Global Research

President Donald Trump is dramatically increasing the covert drone warfare, killing civilians more than ever in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Afghanistan. In June, five months in the White House Trump averaged attacks every 1.8 days, far superior to his predecessors Barack Obama and George Bush.

Civilians murdered in Afghanistan

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), 1600 US strikes were recorded in Afghanistan from January to June this year, killing 366-575 people, at least 18 were civilians.

“More US strikes hit Afghanistan in the first six months of the year than in 2015 and 2016,” reported the BIJ early in July 2017.

In Yemen, 90 strikes killed from 81 to 120 people this year, at least 33-40 civilians including nine children. From 2001 to 2016, 254-276 strikes were confirmed on the country, which killed 890-1228, at least 166-210 were civilians.

On March 16 this year, the al-Jina village in Syria was victim of an emblematic attack on Uncle Sam’s “murderous birds” by criminal aggression followed by cynicism, when at least 38 civilians were killed in a mosque, including at least five children victims of two bombings followed by drone – the so-called “double tap,” through which the US unmanned aerial vehicle fired a second time as survivors tried to get out of the rubble. The Pentagon, which had never conducted a personal investigation into the area of the reconnaissance attack by limiting itself to remotely controlled surveillance, denied that a mosque had been bombed, against reports, photos and videos released by independent Syrian organizations, and by Human Rights Watch.

Drone program criticized

In the following interview, the British human rights campaigner and journalist Peter Tatchell comments US drone program and its current stage. Tatchel is the founder of the Tatchell Foundation, and contributes to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2.

Edu Montesanti: When the Obama administration discussed drone strikes publicly, it offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground and are authorized only when an “imminent” threat is present and there is “near certainty” that the intended target will be eliminated. How do you see such a “policy”, that of substituting boots on the grounds by drones?

Peter Tatchell: Drones serve the same purpose as boots on the ground. They are merely a different way of achieving the same military objective.

The drone strategy of the US armed forces is intended to improve target-hit accuracy and enhance the elimination of enemy combatants, while reducing civilian and US military deaths.

But the reality is that flawed intelligence has led to civilian casualties, including the killing of wedding parties and others.

Edu Montesanti: Professor Doctor Azadeh Shahshahani, a respected lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, recently observed to me that:

a) In the domestic (US) context, they be used for artistic or investigative purposes. For example, they can be used to investigate agribusinesses to see if they are engaging in animal abuse or not. In that sense, they can play an important and legitimate role. However, their use needs to be regulated to ensure that they are used for surveillance by law enforcement agencies.;

b) Per international humanitarian law, drones can only be used as bombs in an active armed conflict and even then with certain restrictions including military necessity, humanity, distinction, and proportionality. Only combatants or civilians who are directly participating in hostilities may be targeted. Targeting of other civilians is prohibited and may constitute a war crime

How much the US government is respecting these principles, Peter, using drones both as surveillance and bombs?

Peter Tatchell: Drones can be used for benign purposes, such as monitoring bushfires and floods, delivering aid to remote earthquake victims and finding sailors lost at sea.

The US use of drones for military purposes is purportedly restricted and within the confines of the international laws of war.

However, civilians are being killed. In some cases, it looks like these deaths may have been the result of the reckless use of unreliable intelligence sources or broad-brush indiscriminate targeting.

These instances may amount to war crimes.

Edu Montesanti: What do you think of the UK government historically supporting US attacks with drones and surveillance, including using it in the Great Britain to spy?

Peter Tatchell: The UK complicity with US drone attacks and surveillance is too open ended. London seems to not ask questions or assess consequences.

Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with Washington often involves giving the Pentagon a free hand. What the US wants, the US gets.

Edu Montesanti: Contrary to Barack Obama, President Donald Trump has given the Central Intelligence Agency new authority to conduct drone attacks against suspected militants. Your view, please, Peter.

Peter Tatchell: The problem is mostly not drones per se, but the military strategy and decisions that direct their use. It is the military and targeting policy that needs to change.

Drones are sometimes used as a way of circumventing congressional and public opposition to troop deployment. They become tools for the subversion of the democratic process.

Featured image is from PravdaReport

This article was first published by Pravda Report.

America has been a discouraging landscape ever since the neoconservatives took over US foreign policy during the Clinton regime and started the two decades of war crimes that define 21st century America and ever since US corporations betrayed the US work force by moving American jobs to Asia.

The outlook became darker when the Obama regime resurrected the Russian Threat and elevated the prospect of military conflict between the nuclear powers.

As Europe is caught in the middle, in normal circumstances European countries would have insisted that Washington cease the gratuitous provocations of Russia. But normal circumstances have not existed. Since the end of WW2, European countries have been vassals without independent economic and foreign policies.

Europe hosts US military bases that threaten Russia. Europe has backed Washington’s wars of aggression against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Washington’s air attacks on provinces of Pakistan, and Washington’s use of Saudi Arabia to fight its proxie war against Yemen.

Europe has backed Washington’s gratuitous economic sanctions against Iran and Russia, sanctions that have cost Europe much and Washington little.

Accustomed to having its way with Europe, Washington commits Europe without even consulting the vassal governments. Now it seems Washington’s extraordinary arrogance and hubris has resulted in overreach. Confronted with a new round of sanctions against Russia, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission told Washington that the time has passed when Washington can put its interests first and Europe’s last.

The new sanctions have devastating economic and political consequences for Europe. Juncker said that if Europe’s

“concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days.”

The German and French foreign ministries added their support to Juncker. The German foreign ministry said:

“It is not in the Americans’ right to judge or stipulate which way European companies may engage in cooperation with any third parties – particularly, with Russian energy companies.”

The French foreign ministry said: the sanctions “contradict international law” due to their “extraterritorial reach.”

Europe views the sanctions as a tool of US industrial policy that elevates US business interests over Europe’s business interests.

Let’s hope that Washington’s arrogance will not permit Washington to back down and that Europe will give Washington the finger and disengage from the American Empire. Without Europe to host its military bases and to parrot its propaganda, Washington’s ability to threaten Russia would significantly decline. Indeed, a continuation of the hostile threatening attitude toward Russia would leave Washington isolated in the world. No country wants the risk of experiencing nuclear war merely for the sake of Washington’s unilateralism.

President Donald Trump has ordered that the CIA begin to phase out its covert train-and-equip program in support of so-called “moderate” rebels fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The program represented the tip of the spear of a larger goal of regime change that had been the official policy of the United States since September 2013, when President Obama declared “Assad must go” in the aftermath of a chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta that killed hundreds of civilians. Through this action, President Trump is walking away from an established policy of America taking an active role in forcing the Syrian President’s ouster, willing instead to leave Assad’s fate in the hands of the Syrian people and its allies. The decision by Trump to terminate support for the “moderate” Syrian rebels, while not giving voice to a policy that rejects regime change in Syria, is the clearest signal yet that the United States has changed course on trying to force regime change in Damascus as a precondition for a political settlement of the Syrian crisis.

The train and equip mission of the CIA in Syria can be traced back to the spring of 2011, when a revolution broke out in Libya against the dictatorial rule of Muammar Gadhafi. Backed by NATO airpower, anti-regime fighters were able to establish control over large areas inside Libya. The CIA began a program to train and equip these fighters, supplying weapons to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, who in turn shipped these weapons to Libya, where they were turned over to Libyan rebels. (This circuitous route was chosen to avoid the U.S. being in violation of a UN embargo against weapons deliveries to Libya.)

Crates of recoilless rifle rounds in a rebel cache in Idlib, Syria, bear the triangle symbol of arms sent to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. (Source: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

In August 2011, in the aftermath of the capture of the Libyan capital of Tripoli by rebel forces, Qatar began diverting arms originally intended for Libya to Turkey, where they were turned over to rebel forces that had, since June of 2011, been fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. These rebels were grouped together under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an ostensibly secular resistance group that  was in reality controlled by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization that had been crushed by Bashar al-Assad’s father back in the early 1980’, and was operating in exile in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. While the CIA was not directly involved in this activity, CIA personnel in Libya and Turkey monitored these shipments to make sure no sensitive weaponry, such as hand-help surface-to-air missiles, made their way into Syria. This effort, which involved billions of dollars of arms, including those provided by the United States for the express purpose of aiding Libyan rebels, continued through 2012 and into 2013. (The U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, who was killed in an attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi in September 2012, was involved in coordinating these weapons transfers.)

As the fighting in Syria expanded in scope and scale, the number of anti-regime combatant organizations increased. The FSA took on an increasingly Islamist character, and many of its fighters defected to more extreme organizations, such as al-Nusra (an Al Qaeda affiliate). Many of the CIA-provided weapons being shipped by Qatar through Turkey made their way into these Islamist units, with the unintended result being that the U.S. was actively arming Al Qaeda and other extremist entities openly hostile to American interests. In an effort to control the flow of weaponry into Syria, President Obama authorized the CIA to formally take over the process of training and equipping Syrian rebels. This operation, known by its codename, Timber Sycamore, was run out of Turkey and Jordan with the full support of both governments.

From 2013 through 2015, Timber Sycamore oversaw the purchase of billions of dollars of modern weaponry from Balkan suppliers, primarily in Croatia, and their shipment to ports in Turkey and Jordan, where the CIA, working with Turkish and Jordanian intelligence agencies, trained and equipped thousands of rebel fighters from more than 50 groups inside Syria that had been vetted by the CIA. The impact of this program on the fighting in Syria was significant—by the fall of 2015, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad was teetering on the brink of collapse, largely due to the military pressure brought to bear on the regime by these U.S.-backed groups. The success of these rebels played a large role in triggering Russian military intervention in Syria in the fall of 2015, with Russian air power being unleashed against these very same rebels in an effort to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Russian gambit worked, and by 2016 the Syrian military had reclaimed the initiative, recapturing the city of Aleppo and driving the U.S.-backed rebels back on all fronts.

A Free Syrian Army trainer addresses fellow fighters as he conducts a demonstration on how to use anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons at a training camp in the northern countryside of Aleppo

The U.S. and its allies had no effective response to the Russian intervention. One of the reasons for this is the fact that there was little to differentiate the U.S.-backed rebels on the ground inside Syria from the more extremist fighters from al-Nusra and other Islamist groups. While the United States protested the Russian air strikes, it had to deal with the reality that Timber Sycamore was arming far more than just the so-called FSA. In both Turkey and Jordan, corrupt intelligence officers were siphoning off tens of millions of dollars in weapons and munitions, selling them on the black market, where they were bought by al-Nusra and, after 2014, ISIS. The U.S.-backed rebels would often sell or trade their US-provided weapons to both al-Nusra and ISIS, and in many cases, U.S.-trained fighters would defect with these weapons. Thousands of fighters serving under the banner of Al Qaeda and ISIS were, in fact, armed and trained by the CIA.

Another problem confronted by the United States was the growing divergence between its objectives in supporting so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels, which were shared by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and the willingness on the part of Turkey and Qatar to train and equip more radical anti-Assad fighters, including al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) and ISIS. The position taken by Turkey and Qatar are rooted in their mutual support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which had morphed into various radical Islamist units operating inside Syria under the guise of the FSA, but in reality fighting in support of both al-Nusra and ISIS. Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood became unsustainable for Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Arab nations, which subsequently outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. The demise of Timber Sycamore is directly linked to the ongoing crisis between Qatar and its Gulf Arab neighbors over support for the Muslim Brotherhood; Turkey’s position in support of Qatar has, given Ankara’s status as a NATO member, likewise created diplomatic problems for the U.S. that are simplified through the termination of the CIA’s train-and-equip efforts in Syria.

President Trump’s decision to terminate Timber Sycamore is part and parcel of an overall policy objective designed to gain control over U.S/ objectives in the region. In many ways, Washington’s policy of regime change in Syria, of which the CIA’s train-and-equip program was a major part, was responsible for the crisis currently underway in Syria, and the region as a whole. Central to this failure was the notion that there existed inside Syria a moderate, secular force able and willing to take down the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which led to the decision to flood the region with U.S.-provided arms and munitions that only served to spread of Islamic extremism under the banner of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

The fact is that there was no secular, moderate force worthy of the name operating inside Syria; virtually the entire anti-Assad effort is dominated by Islamist extremists who, if Assad was overthrown, would probably replace a secular dictator with something far worse. The Obama policy of regime change in Syria, like the Bush policy in Iraq, has done little more than unleash forces which the U.S. was unable to control, costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and the blood of American military personnel who lost their lives in its implementation.

President Trump’s decision to terminate Timber Sycamore, and with it the Obama-era policy of “Assad must go,” when seen in this context, is the clearest expression to date of his desire to rein in the unsuccessful policies of the past. The president’s decision liberates the United States, which can now proceed in its fight against ISIS and Islamic extremism unencumbered by policies that do little to further American interests while empowering enemies. By working with Russia to focus on the defeat of ISIS, President Trump is positioning the United States to play an important role in helping shape a political solution to the Syrian problem that will bring peace to the people of Syria and the region. Achieving such a solution will not be easy, nor is the outcome guaranteed.  Timber Sycamore, however, was nothing more than an impediment in this regard, and President Trump was wise in shutting it down.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.  He is the author of “Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War”(Clarity Press, 2017).

National identities are built on remembered and retold histories. Britain has long viewed the story of its role in World War II as a plucky nation bombed night after night, fighting for freedom all alone with pugnacious determination and Winston Churchill’s powerful rhetoric, liberating the continent from Nazi Germany by dragging a reluctant America to the battlefront. 

Much of that is true, except the “all alone” part. The reality was more complicated. In The Raj At War: A People’s History Of India’s Second World War, Yasmin Khan showed how the British war effort was collective; it was the British empire that fought the war. Britain indeed suffered enormously, but its defence was vastly boosted by the largest mobilization of a voluntary army, and those soldiers were Indian, and they saw action in Anzio, El Alamein, Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Singapore, Kohima, and Dunkirk.

As audiences flock to see Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster Dunkirk, it is important to remember that it is a film, not history. Nolan hasn’t claimed he is making a documentary. But well-made films often shape how history is seen. Dunkirk reinforces Britain’s self-image. And in not seeing the wider canvas, Britons see a distorted reality, which influences attitudes, and indeed, politics.

To be sure, more than 300,000 British troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, and the number of troops of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps in Dunkirk amounted to a few hundred. But as John Broich, who teaches history at Case Western Reserve University in the US, pointed out recently in Slate: “There were also four (Indian) companies … on those beaches. Observers said they were particularly cool under fire and well organized during the retreat. They weren’t large in number … but their appearance in the film would have provided a good reminder of how utterly central the role of the Indian Army was in the war. Their service meant the difference between victory and defeat. In fact, while Britain and other allies were licking their wounds after Dunkirk, the Indian Army picked up the slack in North Africa and the Middle East.”

During the Dunkirk evacuation, John Ashdown, a British army officer, managed to get many of his Indian troops on the last ship before the jetty was bombed. In doing this, he disobeyed an order from one of his superiors to abandon his Indian troops. He was later court-martialled, but the judgement against him was ultimately thrown out, and Ashdown ended the war as a colonel. Ashdown’s son Paddy, who would become a Marine captain and lead the Liberal Democrats in British politics, said in an interview with The Guardian in 2000:

“My father thought simply that these were his men, he was responsible for them, and he must bring them back.”

A still from the film Dunkirk (Source: Metacritic)

Such stories are not widely known, and when recounted, they focus on the gallantry of the officer, skip the perfidy of his superior, and the Indian soldiers appear as extras. This makes history monochromatic, and the complex dynamics that the empire created are simplified or glossed over. It contributes to a false narrative about the British empire. A 2014 YouGov poll of 1,741 people across Britain showed that 59% felt that the empire was something to be proud of and only 19% thought it was something to be ashamed of. Almost half the respondents felt that the colonies were better off for being colonized; only 15% felt they were worse off. Not surprisingly, the Harvard academic and empire nostalgist Niall Ferguson tweeted those results, saying, “I won,” because he believes that the empire was, on balance, a good thing for the subjects, when those statistics actually showed how poorly history has been taught in Britain. In this context, Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire (published as An Era Of Darkness, which I reviewed in Mint last year) is a powerful reality check.

Partial reading of British history does a huge disservice to the British people. It buttresses myths, canonizing a leader like Churchill, disregarding the appalling impacts of his conscious actions (such as the Bengal Famine), and it influences contemporary politics because it perpetuates the image of the colonial subjects being the white man’s burden.

Consider migration, which has made Britain a livelier, more dynamic country. Seeing immigrants, particularly from the former colonies, as unwelcome foreigners partly contributed to Britain’s remarkable self-goal last year—the vote to leave the European Union. The Brexit vote partly showed a yearning among some to return to a time when Britain was not contaminated by outsiders. But as Robert Winder showed in his 2004 book, Bloody Foreigners, there was no such time. All you had to do was to look.

There is a section in Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, about London being transformed by immigration. It is called “a city visible but unseen”. In an interview then, Rushdie had said that the London Indian community “really was unseen. It was there and nobody knew it was there. And I was very struck by how often, when one would talk to white English people about what was going on, you could actually take them to these streets and point to these phenomena, and they would somehow still reject this information.”

Britain needs to look again at what it does not see. Its troops did retreat from Dunkirk. But, a few years later, they joined forces with allies of all colours and many nationalities to fight evil. Britain wasn’t alone and the allies weren’t all white.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London.

ROME, Jul 24 2017 (IPS) – Politicians are so busy fighting for their jobs, they hardly seem to notice that they risk going out of business. Democracy is on the wane, yet the problem is nowhere in Parliaments. Common to all is a progressive loss of vision, of long term planning and solutions, with politics used just for power.

In English, there are two terms: politics, which is term for the machinery, and politics, that is the vision. In Latin languages, there is only one, politics, and that is now becoming the adequate term also for English-speaking countries, from May’s UK to Trump’s US.

In a few years, we have seen an astonishing flourishing of authoritarian governments. Turkey’s Erdogan may be the best example. He was elected in 2002, and hailed as proof that you could be a Muslim and also a champion of democracy. At the end of the decade, he started to take a more fundamentalist and authoritarian approach, until in 2013 there was the famous crackdown on thousands of protesters, protecting a Park in Istanbul intended to be razed for a supermarket.

Since then, the tendency to use power has accelerated. In 2014, Erdogan was accused, along with his son, of corruption (three sons of cabinet ministers were also arrested). He blamed it on the Gulenist Movement, a spiritual movement led by an earlier ally, Fethullah Gulen, who now lives in the US. And when in 2016 some military factions attempted a coup against him, he used the coup as a reason to get rid of Gulenist and other dissidents. It has put 60,000 people in jail, and he has dismissed from public employment a staggering 100,000 people.

What is reminiscent of Stalin and Hitler’s practices is how those 100,000 have been treated. They have been banned from private employment, and their passports as well the ones of their families have been revoked. When asked how they will survive, the government’s reaction was to scoff that even eating roots would be “too good” for them.

President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

We’re talking of hundreds of judges, tens of thousands of teachers, university professors, who have been dismissed without any hearing and without any formal imputation. Europe’s reaction? Empty declarations, and since then Erdogan has become more authoritarian.

He has built a Presidential Palace of 1,150 rooms, larger than the White House and the Kremlin, where there is a three-room office dedicated to taste his food to avoid poisoning. The palace cost between 500 million euro (the government’s declaration), and 1 billion dollars (opposition’ estimates).

It could be said in Europe’s defence that Turkey is not a member of the European Union, and his actions have made it extremely unlikely that membership in the EU is possible. But Poland and Hungary not only are members of the EU, but also the main beneficiaries of his economic support. Poland joined the EU in 2004, has received more than 100 billion dollars in various subsidies: double the Marshall Plan in current dollars, the largest transfer of money ever done in modern history.

Yet the government has embarked in a firm path to dismantle democratic institutions (the last, the judicial system), and even the sleepy EU has been obliged to warn that it could take away the right of Poland to vote, to the total indifference of the government. Yet nobody has formally proposed to cut the subsidies, which are now in the budget from 2014 to 2020 another 60 billion dollars – half of what the world spends for development aid for nearly 150 countries.

