motorcycle caravan.

As captured on camera, the police motorcyclists are seen driving down Francisco de Miranda Avenue when suddenly a bomb goes off, producing a giant explosion as onlookers cheer.

Eight officers were injured in the blast with first, second, and third degree burns. The Public Prosecution is investigating.

The incident marks the second time in a month that large-scale explosive devices has been used in the wealthy eastern Caracas municipality of Chacao. On July 10, seven National Guard officials were injured in a similar remote-detonated explosion.

In total, the Interior Ministry has reported that 21 state security personnel suffered gunshot wounds over the course of the day. Forty-nine people were arrested for attacks on military personnel on Sunday.

Russia and Iran signed a $2.5 billion deal on Monday to start up a much-needed rail wagon production operation. The agreement was forged between the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization of Iran (IDRO) and Transmashholding, who is Russia’s largest rail equipment supplier. The two sides will set up a new joint venture, which will be 80% owned — although completely funded — by the Russian partner.

Iran is currently in the midst of what could be called an infrastructure building bonanza. Emerging from decades of sanctions which left much of the country’s transportation infrastructure descending into proverbial ruins, Iran has embarked upon a near complete rebuild of its highway and rail networks. The country is expected to add on 15,000 kilometers of new rail lines in the next five years alone — a rapid expansion which is going to require 8,000-10,000 new wagons each year.

Reinvigorating the transport sector is a key part of Iran’s vision to leverage its geographic position to become a vibrant hub of trans-Eurasian trade, which plugs nicely into China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Russia’s continued economic activity in the post-Soviet neighborhood. Iran is also a core partner, along with Russia and India, in the emerging North-South Transport Corridor, which seeks to create a multimodal trade route that would cut the lead time between cities on the west coast of India and St. Petersburg in half, and has also worked out its territorial squabbles with Russia over the Caspian Sea.

Tossed in the same boat by U.S. sanctions, this agreement to produce rolling stock for Iran’s new railways is the latest in a string of deals that show Tehran and Moscow’s growing partnership. Seemingly setting aside a longstanding sentiment of distrust and competition, which resulted from various military fracases throughout the Soviet period, Iran and Russia have recently been establishing economic and strategic partnerships on many fronts, including energy, infrastructure development, and military aid — along with being on the same side of the Syria crisis. According to the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Iran has also given Russia priority in any industry it wants to invest in.

Trade between Russia and Iran doubled over the course of 2016, with the sale of military equipment — such as MI-17 helicopters and various rocket systems — being some of Iran’s most sought after acquisitions. Russian oil and gas companies are also moving into Iran, with Gazprom recently being given the contract to develop the Farzad B gas field. It is estimated that the bilateral annual trade between the nations will soon spike to over $10 billion — which would be up from a paltry, sanctions-induced $1.68 billion in 2014.

Beyond the buying and selling of Persian rugs and commercial airplanes, companies from the United States simply cannot get in on the spoils of a rapidly emerging Iran, as the country maintains its sanctions for Tehran’s reputed support of terrorism and its human rights record — sanctions which have recently been intensified. The U.S. also holds a large amount of influence over the actions of European firms in Iran, with companies like France’s Total, an oil and gas provider, reportedly needing U.S. approval before entering the market. These are moves which leave everything wide open for Russia.

In this era of mass-cross border trade and investment, the way that countries gain leverage and influence over each other is via increased economic activity and joint development projects. In this fray, the imposers of sanctions essentially take themselves right out of the game and leave everything on the table for their rivals to accumulate additional wealth and power. China knows this; Russia knows this. Putin probably owes the U.S. congress a thank you.

Wade Shepard is the author of Ghost Cities of China. Traveling since ’99. Currently on the New Silk Road. Read my other articles on Forbes here.

Featured image is from Russia Insider.

Featured image: Masses of Palestinians praying outside al-Aqsa Mosque (Source: Liberation News)

Mass civil disobedience of thousands of Palestinian people has defeated an Israeli attempt to take territory around al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem by installing barricades and metal detectors at entrances.

“The spirit of unity amongst Jerusalemites today has been extraordinary. People from all walks of life, practicing Muslims and non-practicing Muslims and even Christians, have taken part in directly protesting the closure of Al-Aqsa. We all recognize the significance of this battle, and so we all resist,” according to Jalal Abukhater, who lives in East Jerusalem (Electronic Intifada, July 25).

For two weeks Palestinian worshippers refuse to go through metal detectors, and prayed in the thousands in the streets outside the compound, day and night. Thousands of jubilant, chanting Palestinian surrounded the Israelis removing the final security obstacles in the early hours of July 27. A celebratory fireworks display was held in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Western media has given scant coverage to this important struggle, nor to the increasing repression which ignited it. Corporate media reporting on Palestine, when it does happen, often obscures the issues. For instance, recent reporting in the New York Times and other outlets gives the impression that Israel has some claims at al-Aqsa. The reality is that Israel’s presence there violates international law.

The compound, known to Muslims as the Holy Sanctuary, includes the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It is one of the holiest shrines for Muslims all over the world, as well as an important symbol of Palestinian identity. The shrine in located in the West Bank, which Israel has illegally occupied for 50 years. No government recognizes Israeli sovereignty there.

Rightwing groups, some funded by the Israeli government have long sought to occupy this sanctuary, even to destroy the Islamic holy sites at the al-Aqsa mosque compound and replace them with a Jewish temple.

Israel’s unilateral installation of metal detectors and barricades at the shrine was a challenge to the Palestinian Muslim authorities who govern the Sanctuary and to Palestinian sovereignty in this holy site. The Palestinian National Authority, Fatah, Hamas and the Waqf religious trust that administers the site all backed the boycott. The Palestinian Authority even suspended its security cooperation with Israel in protest. .

Protests spread to Jordan

Jordan is the legal custodian of the shrine. Israel’s encroachment there even provoked protest from Amman, an Israeli ally and U.S. client. Adding insult to injury, an Israeli security guard in the Israeli embassy compound in Amman who shot dead two Jordanians was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Israel by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Hundreds responded by demonstrating outside the Israeli compound on July 28, demanding that the Israeli embassy be closed.

Boycotters withstood repeated Israeli attacks

The al-Aqsa boycotters withstood repeated attacks by Israeli forces firing tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades, and spraying the protesters with water hoses. More than 1,000 Palestinians were injured according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and three Palestinians killed.