Hungary is run since 2010 by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who campaigns for “an illiberal democracy”, and, like Poland’s PM Szydlo, has refused to accept any immigrants, in spite of EU subsidies. Hungary, despite its small population (less than 10 million, versus Poland’s 38 million) is the third largest recipient of EU’s subsidies, or 450 dollars per person.

One third of the world population lives on less than that. In addition, the European Investment Bank gives a net subsidy of 1 billion euro, and Hungary received 2.4 billion euro from the balance of Payment Assistance Program. The two countries have formed with Slovakia and Czechia, the Visegrad group, which is in a permanent campaign against the EU and its decisions. Needless to say, subsidies to Slovakia and Czechia largely surpass their contributions.

Are Erdogan, Orban, Szydlo and dictators? On the contrary, they are democratically elected, like Duterte in the Philippines, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Maduro in Venezuela and other 30 authoritarian presidents in the world. But in Europe this is new. And it is also new to see an American President, Donald Trump, present an agenda of isolationism and international confrontation, who was also regularly elected.

A poll at the end of his first semester revealed that his voters would re-elect him again, with the Republican support going down only from 98% to 96%. Nationwide, his popularity has declined to 36%. If elections were held today, he would likely get a second term.

Which brings us to wonder why we still consider elections equivalent to democracy? Because this is how the people can express themselves. But people certainly do not like corruption, which in polls anywhere is considered the most prominent problem of modern governments.

However, unless it reaches a totally systematic level, like in Brazil, a studies don’t show a strong correlation between corruption and electoral punishment. Corruption, in politics, has been used by populists, who has promised to get rid of it to the electorate: exactly what Trump did in his campaign, while now his conflict of interest and lack of transparency with his private interests have no precedent in the White House.

That bring us to the next question. If ideologies are gone, and politics have become mainly a question of administrative efficiency and personalities, what is the link between a candidate and his voters, and whose support persists despite everything, like those who voted for Erdogan, Trump, Orban and Szydlo?

Perhaps it is time that we start to look to politics with a new approach. What did we learn from the last few years’ elections?

That people are aligning themselves under a new paradigm, which is not political in the sense we have used until now: it is called IDENTITY. Voters now elect those with whom they identify, and support them because in fact they defend their identity, no matter what. They do not listen to contradictory information, which they dismiss as “fake news.” Let us see on what this identity issue is based: the new four divides.

There is first a new divide: cities against rural areas, small towns, villages, hamlets. In Brexit, people in urban areas voted to stay in Europe. The same goes for those who voted against Erdogan, who is unpopular in Istanbul, but very popular in the rural areas. In the US, those who vote d for Trump were largely from the poor states. The same has happened with Orban and Szydlo. None would be in power if the vote was restricted to the capital and the major towns.

There is a second new divide: young and older voters. Brexit would not have happened if all young people cared to vote. Same with Erdogan, Trump, Orban and Szydlo. The problem is that young people have in serious percentages stopped to be active in politics because they feel left out, and look to parties as self-maintaining machines, ridden with corruption and inefficiency.

Of course, this plays in favour of those who are already in the system, which perpetuates itself, without the generational lift for change. Italy found 20 billion dollars to save four small banks while the total subsidies for young people are 2 billion euro. No wonder they feel left out.

There is the third divide, which is also new, ideologies of the past were basically more inclusive, even if of course the class system played a significant role. The third divide is between those who have finished at least high school, and those who did not. This is going to increase dramatically in the next two decades, when the robotization of industry and services will reach at least 40% of the production.

Tens of millions of people will be left out, and they will be those with less education, unable to fit in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Elites look with disdain at the choices of electors who are considered ignorant and provincial, while the latter in turn consider the elite winners who reap whatever they can, and marginalize them.

Finally, there is a fourth divide, which is very important for the values of peace and cooperation as a basis for a world governance. It is the divide between those who see the return to nationalism as the solution to their problems (and therefore hate immigrants), and those who believe that their country, in an increasing competing world, can be better if it integrates in international or regional organizations.

Two extremely simplified examples: Europe and the US. There was a survey done by the EU among the nine million Erasmus, or the students who with a scholarship from that exchange program went to make lives in other countries. They have had more than 100,000 children by marrying somebody met abroad: the real Europeans.

In the poll, they were at 92% asking for more Europe, not less Europe. And in the US, the classic Trump voters, as white (a demographic group in decline: at every election 2% less of white vote), who did not get beyond secondary education, who do not read newspapers or books, coming from the poorer states. People who lost their jobs, often after closure of factories or mines, strongly believe that they are victims of globalization, which created social and economic injustice.

This is a consequence of the fact that during two decades, only macroeconomic indexes have been used, like the GNP. Social indicators were largely shunned. How the growth that GNP indicated was divided was not a concern for the IMF, World Bank, the EU and most politicians, who blindly believed that market was the only engine for growth and would solve social problems: only now have they tried to brakes on, too late. The world has seen an unprecedented explosion of inequality, which is helping nationalism and xenophobia to become a central part of the political debate.

Nationalism is not confined to Trump, Erdogan, Orban and Szydlo, and to Brexit. China, India, Japan, the Philippines, Israel, Egypt, Russia, and other countries are now run by nationalist and authoritarian governments. This bring us to a very simple conclusion. Either the transition to an unknown new political system, that will certainly replace the present unsustainable system, will be based on the values of social justice, cooperation and peace (probably updating the present international organizations), or it is difficult to see how we will avoid conflicts, wars and bloodshed.

Why the man is the only animal who does not learn from previous experience?

For three weeks in September 2017, Sweden will be turned into a military training ground. A third of the country, especially the capital Stockholm, the second largest city Gothenburg and the island of Gotland will be designated training areas. In total there will be about 20,000 participating soldiers, from the United States, Finland, France, Estonia, Norway and Denmark, in addition to soldiers from the host country.

Historically, Sweden managed to stay out of war for over 180 years, from 1814 against Napoleon, until the the era after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This neutrality policy was, and still is, hugely popular in population and even with many politicians. The same goes for the policy of no nuclear weapons on Swedish soil.

Even though the political establishment had secret and close military cooperation with NATO during the cold war, the establishment decided it was time to come out in the open and formalize it in the 1990s.

Sweden has been member of the NATO-program “Partnership for Peace” since 1994. Since then, it has been one of the most active participants in NATO-missions in Afghanistan, Balkans and the war on Libya. The country reintroduced conscription a few months ago, due to fears the country wouldn’t be able to recruit enough mercenary ‘professional’ forces for every conflict the military wishes to participate in.

Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Margot Elisabeth Wallström (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Also, since 2009, as part of a commitment to EU, and as another breach of this neutrality, Sweden has pledged itself to the defense of EU-countries. Since EU-membership largely overlaps with NATO-membership, it would be hard to separate these in a war. As foreign minister Margot Wallstrom said in 2015,

“Sweden will not remain passive if another EU country or Nordic country is struck by disaster or comes under attack, and we expect these countries to act in the same way if Sweden is similarly affected.”

In the summer 2016, the country joined Host Country Agreement with NATO, which means that the pact will store equipment in Sweden and be able to use the country for transport and transit of forces if a crisis should occur in the region. The host country agreement does not mention nuclear weapons. Since the NATO nuclear powers as a policy neither confirms or denies if their forces carries nuclear weapons, there are no real guarantees that nuclear weapons will not be brought into Sweden.

Sweden is also a part of NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force, even though it is not formally a member. It participates in the joint NATO air transport fleet, which will automatically be used in any conflicts anywhere in the world where NATO needs rapid deployment. This is part of the Swedish security establishments very determined policy of gradually integrating the country in the nuclear alliance. This air-cooperation consists of 10 NATO-countries, plus Finland and Sweden. It will have Boeing C-17 airplanes which will be able transport 77 tons of weapons and supplies up to 4450 kilometers without refueling. In addition it will get 180 Airbus A400 for troop transports. Swedish troops and equipment have been used in the conflict in Mali.

When these NATO-forces will exercise on Swedish soil in ‘Aurora’, it will be the first time the Host Country Agreement has been used. This NATO-alignment has happened steadily. and always by denying the final goal, which is full participation in the nuclear alliance.

Two senior military officers, Micael Bydén, Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, and Chief of Defence Staff Dennis Gyllensporre, recently gave a recommendation to the Swedish government. They want a change the military stance to a ‘treaty-bound’ defense commitments, in effect meaning NATO.

Chairman of the Swedish parliament’s defense committee, Allan Widman, commented approvingly

“The fact is that Sweden has been on its way to a NATO-membership for 25 years. Everything that has happened the last 25 years, have been in the direction of NATO. This recommendation is just yet another confirmation of where Sweden really belongs.”

Sweden has been courted by a steady stream of dignitaries from the US/NATO military complex over the last few years; amongst them éminence grise of the military-industrial complex, senator John McCain, chairman of NATO military committee Peter Pavel, NATO chairman Jens Stoltenberg and former NATO commander Philip Breedlove.

Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (Nov. 2014) (Source: NATO)

At the same time there is a massive propaganda offensive for NATO and against Russia in Swedish media. Bought journalists have come back from junket trips paid by NATO gushing with enthusiasm for deployment of missiles and other close cooperation. Editorials in all major newspapers and state TV repeat bold statements from Pentagon and the Swedish army command without ever questioning them, showing that they identify with the same interests. But even with this intense campaign, the majority of the Swedish population is against NATO-membership.

US militarists have long set their eyes on the island of Gotland, where a large part of the Aurora exercise will happen. This is part of a long standing plan of encircling Russia as a preparation for a conflict.

In April, general David G Perkins, leader of United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, visited the island accompanied by the leader of the Swedish army, Karl Engelbrektson. Perkins declared

“Gotland is an unsinkable ship and a strategic important position in this region”. “It is not only important for Sweden to have it well defended. We have a common vision of peace here”, continued the veteran commander from the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003. “This is a great opportunity to become closer friends with Sweden.”

The US general himself specifically asked to inspect the strategic island as a part of his visit. The army chief said the visit is a part of the Swedish desire for military cooperation with the US, which he thought was very important.

The leader of the American forces in Europe, general Ben Hodges, has earlier declared his wish for deployment of Patriot air-defense systems on the this ‘unsinkable ship’. If these weapons are deployed, there can be no doubt of who they are directed against: the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, and if needed, to exclude Russia totally from the Baltic, making it a NATO-lake.

These missiles will be part of the US missile defense system, part of an integrated nuclear strategy, which Russia has reacted strongly against. The idea is to be able to intercept the bulk of Russia’s nuclear missiles on the ground before they can be launched, then using missile interception capabilities to take care of any stray Russian missiles that manage to be launched. Denmark, a NATO-country, has joined the system, with deployment on several frigates, and neighboring NATO-member Norway is in the final phases of agreeing to integrate in this system. This will sharply increase the tensions in the northern part of Europe, and make it a central battlefield for a nuclear war.

The Aurora exercise will fit in with the grand US scheme for the Nordic region. The US Marine Corps has taken possession its first base in Norway, This policy was seen as too provocative during the cold war, but is now seen as appropriate.

As part of this, The United States wants to practice moving a US Marine Corps brigade from Trondheim, on Norway’s west coast, to Sweden. According to media close to NATO, is this scenario part of the backdrop for the arrival of 330 US Marines at a base in Værnes, in the central parts of Norway, with strategic road communications with Sweden, ideal for transiting soldiers and equipment ot Sweden per the Host Country Agreement in a future conflict.

The US military unit is an advance guard with orders to prepare exercises and sort out other details in cooperation with Sweden. The planned deployment of a US Marine brigade would make use of pre-positioned materiel in US storage depots in Norway’s Trondelag region and potentially also of equipment that may have been stored in Sweden, permitting the unit to move as an armoured, mechanized spearhead.

Even with all these constant baby steps to NATO-membership, the Aurora exercise will be another sharp notch that will increase the tensions in Europe.

Terje Maloy is a Norwegian/Australian translator and blogger.

Featured image is from Breaking Defense.

Featured image: From left, Carol Van Strum and her neighbor Kathy clean and pull staples as Peter von Stackelberg, who covered Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories as a reporter for the Regina, Saskatchewan, Leader-Post, operates two scanners simultaneously, May 2017. (Source: The Intercept)

FOR DECADES, SOME of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of the chemical industry have been kept in Carol Van Strum’s barn. Creaky, damp, and prowled by the occasional black bear, the listing, 80-year-old structure in rural Oregon housed more than 100,000 pages of documents obtained through legal discovery in lawsuits against Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Air Force, and pulp and paper companies, among others.

As of today, those documents and others that have been collected by environmental activists will be publicly available through a project called the Poison Papers. Together, the library contains more than 200,000 pages of information and “lays out a 40-year history of deceit and collusion involving the chemical industry and the regulatory agencies that were supposed to be protecting human health and the environment,” said Peter von Stackelberg, a journalist who along with the Center for Media and Democracy and the Bioscience Resource Project helped put the collection online.

Van Strum didn’t set out to be the repository for the people’s pushback against the chemical industry. She moved to a house in the Siuslaw National Forest in 1974 to live a simple life. But soon after she arrived, she realized the Forest Service was spraying her area with an herbicide called 2,4,5-T — on one occasion, directly dousing her four children with it as they fished by the river.

The chemical was one of two active ingredients in Agent Orange, which the U.S. military had stopped using in Vietnam after public outcry about the fact that it caused cancer, birth defects, and serious harms to people, animals, and the environment. But in the U.S., the Forest Service continued to use both 2,4,5-T and the other herbicide in Agent Orange, 2,4-D, to kill weeds. (Timber was — and in some places still is — harvested from the national forest and sold.) Between 1972 and 1977, the Forest Service sprayed 20,000 pounds of 2,4,5-T in the 1,600-square-mile area that included Van Strum’s house and the nearby town of Alsea.

A view of the Five Rivers valley in rural Oregon looking southwest from Carol Van Strum’s front door. (Photo: Risa Scott/RF Scott Imagery)

As in Vietnam, the chemicals hurt people and animals in Oregon, as well as the plants that were their target. Immediately after they were sprayed, Van Strum’s children developed nosebleeds, bloody diarrhea, and headaches, and many of their neighbors fell sick, too. Several women who lived in the area had miscarriages shortly after incidents of spraying. Locals described finding animals that had died or had bizarre deformities — ducks with backward-facing feet, birds with misshapen beaks, and blinded elk; cats and dogs that had been exposed began bleeding from their eyes and ears. At a community meeting, residents decided to write to the Forest Service detailing the effects of the spraying they had witnessed.

“We thought that if they knew what had happened to us, they wouldn’t do it anymore,” Van Strum said recently, before erupting into one of the many bursts of laughter that punctuate her conversation.

We were sitting not far from the river where her children played more than 40 years ago, and her property remained much as it was back when the Forest Service first sprayed them with the herbicide. A mountain covered with alder and maple trees rose up across from her home, just as it did then, and the same monkey puzzle tree that was there when she moved in still shaded her dirt driveway.

But Van Strum, now 76, is much changed from the young woman who politely asked that the federal agency stop spraying many years ago. After the Forest Service refused their request to stop using the herbicides, she and her neighbors filed a suit that led to a temporary ban on 2,4,5-T in their area in 1977 and, ultimately, to a total stop to the use of the chemical in 1983.

For Van Strum, the suit was also the beginning of lifetime of battling the chemical industry. The lawyer who had taken their case offered a reduced fee in exchange for Van Strum’s unpaid research assistance. And she found she had a knack for poring over and parsing documents and keeping track of huge volumes of information. Van Strum provided guidance to others filing suit over spraying in national forests and helped filed another case that pointed out that the EPA’s registration of 2,4-D and other pesticides was based on fraudulent data from a company called Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories. That case led to a decision, in 1983, to stop all aerial herbicide spraying by the Forest Service.

“We didn’t think of ourselves as environmentalists, that wasn’t even a word back then,” Van Strum said. “We just didn’t want to be poisoned.”

Still, Van Strum soon found herself helping with a string of suits filed by people who had been hurt by pesticides and other chemicals.

“People would call up and say, ‘Do you have such and such?’ And I’d go clawing through my boxes,” said Van Strum, who often wound up acquiring new documents through these requests — and storing those, too, in her barn.

Some of the more than 100,000 pages of discovery material related to the chemical industry that were stored in Carol Van Strum’s barn in rural Oregon. (Photo: Risa Scott/RF Scott Imagery)

Along the way, she amassed disturbing evidence about the dangers of industrial chemicals — and the practices of the companies that make them. Two documents, for instance, detailed experiments that Dow contracted a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to conduct on prisoners in the 1960s to show the effects of TCDD, a particularly toxic contaminant found in 2,4,5-T. Another document, from 1985, showed that Monsanto had sold a chemical that was tainted with TCDD to the makers of Lysol, who, apparently unaware of its toxicity, used it as an ingredient in their disinfectant spray for 23 years. Yet another, from 1990, detailed the EPA policy of allowing the use of hazardous waste as inert ingredients in pesticides and other products under certain circumstances.

There were limits to what Van Strum could prove through her persistent data collection. The EPA had undertaken a study of the relationship between herbicide exposure and miscarriages and had taken tissue samples from water, animals, a miscarried fetus, and a baby born without a brain in the area. The EPA never released the full results of the “Alsea study,” as it was called, and insisted it had lost many of them. But a lab chemist provided Van Strum with what he said was the analysis of the test results he had been hired to do for the EPA, which showed the samples from water, various animals, and “products of conception” were significantly contaminated with TCDD.

When confronted, the EPA claimed there had been a mix-up and that the samples were from another area. Van Strum filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the results and, for years, battled in court to get to the bottom of what happened. Though the EPA provided more than 34,000 pages in response to her request (which Van Strum carefully numbered and stored in her barn), the agency never released all the results of the study or fully explained what had happened to them or where the contaminated samples had been taken. And eventually, Van Strum gave up. The EPA declined to comment for this story.

Carol Van Strum prepares to work on her property with her dogs Maybe and Mike at her side in May 2017. (Photo: Risa Scott/RF Scott Imagery)

She had to make peace with not fully understanding a personal tragedy, too. In 1977, her house burned to the ground and her four children died in the fire. Firefighters who came to the scene said the fact that the whole house had burned so quickly pointed to the possibility of arson. But an investigation of the causes of the fire was never completed.

Van Strum suspected some of her opponents might have set the fire. It was a time of intense conflict between local activists and employees of timber companies, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies over the spraying of herbicides. A group of angry residents in the area near Van Strum’s home had destroyed a Forest Service helicopter that had been used for spraying. And, on one occasion, Van Strum had come home to find some of the defenders of the herbicides she was attacking in court on her property.

“I’ve accepted that I’ll never really know” what happened, said Van Strum, who never rebuilt her house and now lives in an outbuilding next to the cleared site where it once stood.

But her commitment to the battle against toxic chemicals survived the ordeal.

“If it was intentional, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “After that, there was nothing that could make me stop.”

Still, after all these years, Van Strum felt it was time to pass on her collection of documents, some of which pertain to battles that are still being waged, so “others can take up the fight.” And the seeds of many of the fights over chemicals going on today can be tied to the documents that sat in her barn. The Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories scandal is central in litigation over the carcinogenicity of Monsanto’s Roundup, for instance. And 2,4-D, the other active ingredient in Agent Orange, is still in use.

Meanwhile, private timber companies continue to use both 2,4-D and Roundup widely, though not in the national forest. Van Strum has been part of an effort to ban aerial pesticide spraying in the county, and is speaking on behalf of the local ecosystem in a related lawsuit.

“I get to play the Lorax,” Van Strum said. “It’s going to be fun.”

Featured image: Trump appears committed to the belief that mineral extraction “could be one justification for the United States to stay engaged in” Afghanistan, the New York Times reported. (Photo: DVIDSHUB/Flickr/cc)

As the 16th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan approaches, President Donald Trump is reportedly being pressured by a billionaire financier and a chemical executive to extend the scope of the conflict for one simple, greedy reason: to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral reserves.

According to James Risen and Mark Landler of the New York Times, the Trump administration is “considering sending an envoy to Afghanistan to meet with mining officials” as the president is receiving encouragement from Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire head of DynCorp, and Michael Silver, the head of American Elements, a firm that specializes in “extracting rare-earth minerals.”

“In 2010, American officials estimated that Afghanistan had untapped mineral deposits worth nearly $1 trillion,” Risen and Landler note.

This large figure reportedly “caught the attention of” the president, who has in the past argued that the biggest failure of the U.S. in Iraq was not”taking” the country’s oil.

Trump is hardly the first president to notice and eagerly examine Afghanistan’s mineral reserves.

“In 2006, the George W. Bush administration conducted aerial surveys of the country to map its mineral resources,” Risen and Landler note. “Under President Barack Obama, the Pentagon set up a task force to try to build a mining industry in Afghanistan—a challenge that was stymied by rampant corruption, as well as security problems and the lack of roads, bridges or railroads.”

Nonetheless, Trump appears to be committed to the belief that mineral extraction “could be one justification for the United States to stay engaged in the country,” despite warnings from security analysts that such a strategy could risk further deadly confrontations with the Taliban.

If Trump moves forward with a mineral extraction plan, Eric Levitz of New York Magazine adds, there is a serious

“danger of feeding the Taliban top-notch propaganda. It’s hard to win hearts and minds, when you’re also trying to win minerals and mines.”

But as Gizmodo‘s Adam Clark Estes observes, such concerns are unlikely to move Trump, whose “greed has led the man to leave a path of destruction behind him on his pursuit of profit and glory.”

“That sort of habit makes some people rich in the business world, at the expense of making others poor,” Estes writes. “When you’re talking about global politics and terrorism, however, people die, and nations fail.”

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the Trump White House has been consulting with high-profile war profiteers who have argued that the way forward in Afghanistan is to further privatize military operations in the country. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Jared Kushner reportedly “recruited” both Feinberg and Blackwater founder Erik Prince to lay out a war plan for the president.

Critics denounced this development as a step toward “colonialism,” and commentators had similar words for Trump’s apparent attraction to Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.

Law professor and former White House lawyer Andy Wright concluded that the Times report lays bare Trump’s “British Empire thinking,” which places plunder over “threat-based security.”

so… more lives and treasure, then https://t.co/edkkPho4Gr pic.twitter.com/33LgXUVINI

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) July 26, 2017

Colonialism is back — and dumber than ever!https://t.co/ZMRWbOizPh

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) July 26, 2017

Almost funny how we occasionally have to reverse engineer a "national interest" for our longest war https://t.co/tUtjjcrlhj

— Chase Madar (@ChaseMadar) July 26, 2017

This is like free PR for the Taliban about US intentions under Trump. https://t.co/kq4kjyoWma

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) July 26, 2017

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

Syrian government forces, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, have liberated the village of Baghliyah and nearby hills from ISIS terrorist sin the eastern Homs countryside. Thus, the army and its allies outflanked Dabat Milli, Taliah Sharqiyah and deployed in a striking distance from Rasm Hamidah where clashes are now ongoing.

The general idea of this advance is to put additional pressure on ISIS terrorists north of the Homs-Palmyra highway and to contribute to a wider effort aimed at isolating and destroying a large ISIS grouping deployed at the town of Uqayribat. Pro-government units have been struggling to do this since June. However, ISIS has a strong defense and is not going to withdraw without the battle.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces and pro-government Tribal Forces have liberated of Shinan and Abar al-Jeraih near the Euphrates River in southern Raqqah.

The advance followed reports that the SAA and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) made a deal dividing the spheres of influence in the provinces of Raqqah and Deir Ezzor on July 20. The agreement was reportedly backed by Russia. According to the agreement, the SAA and pro-government tribal forces will be able to gain areas in the southern and southeastern Raqqah countryside and the northwestern Deir Ezzor countryside without any resistance or antagonism from the SDF. This will allow government forces, backed by the Russian Aerospace Forces, to advance towards Deir Ezzor city from the countryside of Raqqah and Palmyra simultaneously.

Some 400 government fighters with battle tanks, multiple rocket launches and other equipment were allegedly deployed in Ukayrshah and Dahla near the contact line with the SDF. The total number of Tribal Forces fighters involved in the operation is about 4,000. The SDF allegedly abandoned plans to captured the western Deir Ezzor countryside.

If it’s true, the agreement will be an important contribution to a de-confliction scenario between the SDF and various pro-government forces. However, there could be some hidden terms and conditions behind the deal that may appear later. There is a lack of info from Raqqah provinces because of a strict media censorship imposed by the Syrian military. Meanwhile, the SDF avoids publishing info about its contacts with the SAA.

According to pro-Kurdish sources, the continued advancing in Raqqah city, repelled an ISIS attack killing 35 terrorists and seized a major part of Hisham Ibn Abdulmalik district. Some problems faced during the battle for Raqqah may be one of the reasons behind the alleged deal with the SAA.

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Another day, another major escalation of tensions caused by US actions. The recent downing of a Syrian jet by a US F-18 Super Hornet, is just the latest installment in a series of US provocations in Syria since Donald Trump took office in January.

The ‘non-interventionist’ Commander-in-Chief has continued and expanded the wars launched by previous US leaders, as Trump has essentially given the military carte blanche to do whatever it wants. From using white phosphorus in Iraq and Syria, to sending thousands more troops into Afghanistan, the US military machine remains completely out of control.

But why did an American fighter jet shoot down a Syrian warplane? Whilst the US – which is operating illegally in Syria – justified the action by saying that the Syrian jet was targeting US-backed forces on the ground (in the form of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)), the Syrian government said that the jet was on a mission against ISIS militants (who were created thanks to US-backing).

Understandably, Russia responded furiously to the illegal US action. Aleksey Pushkov, the head of Russia’s Communications Policy Committee, described the strike as an “act of war.” The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov, said in relation to the incident, that:

“What is it then, if not an act of aggression, an act directly in breach of international law. If you want, it’s actually help for the terrorists the US is fighting, declaring that they are conducting a counterterrorism policy. 

As tensions ratchet up to new levels, Russia has warned the US that they are now tracking US-led coalition jets that fly west of the Euphrates river as potential targets.

Baiting Russia into a Military Response?

Although the official US narrative was that they were protecting US-backed forces on the ground, one cannot help but question the justification used by a country that has repeatedly lied and deceived in order to launch imperial wars. 

There is a very real danger that the decision to shoot down a Syrian jet was designed to provoke Syria to respond militarily to US forces, therefore providing justification for a full-scale invasion of Syria by the US and her allies. 

Moreover, and more dangerously, there is a potential that this incident was designed (by rogue elements with the US) to provoke Russia to respond militarily to the US in Syria, providing justification to start a hot war with Russia, and launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia. 

Although this may sound like madness, we should not underestimate how mad the neocons are. The US and Russia have reportedly already come extremely close to a direct confrontation in Syria earlier this year. In April, after the US launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Russia was “an inch from confrontation” with the US, according to the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani.

Any followers of Dr. Paul Craig Roberts work, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, who also worked at a variety of US think tanks in Washington, will know that he has repeatedly warned that some belligerent and crazed elements within Washington are actually considering launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia.

It is not just Dr. Roberts that is warning of this apocalyptic scenario however. At the end April, the Deputy Head of Operations of the Russian General Staff, Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir, warned of the potential that the US could launch a “sudden nuclear missile strike” against Russia:

“The presence of US missile defense bases in Europe, [and] missile defense vessels in seas and oceans close to Russia, creates a powerful covert strike component for conducting a sudden nuclear missile strike against the Russian Federation.” 

US anti-ballistic missile systems in eastern Europe and in other regions cannot only be used to try and intercept any retaliatory Russian nuclear missiles fired toward NATO countries in response to a US pre-emptive nuclear strike, but, as Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned, many of these ‘defensive’ systems can be quickly turned into offensive systems, used to launch nuclear missiles at Russia in a sneak attack. This is part of the reason why Russian officials have repeatedly called the US anti-missile shield a threat, with Romania hosting a $800m section of the shield.

Painting Russia as the Enemy

Before any war, the state always embarks on an outlandish campaign to demonize the target in the eyes of the people. One logical conclusion to be drawn from the incessant array of anti-Russian propaganda that has been promulgated by the West in recent years, is that it is designed to inculcate in the minds of the western public that Russia is the enemy, in preparation for a future war.

In recent years, the world has become increasingly more unstable. Tensions between Russia and the US have reached a level not seen since the height of the Cold War, with some even arguing that we have surpassed this point by now. The US is continually provoking Russia, as the hawks in Washington cannot stand the fact that Moscow has stood up to the neocons in Syria.

Perhaps the US is trying to intimidate Russia so that it backs down, but this is a very dangerous game to play. How many times can the US poke the Russian bear before the bear responds? Very few know the answer to this question, but the central point is that the US must stop asking this question in the first place.

The world stands on the edge of a dangerous precipice, as it slides towards war.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

Featured image is from the author.

What is the Congress up to with their stupid bill that imposes more sanctions and removes the power of President Trump to rescind the sanctions that President Obama imposed?

Congress is doing two things. One is that Congress is serving their campaign contributors in the military/security complex by being tougher with Russia, thus keeping the orchestrated threat alive so that Americans denied health care don’t start looking at the massive military/security budget as a place to find money for health care.

The other is to put President Trump in a box. If Trump vetoes this encroachment on presidential power, Congress and the presstitute media will present the veto as absolute proof that Trump is a Russian agent and is protecting Russia with his veto. If Trump does not veto the bill, Trump will have thrown in his hand and accepted that he cannot reduce the dangerous tensions with Russia.

In other words, the bill is a lose-lose for Trump. Yet Republicans are supporting the bill, thus undermining their president.

Yesterday I heard an orchestrated, staged “interview” between two women on NPR’s “All Things Considered” (on NPR all things are never considered). It was a propaganda show focused on Trump’s expression of disappointment in Jeff Sessions, whom Trump mistakenly appointed Attorney General.

When Trump nominated Sessions, the Democrats and the presstitutes went berserk. Sessions was “unqualified,” a “racist,” blah-blah. But now Sessions is the hero of the presstitutes and Democrats. They love him, because he has sold out Trump on the question of the justification for an investigation of Trump as a suspect “Russian agent” by an independent prosecutor who happens to be a member of the anti-Trump ruling establishment.

In other words, Sessions, who has been beat up previously by the establishment, is too afraid to do his job.

In other words, Trump had, as I predicted, no idea what he was doing when he chose his government.

So now he suffers for his ignorance.

What was the point of the staged NPR interview between the two women? The point was that Sessions, unlike Trump, respects the rule of law whereas Trump wants to bend the law in order to cover up for himself. The interview was staged so that without the two women having to say it, Trump’s anger at Session was proof that Trump was guilty of some illegitimate “Russian connection.”

In other words, it was carefully constructed innuendo. Who constructed the innuendo? NPR’s women were just reading from a script.

As far as I can tell, there is no one in Trump’s government who is loyal to Trump or who is willing to back Trump’s effort to stop provoking the Russians and to cease serving as Israel’s military force in the Middle East. As far as I can tell not only the Democratic Party but also the Republican Party supports the left-wing’s view that Trump’s election was illegitimate, because he was elected by the votes of illegitimate people—“the deplorables” to use Hillary’s term.

Who are “the deplorables?” They are the remnants of the American working class. They are the people whose jobs were sent overseas to Asia by the global US corporations in order to enrich their shareholders and executives via higher profits from lower labor costs. They are the people who in order to stay afloat had to rely on debt in place of the missing income and whose debt is now so high that they have no disposable income. A huge proportion of the American population is incapable of raising a measly $400 without having to sell personal possessions.

In other words, they are refugees from a destroyed American middle class.

Trump stood up for them against the rich who ruined them, and now the rich are going to ruin Trump.

It will teach a lesson. Henceforth in the United States no one will dare to stick up for the American people. America is not for Americans any more than the world is for the peoples of the world. America and the world are for the One Percent. No one else. Russia, China, and Iran are in the way, and, thus, they are on Washington’s hit list.

It is heartbreaking to watch the Russians continue to believe, lesson after lesson to the contrary, that they can reach a deal with Washington. This unrealistic hope will destroy Russia. The Russian government will continue to grasp at straws and be put off guard.

It is utterly amazing that the Russian government can believe after its extensive history of being left hanging in the wind by its agreements with Washington that any agreement with Washington is worth anything.

Perhaps Russia is aware of the evil that they face in Washington. Perhaps the Russian emphasis on diplomacy is just a way of gaining time to get prepared for the war that Washington intends to bring to them.

There is little doubt that the great and wonderful beacon of light that is Democracy in Washington, also known as the government of the “exceptional” people and the “indispensable” country, is lost in hubris and arrogance and will destroy life on earth.

Featured image is from Sky News.

A few days ago The Washington Post referring to two anonymous sources, members of Trump’s administration, reported that the White House had decided to end a covert CIA program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. It is also reported that the program hadn’t led to any success and got out of control.

Such a decision proves that Washington intends to bet on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which mainly consist of Kurds. According to the White House, the Kurdish troops are now the driving force of the operation to liberate Raqqa.

The U.S. intends to establish control over the city to justify its direct intervention in the Syrian conflict and the U.S.-led Coalition’s aggressive actions. In addition, hiding behind fighting terrorism, this will allow Washington to continue its military operations in Syria.

Such a scenario is confirmed by Commander Deputy of the Global Coalition to fight ISIS Robert Jones. According to ANF News, just after a meeting with Raqqa Civil Council, he said that the U.S. military contingent, together with the Coalition forces, had to remain in Syria even after the end of the operation in Raqqa.

According to many experts, the Syrian conflict faces a turning point. Washington decided to make every effort not to miss the last chance to miss a chance to remain in the country. That’s why the U.S. administration intends to support Kurds, who are naive to believe that Washington will fulfill all its promises.

Realizing the U.S. plan, the Syrian Army (SAA) High Command announced the government forces were able to liberate the city of Raqqa just in few hours, Inside Syria Media Center reported.

According to a military source, the operation to liberate Raqqa is divided into three stages. The first began with the liberation of the Kuweires Military Airbase, occupied by the ISIS, settlements of Dayr Hafir and Maskanah. Then the Syrian Army was able to enter the southwestern areas of Raqqa.

The second stage of the operation was the liberation of the city of Resafa, and oil and gas fields. Then the SAA managed to ensure the safety of the Rasaf-Ithriyah road between the provinces of Raqqa, Homs and Aleppo.

According to different sources, the SAA has already begun to conduct the third stage. Within its frameworks, the troops managed to gain a foothold 10 kilometers from the Euphrates River and 30 kilometers from Raqqa.

Now the government forces need to activate their forces as soon as possible and not allow Washington to take credit for the liberation of Raqqa, continuing to conduct its aggressive policy towards not only Syria, but the entire Middle East.

Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist from Inside Syria Media Center.

France has raised doubts about the legitimacy of new US sanctions against Iran and Russia, saying they do not conform to international law due to their extraterritorial reach.

The French foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that French and European laws would need to be adjusted in response to the new sanctions, which await US President Donald Trump’s approval.

The ministry also called for discussions at European Union level because of the potential impact that the bans were going to have on European citizens and firms.

On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives voted to impose new sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea. The lower chamber of the US Congress voted 419 to 3 to pass the sanctions package.

The bill includes sanctions against Iran and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) for allegedly supporting terrorism, which Tehran vehemently denies, and North Korea, for its missile tests.

The legislation also aims to punish Moscow for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Federation.

The EU had earlier warned Washington against the new bans, out of fear that they would adversely affect its new energy deals with Russia.

In a clear message to Trump, EU President Jean-Claude Juncker said the bloc would act “within days” if the Trump administration failed to reassure its European allies about the potential impacts of the bans on their interests.

“America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last,” he added.

The EU fears that the new punitive measures might hit European companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which will be used to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany.

Germany has also opposed the latest measures, calling them an “unacceptable” move that is likely “to serve the interests of US industry policies.”

Iran warns of reciprocal measures

Earlier in the day, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the new Congress bill and said the Iranian parliament would adopt reciprocal measures.

“And we will take any step deemed necessary in line with the interests of our country, and we will continue our path without paying attention to their (Americans’) sanctions and policies,” he asserted.

Meanwhile, Abbas Araqchi, the Iranian deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said the “hostile” move amounted to a breach of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers—the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.

The policies of the Netanyahu government treat the future of the next generation of both Israelis and Arabs, with contempt.

Netanyahu and his cabinet know fully well that they are on a deliberate trajectory towards an escalating conflict with the blockaded peoples of Gaza and the West Bank who are forced to live and work with virtually no electricity or power, whilst Israelis in Tel Aviv’s affluent marina playground, plan their next luxury vacation to New York and the capitals of Europe.

Former Palestine is a land where IDF soldiers strut their stuff in the coffee bars fronting Tel Aviv beach whilst the indigenous Arab population is forced into massive unemployment by the Israeli occupying power and its economic blockades.

The incomprehensible factor in this smouldering cauldron of religious, economic and cultural disparity, is the apparent unlimited support from the Diasporas of New York and London, and indeed from the US Congress and the British Parliament, who continue to send money and weapons, by the shipload and plane load, to shore up the occupying regime.

When the now inevitable war does start: when the nuclear warheads are deployed: when the clouds of deadly radiation are released – they won’t, of course, stop at the Eastern Mediterranean. They will also bring death and sickness to all who will breathe in the cancer of the contaminated air from the Negev desert to poison even those who mistakenly thought they would be immune. [In Israel itself, all residential properties have to have a nuclear- fallout shelter, by government decree].

The above scenario will be the terrifying consequence of today’s unqualified Western support for the occupation of the Holy Land, and the 10-year, inhuman blockade of essential supplies to over half a million families in Gaza, by the Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu. 

And it is precisely that overt support for the illegal settlements plus the economic blockade and Israel’s rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which is the crucial driver of increasing antisemitism in Britain, Europe and around the world.

In 2011, US and European policy think tanks, which both create and promote policy serving the collective interests of the corporations that sponsor them, promoted NATO military intervention in Libya. Under the guise of a humanitarian intervention, what unfolded was the long-planned overthrow of the Libyan government, then headed by Muammar Ghaddafi.

Unable or unwilling to commit significant ground troops, the majority of the fighting was carried out by militant groups with NATO air and covert ground support. Many of these militant groups would be later revealed as comprised of extremists, including Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

In essence, NATO overthrew a unifying government in Libya, placed entire regions of the fractured nation under the control of terrorist organizations and opposing militant groups, and allowed the nation to slid into chaos ever since.

The consequences of overthrowing the Libyan government in 2011 were well known long before the intervention even took place. Libya’s role as a destination for refugees and migrants fleeing socioeconomic turmoil across Africa was long-established. After NATO’s intervention, Libya has now become a springboard for those fleeing from across Africa, across the Mediterranean Sea, and into Europe.

The issue of pirates, smuggling, organized crime and many other ills the Libyan government had kept under control, have also predictably spiraled out of control.

Now, those same policy think tanks that promoted the Libyan intervention, lament over the catastrophe that has continued to unfold ever since.

Foreign Affairs, published by one of the most prominent of these policy think tanks, the Council on Foreign Affairs (CFR), has published a series of articles by various authors, illustrating a sort of “buyers remorse” regarding the now devastated North African state. Part historical revision, part spin and part shifting of blame, articles like, “Europe’s Libya Problem: How to Stem the Flow of Migrants,” go into great detail about the problems now facing Libya and its neighbors.

The article laments:

Nearly 11,000 migrants arrived on Italian shores in just the last five days of June, following nearly 80,000 in the first half of 2017. Over 2,000 have perished at sea since the start of this year. The vast majority came from sub-Saharan Africa and embarked from the Libyan coast.

It then notes how Europe has been attempting to deal with the ongoing migrant crisis, claiming:

The European Union (EU) has been searching for a way to stem the flow of migrants and handle the tens of thousands who arrive in Italy on a daily basis. The EU’s current policy approach aims to shut off the route through the central Mediterranean and strengthen Libyan coastal patrol and enforcement capacities at sea. But it is unlikely to be effective or humane, given the sheer volume of migrants and the number of groups that profit from trafficking them, not to mention the weakness of the Libyan navy and other official security structures. 