East Jerusalem leaders were arbitrarily arrested. The Palestinian al-Makassed hospital, where the wounded were treated, was stormed twice by Israeli soldiers and police The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that journalists covering al-Aqsa were punched in the chest, hit on the head with batons, tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets by Israeli security forces.

On July 27, just one hour after the mosque reopened without metal detectors, as thousands poured in, Israeli soldiers attacked the crowd with stun grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas and water hoses, wounding 100, and prohibiting all men under 30 from entering. By July 28, however, all Palestinians had won their right to enter the mosque, and more than 10,000 came to worship, according to the Waqf.

50 years of Israeli provocations

The metal detectors were installed following a July 14 incident. Israel maintains that men coming out of Al-Aqsa mosque that day shot dead two Israeli occupation police guarding the compound. But Israeli police have no business on Palestinian land which is not theirs to “guard,” and their presence, particularly at this shrine, is a provocation. The site, which Israel calls the Temple Mount, has been the scene for Israeli government and rightwing provocation since it was seized in 1967.

For example, those who seek to destroy the mosques are allowed to tour the Holy Sanctuary grounds on a daily basis under military protection. They try to provoke Palestinian worshippers by shouting and singing Israeli anthems.

Life in Jerusalem’s Old City is constantly disrupted by Israeli security forces that strut through the streets and alleys fully armed, threatening and humiliating Palestinians. The Israeli invasion increases on Fridays, when thousands come to worship. Barricades are put up and the police block the roads so that thousands of worshippers must walk single file surrounded by heavily armed soldiers. IDs are checked, and police arbitrarily denying worshipper’s entry into the Old City where the shrines are located.

“Al-Aqsa is also central to Palestinian economic and social activity in Jerusalem, said Abukhater. Palestinians also view Israel’s measures at al-Aqsa as part of an ongoing effort to erase all Palestinian life in the city, said Abukhater.

“I see the decline of the city in growing poverty, disappearing street vendors, the total absence of nightlife and the lack of public hangout places and cafes… Palestinian traders in Jerusalem depend largely on the vast numbers of worshippers who regularly make their way to al-Aqsa,” he added. (Electronic Intifada, July 25)

Israeli settlers not “innocent victims”

In the midst of this struggle, on July 21 a young Palestinian man wielding a knife killed three Israelis in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Halamish. Much of the western media has derided this as “killing of innocent civilians.” A close look at the residents of Halamish reveals they are far from innocent. They are the front line of Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land. Settlers from Halamish regularly burn the olive trees of neighboring Palestinians, attack the villagers, and take their land and water. For several years Palestinian have held protest marches against Halamish violence. The Israeli military suppresses the protests, while doing nothing to curb the settler violence.

A more realistic picture of settler behavior can be seen in a video circulating on Facebook and available on Electronic Intifada. It shows scores of settlers storming a Palestinian home in Hebron and terrorizing the family living there while Israeli soldiers do nothing. The settlers returned the next day under military escort, took over two of the three floors, and moved in their own furniture.

"Abu Rajab" family resist the theft of their house as Israeli settlers and soldiers try to occupy/seize it – Dura city, south of West Bank. pic.twitter.com/UnuCdF86gY

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 26, 2017

U.S. funds Israeli repression

This blatant and gut wrenching repression wouldn’t be possible without the billions of dollars in financial, military and political assistance that the U.S. gives to Israel each year. U.S. aid to Israel should be stopped, and the money used instead to meet human needs here at home. No U.S. elected official, will raise this demand. Instead, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for people in the U.S. to support the international boycott against Israel which protests the occupation of Palestine!

This article was originally published by Liberation News.

The American criminal justice system presently is broken, and an example of justice run amok. The system has deteriorated to a point whereby innocent people are being imprisoned even with the lack of sufficient evidence. For the real criminals, punishments are often not commensurate with the crime. Presently, many nonviolent offenders serve more time behind bars than murderers, rapists, and armed robbers. Consequently, the criminal justice system does more harm than good – destroying lives, shattering dreams and crushing hopes and aspirations for happiness.

Being the world’s largest democracy is supposed to make America a faithful steward of the fairest and finest legal system the world has ever known. However, the U.S. legal system runs counter to traditional American core values.  25% of total global prisoners reside in the U.S. even though America is only about 3% of the world’s population. About “seven million are now under some form of penal supervision,”¹ and roughly “100 million Americans – or as many as one in three – have a criminal record.”²

The credo of legal jurisprudence in any civilized dispensation is that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a competent jurisdiction. However, in the United States of America, the reverse is the case due to its misguided penal policies.

Presently, the U.S. leads the world in highest prison population, longest prison time, most business deals for contractors and lobbyists, and highest recidivism rate. Worse, so many ex-convicts end up back in jail and, as a result, the U.S. prison system has become a revolving door, with people brought in every day, as if doing so was the only option. The law, rather than being a rule of conduct or ordinance has become a trap to ensnare even the most unsuspecting innocent citizen.

Moreover, when you become entangled in the cobweb of the American criminal justice system, as I was, your innocence becomes irrelevant, and you have no authority to turn to for help. Even though the Constitution guarantees the right to a fair and speedy trial, many have lost faith in the judicial system because of corrupt practices by judges, prosecutorial abuses and unethical courtroom conduct by government agents. Although lawmakers can do more to remedy the situation, because of political expediency, the legislative arm of government continue to enact laws and regulations that criminalize harmless acts.

Under normal circumstances, obeying the law is enough to shield anyone from trouble. Unfortunately, the current dispensation is hardly normal and being careful in private or public life does not insulate against being caught in the cobweb of the numerous laws and regulations that are the hallmarks of the criminal justice system. Stories of prosecutorial abuse run like a horror movie and the fear of prosecutors “is the beginning of wisdom.” They take to the extreme the dangerous impulse to punish perceived offenders – real or imagined. Prosecutors have enormous power and discretion to pick and choose who goes to jail and who does not. Reports of unwarranted arrests, police brutality, senseless prosecutions, and mass incarceration are a commonplace to the extent that the country’s legal system is teetering dangerously towards a precipice.