The final sentence, noting the “weakness of the Libyan navy,” is particularly ironic, since it was NATO that attacked and sent many of the Libyan navy’s vessels to the bottom of Libya’s harbors.

The article concludes, offering no practical means of stemming the crisis besides waiting for the next Ghaddafi to unite Libya’s currently warring factions, eliminate or confine Western-sponsored terrorist organizations mainly based in the east, particularly in Benghazi, and rebuilding the nation’s economy to once again offer incentives for refugees and migrants to live and work in Libya rather than travelling onward toward Europe.

Nowhere in Foreign Affairs’ article is it mentions that the only reason Libya is now in chaos is not despite NATO military intervention, but because of it.

Unifying Libya will be difficult. Another Foreign Affairs article, titled, “Filling the Vacuum in Libya: The Need for a Political, Not Military Solution,” admits just how fractured the nation is:

The GNA [Government of National Accord] barely controls the capital, Tripoli, through militias that are only nominally under its authority. Although the GNA recently succeeded in pushing a rump government—containing remnants of the Islamist-dominated parliament that was elected in 2012—out of the capital, it was long in coming, and these rival factions continue to prove a threat to Tripoli.

Meanwhile, in the eastern part of the country, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a former military officer under Qaddafi, and his Libyan National Army (LNA)—a coalition largely made up of eastern, anti-Islamist militias—are aligned with the House of Representatives, which refuses to recognize the GNA.

Foreign Affairs notes the rising political as well as military prominence of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a “strongman” who appears to have the most potential of creating anything resembling a unified Libya. However, that will leave Libya once again in the same position it found itself before the 2011 intervention, with a strongman running the nation, and likely to drift further and further away from US and European interests until yet another proxy war is engineered, promoted by think tanks like the CFR and fought.

Again, despite Foreign Affairs’ apparently in-depth analysis, it failed to isolate the true source of Libya’s upheaval and instability, NATO. It was the 2011 intervention that upended stability not only in Libya, but created a chain reaction of violence and chaos that was felt as far west as Nigeria, Mali and Niger. This violence prompted, or more accurately, served as a pretext for the reintroduction of French troops in several of its “former” colonies. It has also served as a pretext for US Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) continued expansion.

Ultimately, Libya is a showcase of the chaos and regression that NATO intervention brings, and serves as the greatest case for isolating, containing and by all means, opposing and obstructing further use of NATO military forces anywhere beyond NATO’s own borders. The enduring chaos that is currently consuming nations like Libya also serve as a warning of what awaits nations like Syria and beyond should they fail in dissuading the West from further intervention within their borders.

It has been 6 years since NATO divided and destroyed Libya and the nation still remains fractured and fighting. The notion that NATO and its Western membership hold the solution to problems the West itself intentionally created should not be entertained, and, if international organizations, courts and laws had any meaning, NATO would be barred from any further role regarding Libya, beyond paying reparations for what it has done.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

Featured image is from the author.

MOSUL, Iraq – The Iraqi soldier looks out from his tiny three-walled room across a wasteland of rubble that crumbles steeply down to the banks of the Tigris River and contemplates the last days of the savage fight against the Islamic State (IS) group. 

“We killed them all,” he says quietly. “Daesh, men, women and children. We killed everyone.”

What remains of this part of Mosul’s Old City, where IS militants made their last stand, and what lies beneath betrays the horrific final days of the battle.

Hundreds of corpses lie half-buried in the broken masonry and rubble that was once a bustling, historic quarter. The stench of decaying flesh, which comes fast in the 50C summer heat, overwhelms the senses.

Feet are the most distinguishable remains; there are many poking from the rubble.

That final killing spree has left its mark, and it is one some appear keen to cover over.

Feet poke from the rubble of the Old City of Mosul (MEE)

Over the last week, armoured bulldozers have trundled back and forth over the crumpled houses, grinding uncounted corpses into the rubble.

But the dead refuse to go away. Rotting body parts glow a reddish-brown amid the pale grey of the undulating heatscape of masonry, dust and broken buildings.

“There are many civilians among the bodies,” an Iraqi army major tells MEE. “After liberation was announced, the order was given to kill anything or anyone that moved.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the major said the orders were wrong, but the military had to follow them.

“It was not the right thing to do,” he said. “Most of the Daesh fighters surrendered. They gave themselves up, and we just killed them.”

‘We make very few arrests’

The major scoffs at claims made by some Iraqi soldiers that the jails in Baghdad were already too full to take any more IS prisoners.

“It’s not true, we have plenty of prisons, but now we are not treating the prisoners like we did before,” he says. “Earlier in this war, we arrested a lot of Daesh and brought them to the intelligence services. But now, we make very few arrests.”

On Monday, several journalists witnessed an IS captive being dragged through the ruined streets of the Old City by special forces soldiers.

The man was bound and had a rope fastened around his neck. The journalists had their memory cards confiscated by soldiers and were ordered to leave.

“There is no law here now,” the major said. “Every day, I see that we are doing the same thing as Daesh. People went down to the river to get water because they were dying of thirst and we killed them.”

Iraqi soldiers on the banks of the Tigris. Compressed into the rubble underfoot are several hundred corpses (MEE)

Corpses line the western banks of the Tigris. Killed in air strikes, fighting and executions, or having died of hunger or thirst, some have washed ashore while others float in the blue waters. Some of the bodies are small. They were children.

Footage released on social media on 17 July shows Iraqi helicopters carrying out what are believed to have been some of the last air strikes of the nine-month-long battle for Mosul.

To a soundtrack of cheerful, victorious music, the helicopters target desperate people attempting to escape the Old City by swimming across the wide river.

Nearby, soldiers pose for victory photos before an Iraqi flag, the pole planted atop a pile of rubble and body parts.

They have become inured to the landscape of death over which they move. The brutality of this long conflict and the barbarity of their enemy has taken its toll on the Iraqi armed forces. There is little humanity left.

Soldiers – most with scarves wrapped around their faces to fend off the overpowering stench of death – pick through the rubble and corpses, looking for modest spoils of war. Burned and broken pieces of AK47s, empty magazines, a few tins of ammunition.

Iraqi soldiers pick through the rubble and ruins of the Old City (MEE)

Late last week, Iraqi forces were still being attacked by occasional IS militants emerging from the rubble or collapsed buildings to shoot at soldiers or hurl grenades.

On Thursday, a soldier approached what he thought was an IS corpse. The militant was pretending to be dead and shot the soldier at close range with a pistol.

There were still people alive under the rubble on Monday, when four IS members – two foreign fighters and two Iraqis – were found hiding. All four were shot, according to an Iraqi soldier stationed there.

These are likely to be among what soldiers believe are comparatively few survivors, some of whom are still managing to target Iraqi forces from underground hide-outs.

Last Thursday, Iraqi army soldier Haidar said eight tunnels with people inside had been identified by the military, mainly from interviews with women and children who had escaped.

“In our section, there are three. One tunnel has six Iraqi Daesh fighters, in another there are 30, including nine women, and in the third, we do not know the exact number but people coming out tell us there are a lot,” he said.

It is not known what became of any of those people – but very few civilians have emerged alive from the ruins since Thursday.

Supplies of food and drinking water are either scarce or non-existent below ground.

Corpses bob in the waters of the Tigris (MEE)

The last civilians to emerge from the rubble resembled concentration-camp victims, many reporting they had not eaten for a fortnight. Some were near death.

Last Wednesday, a starving Yazidi boy, 11, wept in a field hospital where he was treated for extreme dehydration and malnutrition as he described watching four other children die of thirst.

IS abducted the boy and his 13 year-old sister, who he had not seen for the preceding 30 days, from their home town in Iraq’s Sinjar mountain in 2014.

IS massacred thousands of Yazidis – whose ancient faith they decry as devil-worship – and took thousands more women and children into captivity.

“We will give them nothing,” Haider said on Thursday. “Yesterday, one of the soldiers relented and bent down to hand a bottle of water into a hole where he thought civilians were trapped and an IS fighter seized the gun from his shoulder. It was an M4 (assault rifle).”

Near the river, bulldozer driver Hussein said that his job was to maneuvre over the rubble, filling in any suspicious entrance holes to block possible IS activity.

“I fill the holes with rubble so the Daesh can’t come out again,” he said, adding that he was not sure whether he was burying people alive.

“Some of the tunnels stretch a long way and maybe they can get out some other place. But my job is to make sure they can’t come out of these holes again.”

Death is everywhere

Even in areas of the Old City that were liberated weeks ago, death still lingers.

Near the remains of the destroyed al-Nuri mosque, the blackened disembodied head of a female IS adherent who blew herself up among fleeing women and children lies beside a crater.

In the dust nearby is a hairbrush, a fashionable handbag, colourful clothing – small things with which people had hoped to escape – and a woman’s leg.

Human flesh has become food for the animals (MEE)

A cat steals across a ruined street with a piece of fresh meat hanging from its jaws. It is inevitably human – the only flesh left anywhere in the Old City is that of dead people.

New corpses still appear at different locations across the Old City. Some have clearly been executed, shot in the head at close range.

Many still have ropes trailing from tied hands and feet, indicating that either while dead or alive, they were dragged through the deserted streets. Many have been set on fire to curb the smell of decomposition.

Iraqi forces proudly claim to have killed at least 2,000 IS militants in the last stages of the Old City battle. Many of these were foreign fighters.

No one has offered a figure for the dead civilians – the women and children who could not escape.

The way the bulldozers have churned over the rubble and corpses and then driven back and forth over the terrain means that the real loss of life in the final bloodbath of the Mosul conflict will never be known.

The once-elegant historic Old City of Mosul is now an expansive graveyard – a crumbled flattened monument to one of the most merciless conflicts of the still young 21st century.

The renowned sociologist Maria Páez Victor at Law Commission of Ontario in Canada, deeply analyses the Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly to be voted on July 30, in the context of the Caribbean nation, and speaks on the biggest challenges the Bolivarian Revolution faces today.

Edu Montesanti: Professor Doctor Maria Páez Victor, thank you so very much for granting me this so important interview; it is an honor to me. What is the importance of the upcoming National Constituent Assembly in Venezuela? The opposition claims it is undemocratic: how do you respond to it?

Maria Páez: The parties and leaders of the violent protests that for three months have disturbed the peace of Venezuelans, are the very same who in 2002 supported the coup d’etat against President Chávez. During those tense 48 hours, one of the very first things they did was to abolish the Constitution of 1999 – the one they now purport to defend. (See the film, available on the internet: “The Revolution will not be Televised”)

During 18 years, the opposition has denigrated the Constitution. So intense has been this revolt against it that even after winning the majority at the National Assembly they insisted that the government was illegitimate, ignored the rule of law, disregarded sentences of the Supreme Court, refused to legislate, and declared the main purpose of the Assembly was to “get rid of Maduro”.

These paragons are now pretending to be arbiters of democracy and opposing any constitutional amendment by an elected Constitutional Assembly. They are now opposing, not the government, but the people themselves.

The day of reckoning has come. The opposition has orchestrated economic sabotage, corporate smuggling, black market currency manipulations, full scale hoarding of food and essential products. They have closed highways, burned public buildings including a packed maternity hospital, have dropped grenades from a helicopter on to the Supreme Court offices, have assaulted, lynched and even burned alive young men of dark skin “who looked Chavista”. This is a violent opposition steeped in racism and classism against their own people and in the service of foreign powers and big oil.

The opposition parties refused to negotiate with the government, despite a Peace and Dialogue Table having been established facilitated by 3 former presidents of Latin America. The opposition insisted on having the Vatican there; when the Nuncio arrived they still refused. President Maduro then decided that if the opposition did not want to negotiate with the government, they would have to negotiate directly with the people – and called for a Constitutional Assembly to amend the constitution. And they are terrified.

Constitutional articles 437,438,439  clearly indicate that the president has the right to call a Constitutional Assembly to amend the constitution. It is undisputedly a legitimate process. President Chávez himself spoke of the need to amend the constitution as a living work to enable facing whatever new circumstances may come. President Maduro has called for an amendment now, at this time because it is the very last resort towards a peaceful solution to the violence in the streets that to this day the opposition continues to promote.

In 1999, Venezuela was not facing the series of dangers it is facing now, and it has a dysfunctional National Assembly that refuses to legislate to face these challenges. At that time paramilitary forces were not rampant on its western borders, there was no terrorism on the streets, there was no economic and financial war against the economy, a post-oil economy was not seriously contemplated, government employees were not being assassinated, opposition mayors and governors were not harboring street violence, the Attorney General was not actively supporting impunity of crimes, there was no blatant abuse of parliamentary immunity, with officials openly asking foreign powers for their intervention to overthrow the government, there was scant attention to the environmental and climate dangers of the  country and the Planet. These have now become serious issues pertaining to the security of the state.

The representatives to the Constitutional Assembly will be elected on July 30 by a direct and secret vote that has electronic, paper and digital safeguards against fraud. Former US president and Nobel Prize winner, Jimmy Carter lauded this electoral process as: “the best in the world.” They will deliberate and amend nine specific areas:

(1) Mechanisms for peace: to counter those who carry out violence, reaffirm the values and mechanisms for justice

(2) Promote a new post-petroleum economy that is productive, diversified, integrationist, safeguard against economic war

(3) Enshrine anti-poverty programs (“misiones”) with constitutional status, securing the state’s social investment

(4) Revise the justice, security and protection system, promote a preventative and investigative police system and the penitential system, a stronger penal code against rape, kidnapping and homicide, strengthen the fight against terrorism, paramilitaries, narco-traffic and impunity

(5) Promote further participatory democracy by strengthening communal councils and communes giving them further constitutional status

(6) Promote a sovereign foreign policy defending the integrity of Venezuela in a multipolar world

(7) Promote the new Venezuelan identity and spirituality based on pluri-cultural and diversity of the people, art and culture

(8) Guarantee the future for youth, their social rights: cultural, educational, work and technology.

(9) Work towards countering climate change and protect the environmental conditions of life in the Planet.

The constitutional changes do not contemplate “making Maduro president for life” or “eliminating elections forever” as the opposition propaganda machine accuses.

Edu Montesanti: What are the big challenges facing Venezuela today, and what are the best ways to win such challenges?

María Páez: The biggest challenge to Venezuela is that international forces could back opposition groups and paramilitary groups to militarily overthrow the government. Big oil is behind this. They lobby the USA and its allies because they want to solely control the largest oil reserve in the planet that lies in Venezuela. With a former CEO of Exxon Mobil at the head of the US State Department, the danger to Venezuela became greatly enhanced. The wealthy upper classes of Venezuela are playing the role they have always historically had since Independence: being the lackeys of whatever world power is dominant. Their country is money and they want to control the oil money that flows to the state. When they ruled Venezuela during the previous 40 years, the equivalent of 15 Marshal Plans disappeared into their pockets.

The best way to counter the dangers that face Venezuela is clear.

(1) Firstly, as long as the Bolivarian government is onside of its people, defending their human rights, their sovereignty as a people, promoting their participation in democracy and promoting equality and social justice, the Bolivarian Revolution will have their support.

(2) Secondly, President Chavez transformed the armed forces – no longer is their main function a repressive one (learned at the sinister School of the Americas), but one that sees itself as defender of the people and their Constitution, their identity is now that of  the descendants of Bolívar’s liberation army.

(3) Thirdly, Venezuela has amply proven to be a real Good Neighbour with ALBA, Petrocaribe, Telesur, UNASUR and CELAC. It is organically linked to its region. It has also developed close relations with Russia, China, India, Africa and parts of Europe: it is no longer a backwater country. The USA may have undisputable military might, and a dangerous ally in Colombia, but an attack on Venezuela would create significant international and internal domestic strife for the USA.

Edu Montesanti: Facing a violent opposition, its principal supporter, that is, the US, and the media war, what has made possible for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela to survive to date almost 19 years after Hugo Chávez took power?

María Páez: The opposition cannot overthrow the government of Venezuela without significant backing of the majority, without backing of the Armed Forces and without international backing. That is the sane, rational view.

However, the USA  empire, with a dangerously ignorant and erratic president at its helm could take the insane path of arming the opposition to provoke a full scale civil war, possibly with Colombian troops. My prediction is that such an evil adventure, while painful, will ultimately fail.

The Spanish Empire also consistently underestimated the resiliency and resolve of the Venezuelan people, not for nothing they are called “el bravo pueblo”.

The Big Lie today is as enormous as, and potentially far more harmful than, any Big Lie throughout history has been; and, it will be exposed fully here, and will be documented even more fully, by means of the links that are provided in this summary of it.

(This Big Lie is certainly important enough for that care, because if the lie is continued unexposed, that massive fraud will produce World War III, a world-destroying nuclear war, perhaps even soon.)

So, this will be only a summary of it, but a completely documented summary — not a mere ‘exposé’ that’s expected to be believed because it’s already generally suspected or thought to be the case, but, instead, something that’s presented in the expectation that the key facts of the case have, to the contrary, been so effectively hidden from the public, as to make necessary here the providing of full documentation of it, for anyone who wants to delve more deeply into this ongoing rape of history — the super-dangerous Big Lie that’s ongoing right now.   

This Big Lie today, which is to be described here, is the lie, upon the basis of which the Cold War against the dictatorial communist U.S.S.R. — which Cold War had been such a boost to U.S. weapons-makers such as Lockheed Martin while it lasted — actually became restored in 2014, and continues today, as, this time, not a ‘cold’ but a hot war, by the U.S. and its allies, all united together (for the benefit of the owners of their international corporations, and especially of the big U.S. arms-suppliers) against democratic post-communist Russia (which gets blamed for trying to defend itself, at every step of the way that it does so).

This increasingly hot war started in early 2014 (after at least three years of advance-preparation of it by the U.S. Administration of American President Barack Obama), in Ukraine (formerly a part of the U.S.S.R.), when a CIA coup that was perpetrated under the cover of ‘democracy’ demonstrations, against the democratically elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych — when this CIA coup installed there, in Ukraine, a rabidly anti-Russian government, bordering Russia. That is certainly a provocation to war, just as would be the case if instead Russia had overthrown Mexico’s government and installed there a rabidly anti-U.S. regime.

In this Big Lie, which reigns today and is almost universally believed in the U.S. to be true, that bloody coup in Ukraine is simply ignored, and instead the focus is placed upon the peaceful and voluntary breakaway of Crimea from Ukraine, which breakaway actually resulted directly from that coup, which was the real precipitating-event for ‘the new Cold War’ — the basis of the U.S.-and-allied economic sanctions against Russia, and for the massing of NATO troops and weapons onto Russia’s borders, ready to invade Russia. (How would Americans feel if the Russian government did all of that, to us?)

Former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych

The Big Lie today is this: that the reason for the economic sanctions against Russia, is that ‘Putin’ or Russia ‘stole’ or ‘conquered’ or ‘seized’ the Crimea region of Ukraine. The Big Truth, about the matter, is that U.S. President Obama conquered Ukraine itself (all of it), via a February 2014 CIA coup that he had secretly started planning by no later than 2011, which on 20 February 2014 culminated with the violent overthrow of the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Yanukovych, who had won 90% of the votes in the far-eastern Donbass area of Ukraine, and 75% of the votes in the far-southern Crimea area of Ukraine, both of which intensely pro-Yanukovych regions refused to be ruled by the Obama-appointed rulers — the hard-right, fascist and rabidly anti-Russian, team that the Obama regime imposed upon Ukraine, after Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland told Obama’s Ambassador to Ukraine on 4 February 2014, that “Yats” (Arseniy Yatenyuk), a hard-right and even racist anti-Russian Ukrainian politician, was to become appointed to run the country as soon as the coup would be over, which happened 23 days later (and Yatsenyuk did then receive the appointment and establish very hard-right anti-Russian policies — including massacres of ethnic Russians in Ukraine).

The legalities of the situation are as heinous on America’s side as the moralities are; and, yet, America’s vassal-states, in the EU and elsewhere, slavishly honor Obama’s sanctions against the victim-nation here, Russia (even while acknowledging that the residents of Crimea are overwhelmingly supportive of having separated themselves from Ukraine and grateful to Russia for now protecting them against the rabidly anti-Crimean U.S.-imposed rulers of Ukraine). Furthermore: by no later than 26 February 2014, the leaders of the EU knew that the ‘revolution on the Maidan’ had, in fact, been a brutal coup, nothing at all ‘democratic’ — but decided to ignore that fact. So, they too are culpable in this, though not nearly to the extent that Obama is.

On Friday 21 July 2017, the anti-Russian Reuters ‘news’ (propaganda) agency headlined “Crimean scandal prompts Siemens to retreat from Russian energy“ and reported that,

“Germany’s Siemens tried to distance itself from a Crimean sanctions scandal on Friday, halting deliveries of power equipment to Russian state-controlled customers and reviewing supply deals. The industrial group said it now had credible evidence that all four gas turbines it delivered a year ago for a project in southern Russia had been illegally moved to Crimea, confirming a series of Reuters reports.”

The false underlying assumption in this propaganda-article was that the “scandal” it refers to had been initiated and perpetrated by Russia, not by the United States government (which initiated the sanctions against Russia, which Siemens and Russia are now being punished for). The Wikipedia propaganda site says in its article “Russian financial crisis (2014–2017)” that “The financial crisis in Russia in 2014-2015 was the result of the collapse of the Russian ruble beginning in the second half of 2014” and barely even mentions the economic sanctions, other than to say, “The second [reason for it] is the result of international economic sanctions imposed on Russia following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine” — implying, but not stating, that Russia had started that war — which just happened to be on its doorstep, not on the doorstep of the U.S. — as if Mexico had been taken over by an enemy nation and the people of America were being threatened, which is what this takeover by the U.S. government was equivalent to for the Russian people: a very real and grave national-security threat to them.

The Reuters article simply ignored the fact that Ukraine had been seized by Obama, and it simply presumed that Crimea (and also Donbass) had been seized by Putin. (Furthermore, the appeal by Donbass to become a part of Russia, was declined by Putin on 17 September 2014. But, still, the lie is also being pumped by pro-U.S.-regime ’news’media, that Russia is trying to steal Donbass from Ukraine’s government. The U.S. team’s lying is beyond bizarre. Sometimes, by their using carefully veiled language to deceive without outright asserting their lies, they implicitly blame Russia regarding the impasse in Donbass, even three years after Putin said no to that appeal by the residents of Donbass. And, still: Russia, which had — despite the Obama regime’s refusal to participate — signed and even had helped set up the Minsk agreements to settle the war in Donbass, gets blamed in the U.S.-allied press for what are actually Ukraine’s refusal to honor the commitments it had signed to there. As usual, the victims get blamed. And the Trump Administration says that “there should be no sanctions relief until Russia meets its obligations under the Minsk agreements.” No good deed will go unpunished — ever.)

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Chrystia Freeland

Nor has Reuters (nor the rest of the U.S. regime’s press) reported that a power-struggle is now occurring in the post-coup Ukraine, between the overt nazis (or racist-fascists) there, and the post-coup (rump remaining Ukrainian-elected) (that’s the fascist but not outright nazi) elected government (in elections that excluded non-fascists). The fascists, whom the current U.S. regime supports, are being attacked by the nazis. The nazis are being led by Dmitriy Yarosh, whose followers are unabashedly nazis and often even boldly flash German Nazi Party insignia. The U.S. Obama regime was one of only three governments throughout the world that voted against a resolution that had been introduced in the United Nations condemning fascism, racism and denial of the Holocaust. The two other pro-Nazi nations were Ukraine, whose U.S.-installed regime felt the resolution to be personally offensive even though it wasn’t specific to Ukraine and didn’t even mention Ukraine, and the other country was Canada, which is a U.S. vassal-nation and also has a powerful community of Ukrainian Nazis who escaped Ukraine right after WW II ended in 1945. Canada’s current Foreign Minister, appointed by the Liberal Party’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is Chrystia Freeland, a racist-fascist who is proud of her Nazi grandparents and who championed in Canada the fascist takeover of Ukraine. 

When the International Criminal Court issued, on 14 November 2016, its annual “Report on Preliminary Examination Activities”, it included, on pages 34-43, a section on “Ukraine,” but considered only accusations that the Obama-installed Ukrainian government had lodged against Russia, and none of the demonstrated crimes (which are amply documented in the links herein), including the illegal coup, that the Obama regime had, in fact, perpetrated against not only the people of Ukraine, but the people of Russia next door; and the discussion by the ICC did not (such as an influential but grossly false Forbes article six days later headlined and yet provided no documentation for, “International Criminal Court: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine Is A ‘Crime,’ Not A Civil War”) even allege that any “crime” had been committed by any party; but, nonetheless, the Russian government (which had never ratified the treaty that established the Court) condemned the report as being “one-sided,” which was an understatement, because the report included many gross falsehoods, outright lies, such as (and I boldface the falsehood):

“At the time of the start of the events that are the subject of the Office’s preliminary examination, the democratically-elected Government of Ukraine was dominated by the Party of Regions, led by President at the time, Viktor Yanukovych. The Maidan protests were prompted by the decision of the Ukrainian Government on 21 November 2013 not to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union.”

As I and others have documented, the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President started well before that time, and the coup even was already being organized inside the U.S. Embassy there by no later than 1 March 2013; and the U.S. State Department had begun its work to prepare it, no later than 2011 — it didn’t simply ‘happen’. And it certainly wasn’t ‘democratic’; it ended whatever democracy Ukraine had. Furthermore, Yanukovych’s turn-down of the EU’s offer was, itself, a part of the Obama regime’s plan: Yanukovych had turned it down because the Ukrainian Academy of Science’s analysis of the EU’s offer (which had been prepared in accord with the U.S. government’s urgings) had concluded that to accept the deal would produce losses for Ukraine of $160 billion. 

This is the Big Lie straight out of hell, because, unless the United States acknowledges publicly that it has been lying, and that the anti-Russia sanctions that the U.S. initiated, are based on that lie and should therefore never even have been imposed (and should not be honored anywhere), there will be war between Russia and the U.S. Either those sanctions will be entirely lifted, or else nuclear war will inevitably result, because Russia will not forever tolerate having its economy squeezed to death on the basis of a clear lie. But how can such sanctions be ended unless the perpetrator — here, clearly, the U.S. — publicly acknowledges that former U.S. President Barack Obama, and his Administration, lied through their teeth, in order to impose them, in the first place? The U.S. government would need to renounce, to the entire world, that former U.S. President. Or else, WW III would seem to be well-nigh inevitable. This is an extremely serious matter, which isn’t so much as even being discussed — much less, debated. WW III could result from it, but it’s entirely ignored. The Big Lie just continues to be promoted, instead of exposed.

Back on 20 February 2015, I headlined “Crimea: Was It Seized by Russia, or Did Russia Block Its Seizure by the U.S.?” and, in the years since, the documentation that it was Obama not Putin who initiated (perpetrated)the new ‘Cold War’, has only increased. But the ‘news’media hide this fact (just as they hid that article), because they exist in order to pump the Big Lie, not to puncture it. (And, of course, that also is why they won’t publish this, though it, too, is sent to all of them free-of-charge to publish.)

Donald Trump condemns many of his predecessor’s actions and decisions and statements; but, on this one, which is the most important of them all and is blatantly a fraud (the blame for the entire catastrophe in Ukraine), Trump remains alternately supportive, and noncommittal, regarding Obama’s most enormous Big Lie. Now, after half a year in office, does he even care — or does he instead simply lack the courage?

It’s clear what a real leader would do — expose and renounce that biggest of all Big Lies. Only a coward would not.

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.

Having poured scorn and not an indecent amount of bile upon the refugee deal between the Obama administration and Canberra last year, US President Donald Trump was never going to make things easy for the resettlement of various groups held on Nauru and Manus Island.

Repeated emphasis has been made on the issue of how the anti-terrorism regime outlined in the USA Patriot Act disqualifies potential entrants, given the sheer scope of how “support” is defined. This is particularly applicable to the Tamils, numbering some 100, who might have been sympathetic to the cause of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam.[1]

The true sufferers remain the refugees, who continue being shuffled and disposed in a broken international system that Australia insists on further fracturing. (It might be argued, with good grounds, that Australian governments have been instrumental in ensuring its failure.)

Another troubling feature of Canberra’s obstinacy lies is its inventive approach to the factual record. Both sides of the political aisle insist that the people-smuggling “market” model must be confronted, with a hammer wielded in determination against its workings. All done in the spirit of humanitarian sensibility, we are told.

Yet Amnesty International has noted instances where members of the Australian navy have paid those very smugglers to move their human cargo away from Australian waters. The model, in other words, thrives under the colluding eyes of states who prefer borders and regulation over humans and rights.

The tail in Canberra has continued to twist on this score. For one, where would those rejected by the US vetting process go? Even if some had passed muster under those “extreme vetting” procedures, what would it do to those with ties to Australia?

Disputes have emerged. One backer for the US-Australia resettlement deal was the United Nations through its various organs dealing with refugees. But conflicting claims between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, and the Turnbull government about the resettling those captives on Manus Island and Nauru have surfaced.

We are long accustomed to the usual charge and counter-charge in these squabbles over how best to use and abuse a refugee debate. Enter milksop Grandi:

“Australia’s policy of offshore processing in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, which denies access to asylum in Australia for refugees arriving by sea without a valid visa, has caused extensive, avoidable suffering for far too long.”

Grandi then gets to the crux: an explanation as to why the UNHCR, not exactly the most persuasive organisation, committed to the Australian-US agreement on resettling refugees.

“We agreed to do so on the clear understanding that vulnerable refugees with close family ties in Australia would ultimately be allowed to settle there.”

Cue Grandi’s perplexed response to being

“informed by Australia that it refuses to accept even these refugees, and that they, along with the others on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, have been informed that their only option is to remain where they are or to be transferred to Cambodia or the United States.”

Canberra’s UNHCR mission was also baffled.

“We’ve maintained from the beginning,” claimed Catherine Stubberfield, “that allowing people with close family being able to come to Australia is a minimum, and unfortunately that’s not being honoured.”[2]

According to Stubberfield, this understanding would prevail even of those accepted by US authorities.

UN Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Volker Turk, also added his name to the inventory of the deluded that families with ties to Australia would be prioritised.

“We were hoping very much, based on the understanding, that Australia would be part of the solution, that we would find an agreement that would allow them to settle in Australia.”

Why Grandi and the UNHCR grandees should be puzzled is itself puzzling. The official policy from Canberra on refugees has been well minted for some years. In the dying days of an election campaign, a desperate Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, turned over a leaf on countering naval arrivals by declaring that any unprocessed individuals heading to Australia by boat would never be permitted settlement on the mainland.

A more reactionary, but consistently brutal Prime Minister Tony Abbott merely militarised the response, cloaking it with a secrecy that any authoritarian leader would be pleased with. The “never settle in Australia” approach persists with grim determination.

Last week, Rudd attempted to throw a dose of humanitarianism on the policy by insisting that, when he re-commenced the offshore processing system in July 2013, he had only intended a 12-month limit on operating the Manus Island centre. Rudd remains immaculately disingenuous on this score.

What we have on record is a clear case of double narratives, one spun for political convenience to an electorate hardened to Fortress Australia, and to diplomats charged with negotiating the resettlement program. Caught between two chairs, those on Manus and Nauru will fall between them, doomed to a comical and vicious solution that will see those rejected by the United States and Australia find testy homes in third, vastly inappropriate states.

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

Notes

Recently, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham militants (ex Jabhat Al-Nusra) have faced serious issues with money. Inside Syria Media Center military correspondents on the ground confirm that the militants and field-commanders have not received cash allowance for several months. Furthermore, the jihadists don’t receive money and ammunition for organizing and conducting illegal activity in Syria.

The militants are currently controlling vast territories in the eastern part of Aleppo province and the central part of Idlib. The opposing Ahrar al-Sham formations have to retreat under the pressure of Tahrir Al-Sham, suffering heavy losses and joining ISIS. Despite these facts, the condition of the former Al-Nusra front is not as good as it seems.

First of all, the units of the group are leaving the previously occupied territories and try to take under control other settlements in the region. That’s why Tahrir Al-Sham has serious disagreements with Ahrar al-Sham group. The militants try to seize the resources they need, including various weapons, equipment, fuel and other resources in new territories controlled by other factions.

Yet, another proof Al-Nusra having some difficulties is the fact that the militants have to sell small arms, explosives and other military equipment. From time to time, we can see offers on different types of weapons, ranging from pistols and machine guns to TOW missile launchers and missile installations on Facebook.

In addition, seeking profit, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham militants advanced and occupied territories in the northern part of Aleppo, where the objects of historic and cultural values are located. At present, the militants grant license to so-called “black archaeologists” for the possibility of carrying out archaeological excavations there. At the same time all the found artifacts are withdrawn for further selling to the Western collectors.

Moreover, Jabhat al-Nusra established full control over Bab al Hawa checkpoint on the Syrian-Turkish border. This achievement allows terrorists to set up selling of seized property via the checkpoint. Most often, the Turkish side is a major customer of these goods.

Apparently, militant’s western patrons and sponsors are beginning to realize that the financing of terrorists will no longer bring them dividends either in political or economic terms. Therefore, investing radical groups like Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham is not profitable any more as the successful steps of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) contribute much to stability across Syria. The militants seem to be the scapegoats left to their fate.

First published by Inside Syria Media Center

Featured image is from the author.

You may recall this bizarre incident that occurred last month in Venezuela. A rogue police officer by the name of Oscar Perez, who is also well known in Venezuela for starring in several B-rated action movies, commandeered a helicopter, before dropping grenades on the nation’s Supreme Court building and strafing the Interior Ministry with gunfire. It was without a doubt, the strangest moment to come out of that nation’s ongoing civil unrest. 

But this brazen attack isn’t just odd. In fact, it may portend something much more serious that is simmering under the surface of Venezuela’s slow motion social collapse. It’s a sign that Venezuela is very close to erupting into a full-blown civil war.

Recently, a stolen police helicopter attacked the Venezuelan Supreme Court with grenades and automatic weapons. While no one was hurt, the incident should serve as a wake-up call for the entire Western Hemisphere, including the United States. The attack demonstrates a quantum escalation of the hunger-fueled conflict that has consumed the country for close to a year. Hunger is the key word. Hunger is the most basic of human suffering. Remember that rising food prices helped fuel the Arab Spring, which has left the world with a chaotic, fractured, refugee-hemorrhaging Middle East.

Obviously, the lack of food in Venezuela is a key factor in that nation’s unrest. Multiple studies have shown in the past that when food prices escalate to a certain point, riots and revolutions become very likely, even in cases where the population isn’t specifically revolting over the price of food. But in any case the lack of food, skyrocketing crime, rampant corruption, and flippant tyranny that are all fueling the unrest, and giving people like Oscar Perez lots of support in both high and low places.

Is Venezuela in danger of becoming another Syria? Maybe. The helicopter pilot, Oscar Perez, posted a bare-faced declaration online describing himself as representative of a group of “nationalists, patriots, and institutionalists.” The fact that he has been allowed to slip quietly back into the shadows illustrates how much of the population is willing to hide him. Even more distressing is the fact that his group even had access to a helicopter, a fact illustrating how much support they may have within Venezuela’s government institutions.

We can deduce from Perez’s attack that there are battle lines being drawn in Venezuela right now, and those lines run right through the middle of the civilian population, the military, the police, and the political class (and yes, that line does run through the middle of society, because there are still millions of people who support President Maduro).

And that’s what makes civil wars possible. They don’t usually occur in countries where millions of unarmed civilians hate the government, and the government is staffed by plenty of loyalists. These wars tend to happen in places where the soldiers and cops are also divided along partisan lines. That way, you have a lot of people armed to the teeth with the best weapons government tax dollars can buy, and those people become two separate armed camps with divergent views and political goals.

You can’t have a war unless there are two sides with a lot of firepower, and that’s what we see in Venezuela right now. That nation is a powder keg, and it could blow at any time.

Featured image is from the author.

The Western allies never run dry of resources to support their global war of terror and aggression, ostensibly an integral part of their foreign policy. They dynamically legislate laws lest the people awaken. They have the unbending support of the corporate media, which skilfully distorts reality. When will they ever back down from their destructive quest for colonies? Read our selection below. 

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House Passes New Russia Sanctions, Pumps Adrenaline into Cold War 2.0

By Daniel McAdams, July 26, 2017

The bill adds additional sanctions on Russia as punishment for the as-yet-unproven claims that Moscow somehow interfered in US elections to help secure a victory for Donald Trump. It also seeks to punish Russia for its supposed involvement in Ukraine — ignoring that unrest in Ukraine stems from the US-initiated coup against the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovich in 2014.

State Department Lawyers Removing References to ISIS ‘Genocide’ Against Christians, Other Religious Minorities

By Susan Crabtree, July 26, 2017

Richard Visek, who was appointed by President Obama as head the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser in October 2016, is behind the decision to remove the word “genocide” from official documents, according to Nina Shea, an international human rights lawyer who directs the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

Philippines: Western Media Is Distorting Reality, People and Army Unite to Battle “ISIS”

By Andre Vltchek, July 26, 2017

It is evident, right from the start, that Marawi is not “totally destroyed,” as has been reported. Most of it is standing and standing firm. I would estimate that only between 20 and 30 percent of the houses and buildings, (most of them in the wealthy core center of the city) have sustained heavy damage.

The World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis Is Basically Being Blacked Out by Western Media

By Prof. Vijay Prashad, July 26, 2017

The United States is fueling a conflict that has resulted in war crimes and famine.

U.S. Expands Military Budget – How Will This Affect Syria

By Mehmet Ersoy, July 26, 2017

On July 14, the House of Representatives passed a defense policy bill proposed by Donald Trump to authorize $696 billion budget in fiscal year 2018. The White House claimed it to be a “historic increase in defense spending”.

Truth of Ukraine War Revealed: Watchdog Media Releases Timeline Video of Ukrainian War From Euromaidan to MH-17

By Clarity of Signal, July 24, 2017

This video thoroughly reveals that the western mainstream media’s narrative related to events in Ukraine was not accurate in relation to what the first-person captured videos show.

“The Media Coverage on Syria is the Biggest Media Lie of our Time”: Interview with Flemish Priest in Syria

By Père Daniel Maes, July 23, 2017

“Do you not know that the media coverage on Syria is the biggest media lie of our time? They have sold pure nonsense about Assad: It was actually the rebels who plundered and killed. Do you think that the Syrian people are stupid?Do you think those people were forced to cheer for Assad and Putin? It is the Americans who have a hand in all of this, for pipelines and natural resources in this region and to thwart Putin.”

*     *     *

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The horrific execution by police of an Australian woman in her pajamas that took place last week in Minneapolis has again produced a torrent of criticism over killings initiated by law enforcement in situations in which the officers are in no way threatened. America has always been a violent place relative to much of the rest of the world, but even so there has been a noticeable shift in how, since the trauma of 9/11, some policemen believe themselves to be superior to and detached from the society they are supposed to be protecting.

And the public is reciprocating, seeing the police frequently as a force that is no longer there to serve the people and instead something that should be feared. Even in the upper middle class predominantly white county that I live in, residents not infrequently discuss the increasingly visible and aggressive police presence. It is widely believed that arguing with cops or showing even the slightest attitude in contacts with them is done at one’s peril.

Even in low crime parts of the country, the police are able to deploy fully armed and equipped swat teams that are more military than civilian in their threatening demeanor as well in the body armor and weapons they carry. Many cities and counties now have surplus military armored vans for crowd control even if they have no crowds. Armed drones are increasingly becoming part of the law enforcement arsenal and it sometimes appears as if the police are copying the military as a model of “how to do it.”

The various levels of government that make up the United States seem to be preparing for some kind of insurrection, which may indeed be the case somewhere down the road if the frustrations of the public are not somehow dealt with. But there is another factor that has, in my opinion, become a key element in the militarization of the police in the United States. That would be the role of the security organs of the state of Israel in training American cops, a lucrative business that has developed since 9/11 and which inter alia gives the “students” a whole different perspective on the connection of the police with those who are being policed, making the relationship much more one of an occupier and the occupied.