Across the country, the visible signs of pain and anguish can be seen in many families devastated by the imprisonment of a loved one and the so-called respect for human rights can only be thought of in comparative terms. The lack of a guilty mind no longer matters in criminal cases in U.S. courts. As a result, the nation has drifted from the core foundations and principles on which the Union was built, which adds up to one concept and one word: freedom. In the context of the nation’s criminal justice system, this “American Creed” lies in tatters.

While many of us believe that it is the responsibility of the government to punish criminals for public safety and security, and the fact that society has a right to demand punishment for wrongdoers, however, this fundamental tenet must operate within a justice system that is equal and fair. Punishment must fit the crime, and the innocent must not suffer unjustly for crimes not committed.

There is no justification for mass incarceration; it could no longer be defended morally. America needs a more rational and sensible justice system, one that is fair – a people’s justice system – that all can trust to protect them while punishing offenders appropriately and ensuring that innocent people are not unfairly prosecuted or imprisoned. Only a reformed justice system can give practical meaning to the noble ideals on which the nation was founded. A commonsense approach to the criminal justice system in American might someday be possible, but not anytime soon given the interplay of politics and business within it. With so many locked up, the United States has become a nation that feeds on its own.

As part of reform efforts, public accountability for investigators and prosecutors is required. Prosecutors found wanting should be prosecuted as a deterrent to others. Greater oversight of prosecutors’ activities should be undertaken by the American Bar Association to deter those who engage in flagrant ethical misconduct such as withholding exculpatory evidence, using false witnesses, witness intimidation, bribing potential witnesses, threatening defendants and their families, among other behavior. Appropriate punishment should be meted out to those found wanting. Also important is the need to address abuses in the system. One way to stem the tide of prosecutorial abuse is for Congress to put in place a moratorium on further attempts at creating new laws and regulations, while at the same time undertaking a thorough review of existing ones. Wherever possible, laws that are deemed unnecessary or vague should be decriminalized and expunged from the statute books.

This article is an excerpt from my book, American Criminal Justice System, Inc: Rogue Prosecutions in an Era of Mass Incarceration.

Fred Eghobor is a former Nigerian university assistant lecturer and adjunct professor at a community college in Florida. He also had a stint as an information technology consultant in the United States. At the time of his arrest and imprisonment, he was the director of nursing in a health care service company in Dallas, Texas. Fred resides in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and three children. Fred is currently the editor of the sensiblereform.com blog.

Notes

1. Robert A. Ferguson. Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment. p. 16.

2. Rebecca Vallas & Sharon Dietrich. Center for American Progress. One Strike and You’re Out – How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records. December 2014, available at https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/VallasCriminalRecordsReport.pdf.

Featured image: A Massive Ordnance Air Blast– or more commonly known as the Mother of All Bombs -(MOAB) weapon is prepared for testing at the Eglin Air Force Armament Center on March 11, 2003. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The GBU-43/B (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) which is colloquially known as “Mother of All Bombs” is a term that is still clinging on to our minds, importantly for its malignant consequences leaving in the ground. The appalling health impacts that are coming into the surface open the door for researches into further potential aftereffects.

An array of reasons has been placed behind the use of MOAB including mine extraction. Zahir Qadeer, an Afghan Member of Parliament alleged that a blast of this magnitude was needed to generate a crack in the mountain and enable mining process to proceed. He refused MOAB wrecked any harm to the Islamic State’s strongholds even though they are abounding there.

The use of destructive weapon as such could kill several birds with one stone. It earned Donald Trump somewhat uplift in status amid disgraces whirling around White House at that time. It also played a commercial advertisement for purchasers of the US arms, in part for being over-hyped.

In an interview, an Afghan environment protection expert explained that MOAB-like bombs exposes hazardous chemicals into air that causes cancer, respiratory and digestive problems, deformities in babies, strokes, high blood pressure and weakened vision. It severely contaminates food and water that even stay afloat to affect next generation.

A psychologist, Jaffar Ahmadi, described that such blasts spawn psychological disorders and fear among the affected population. The stricken people, he says, feel petrified and insecure. According to data, MOAB annihilates living things within a range of five km and its effects persist in air for decades. It also robs away oxygen for inhalation in a matter of several km from epicenter.

The Kabul-based Killid Group ventured into villages where MOAB-hit people had a ton of words to utter. A resident of Asad Khil village, Ghazeer, said that the bomb has born health hazards. He told Killid group:

“My Children are scared to sleep at night. Our skin is itching; small spots have appeared on the bodies of all people here. Our throats hurt. We are scared”

Another interviewee from the same village, Noor Bibi told the media group that the fierce explosion has almost blinded her. She acknowledges that:

“The bomb turned people blind and deaf. I can’t see anything, my skin is itching, my four grandchildren have chest problems and they also complain about their eyes”

In 2001, a day after the US soldiers first set foot in Afghanistan and captured Bagram airbase, it aerially attacked the final Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in notorious Tora Bora district in eastern Afghanistan. The air campaign continued until December 6 so intensely that a missile would land every two minute. It incurred great human fatalities and extensive financial loss. According to history records, the explosions would produce ear-splitting sound that caused ear-bleeding in many districts.

Sometime later, investigations found that the US had used short-range nuclear missiles. It left behind scores of creepy instances such as a drop in animal breeding in the area, a dramatic fall in agricultural products, and a few goats gave birth to defective babies.

Some British media reported that radioactive materials have also been observed in the area. Following the US bombings in many southern provinces, several babies were born eerily unlike normal humans, which doctors associated with the existence of radioactive material.

Afghanistan is far ill-equipped to move into timely investigations and take on preventative measures in sites where fatal exposures have been reported following the use of vicious weapons. A senior WHO official told BBC’s One Planet that no demand was made by Afghan authorities regarding the investigation of depleted uranium used by the US forces in 2001.

A Canadian investigation group initiated a research right after the US invasion of Afghanistan into the use of weapons containing depleted uranium (DU). The group found a startling degree of uranium in Afghans as result of testing urines which, in some samples, was multifold the result of Gulf War victims. At the time, the hospitals recorded a mounting number of malformed babies. Even the wildlife and plants were infected.

The Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) chief Dr. Asef Dracovic in an interview with Al-Jazeera television in 2002 said that the US forces used more DU weapons in Afghanistan than they used in the Persian Gulf War and the Balkans War. He said:

“A large number of health specialists in Afghanistan and international observers regard the risen number of birth defects to be the direct result of the US dropping of DU bombs on Afghanistan”.