The engagement of American police forces with Israeli security services began modestly enough in the wake of 9/11. The panic response in the United States to a major terrorist act led to a search for resources to confront what was perceived as a new type of threat that normal law-and-order training did not address.

Israel, which, in its current occupation of much of Palestine and the Golan Heights as well as former stints in Gaza, southern Lebanon and Sinai, admittedly has considerable experience in dealing with the resistance to its expansion manifested as what it describes as terrorism. Jewish organizations in the United States dedicated to providing cover for Israeli’s bad behavior, saw an opportunity to get their hooks into a sizable and respected community within the U.S. that was ripe for conversion to the Israeli point of view, so they began funding “exchanges.”

Since 2002 there have been hundreds of all-expenses-paid trips including officers from every major American city as well as state and local police departments. Some have been sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has also been directly funding trips since 2008, explaining that “As a people living under constant threat of attack, the Israelis are leading experts in security enforcement and response strategies.” The intent? To “learn” and “draw from the latest developments” so the American cops can “bring these methods back home to implement in their communities.”

AIPAC has several pages in its website dedicated to security cooperation between the two countries. It asks

“Did you know? In May 2010, 50 retired Generals and Admirals wrote to President Obama, highlighting the value of U.S. Israeli cooperation.”

It goes on to cite an Alabama sheriff who enthuses that

“There is no other country [Israel] that shares the same values and overarching goal to allow others to live in peace.”

Regarding airport security, it also quotes a U.S. “security expert” who states

“We should move even closer to an Israeli model where there’s more engagement with passengers…We’ve just stated to do that at TSA…”

Indeed. That’s called profiling and pre-boarding interrogations.

Even the federal government has gotten onto the Israel bandwagon, perhaps not a surprise given the number of Israel Firsters in Congress. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security established a special Office of International Affairs to “institutionalize the relationship between Israeli and American security officials.” The New York City Police Department has a branch in Israel and carries out frequent exchanges.

It should be noted from the git-go that Israel is no more knowledgeable about possible responses to acts of terror than is anyone else. The techniques employed to create physical barriers, to develop sources for intelligence gathering, and to train in tactical responses are quite familiar to anyone who has studied modern-style terrorism since it emerged in Western Europe in the 1970s.

Most countries that have a high or even moderate risk level deriving from terrorists, either domestic or foreign, have recruited and trained special police and paramilitary forces that are familiar with the basic techniques and are quite capable of responding. Ironically, even though the United States government and local police forces have tended to look at the “real pro” Israelis for guidance, state of the art resources for learning about how to deal with terror are available right here at home. JSOC has teams that are every bit as effective – and lethal – as anything the Israelis can muster and the CIA and FBI together know far more about terrorists and how they behave than do the ideologically driven Mossad and Shin Beth.

The American policemen who go on the “exchanges” are probably only dimly aware that what they are being shown is part of Israel’s military justice system, which has nothing to do with Israeli criminals, but instead is designed to keep the lid on the millions of Palestinians who live in what has become a virtual outdoor prison camp. It is an apartheid police state that uses deadly force as a form of crowd control. And the Palestinian former residents of the lands Israel now holds are the “terrorists” that Israel is protecting itself against.

You can bet that the American guests for their part clearly do not realize that they are being trained as prison guards and you also can be sure that they never catch so much as a glimpse of the 300 child prisoners that Israel continues to hold without charges.

Israel’s reputation for “dealing with” terrorism has in any event been glamorized by the Israel-friendly media and entertainment industry while also being promoted by Jewish organizations. It has meant in practical terms that many of the contract security firms operating at airports in the United States and Europe are Israeli. They have also infiltrated state Homeland Security agencies and corporate security in the U.S. Many of the Israeli companies with offices in the United States work closely with Mossad and might reasonably be considered arms of the Israeli government.

Where Israel really excels is in its willingness to kill large numbers of Arabs of all ages and genders using the excuse that they are terrorists. It does so with impunity because Israeli courts almost never hold the army and police accountable for whatever they do. It might reasonably be suggested that when American police officers go through their training in Israel they acquire at least a bit of that attitude from their instructors.

Recognizing that Israel is not exactly a model to be emulated when it comes to the human rights of its Palestinian victims, there is alternative viewpoint which suggests that American law enforcement might just be learning the wrong things when it travels to Israel. Amnesty International asks 

“With Whom are Many U.S. Police Departments Training? With Chronic Human Rights Violator Israel.”

It notes that last August when the Department of Justice documented numerous violations by the Baltimore Police Department the report failed to mention that policemen from that city had received training in Israel.

Amnesty makes clear what we are dealing with when our policemen are being trained –

“…military, security and police systems that have racked up documented human rights violations for years…carrying out extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, using ill treatment and torture (even against children). Suppression of freedom of expressions/association, including through government surveillance, and excessive use of force against peaceful protesters.”

And actually, it is worse than that. The American visitors will be welcomed to contemplate the Potemkin village miracle of a democratic, multicultural, inclusive, clever Israel. They will not be allowed to see how the soldiers training them, representatives of “the most moral army in the world,” force Palestinian women to give birth at military checkpoints and watch their babies die, shoot Palestinian teenagers as they are running away for throwing stones, drag men and women out of their beds and kill them while terrorizing their children and dragging them off to jail during midnight raids.

Amnesty’s article documents many of the abuses by Israeli security forces and concludes that using

“Public or private funds spent to train our domestic police in Israel should concern all of us. Many of the abuses [in the U.S.] parallel violations by Israeli military, security and police officials.”

I would also add that the training provided by JINSA, ADL and the AJC is also partly on the American taxpayers’ dime as the organizations are all tax exempt.

Finally, Israel’s ability to market its state sponsored brutality has even become a form of light entertainment. A company in Israel called Caliber 3 that was set up by a reserve colonel in the Israeli army is offering what has been described as a two hour “boot camp” counter-terrorism experience. It includes a life size target consisting of a man in Arab attire holding a cell phone. The mostly Jewish American audience ponders if he should be shot, but the instructors eventually intervene and declare that he does not quite meet the standard for being killed. Visitors are also treated to simulations of Israeli commandos taking down terrorists and can even shoot live rounds from a semi-automatic weapon at a firing range. Ironically, the Caliber 3 gated compound camp is located in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc on the West Bank, land that was stolen from the Palestinians.

Featured image is from the author.

The ongoing problems with the F-35 and other military programs, stemming from virtually unlimited budgets, underline the inefficiency of the American military-industrial complex (MIC). In contrast, Moscow develops armaments capable of counteracting the latest technological advances of the US at minimal cost.

One of a state’s most insidious mechanisms is the inefficiency of the military-industrial sector. When looking at the world’s first superpower, this becomes all the more pronounced. Still, the ongoing problems highlighted by the F-35 program and failed missile interceptions by ABM systems are a good demonstration of how inefficiency in the US military sector has risen to worrying levels.

The main cause of these issues is related to the huge military-industrial complex that employs hundreds of thousands Americans directly or indirectly. The unhealthy composition of this power conglomerate often employs a revolving door involving politicians and board members from large arms-producing companies. This situation raises questions about corruption as well as a number of obvious conflicts of interest.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Congress is increasingly willing to grant what almost amount to blank checks to finance military budgets, numbering in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The second factor that impacts negatively on the efficiency of the MIC is the propaganda to which the entire American system is subjected. Looking at the example of think-tanks, they are all practically funded, directly or indirectly, by the military-related industries or foreign governments (especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel). The role of think-tanks is to influence policymakers, creating a common view between components of the (deep) state.

A problem arises when almost all experts and politicians participating in these Washington based think tanks come from federal agencies or industries tied to the military through contracts worth billions of dollars. Hardly offering any dissent from official or mainstream opinions on issue ranging from Russia to the F-35, politicians, experts and journalists all agree that Russia constitutes the main danger and that the F-35 program does not have any critical issues and is actually a superior weapon, two lies in full swing. Think-tanks and their guests promote an erroneous narrative that seeds, nourishes and sustains the problems and inefficiencies that beset military systems and Washington’s strategic vision. They offer no criticism, no change of policy, only echo chambers of lies and propaganda.

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) underway on its own power for the first time while leaving Naval Station Newport, Virginia (USA), on 8 April 2017. (Source: U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to the think-tanks and the revolving doors involving board members of MIC companies and Congress and Senate members, a major problem concerns the timing of projects and the contemporary technological advancements of geopolitical opponents. The cost of projects such as the F-35, the ABM system, and the new supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, have reached astronomical figures, following decades of development. The immediate consequences are the obsolescence of these systems once they come into service, especially when compared with weapon systems developed, or being developed, by countries such as China and especially Russia.

Despite the fact that US spending is unmatched in the world, amounting to about half of that of all countries combined, the weapons systems of competitors often cost less and are more efficient.

The survival of the MIC is inextricably tied to the US dollar and its role in the world as a reserve currency. With almost $700 billion a year worth of military spending, it is easy to reach a nationwide debt of over $21 trillion. The only way to sustain this kind of debt is due to the credibility of the dollar itself.

The reason why US treasury bills are considered safe and a great way for a foreign investor to diversify in long-term assets, despite $21 trillion of debt, is because of US credibility and the dollar’s status as reserve currency. The dollar, being the main global reserve currency, continues to be purchased by foreign countries to pay for commodities as well as for trade between each other. Just as the MIC warns breathlessly of all the dangers and threats through propaganda, resulting in enormous investments in unnecessary and obsolete weapon systems, the dollar is also printed by the Fed without any fear of devaluation or inflation risk, providing Washington with virtually unlimited funds for defense budgets and the ability to carry out massive wars. If you combine the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and add to it the cost of the F-35, it amounts to more than $7 trillion. It is an almost incomprehensible figure that is at the same emblematic of how the global economic system is at the service of American warfare imperialism.

In response to this dysfunctional system, we find a diametrically opposite situation in Russia. With a budget that is about one-tenth that of the US, but with the need to keep pace with the world’s most powerful war machine (at least in terms of quantity; we can discuss quality at another time), Moscow has had to optimize costs to get the greatest possible benefits from its weapon systems. This has led to a much more logical management of the Russian military apparatus.

By carefully observing the most important American technological advances (fifth-generation aircraft like the F-35, new ICBMs and aircraft carriers), it is easy to discern two asymmetric strategies by Moscow, one defensive and other offensive. With the defensive one, for each American action there is a corresponding Russian response. The F-35 and fifth-generation aircraft become easy targets thanks to complex systems such as the S-400, the future S-500, and cutting-edge radar technology. The Gerald Ford supercarrier becomes a simple target to hit if attacked by a Russian supersonic Zircon missile (ready to be put into production in 2018). The S-500s will also be able to intercept any kind of ICBM directed at Russian territory, thus succeeding in sealing Russian skies, a goal the United States is light years away from achieving.

Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat Nuclear Missile (Source: nationalinterest.org)

In terms of offensive strategy, Moscow’s capabilities are even more impressive. Emphasis must be placed on the most effective system possible, the SS-28, better known as the Sarmat, a nuclear missile capable of modifying its own trajectory in descent, accelerating or decelerating, thus becoming impossible to intercept for American ABM systems. It is thought that the overall power of a single Sarmat missile (armed with up to 24 MIRVs) is likely to reduce to ashes an area as large as Texas or France. It is the ultimate deterrent weapon.

Other programs related to the development of fifth-generation aircraft or aircraft bombers (PAK-FA and PAK-DA) have slowed down to facilitate the upgrading of aircraft such as the Su-34 and Tu-160, with the Su-35 already within the category of 4++ generation. Such choices can only be made through an military-industrial system that favors the strategies of the nation and not that enrichment of individuals, corrupt shareholders or politicians.

Finally, an operating mix capable of providing defense or attack performance certainly involves cyberspace and, more generally, electronic warfare (EW). Of these systems we know little to nothing; they are secrets jealousy guarded by the Russian defense ministry. But from what many experts write, Moscow could be far ahead of their American colleagues in this field.

It is no exaggeration to say that the technological gap between Russia and the United States is being overcome by the need for Moscow to efficiently optimize its key weapons systems. The main problem for the United States concerns its maintenance of the status of military superpower. The continued issuance of dollar-denominated bonds, the use of the dollar as the main reserve currency, provokes a dangerous sequence that allows the US to print unlimited amounts of money, therefore being able to invest incredible amounts of money in old and vulnerable weapons systems.

The blatant squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of two decades, without anyone ever being held to account for it, has produced enormous damage to the reliability and effectiveness of most of the advanced American military systems and those still in the process of being developed. The military-industrial complex continues to spend large amounts of taxpayers’ money without fulfilling the need for concrete or tangible results. Dozens of failed projects costing tens of billions of dollars have ended up allowing competitors to close the gap enjoyed by US military superiority.

A new era is opening up, one where the United States will no longer possess military and technical superiority over its geopolitical opponents in all domains. This will certainly bare consequences for Washington’s present and future strategy of power projection, possibly deterring the US from further engaging in failed policies, leaving countries completely destroyed and millions of lives lost.

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

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Featured image is from the author.

Late this afternoon the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed HR 3364, the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.” The vote was 419-3, with the only nays coming from Republicans Justin Amash (R-MI), John Duncan (R-TN), and Thomas Massie (R-KY). 

The bill adds additional sanctions on Russia as punishment for the as-yet-unproven claims that Moscow somehow interfered in US elections to help secure a victory for Donald Trump. It also seeks to punish Russia for its supposed involvement in Ukraine — ignoring that unrest in Ukraine stems from the US-initiated coup against the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovich in 2014.

The legislation ties the president’s hands in an unprecedented way, as should Trump decide within his Constitutional authority as Executive to pursue a foreign policy requiring the canceling of sanctions he is not free to do so. He must write to Congress asking permission to end the sanctions and give convincing reason why Congress should agree. Congress then has 30 days to consider the President’s request during which time he is forbidden from taking any action on the matter.

It President Trump does not veto this bill, it will signify that he has essentially given up on his presidency. At least when it comes to foreign policy. Will the bill for such a surrender come due should he decide to seek a second term?
One little-noted part of the typically difficult to digest piece of legislation is a section (231) that imposes sanctions on “persons” who are “engaging in transactions with the intelligence or defense sectors of the Government of the Russian Federation.”

What does this mean? It is unclear but suspicious. In Section 221 of Part 2 of Subtitle A of Title 2 where terms are defined for the Russian sanctions part of the legislation there are entries defining “person” and “United States person.” For the purposes of the bill: “PERSON.—The term ‘person’ means an individual or entity.” A “United States Person” is:

(A) a United States citizen or an alien law fully admitted for permanent residence to the United States; or
(B) an entity organized under the laws of the United States or of any jurisdiction within the United States, including a foreign branch of such an entity.

The bill does not make clear whether one can be both a “person” and a “United States person” at the same time. Indeed there does not appear to be any exclusivity suggesting that a “United States person” is not also a “person” for the purpose of this section of the bill.

Why is this interesting? Director of Central Intelligence Mike Pompeo in an April speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies condemned Russian state-funded television station RT as “Russia’s primary propaganda outlet.” In May, Pompeo said that RT attempts to “muddle” Russian intelligence’s involvement in Wikileaks. In January the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian involvement in US elections intensively focused on the actions of RT.

It is clear that Pompeo and other hawks in the Trump Administration, along with Beltway neocons, have long endeavored to tie RT to Russian intelligence. Might this bill not open the door for sanctions against “persons” including possibly US citizens who are employed by — or even appear on — RT?
The bill requires the President to:

…impose 5 or more of the sanctions described in section 235 with respect to a person the President determines knowingly, on or after such date of enactment, engages in a significant transaction with a person that is part of, or operates for or on behalf of, the defense or intelligence sectors of the Government of the Russian Federation, including the Main Intelligence Agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.

The sanctions include prohibition of “persons” so determined from engaging in financial transactions with “United States financial institutions” under certain circumstances.

So do we see the beginning of a crackdown on RT buried in the obscure language of this legislation?

The legislation is clearly interested in information warfare. In fact it appropriates a quarter of a billion dollars for something called a “Countering Russian Influence Fund,” which will among other meddling serve to prop up foreign media outlets whose editorial line is in sync with US foreign policy. In short, the US taxpayer will subsidize “fake news” produced on foreign soil and then likely broadcast directly or indirectly back to the US to further propagandize the people who pay the bills.

It will also fund “non-governmental” organizations in targeted countries who act in the service of US foreign policy goals. It is the weaponization of the non-profit sector, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

The government of Russia has been much-criticized over legislation to force transparency on foreign-funded political organizations operating on Russian soil, but of course United States law is far more restrictive when it comes to foreign funds seeking to influence the electoral process (unless you happen to operate something called “The Clinton Foundation”).

This massive appropriation of our tax dollars will no doubt enrich Russia-targeting organizations in places like Poland and the Baltics. Look for more “experts” warning of Russian “aggression” every time a NATO exercise takes place within feet of Russia’s borders.

In all, this bill represents the massive failure of the US Congress and entire foreign policy establishment to come up with a coherent idea of the US place in a post-post Cold War world, where various US wars of choice (and deception) have cost thousands of American lives, millions of foreign lives, and trillions of dollars. A new Cold War, which this legislation injects with a shot of adrenaline, only serves to further underscore the absolute intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of Washington’s “expert” foreign policy elite.

The ultimate irony, however, is that like most of what Congress does, the bill is largely irrelevant. The idea that Europe is going to shoot itself in the foot again by going along with another cockamamie Washington sanctions scheme is getting harder to believe. The break may not come immediately, but Europe is clearly losing its patience with Washington’s brain-dead neocons. The sooner the better.

Featured image is from the author.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” –George Orwell

With Germany being one of the acknowledged leaders of the European Union, the German people — though still haunted by the spectre of a Nazi past while being blackmailed by a pernicious “Holocaust Industry” — nonetheless have a responsibility to themselves and the rest of humanity to unconditionally condemn and oppose any racial ideology that asserts its own people are “superior” and/or “God’s chosen.” This onerous responsibility has recently become even more pressing as a consequence of the world leadership vacuum created by the United States — an already morally decrepit superpower subservient to the dictates of an Apartheid Jewish State — which recently further diminished its world standing and relinquished any semblance of national character and fortitude by electing a deranged buffoon for President.

In fairness, however, the reality of the U.S. now resembling George Orwell’s 1984 — with a government persecuting individualism and independent thinking as a “thoughtcrime” to be enforced by a “Thought Police” [AIPAC] — cannot be blamed entirely on the unstatesmanlike buffoonery of the incumbent President. This is because subservience to the pro-Israel lobby has over a period of many decades become the hallmark of successive U.S. governments as has just occurred with the condemnation of a State Department report blaming Israel for terrorism and claiming that Palestinians rarely incite attacks.

Such U.S. subservience was also confirmed by a group of U.S. Senators who co-sponsored S.720 — also known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act — that would make it a felony for Americans to support the boycott of Israel. This outrageous assault on civil liberties prompted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to publish a letter from which the following is an excerpt:

“The bill seeks to expand the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export Import Bank Act of 1945 which, among other things, prohibit U.S. persons from complying with a foreign government’s request to boycott a country friendly to the U.S. The bill would amend those laws to bar U.S. persons from supporting boycotts against Israel, including its settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, conducted by international governmental organisations, such as the United Nations and the European Union. It would also broaden the law to include penalties for simply requesting information about such boycotts. Violations would be subject to a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison. We take no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country, for that matter. However, we do assert that the government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, punish U.S. persons based solely on their expressed political beliefs.”

The German people — along with other Europeans including the not-so-independent Brexit British — have also continued to permit their respective governments and corporate media outlets to snuff out any criticism of Israel with even the recently elected President Macron asserting that France would “not surrender” to anti-Israel rhetoric and that anti-Zionism is a new type of anti-Semitism. So now in our Brave New World condemning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli Jews is anti-Semitic. Whatever happened to France’s national motto of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la Mort (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or death). 