Uranium is most likely used in warheads to maximize the effectiveness and destructivity of the weapon. According to reports, by comparison, the US-UK armed forces have used three times more uranium-based weapons in Afghanistan than they did in Iraq or in the Balkans. The reports elaborate that the Weapons of Mass Destruction used in Afghanistan are more powerful than those used in Iraq and possibly elsewhere.

U.S. forces and Afghan commandos are seen in Asad Khil near the site of a U.S. bombing in the Achin district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, April 17, 2017. (Source: Rahmat Gul, STF)

The UMRC concluded two different types of researches with fruitful findings. They recognized the utilization of uranium-based weapons by discovering mysterious forms of metal in Afghan soil samples, as well as found out symptoms of illnesses associated with DU contamination. They, as did a Canadian research group, analyzed urines from residents of eastern Jalalabad city of Afghanistan with positive results.

Dr. Wazir, a surgeon at Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital gave accounts of instances that bolstered the allegations of DU use near Tora Bora district in 2001. He said that a 10-year-old boy with superficial injuries died from respiratory problems after the bombing. Among dozens of cases, three other teenage patients, dr. said, who were rushed to hospital with minor wounds from the bombings, succumbed hours after breathing difficulties and internal bleeding.

Victims of such weapons suffer without injuries, burns or other forms we witness in ordinary blasts. There is, instead, bleeding from mouth, nostrils, ears, bleeding through urine and stool, vomiting and others that are signs of agony.

Many Taliban members assaulted by the US airstrikes in 2001 have died the same way. Surprisingly, some Taliban affiliates who survived the bombings, died after returning to their native villages. Their families were baffled about their weird reactions in moments leading to death. The weapon’s implications were as severe as in some cases it melted the rifles of the Taliban in their hands, yet there was no trace of burn in bodies.

Another independent DU researcher, Dai Williams described there has been 50 to 100 times greater health hazards in Afghanistan than had been in Balkans from the usage of uranium-based weapons, depleted uranium or other forms of uranium.

As a postscript to the use of dangerous weapons in Afghanistan, Pakistan buried a huge heap of nuclear waste in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan. An Afghan environment protection expert, Humayun Kazem explained that Pakistan availed the opportunity of amicable relations with the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001 and reached out to southern Helmand province to dispose of its nuclear wastes. According to his accounts, it now needs billions of dollars to be safely decontaminated. There is no report of human infections from exposure to the buried wastes so far.

The Trump administration is relentless in its push for war against Iran. The New York Times reported that Trump has ordered his national security aides to find a way to accuse the Iranian government of violating its nuclear agreement they signed in 2015 with what is known as the P5+1 under the Obama Administration. The New York Times report by David E. Sanger titled ‘Trump Seeks Way to Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal’ said that President Trump “has instructed them to find a rationale for declaring that the country is violating the terms of the accord.” 

Although last month, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley (who is a war hawk) testified before the U.S. House of Representatives committee on Iran’s nuclear and said that “In reference to the JCPOA, we’re not seeing any sort of violations of that” although she did mention that “They’re going to continue their nuclear capabilities and we just gave them a lot of money to do it with” following Trump’s view that the Iran’s nuclear deal was bad to begin with.

According to The New York Times report

“U.S. officials have already told allies they should be prepared to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the United States may abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord.”

One important aspect of the Nuclear Deal is that it can be abandoned because it was not necessarily a treaty since Obama did not have full support of the Senate that was dominated by the Republicans who most are anti-Iran and in the pockets of the Israeli lobby. According to Sanger:

Mr. Trump has enormous latitude to abandon the accord. It was never a treaty because President Barack Obama knew that opposition to the agreement in the Republican-dominated Senate was so great that he could never get the two-thirds majority needed for ratification. Instead, he made an executive agreement, one that his successor could eliminate by merely disregarding the accord’s requirement to waive sanctions against Iran.

The Trump Administration has notified international inspectors in Vienna that “the possibility of demanding access to military sites in Iran where there is reasonable suspicion of nuclear research or development” the report continued “If the Iranians balk, as seems likely, their refusal could enable Washington to declare Tehran in violation of the 2-year-old deal.” What would that mean? For starters, the U.S. would impose harsh sanctions against Iran which would see retaliatory actions by the Iranians including the complete elimination of the U.S. dollar in its oil trades.

Trump is so eager to accuse Iran of violating the nuclear deal that he even hesitated to certify that Iran complied with the nuclear agreement.

“Trump initially balked at certifying, for a second time since he took office, that Iran is in compliance with the agreement. He later reluctantly approved the certification” according to the report.

Parties who signed on to the nuclear agreement which includes Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia do not share Trump’s view. Trump told The Wall Street Journal that “We’re doing very detailed studies” and according to Trump “I think they’ll be noncompliant.” Trump surely hopes that Iran would be non-compliant.

It seems that the Trump administration is looking for any excuse to go to war with Iran even though Russia and China will back Iran if the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia were foolish enough to launch an attack on the Islamic Republic. Does the Trump Administration realize that Iran is not Iraq? The U.S. is setting itself up for another humiliating defeat, perhaps worse than Vietnam. Iran has a capable military plus a population (whether they are for or against the Iranian government) that would join the fight to defend their homeland. Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and Syria would also prepare for war against Israel and the U.S. Besides a devastating military confrontation, Washington’s war with Iran would have enormous repercussions for the U.S. economy including the fact that Iran, Russia and possibly China would most likely dump the U.S. dollar in retaliation.

Trump wants to destabilize and eventually destroy Iran so that Israel can dominate the Middle East, something that the Israeli’s would appreciate. If you follow the money, the U.S. and Israel have a mutual interest in the Middle East and that is to control its vast natural resources and its Arab population.

A war against Iran seems inevitable, however, it is important to note that Iran has a strong military (stronger than even North Korea) that can defend itself and with Russia and China on its side, the U.S. would be in a lose-lose situation. However, one important fact to consider is that the U.S. usually goes to war against weaker nations like Panama or Grenada and even Iraq who was already weakened by a decade of sanctions under then U.S. president Bill Clinton which paved the way for George W. Bush’s invasion in 2003.

Iran is not the only nation targeted for war, North Korea is also on the list as Nikki Haley said in a recent statement

“The time for talk is over. The danger the North Korean regime poses to international peace is now clear to all.”

The Trump administration is edging towards war in two continents which would cost trillions of dollars which the U.S. economy can not afford.

A war with Iran seems inevitable. North Korea and even Venezuela are also on Washington’s list for a future military conflict or regime change. One thing is certain, Trump will enter a new war in the foreseeable future following his predecessors long legacy of war, death and destruction.

This article was originally published by Silent Crow News.

Featured image: Protests in various cities throughout Italy during the past week (June 2017) (Source: ANSA.it)

The following article was first published by Health Impact News on June 8, 2017

Readers from Italy have been contacting Health Impact News this past week, asking us to cover the massive demonstrations happening throughout Italy to protest a new mandatory vaccine law. This news has been censored from the U.S. corporate media.

Francesca Alesse, who worked with the VAXXED film team to get the film shown in Italy last year, writes:

In an unprecedented way, the decree-law proposed by the Minister of Health has been signed by the sitting Italian president Sergio Mattarella. Only four vaccines were mandatory in Italy, now that number triples to 12.

No other decree-law has moved so fast in the Italian legislative system, the reasons of such hurry are incomprehensible considering that the Istituto Superiore Di Sanità (the local version of the CDC) has declared that contrary to what stated in the decree itself there is no objective urgency. There are no epidemics, the number of cases of measles or meningitis in the current year have been substantially lower than the previous year.

Thousands of parents have protested the new law this past June 3rd, protests and marches have taken place in 21 Italian cities spread across the nation. A national protest is scheduled for this Sunday June 11th.

The translated full text of the decree-law is found here.

Recent protests in Florence. Photo sent to Health Impact News from an Italian reader.

The new law apparently has severe consequences for parents who fail to comply, including the possibility of having their children taken away from them. In addition to public outcry, there appears to be strong political opposition to the law as well.

Elisabetta Bressan, an Italian commenting on Facebook writes:

Protests are going to increase here, as our Government has announced… a law to introduce 12 mandatory vaccines. The law…. was announced by our Health Ministry to be as follows: 12 mandatory vaccination needed to have access to pre-school system (age 0-6): no vaccination, no enrollment, no exceptions; for mandatory school (age 0-16) if kids were not vaccinated parents should pay a penalty between 500€ and 7.500€ per year, if you cannot afford it, you’ll be refer to Jouvanile Court, that could suspend your parents rights to get your children vaccinated. A national protest is envisaged in Rome on June 11.

This will start within the next school year (September 2017); it has been calculated that more then 800,000 kids will need to receive a massive vaccination in a very little time.

As you know, Italy had been chosen in 2014 as leading Country for the WHO world vaccination campaign co-financed by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, therefore what happen here can affect also other countries.

In other comments posted on Facebook, Elisabetta Bressan suggests that the new mandatory vaccine law has strong financial connections to the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, which could benefit from over 1 billion euros invested in Italy over the next four years. She writes:

This is the press conference of Health Minister, Ms. Lorenzin explaining the DL

At the opening of the conference, all guests are presented to the press, including Dr. Ranieri Guerra, presented as Director General of Health Prevention of the Ministry of Health. (Man sitting on Ms. Lorenzin right)

His curriculum vitae is regularly published in the Government’s website:
at page 6 you can see he is a member of Glaxo Smith-Kline Foundation board.

On the Foundation website you are provided with additional information:

In 1987, it was recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the ‘Center for Collaboration in the Training of Health Personnel’ and in 1997 as a ‘Hospitality Management Collaboration Center’ in Italy.

The Fsk.it website belongs To Smith Kline Foundation which is maintained thanks to the non-binding annual liberal loan of the founding partner GLAXOSMITHKLINE SpA, as well as the incomes of its own projects.

The members of the Board of Directors, as indicated here, are nominated by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of University and Research, the Ministry of the Economy, ISS, the State State Conference and GlaxoSmithKline SpA and they approve the FSK Activity Plan annually.

The members of the Board of Directors (including Mr. Ranieri Guerra) are appointed, among others, by:
– Ministry of Health, represented in the press conference by Minister Beatrice Lorenzin
– ISS,
– Higher Institute of Health, present in the person of Dr. Walter Ricciardi,
– the same GlaxoSmithKline S.p.A. Vaccines and drugs, Glaxo bets 1 billion on Italy
…

Here we talk about an investment of 1 billion euros in Italy for the next 4 years, including 2016 and the years relating to the new National Vaccine Plan 2017/2019 so promoted by the Ministry of Health.

Health Impact News will continue to publish opposition to forced vaccination laws around the world, since the corporate sponsored “mainstream” media in the U.S. is censoring this information.

Venezuela has voted on 30 July for a National Constituent Assembly (ANC – Asamblea Nacional Constituyente) with a resounding close to 8.1 million votes, or over 41% of the total eligible electorate. The figure was confirmed by the president of the National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena. The Chavistas battle cry before the elections was Venceremos! – Ché Guevaras favored revolutionary slogan. And the day after, 31 July, the victorious Ganamos! Accompanied by dancing in the streets.

To counter the mainstream presstitute mass media slandering of Venezuela, calling the legitimate democratically elected President a dictator, and that the vote was illegitimate and against the present Venezuelan Constitution – lets explain upfront what the Constitution says:

Article 347 of Venezuela’s constitution:

“The original constituent power rests with the people of Venezuela. This power may be exercised by calling a National Constituent Assembly for the purpose of transforming the State, creating a new juridical order and drawing up a new Constitution.”

Article 348 states

“(t)he initiative for calling a National Constituent Assembly may emanate from the President of the Republic sitting with the Cabinet of Ministers; from the National Assembly by a two-thirds vote of its members; from the Municipal Councils in open session, by a two-thirds vote of their members; and from 15% of the voters registered with the Civil and Electoral Registry.”

Article 349 states

“(t)he President of the Republic shall not have the power to object to the new Constitution. The existing constituted authorities shall not be permitted to obstruct the Constituent Assembly in any way.”

The process to vote for the ANC is complex but highly democratic. The 30 July election chose 545 members to the National Constituent Assembly, of which two thirds (364) were elected on a regional or territorial basis, and one third (181) by sectors of professions or activities, i.e. students, farmers, unions of different labor forces, employees, business owners – and so on. This cross-section of people’s representation is the most solid basis for democracy. See also:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-is-venezuela-in-the-white-houses-crosshairs/5594240.