Though some uncertainty may still exist as to just how much the German people back in Hitler’s time knew about the atrocities being perpetrated by the Nazi regime, there can be no doubt whatsoever that today’s citizens along with their political and religious leaders have been fully conversant — for almost seven decades — with the recorded and irrefutable evidence of Israel’s inhumane crimes against the Palestinian people whose children are deliberately targeted with callous disregard for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which Israel hypocritically signed in July 1990 and ratified in October 1991.

Despite the glaring reality of such evidence, recent German generations — still very much guilt-ridden from endless reminders of the Holocaust — continue apologising for the sins of their forefathers; continue paying vast sums in compensation; continue flagellating themselves with obligatory acts and pronouncements of contrition; continue supporting an Apartheid and virtually rogue Jewish state hell-bent on ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people and stealing their land; and continue to supply Israel with substantially discounted military equipment including three nuclear-capable submarines whose acquisition involved the usual Israeli propensity for subterfuge and corrupt shenanigans.

(http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.801881)

Germany’s customary adoration, benevolence, and subservience — due to a fundamental German foreign policy conviction that, given the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War Two, the country should refrain from criticising Israel — is, however, no longer an inevitable certainty because Germans are beginning to realise the importance of not allowing their historical guilt to lead them to accept Israeli government policies that are widely divergent from the aims and values which both countries profess to wholeheartedly embrace. 

Yet despite a recent expression of alleged “great concern” over Israeli settlement plans — including Israeli decisions to build settlements inside Palestinian neighbourhoods, in East Jerusalem and around it — from the German Foreign Ministry, the German government like most others in the West has again miserably failed to back such concern with any positive or punitive action. Germany’s continuing failure to condemn and take action against blatant Israeli violations constitutes contemptible complicity tantamount to the criminality for which Nazis were made accountable at the Nuremberg Trials.

The German people must therefore by their own example take the lead in helping to disengage Europe from U.S.-led subservience to Israel because it is the height of amoral hypocrisy to wring their hands over past Nazi atrocities while simultaneously tolerating the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people as has been and is still occurring right under their very noses. Furthermore, Europeans must seriously endeavour to regain some degree of self-respect and genuine independence by unconditionally refusing to be blackmailed into silent toleration of Israeli crimes against humanity. They can do that by starting to recognise the spiteful contempt with which Israel regards them as was recently made very apparent with a withering attack by Prime Minister Netanyahu who during closed-door meeting of eastern European leaders in Budapest, arrogantly asserted that the European Union would wither and die if it did not change its policy towards Israel. Which presumably means tolerating Israel’s criminality with subservient silence.

“There are two life-forces in the world I know: Jewish and Gentile, ours and yours . . . I do not believe that the primal difference between gentile and Jew is reconcilable. You and we may come to an understanding, never to a reconciliation. There will be irritation between us as long as we are in intimate contact. For nature and constitution and vision divide us from all of you forever – not a mere conviction, not a mere language, not a mere difference of national or religious allegiance.” –Maurice Samuel, You Gentiles

William Hanna is a freelance writer with published books the Hiramic Brotherhood of the Third Temple, The Tragedy of Palestine and its Children, and Hiramic Brotherhood: Ezekiel’s Temple Prophesy. Purchase information, sample chapters, other articles, videos, and contact details at:

(http://www.hiramicbrotherhood.com/)

Featured image is from the author.

The State Department’s top lawyers are systematically removing the word “genocide” to describe the Islamic State’s mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies.

Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan support.

These efforts guarantee that Obama-era policies that worked to exclude Iraq’s Christian and other minority religious populations from key U.S. aid programs remain in place, the activists said.

Richard Visek, who was appointed by President Obama as head the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser in October 2016, is behind the decision to remove the word “genocide” from official documents, according to Nina Shea, an international human rights lawyer who directs the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“I don’t think for a minute it’s a bureaucratic decision—it’s ideological,” said Shea, who also spent 12 years as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or CIRF, from 1999 to 2012.

A State Department spokesman on Monday said he would look into the matter and respond.

The latest moves from the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser appear aimed at rolling back then-Secretary of State John Kerry‘s March 2016 genocide determination. Kerry’s much-anticipated genocide designation came after months of equivocation and detailed documentation by interested parties that the Islamic State is responsible for genocide against Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.

It was one of the few times in history that the United States designated ongoing mass murders against ethnic or religious minorities as meeting the legal definition of genocide laid out in a 1948 treaty. That agreement requires signatories, including the United States, to take steps to “prevent and punish” genocide.

A bipartisan group of Capitol Hill lawmakers and activists, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R., Ala.) were hoping the designation would help direct millions of dollars in U.S. relief funds to Christian, Yazidi, and other persecuted religious minority communities.

ISIS murders and kidnappings have decimated the Christian population in Iraq, which numbered between 800,000 and 1.4 million in 2002, reducing it to fewer than 250,000 now. Without action, activists and charities say, Christians could disappear completely from Iraq in the near future.

After meeting with Pope Francis in May, President Trump vowed to do everything in his power to defend and protect the “historic Christian communities of the Middle East.”

Activists and Catholic leaders are now calling on Trump to turn the rhetoric into action on the ground and help get U.S. aid to these persecuted communities trying to rebuild their homes and their lives in Iraq.

These advocates want the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Nations to allow church groups and other religious-affiliated relief organizations to receive government aid, a practice prohibited during the Obama administration.

In early May, Congress allocated more than $1.3 billion in funds for refugee assistance and included specific language to try to ensure that at least some of the money is used to assist persecuted religious minorities, including Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims—all groups the State Department deemed victims of genocide in 2016.

Nevertheless, only $10 million is specifically earmarked for Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities. The Trump administration has until the end of September, when the stop-gap funding bill runs out, to ensure it distributes the funds in the most effective way.

“There is congressional legislation … that calls for the U.S. government to stop excluding the genocide-targeted minorities in Iraq,” Shea said. “This has been a pervasive problem that this aid has not been getting to them.”

“Iraq is home to one of the four largest remaining Christian communities in the Middle East that are about to become extinct,” she said. “Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama made catastrophic mistakes that left these communities on the brink of extinction, but it’s going to be on President Trump’s watch as to whether they survive or become extinct—it’s going to be his policies that make or break the situation.”

Instead of going through Iraqi government agencies or other internationally recognized groups, activists say the best way to get the aid to Christians and other persecuted minorities is through local Iraqi Catholic dioceses and parishes and other religious organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus, which have spent years on the ground working with these communities.

The money would be specifically designated for relief efforts for these persecuted communities and could not be used for other purposes, such as church-building or more general church operations.

Groups say the special allocation is needed because Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities often do not go to Muslim-dominated refugee camps out of fear they will be targeted, killed, or kidnapped.

After the Iraqi army retook Mosul from the Islamic State with the help of U.S. forces, much international attention has focused on helping rebuild the Sunni community so that ISIS cannot regain its influence there through sleeper cells or other supportive Islamic terrorist groups.

Shea said Christians will also play a key role in stabilizing the area in and around Mosul if they have enough aid to rebuild their homes in the area and other parts of Northern Iraq.

They could also combat Iran’s colonization of northern Iraq, where pro-Iranian militias are buying up Christian land in the area to try to broaden their influence.

“Christians and Yazidis need to be able to go back to their towns just to hold them—it’s a big national security priority for the U.S.,” she said.

Susan Crabtree is a senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon. She is a veteran Washington reporter who has covered the White House and Congress over the past two decades. She has written for the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, the Hill newspaper, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly.

Featured image: Marawi City ground zero

Covering the recent battle for the city of Marawi on Mindanao Island in the Southern Philippines, the Western media has been grossly exaggerating unconfirmed reports and rumors. It has been spreading twisted information and ‘facts’.

At the beginning of July, I visited Mindanao as one of only a few foreigners allowed inside the besieged city of Marawi and to its surrounding area.

I spoke to local people, to the IDPs – those who managed to escape the city taken over by the jihadists. I also managed to discuss the situation with the highest commanders of the military in charge of the combat, including General Ramiro Rey and Lt. Colonel Jo-Ar Herrera. I encountered many soldiers, civil servants, and relief workers.

My contacts in the capital informed me via text messages that I had been “red-flagged,” clearly, by the pro-US faction in the Philippine military. So before my presence was finally cleared from Manila, I was detained and held in a provisional military base in the city of Saguiaran. Here I was “softly” interrogated by military intelligence. A few steps away, a howitzer was firing artillery toward ISIS positions in Marawi, some 10 kilometers distant.

“So you believe the United States is responsible for spreading terrorism all over the world,” I was asked late at night by one of the officers, point blank, while local starlet was imitating old Chuck Berry’s hit “Johnny B. Goode” on TV, sound blasted all over the barracks. It was clear that someone ‘behind the scenes’ was busy studying my published work.

Driving through Marawi

The Western establishment media and various servile NGOs (including those which are “defending human rights” in several rebellious and independent-minded countries) consistently demonize President Duterte, an anti-imperialist, progressive leader who enjoys well over 80 percent approval rating. It is no secret in the Philippines there are two distinct factions inside the military – one supports the president and his drive for independence from the West. The other, which is trained and often corrupted by Washington and other Western capitals, would love to see him go.

The pro-Western fraction obviously wanted me out, detained, perhaps even disappeared. The other one that stands by its president wanted me to see the truth, even to be allowed into Marawi.

A final decision was made late at night in Manila. I was released and granted permission to work in the besieged city. But even when the top commanders personally called the camp, there was, at least for a while, apparent reluctance to let me go.

My first reaction after visiting the Marawi front was one of shock and outrage. What I witnessed was fundamentally different from what has repeatedly been said by most of the Western mass media outlets, as well as pro-Western local news channels broadcasting from Manila.

It is evident, right from the start, that Marawi is not “totally destroyed,” as has been reported. Most of it is standing and standing firm. I would estimate that only between 20 and 30 percent of the houses and buildings, (most of them in the wealthy core center of the city) have sustained heavy damage.

It was explained to me during the presentation by top army commanders that the ISIS-related jihadists began their offensive on May 23rd 2017 and their plan was to take full control of the town by the time Ramadan was to begin (May 26th). The military spoiled their plans; it counter-attacked and managed to contain the terrorists in just one neighborhood, retaining or regaining control of all the other ‘barangays.’

High quality tents for IDPs

Undoubtedly there were heavy losses, and, because of the palpable sense of fear after tremendous brutality unleashed by the terrorists, a substantial movement of IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). But it was never 400,000 people escaping the area, as reported in the West, but approximately 200,000 (the number once peaked at about 300,000 for a short time).

There has been no “indiscriminate bombing” of the civilians. I witnessed both incoming and outgoing howitzer fire and also very limited bombing from the air; it was all targeted and mostly precise, aiming at the position of the terrorists. As in all other war zones where I have been working, I refused any protection, including helmets and bulletproof vests. That allowed me to remain more mobile. I did manage to come ‘very close’ to the front. It was clear the fighting and bombing were strictly contained to one area, no more than one-kilometer square. Even there, the mosques and almost all other buildings and houses were still standing, as is demonstrated on my photographs.

Anti-Duterte NGOs and many Western governments claim that they ‘worry’ about the martial law imposed on Mindanao Island. I was told that in and around Marawi (or anywhere else on the Island), the martial law carried no brutal consequences. Even the curfew (9PM-5AM) is laxly implemented.

General Rey – Head of Joint Task Force Group Ranao

Brigadier General Ramiro Rey (head of the Joint Task Force Group, Ranao) explained to me in Marawi City:

“The difference between this martial law and those that were imposed during the reign of Ferdinand Marcos is that now the military is mainly doing real fighting while providing assistance to the civilians. I absolutely don’t interfere with the work of local elected government officials. I’m actually encouraging them to do their job as before, asking them to contact me only when my assistance is needed. I never took, and I don’t intend to take, control of the area.”

Local government officials and volunteers working for various relief agencies and NGO’s operating in the area have confirmed what General Rey said.

During my work in the conflict zone, I detected no fear among the residents. The relationship between the army and civilians was clearly friendly and cordial. As the military convoys were moving between the cities of Illigan and Marawi, both children and adults were smiling, waving, some cheering the soldiers.

In the camps housing the IDPs, there was almost unanimous consensus: while many citizens of Mindanao Island in general and the Marawi area in particular would most likely welcome more autonomy from Manila, during this ongoing and brutal conflict almost all local people have been supportive of the military and government efforts.

“We hope that both Filipino and foreign jihadi cadres would soon be crushed,” was an almost unanimous statement coming from the local people.

The Military Perspective

In the cities of Iligan and Marawi I was shown detailed maps clearly indicating positions of the ISIS and the military.

Both Lt. Colonel Jun Abad from Ranao Camp and the commanding officer, General Rey, gave me a clear and detailed briefing. As of July 3rd, the Agus River represented the ‘borderline’ between the ISIS-held area and the zone liberated and controlled by the army.

General Rey explained during our meeting in the Municipality of Marawi City (now the complex is also serving as the headquarters of the war theatre):

“The ISIS wants to establish their state on the island of Mindanao – an Islamic caliphate – right here in the Province of Lanao del Sur.”

But that’s not what the majority of local people want. Before President Duterte came to power little over one year ago, social situation in many parts of Mindanao was desperate and therefore there was at least some support for radical ‘solutions’. Since then, however, things changed dramatically. Healthcare, education and public housing are improving. Indiscriminate mining by multi-national companies has been deterred. People here; as well as in almost all other parts of the Philippines finally feel hopeful and optimistic about their future.

This converts into great support for both the government and the military.

Filipino soldier going to action with second-hand US helmet

There is no doubt the entire city will be freed, soon, most likely in July or August. The only reason why it did not happen yet is that the terrorists are using hostages, both Christians and Muslims, as human shields. President Duterte, General Rey, and other civilian and military officials are trying to avoid unnecessary human losses.

Cultural topography of the area is also very complex. Near the front line I was told by one of the top commanding army officers:

“We could take the city in just one day, but there would be great civilian casualties. The houses in this area are very sturdy; they are 2-3 stories high and fortified, as there are constant and brutal family feuds, called ‘rido’, raging here, and have been for centuries.”

But to delay the liberation of Marawi is also very dangerous.

“The terrorists began using captured women as sex slaves,” explained Major MalvinLigutan, standing in front of a temporary military base in Saguiaran.

Despite all the horrors of the Marawi war, the army refused to use brutal tactics, even after it found out that various local citizens clearly miscalculated and before the conflict began, offered substantial support to the ISIS-related terrorists.

Captain John Mark Silva Onipig clarified:

“These people belonging to the ISIS are not only terrorists, but they are also criminals. They were dealing in drugs… And some local people knew that… Actually, locals knew quite a lot; they knew about the presence of the terrorists in the area long before all this started, but they never reported it to the authorities.”

“How did the terrorists get hold of so many weapons?” I wanted to know.

“In the Philippines, those who have money can buy as many weapons as they want on the black market.”

The situation is extremely sensitive as there is clearly the involvement of foreign fighters. On June 30th, in Saguiaran, Major MalvinLigutan admitted, hesitantly:

“In one of the safe houses, we found passports issued in Indonesia, Malaysia and several Arab countries.”

A month ago I wrote an essay exposing the complex network of Western-sponsored terrorism in Asia (“Washington Jihad Express: Indonesia, Afghanistan, Syria and Philippines”). I argued that in the 1980’s, Indonesian and Malaysian jihadists, indoctrinated by the Southeast Asian brand of extreme anti-Communism, went to fight in Afghanistan against the socialist governments of Karmal, and then Mohammad Najibullah, with the ultimate goal of destroying the Soviet Union.

Hardened and further brainwashed, they returned home to Southeast Asia, participated in several ethnic strives and pogroms (including those in Ambon and Poso), and then, in order to ‘bridge the generational gap’, embarked on the coaching of a young generation of terrorists, who eventually ended up fighting in Syria and recently in the Philippines.

My essay was full of facts, and I put into it various testimonies of Southeast Asian academics, thinkers, and even of one active and prominent ‘jihadi cadre’ who is now living in Jakarta.

In the Indonesian city of Bandung, Prof. ImanSoleh, a professor at the Faculty of Social and Political Science (University of Padjadjaran- UNPAD) offered his take on why the West is now so obsessed with destabilizing and smearing the Philippines and its current rebellious administration:

“Since World War Two, the U.S. was afraid of so-called ‘domino effects’. Among other things that are now happening in the Philippines under president Duterte, the government is curbing activities of the multi-national mining conglomerates, and the West cannot accept that. Philippines are putting its environmental concerns above the short-term profits! For the millions of left-wing activists here in Indonesia and all over Southeast Asia, President Duterte is a role model.”

It is no secret that the West punishes such ‘bad paradigms’ brutally and decisively.

Prof. Soleh continued:

“I think all that is happening is not just to ‘destabilize’ the Philippines, but also because the country has conflict areas that could be ‘nurtured’. The best example is the predominantly Muslim island of Mindanao, vs. the rest of the Philippines, which is predominantly a Catholic country…”

The West is regularly using ‘jihad,’ directly and indirectly, to destabilize socialist, anti-imperialist, and just patriotic countries and governments. In the past, it managed to ruin countries like Afghanistan, Indonesia (1965) and Syria. Many believe that the Philippines is the latest addition to the ‘hit-list.’

The China & Russia Connection

As Drei Toledo, a prominent Philippine journalist, educator and pro-Duterte activist, originally from Mindanao, explained:

“The reason why the West is hostile toward President Duterte is simple: he is working hard to reach a peace agreement with China, a country that is seen by Washington as its arch-enemy. Another ‘adversary of the West,’ Russia, is admired by Duterte and increasingly by his people. Recently, Russia and the Philippines signed a defense agreement. The president is also forging close ties with Cuba, particularly in the area of health… Before Duterte became our President, poverty by design in Philippines was restored and perpetuated by the U.S. and Malaysia-controlled Cojuangco-Aquino clan.

Foreign and local entities that have long benefited financially from Philippines being a weak state are now threatened overwhelmingly by President Duterte’s unifying agenda to create a socialist system in the Philippines.”

Ms. Toledo pointed her accusative finger at Malaysia:

“Malaysia benefits from Mindanao being in a perpetual state of chaos and conflict because this means we can never reclaim oil-rich Sabah.”

She also doesn’t spare Indonesia and its sinister political (anti-socialist and anti-Communist) as well as economic interests:

“As exposed by Rigoberto D. Tiglao, a Filipino diplomat and writer, Indonesian magnate AnthoniSalim, not only does have total control or substantial stakes in local mainstream media papers and networks, his conglomerate in Philippines is also based on telecoms, power, water distribution, and other public utilities.”

Or more precisely: it is based on making sure that ‘public utilities’ will never become truly ‘public’, remaining in private hands. Salim’s ‘empire’ already brought great damage to India, particularly to West Bengal where, some argue, because of allowing it to operate and to implement its brutal feudal-capitalist practices, the CPI (M) (Communist Party of India – Marxist) managed to thoroughly disgust local voters and to lose power.

The Human Cost

Nobody could deny the gravity of the situation.

I witnessed exhausted glances of the people from Marawi, now living in a rescue center built on the land of the town hall of Saguiaran.

“Yesterday two infants died,” I’m told by Amer Hassan, a student volunteer from Mindanao State University (MSU).

The reason was “different water, malnutrition, exhaustion…”

I wanted to know more, and Amer continues:

“People are still in shock… They can’t believe what is happening. Especially those whose houses were destroyed; those who lost their relatives, everything…”

While the West is constantly criticizing, does it provide help? Amer just shrugs his shoulders:

“There is no foreign help coming… Almost all that we have here comes from Manila, either from the government or local agencies. Duterte is working very hard, helping our people.”

Mimbalawag family haunted by horrid memories

A family of three, Camal Mimbalawag, his wife Ima and one-month-old baby Mohammad, is squeezed into a tiny space at the center. Their memories are bleak. Ima gives her account almost mechanically:

“We were in Marawi during the first stage of the attack. I was pregnant, ready to give birth. We were in the city hall when ISIS attacked… They erected checkpoints; divided people into groups… they pointed guns at us… They asked: ‘Muslim or not?’…and ‘If Muslim, then recite ‘Shahadat.’ If cannot, you get killed or taken as a hostage… We saw corpses of those killed, eaten by dogs under the burning sun…”

The battle for the city of Marawi is raging. I face it from the highest floor of the building, destroyed by ISIS snipers, a place where an Australian reporter was hit just two days earlier.