The 8.1million pro-ANC vote may, at first sight, with 41% of total eligible voters not constitute an absolute majority, but they are a legitimate majority analyzed from different perspectives. The only historic data we currently have on Venezuela is the one from the 1999 Constitution (still valid today), which President Hugo Chavez Frias, elected in 1998, initiated after asking the people whether they agreed to the drafting of a new Constitution. He received an overwhelming 80% support.

Assuming that on average about 20% to 25% of the electorate do not vote (based on the past 19 elections since the Bolivarian Revolutionary Government took over in 1998), of the 20 million eligible electorate, about 15 million could be expected to vote. With 8.1million ANC supporters, the National Constituent Assembly resulting from the 30 July elections is a clear majority, about 54%.

The election result is another resounding victory, when compared to the opposition’s plebiscite, illegally held a week earlier. The opposition claims having received 7.2 million votes against the ANC. However, by all observers, including internationals, this is a highly questionable and probably vastly inflated figure, based on their election boots which were a fraction of those of the ANC election process countrywide. Plus, the announced result cannot be checked, as the voter’s bulletins were burned by the opposition, as soon as they informed the public of the plebiscite’s result. However, even assuming this figure was correct – which it most likely isn’t – the total alleged votes cast between the official ANC process and the illegitimate referendum would amount to 15.3 million, of which 8.1 million represents about 53%, or an absolute majority of the votes cast.

For analysis sake, let’s just look at the curious composition of votes the oppositions claims having received. In their referendum people had to respond with yes, or no to three questions, with each one being a leading question against the ANC. Each one of the three answers counted for one vote, thus, there were up to three votes per person. The same people also were allowed to vote in several districts. During the press conference held by the opposition, a journalist asked whether it was correct that one voter could cast his / her vote 17 times. The answer of one of the directors was yes, but it may be discovered at the final count. There were also stories of 10-year old kids and other minors voting. Also, there are 101,000 eligible voters abroad – but according to the opposition, the votes received from Venezuelans living outside Venezuela were almost 700,000.

The illegitimate – yes, illegitimate – opposition vote is pure farce. Though it can never be checked, since the votes were burned and given the above details, the promulgated results of 7.2 million votes against the ANC would have to be discounted by at least 30% to 50%. Yes, illegitimate, as the Constitution does not allow interference from anybody, once the ANC process has been launched.

Curiously though, the opposition, having the majority in the National Assembly could have initiated themselves an National Constituent Assembly. They didn’t. They could have actively participated in President Maduro’s ANC vote and presented their own candidates as they would have, had they respected the principles of democracy. They didn’t do that either. It is clear, they are not interested in a democratic process. They are not interested even in dialogue, one of Mr. Maduro’s priorities for conflict resolution. They want a violent ‘regime change’ – that’s what their Washington masters want and pays them for.

Maduro expressed gratitude for the solidarity of the peoples of the world with the country’s Constituent Assembly process. (Photo: AVN via Granma)

The most vociferous critics of the process came from the usual villains, CNN, BBC, Washington Post, NYT, even The Guardian, but so far relatively few from the EU and her members. One of the countries that sticks out most with her unsolicited comment is “neutral” Switzerland, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on President Maduro, to cancel the elections for the new National Constitutional Assembly in ‘respect of democracy’. It further declared through the Swiss state-run radio-TV station, SRG, that the elections were illegal, as they are against the Constitution – which is a blatant lie, the Swiss Executive is aware of, but it pleases for sure Washington.

The Trump Administration also said it would not recognize the vote and slammed more heavy sanctions on Venezuela, among them, blocking President Maduro’s alleged ‘assets held in the US’. This in itself is a massive and ridiculous propaganda falsehood. It must be clear to any dimwit, that President Maduro does not have assets in the US. Washington forced ‘sanctions’ will probably also follow from its European vassals.

The right-wing puppet leaders (sic) in Latin America have of course also immediately played to the tune of their northern masters. The first one to do so was Peru’s President Pablo Kuczynski, saying that his government would not recognize the result of the elections. But who cares what Peru thinks about sovereign democratic Venezuela? – His arrogance went as far as calling upon the Peruvian Prime Minister to form a committee that should look into possible actions Peru could and should take against Venezuela. If one knows the level of corruption that literally runs Peru – one of the worst, if not the worst of all Latin America – and the way Kuczynski was ‘elected’, or rather shoed in by his Washington Masters, one can just chuckle in disbelief. If there was any un-bought, uncorrupted functioning legal system in Peru – the last five consecutive Presidents would now be in jail for corruption and crimes against humanity, including the present one.

Of course, Colombia and Mexico, among the staunchest vassals of the northern empire were also accusing Venezuela’s ANC initiative as being illegitimate, anti-democratic, for the sole purpose of allowing President Maduro to become a dictator and to bend the new Constitution so that he may stay President for life. None of this is of course intended or in the cards, or indeed allowed under the Constitution and the National Assembly still in place. In fact, according to the Constitution, neither the President or the National Assembly which is not being resolved or replaced by the new National Constituent Assembly, have a right to interfere in ANC’s process of drafting a new Constitution.

On a recent visit to Mexico, the ultra-right-wing (Tea Party) CIA chief, Mr. Pompeo, pledged for both Mexico and Colombia to help assure that the situation in Venezuela is being corrected. Let’s not forget, Colombia’s President Santos (the latest Peace Nobel Laureate!) has already several months ago asked Brussels to send NATO troop to Colombia. They may already be there. With a 2,200 km porous border between Colombia and Venezuela, infiltration of Colombian and NATO troops into Venezuela would not be complicated.

Among the few but strong supporters of the ANC and which called for the world to respect this legitimate and democratic process, were Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Iran, China and Russia. Others may follow. So far Brussels has only been mumbling. What remains to be seen is how these countries, notably Russia and China, would react, when it comes down to the wire with a possible CIA / US / NATO instigated coup à la Maidan, in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2014.

Source: MR Online

Why did President Maduro call now for a National Constituent Assembly to modify or redraft the current Constitution? – The answer is simple. Dictators around the world, like France under Macron, the UK under Mme. May, and probably soon Germany under Mme. Merkel, would call for Martial Law to clamp down ‘legitimately’ on the peoples’ rights and carry through their atrocious militarization and austerity programs, as well as to ’selectively curtail foreign influence’.

President Maduro, instead, follows democratic principles to the core. The purpose of a new or reality adjusted Constitution has precisely to do with foreign interference to the detriment of Venezuela’s economy. They include outside orchestrated food and medical supply shortages; from Miami manipulated black-market vs. official exchange rates, ruining local purchasing power, thereby causing inflation and a sagging economy; foreign news networks deadly propaganda; and infiltration of foreign trained, armed and funded violent terror groups to help organizing the relatively small Venezuelan elitist opposition to cause havoc and civil unrest – as we have seen over  the last several months in the runup to these ANC elections. The US State Department funded NED – National Endowment for Democracy – is a key sponsor of violent opposition in Venezuela, as well as elsewhere in the world. The new or adjusted Constitution is expected to allow the government to sovereignly control its borders and its economy with whatever means it has to take to keep the criminals out and regain full sovereignty.

These vicious foreign supported groups have cost the life of some 110 people during the last few months leading up to the ANC vote, through the most horrendous acts of terror, including lynching, burning alive, shooting, looting of shops, attacking and destroying schools, public infrastructure, police headquarters and more. There is no end to the list of heinous crimes committed by the so-called opposition – which is nothing else as a tool for the Washington tyrant-in-chief, who will not let go until he has achieved ‘regime change’.

The presstitute doesn’t present this real picture of things. They portray the violence and dead toll as the government’s responsibility. In fact, thanks to the diligence of national police and the 200,000 military forces deployed throughout the country in the last couple of weeks to protect the population, the voters, in the leadup to the elections, violence and dead tolls were kept in check. Violent outbreak would have most likely been even more atrocious without the military deployment.

A new puppet government would return Venezuela to the pre-Chavez years – or most likely much worse – giving away Venezuelans world’s largest hydrocarbon deposit is to US petrol giants and torturing Chavistas and anybody who had in the past opposed and still opposes the violent undemocratic, oppressive servile-to-Washington elite.

What’s next for Venezuela? – Well, it’s not over. The National Constituent Assembly is just the first step. The rabid bulldog will not let go. He keeps attacking and biting relentlessly and without merci sovereign democratic and un-obedient Venezuela. The steady internal foreign instigated economic and social decay, the build-up to what prompted President Maduro to initiate the ANC vote, was very reminiscent of the fascist 9/11/1973 CIA instigated military coup in Chile.

The Chile coup was also preceded by artificially and outside instrumented shortages of food and medical supplies – paying people to protest in the streets. The only difference there is that the Chilean army was split and high ranks defected President Allende. This doesn’t seem to be the case in Venezuela. – The overwhelming people’s support for the ANC has further cemented the solidarity within the Bolivarian Republic – and given the revolution new energy. Venezuela will prevail. Venceremos!

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.

Few people know that, as a condition for admission to the UN in 1949, Israel accepted UN Resolution 194, which stipulates that Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the Jewish takeover of 1947-49 in Palestine, have the right of return. 

As with every other legitimate claim that Palestinians have made about their situation over the long years since the Nakba, pro-Israel supporters have effectively drowned them out. They continue to do so today with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement call in typical fashion, by plumbing “the depths of dishonor” in the words of one US foreign policy expert:

 …The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth… The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its view.

Israel’s fake framing and hypocritical “disputation” of Palestinian legitimate claims may not be unique in the annals of war propaganda – after all, the adage that “every conflict is fought on at least two grounds: the battlefield and the minds of the people via propaganda” is well known.

But Israel’s propaganda war on the Palestinian people is particularly diabolical, starting with its use of the words “conflict” and “war”.  Israel (and much of the world) uses the former to obscure the revolutionary nature of the Palestinian struggle and the latter to obscure Israel’s powerful grip on a largely unarmed people and their lands and property.

War is “a state of armed conflict between societies”, but if one of the said societies is under the military and political control of the other society and rises up in revolt, as in one intifada, two intifadas, three intifadas – maybe, Jerusalem intifada, said societies can no longer be meaningfully described as at war with each other. (See also The Palestinian Revolution).

Along similar lines of disputation, the 50-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is said to be not really an occupation.  It is often described, in the pages of the New York Times and other media under the influence of Israel’s “narrative” as “disputed territories” or “disputed settlements” to propagate the fiction that Israel has an equal claim to these territories of historic Palestine as do the Palestinians.

The legal nonsense behind this particular piece of “war propaganda” on Israel’s part rests on the fact that Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank on April 24th, 1950 was not recognized internationally (ironically for this lame “legal” argument, neither is Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem) and is aimed to allow Israel to colonize occupied territory and move its Jewish population to it regardless of what UNSC Resolution 242 and the Geneva Conventions have to say on the matter.

The International Court of Justice in its landmark 2004 advisory opinion regarding Israel’s annexation/apartheid wall made it clear that what matters form a legal perspective is the status between Jordan and Israel as  two “high-contracting parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention”, not the status of  sovereignty.

Fraudulent references and allegations along similar lines can be traced way back to the language used in the Balfour Declaration. One example in that document is the reference to “non-Jewish communities”. Explaining the galling and deceptive nature of such a reference, Joseph Mary Nagel (J.M.N.) Jeffries comments in 1939 in Palestine: The Reality:

… We have Palestine with 91 percent of its people Arab and 9 percent Jew at the time of the Declaration. It was an Arab population with a dash of Jew. Half of the Jews were recent arrivals … By an altogether abject subterfuge, under color of protecting Arab interests, they set out to conceal the fact that the Arabs to all intents constituted the population of the country. It called them the non-Jewish communities in Palestine! … it is fraudulent. It was done in order to conceal the true ratio between Arabs and Jews, and thereby to make easier the suppression of the former.

And so it continues. It’s only recently that the Palestinian right of return has begun to be discussed again with any seriousness – thanks partly to the BDS movement, which clearly subscribes to the following sentiment published in 2010 in BNC e-magazine commemorating the 5th anniversary of the BDS call of July 9th 2005:

There is hardly a right that is more morally urgent and more legally compelling than the Palestinian right of return. Regardless of who they are, where they came from, or when they became homeless, refugees the world over have an inalienable right to return to their homes.

When news first started surfacing in 2012 about the tragic flight of Palestinian refugees from Yarmouk camp in Syria in 2014, many wrote about their plight without mentioning the obvious, that these people belong in their own homeland, Palestine, and that it is Israel, not Arab countries, that must take them in as a matter of international law as well as humanity and morality. It was as if such commentary were taboo, or a lost cause or both.

For example, Ramzy Baroud concluded a passionate article on these refugees with:

The international community and Palestine solidarity groups everywhere must place Palestinian refugees on the top of their agenda. Food should never be a weapon in this dirty war, and Palestinians should never be starving to death, no matter the motive or the logic.

The obvious appeal should have referenced the right of return, which Baroud and others subsequently began to address seriously on social media.

More galling yet is the hypocrisy of Israel’s so-called liberals who criticize Israel for its rejection of Eritrean and other refugees, but say not a word about Palestinian refugees. Refugee washing is what it is.

Israel has yet to respect the obligation regarding the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as specified in UN Resolution 194. On the contrary, after the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of “independence” from Palestine’s own native non-Jewish population in 1948, Israel began destroying hundreds of forcibly depopulated Palestinian villages in order to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning and confiscated the land they left behind.

Israel continues to do the same in Jerusalem today and the occupied territories generally. In the process it renders refugees twice over and displaces many, just as it continues to deny return to displaced Palestinian citizens of Israel to their property within Israel and to force Palestinian Bedouins from their traditional lands in the Palestinian Ghor (the Jordan Valley) and the Naqab to plant Jewish communities there instead.

In Gaza, we have witnessed the ghoulish spectacle of Israeli immigrant Jews across the border in the very same city (al-Majdal Asqalan) from which its Palestinian inhabitants were trucked to the Gaza Strip watching and cheering the obliteration of whole Palestinian families.

The Palestinian refugee problem extends to both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. More than one million (23%) UNRWA registered refugees live in Gaza, and nearly 760,000 (16%) live in the West Bank; no “land swap” will resolve their status or the status of Palestinian refugees and exiles worldwide or those displaced within Israel itself.

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights examines the right of return through different lenses and concludes unequivocally that Israel’s denial of this right violates an established body of law:

1. The Right of Return in Customary Law of 1948
2. The Right of Return in the Law of Nationality.
3. The Right of Return in Humanitarian Law
4. The Right of Return in Human Rights Law
5. State Practice (Opinio Juris) Implementing the Right of Return of Refugees

The conclusion (on page 83 of the pdf document) begins like this:

Discussion of the implementation of the right of return of the 1948 Palestinian refugees raises all sorts of questions regarding the nature of the state of Israel and the legality of its actions vis-à-vis the 1948 Palestinian refugees, including obstruction of their right of return, the subsequent purported denationalization and the illegal confiscation of their entire massive private property and land-holdings.

Consequently, it will come as no surprise to learn that supporters of the Zionist position (who hold that all these actions are perfectly legitimate) have labored long and hard to challenge the legal validity of Resolution 194, and specifically paragraph 11(1) which delineates the right of return. Following are responses to some of the most prevalent arguments which have been raised to challenge and argue against the binding nature of paragraph 11(1) of Resolution 194.

What’s more, Palestinian right of return is not only just, it is also feasible and practical as this new infographic from Visualizing Palestine shows.

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

Featured image: Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Several hours after President Trump officially signed the new Russian sanctions into law – despite his reservations and his statement that while he favors “tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed” – Russia responded when moments ago Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on his FaceBook page that any hopes of improving Russian relations with the new US administration are dead, that the Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence by transferring executive power to Congress “in the most humiliating manner”, and most notably, that the US just declared a full-scale trade war on Russia.

From Medvedev’s facebook page:

The signing of new sanctions against Russia into law by the US president leads to several consequences. First, any hope of improving our relations with the new US administration is over. Second, the US just declared a full-scale trade war on Russia. Third, the Trump administration demonstrated it is utterly powerless, and in the most humiliating manner transferred executive powers to Congress. This shifts the alignment of forces in US political circles.

What does this mean for the U.S.? The American establishment completely outplayed Trump. The president is not happy with the new sanctions, but he could not avoid signing the new law. The purpose of the new sanctions was to put Trump in his place. Their ultimate goal is to remove Trump from power. An incompetent player must be eliminated. At the same time, the interests of American businesses were almost ignored. Politics rose above the pragmatic approach. Anti-Russian hysteria has turned into a key part of not only foreign (as has been the case many times), but also domestic US policy (this is recent).

The sanctions codified into law will now last for decades, unless some miracle occurs. Moreover, it will be tougher than the Jackson-Vanik law, because it is comprehensive and can not be postponed by special orders of the president without the consent of the Congress. Therefore, the future relationship between the Russian Federation and the United States will be extremely tense, regardless of the composition of the Congress or the personality of the president. Relations between the two countries will now be clarified in international bodies and courts of justice leading to further intensification of international tensions, and a refusal to resolve major international problems.

What does this mean for Russia? We will continue to work on the development of the economy and social sphere, we will deal with import substitution, solve the most important state tasks, counting primarily on ourselves. We have learned to do this in recent years. Within almost closed financial markets, foreign creditors and investors will be afraid to invest in Russia due to worries of sanctions against third parties and countries. In some ways, it will benefit us, although sanctions – in general – are meaningless. We will manage.

Separately, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia retains the right to impose new counter-measures, adding the US sanctions are short-sighted, and risk harming global stability. He concludes that and attempts to pressure Russia will not make it change course.

Echoing Lavrov, earlier on Wednesday the permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow “won’t bend” and has no plans to change its policies following Donald Trump’s signing of new anti-Russian sanctions.

“Those who invented this bill, if they were thinking that they might change our policy they were wrong, as history many times proved. They should have known better that we do not bend and do not break,” Nebenzia told journalists in New York.

“Some of the US officials were saying that this is a bill that might encourage Russia to cooperate… This is a strange form of encouragement. But it is not our habit to be resentful children,” continued the diplomat, who promised that Moscow would “not relent on finding means and ways” to cooperate in the international arena over issues such as Syria.

The Kremlin also chose not to escalate the situation further.

“This changes nothing. There is nothing new here,” Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told the media in Moscow. “Counter-measures have already been taken.”

And now we await a similar announcement from the European Union.

Surreal headline of the day pic.twitter.com/CsIMNBI49O

— Gap Spotter (@GotfrydKarol) August 2, 2017