It is not Aleppo, but it could have been, if not for the heroic counter-attack of the army.

Marawi is just one new chapter in the already long book of horrors of brutal religious terrorist acts, most of them directly or indirectly triggered by Western imperialism. In the first wave of its fight again the secular socialist Muslim governments, the West destabilized Iran, Egypt and Indonesia. Then came the Afghanistan ‘gambit’, followed by the arch-brutal destruction of Iraq and Libya. Then it was Syria’s turn.

‘Jihad’ is consistently used against Russia, China as well as the former Central Asian Soviet republics.

All this I described in my 840-page book: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”, but one can never write fast enough and fully catch up with the crimes committed by the West.

It is often easy to pinpoint Western involvement in the religious conflicts, particularly in such places as Afghanistan and Syria. In the Philippines, the link is still indirect, well concealed, but it certainly exists.

To rebel against the Western Empire is always a costly and bloody affair. It often leads to coups sponsored by Washington, London or Paris, and even to direct military conflicts, interventions and full-scale wars.

But by now, the people of the Philippines have had it ‘up to here’. They had enough of being submissive; enough of being plundered while remaining silent. They are assembling behind their president. Duterte’s popularity is still around 75%. The army is clearly winning the war against the hardened local and foreign jihadists. Relief operations are effective and well organized. Things are just fine.

Marawi – rooftop devastated by ISIS snipers

In only one year, the country has diametrically changed. To break the spirit of the liberated masses, to force people back onto their knees would be difficult, perhaps almost impossible, even if jihadi terror is unleashed brutally.

Almost 100 soldiers already lost their lives. Just one day before I encounter General Rey, six of his men were injured. It is said that 800 or more civilians died. Nobody knows exactly how many terrorists were killed. It is real war: tough and merciless as all wars are, but in this case, the ‘newly independent’ country is clearly winning.

It is an incredible sight: some soldiers, patriotic and determined, are still wearing those helmets with the US flags engraved into them, or some old Israeli bulletproof vests. But have no doubts: this is real, new country! Totally different Philippines and Marawi is one of the first and toughest tests it will have to endure.

The war united people and the army. No matter what the West and local corporate media are saying, most Filipinos know: this is their struggle; this is their president and their military fighting against something extremely foreign, violent and dreadful.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: Air strike on Sana’a in May 2015 (Source: Ibrahem Qasim/Wikipedia)

A day ago, a Saudi jet fired on a convoy of cars in Mawzaa district, Yemen. The strike is reported to have killed at least twenty civilians, many from the same family. These cars carried families who were fleeing renewed fighting near the city of Taiz in southwest Yemen. ‘Nowhere in Yemen is safe for civilians,’ said Shabia Mantoo of the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR). This incident, like others before it, says the UNHCR, ‘demonstrates the extreme dangers facing civilians in Yemen, particularly those attempting to flee violence, as they disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict.’

Saudi Arabia has made no official statement about the incident. It is likely that the Kingdom’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) will study the evidence available. Earlier atrocities have been looked at by JIAT, and – in an April 2017 report – they have admitted culpability for many of them. But in each case, the Saudi government says that it was either ‘unaware of the presence of the hospital’ that it struck or that civilian areas were being used by the anti-Saudi Yemeni coalition as military bases. It is impossible to deny the weight of evidence that shows Saudi bombardment of civilian areas – schools, hospitals, markets and residential areas. But they hesitate to take full responsibility.

The Arab world’s richest country, Saudi Arabia, went to war against the Arab world’s poorest country in 2015. In this period, Yemen – with a population of 25 million – has been substantially destroyed. The United Nations has been tracking the scale of the atrocity. The numbers are bewildering. Close to 20,000 people have died in this war, at least half of them civilians. The numbers of those injured could not be tabulated as half of Yemen’s hospitals and medical centers do not work. This means there is no accurate measure of those who come in to be treated.

Life for the survivors, thus far, has been perilous. For them, time drags on. The war continues endlessly. Suffering intensifies. Ancient maladies reappear. Amongst them is famine. Last week, the UN’s Special Envoy for the Secretary General for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh was in New York. He addressed the Security Council about the situation in Yemen. Mr. Cheikh said that 20 million of Yemen’s 25 million people are affected by the war. Most of them have little access to water, sanitation, hygiene and food. Seven million of them – including 2.3 million children under the age of five – are on the ‘cusp of famine.’ There are now 320,000 suspected cases of cholera in the country, with 1,700 confirmed deaths because of that disease.

Reports have come out of Yemen thanks to a combination of UN personnel, a few intrepid journalists, and Yemenis who have been trying to make their case – unsuccessfully – to the international community. When the UN tried to take three BBC journalists on an aid flight from Djibouti to Sana’a, the Saudi-backed forces prevented its arrival. Ben Lassoued, who works at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, said,

‘It’s unfortunate and partially explains why Yemen, which is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, is not getting much attention in international media.’

Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria are each the throes of a man-made famine, with twenty million people starving to death. No humanitarian intervention has been possible. There has been little concern from the powers that be. Pictures on social media of rail-thin children evoke pity, but no action. The UN has only been able to raise 43 per cent of the $6.27 billion it urgently needs to prevent the famine in these four countries. The United States has contributed $1.9 billion to this effort. But this is a fraction of what the US arms industry has been making by selling arms to Saudi Arabia, resupplying it as it bombs Yemen into famine. Most recently, when US President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, the US sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. This deal is in addition to a $350 billion arms sales agreement over ten years.

In other words, the United States is fueling a conflict that has resulted in war crimes and famine. It is responsible – by proxy – for this devastation.

In 2016, a UN panel of experts concluded that the Saudi war on Yemen documented grave violations of human rights that were ‘widespread and systematic.’ What is most chilling in that report is the documentation of Saudi strikes on transportation routes (both sea and air), storage facilities for holding food (including an Oxfam warehouse for food aid) and a water project funded by the European Union. The panel noted that it ‘documented three coalition attacks on local food and agricultural production sites.’ In 2015, Saudi aircraft destroyed the cranes and warehouses in the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah. With 90 per cent of Yemen’s food imported, the destruction of this infrastructure has been catastrophic. These strikes by the Saudis on food transportation and storage as well as on water purification plants have produced famine conditions in Yemen.

Mr. Cheikh’s report to the UN Security Council did not lift the rhetoric of its members. They sat silently. China’s ambassador – Liu Jieyi – is the President of the Security Council for July. He said that the mute members ‘do see eye to eye with each other on the gravity of the situation’ and that they support a ‘political solution as the only way to end the conflict in Yemen.’ Three UN-brokered peace talks have failed, with both sides rejecting the latest round in August of last year. Talks set to start in May of this year faltered. Discussions began in Oman, with confidence building measures on the table. The UN offered to give the port city of Hudaydah to a neutral country for oversight. Neither side could agree on who should take charge of this crucial city.

UNICEF’s Justin Forsyth went before a subcommittee of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. He noted that the crises in places such as Yemen deserve immediate attention. Funds for relief must be provided and a political solution to the crisis must be found. Neither the funds nor the political solution seems possible in these times. These wars seem endless. Their tragedies increase geometrically. But nonetheless Mr. Forsyth suggested that more is needed.

‘Conflict, extreme climate events like drought, environmental degradation, climate change, loss of livelihoods and poverty,’ Mr. Forsyth said, ‘all underpin these looming famines and crises. Unless we address these causes we will continue to get recurrent crises.’

Mr. Forsyth was bold to raise these deeper challenges. He left out some: an economic model that favors income inequality and that displaces human labor for machines and a callous disregard for the suffering of vast areas of the world that have not been able to move out of the shackles of colonial-era poverty. Still, the Senators nodded their heads. They are sagacious.

But then they move along. There are arms deals to cut. There are donors to talk to. So much to do in a day. So difficult to concentrate on every problem in the world. So hard to digest these stories of suffering. Perhaps an extra oxycodone with the next cup of coffee?

Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter(AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South(Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution(University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.

Featured image: Former US Senator Barry Goldwater (Source: NPR)

A leading psychiatry group has told its members they should not feel bound by a longstanding rule against commenting publicly on the mental state of public figures — even the president.

The statement, an email this month from the executive committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association to its 3,500 members, represents the first significant crack in the profession’s decades-old united front aimed at preventing experts from discussing the psychiatric aspects of politicians’ behavior. It will likely make many of its members feel more comfortable speaking openly about President Trump’s mental health.

The impetus for the email was “belief in the value of psychoanalytic knowledge in explaining human behavior,” said psychoanalytic association past president Dr. Prudence Gourguechon, a psychiatrist in Chicago.

“We don’t want to prohibit our members from using their knowledge responsibly.”

That responsibility is especially great today, she told STAT, “since Trump’s behavior is so different from anything we’ve seen before” in a commander in chief.

An increasing number of psychologists and psychiatrists have denounced the restriction as a “gag rule” and flouted it, with some arguing they have a “duty to warn” the public about what they see as Trump’s narcissism, impulsivity, poor attention span, paranoia, and other traits that, they believe, impair his ability to lead.

Reporters, pundits, and government officials “have been stumbling around trying to explain Trump’s unusual behavior,” from his seemingly compulsive tweeting to his grandiosity, said Dr. Leonard Glass, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. The rule against psychiatrists offering their analysis of the emotions, thought patterns, and beliefs underlying such behaviors, Glass said, robs the public “of our professional judgment and prevents us from communicating our understanding” of the president’s mental state.

Last week, in an essay in Psychiatric Times, Glass called the prohibition on such communication “an unacceptable infringement on my right and duty” to discuss issues “where the perspective of psychiatrists could be very relevant and enlightening.” He ended the essay by announcing his resignation from the American Psychiatric Association, which adopted the rule in 1973. He had been a member for 41 years.

Called the “Goldwater rule,” the prohibition on offering opinions about the mental state of public figures was adopted after some psychiatrists answered a 1964 survey on whether Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate that year, was mentally fit for the Oval Office. The rule states that it is unethical to offer a professional opinion about a public figure’s mental health, including the presence or absence of a disorder, without that person’s consent and without doing a standard examination. In March, the psychiatric association reaffirmed the rule.

The group acted despite growing criticism that the Goldwater rule is outdated and even unethical for preventing psychiatrists from pointing out behaviors that raise questions about a government official’s mental state. No other medical specialty has such a rule; cardiologists are not prohibited from offering their views of an official’s fainting spell, for instance, as long as they make clear that they have not examined the person.

Although opposition to the Goldwater rule has existed for years, it intensified with Trump’s candidacy and then election. In October, a book titled “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President” will be published.

“When the book comes out, there will be renewed furor about the Goldwater rule, since it is precisely about what is wrong with him,” said psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired professor at Harvard Medical School who is now in private practice in Los Angeles.

A number of psychologists have spoken to reporters about what Trump’s statements and actions might reveal about his emotional and cognitive state. Although the American Psychological Association “prefers” that its members not offer opinions on the psychology of someone they have not examined, it does not have a Goldwater rule and is not considering implementing one, an official told STAT.

The psychoanalytic association went further. In its July 6 email, it explicitly stated for the first time that the organization does not subscribe to the rule. That position had been implicit for years, but the association’s “leadership has been extremely reluctant to make a statement and publicly challenge the American Psychiatric Association,” said one psychoanalytic association member who asked not to be publicly identified criticizing the other group.

One stated rationale for the Goldwater rule is that psychiatrists need to examine patients in order to properly evaluate them. In fact, for decades the State Department and other federal agencies have asked psychiatrists to offer their views on the psychological state of foreign leaders, Glass pointed out, evidence that government officials believe it is possible to make informed inferences about mental states based on public behavior and speech.

“In the case of Donald Trump, there is an extraordinary abundance of speech and behavior on which one could form a judgment,” Glass said. “It’s not definitive, it’s an informed hypothesis, and one we should be able to offer rather than the stunning silence demanded by the Goldwater rule.”

The Goldwater rule has long been odd in that violating it carries no penalties. In principle the psychiatric association could file a complaint with a member’s state medical board. That has apparently never happened. Nor has the association ejected a member for violating the Goldwater rule. That is something it, as a private association, would be legally permitted to do.

A state agency, however, is subject to the U.S. Constitution, civil liberties experts say, and penalizing psychiatrists for speaking out would likely be a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Correction: The headline of this story has been changed to make clear that the American Psychoanalytic Association has told its members that they are free to ignore the “Goldwater rule” and comment about public figures’ mental state.

Sharon Begley covers science and discovery.

The short-term policies of the now discredited Netanyahu government that are aligned towards ensuring another war with Hezbollah and Hamas, treat the future of the next generation of both Israelis and Arabs, with complete contempt. 

Netanyahu and his cabinet know full well that they are on a deliberate trajectory towards an escalating conflict with the blockaded peoples of Gaza and the West Bank who are forced to exist with virtually no electricity, or power, whilst Israelis in Tel Aviv’s affluent marina playground, in Herzliya, cavort about in their power boats as they plan their next luxury vacation to New York and the capitals of Europe.

Former Palestine is a land where shashlik salad and pitta fill the bellies of soldiers who strut their stuff in the coffee bars fronting Tel Aviv beach whilst the indigenous Arab population continue to live and work, often in darkness, under the heel of the Israeli military occupier.

The incomprehensible factor in this smouldering cauldron of religious, economic and cultural disparity, is the apparent unlimited support from the Diasporas of New York and London, and indeed from the US Congress and the British Parliament, who continue to send money and weapons, by the shipload and plane load, to shore up the occupying regime.

When the war does start: when the nuclear warheads are deployed: when the clouds of deadly radiation are released – they won’t, of course, stop at the Eastern Mediterranean. They will automatically continue north and west to darken the skies over Europe, bringing sickness and inevitable death and suffering to all who will breathe in the cancer of the contaminated air from the Negev-based, nuclear weapons facility in the Israeli desert. Inevitably, the trade winds will eventually push the irradiated rain westwards across the Atlantic, to poison even those who mistakenly thought they would be immune. [Of course, by that time, nobody in NY or London  will still be importing diamonds; eating oranges or trying to use a dead cellphone .. they’ll be trying to build nuclear- fallout shelters – unaware that every Israeli family already has one].

That will be the terrifying consequence of today’s unqualified Western support for the occupation of the Holy Land, and the 10-year,  inhuman blockade of essential supplies to over half a million Arab families in Gaza, by the Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Featured image is from Adeyinka Makinde.

Syrian government forces have liberated at least 55 towns from ISIS and killed some 2,000 terrorists in the province of Aleppo since June 1st and now the Syrian military and its allies continue advancing against ISIS along the Euphrates River, Chief of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy announced on Monday.

Rudskoy added that the Syrian army and its allies have freed 150km of the border with Iraq including the city of El-Bud and the T-2 gas distribution system from ISIS and now they are developing the offensive in the direction of the city of al-Bukamal. Government forces are allegedly deployed within 26km of this strategic ISIS-held city.

He added that an operation aimed at blocking and destroying a large group of ISIS terrorists at Uqayribat is now ongoing northwest of Palmyra.

Meanwhile, the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted at least 2,000 sorties and carried out 5,850 airstrikes on terrorist targets. Russia used Kalibr cruise missiles and Tu-95MC strategic bombers to destroy the most important ISIS targets.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have made some gains in the districts of al-Muazzafin, al-Hamra, and Nazlat Shehada and killed 14 ISIS members in the city of Raqqah. However, clashes are still ongoing in these areas.

Considering the progress of the SDF advance, the US-led force is not going to liberate the city in the nearest future.  The Syrian military command used the SDF problems in Raqqah in order to launch a large-scale campaign against ISIS terrorists south of the Euphrates River. This may lead to a situation where US-led forces will lose the race to the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor even before the formal start of the campaign which is expected after the liberation of Raqqah.

Earlier this summer, many pro-US sources speculated that the SDF would capture Raqqah and the oil-rich Deir Ezzor countryside before the army and its allies reached the city.

One hundred forty-three Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members have been killed since the start of the Hezbollah-led advance in the Jaroud Arsal area at the Syrian-Lebanese border. Hezbollah, backed up by the Syrian Army and the Lebanese Army, has retaken almost the entire area controlled by the group and allegedly lost only 19 fighters during the effort. The ISIS-held part of Jaroud Arsal will become the next target of the Hezbollah-led operation.

Voiceover by Harold Hoover

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On July 14, the House of Representatives passed a defense policy bill proposed by Donald Trump to authorize $696 billion budget in fiscal year 2018. The White House claimed it to be a “historic increase in defense spending”.

$75 billion of the sum shall be spent on war funding. One can easily guess what countries will be top priority – among them are Afghanistan, Iraq and first of all Syria.

The recent leak of the U.S. military bases and points’ locations in Syria showed that the American troops are not up to leaving the Syrian soil soon. Washington doesn’t want to confine itself to Raqqa’s liberation and fighting ISIS. Seeing that the U.S. is reminding of an outsider in the battle against Damascus and its allies, the White House decided to bet on the Kurds.

Meanwhile Donald Trump seems to have completely given up the idea of supporting the armed groups of the Syrian opposition, which he characterized as “dangerous and wasteful payments” on his Twitter.

Thus, the strategy of the U.S. to interfere into Syria’s domestic affairs becomes more and more evident. After ISIS is eliminated, Washington shall do anything to set up a loyal and independent Kurdish state. Consequently, Syria will be divided and the United States will control a whole country to promote its interests in the Middle East.

To curb the responses of Damascus and Ankara, the U.S. is slowly building up its presence on the territories controlled by the Kurds. Clearly, upkeeping its own troops and supplying the Kurdish militia requires money, and the White House knows it. This is one of the reasons why the bill was adopted.

Quite peculiar is that the American taxpayers will literally “pay” for Washington’s lobbyist state in the Middle East with their health as some part of the budget increase is formed of Obamacare repeal.

Though the latest events leave not much hope for a bright future but there still exists a chance for the diplomatic solution of the Syrian crisis and for a united Syria.

Originally published by Inside Syria Media Center

Coming at a time when the fate of the Syrian war is more or less locked in place, the mainstream media in the week commencing from July 17th, 2017, started to disseminate certain information that was originally reported by the Washington Post, citing “US officials”, that a decision was recently made in the White House to halt all financing for vetted opposition groups fighting in Syria. However, according to the same newspaper in a 2015 article, already at that time a decision had been voted for in the House Intelligence Committee “to cut as much as 20 percent of the classified funds flowing into a CIA program that U.S. officials said has become one the agency’s largest covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year”.

It follows from the same 2015 article, citing documents obtained from none other than Edward Snowden, that “at $1 billion, Syria-related operations account for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget”. Incidentally, at a ratio of 1:15, CNN, of course coupled with the usual anti-Russian overtones, described the funding of the “CIA program in Syria” as “small”. 

The ending of funding for such a “small” program as spending billions of US tax payer money across half a decade on overthrowing the legally-elected government of yet another Middle Eastern country, of course, is not simply everyday news, and thus it should not be treated as such. However, at the same time the “news” (published by the Washington Post) should also not be treated as the reality. The President of the US Donald Trump was very quick to refute information published by the Washington Post, but he also did not completely deny it:

The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

So, to summarise the aforementioned facts: The Washington Post claims the White House has now ended the funding to “moderate rebel” groups, but, according to Trump, what was written by the Newspaper is not strictly true. Also, there were reports from the same Newspaper in 2015 that funding had been cut (~20%). Proceeding from this summary, the following question naturally arises:

• Did the US end financial support for its “vetted” militant groups in Syria, and if so, when?

As was noticed by others with a keen eye, Reuters already reported earlier this year – February 2017 – that funding to vetted “moderate” groups had been “frozen”…

…and the Financial Times published an “interview” with a “US-backed rebel commander”, in which the newspaper’s interlocutor gives the impression that the US have more or less flushed him and his comrades down the toilet.

Did Washington cut the program’s funding in July 2017? February 2017? In 2015? Sometime in 2016…say…August 19th at 17:36:59 on the dot?

This question, of course, is impossible for non-State employees to definitively answer. The only barometer external observers have is the content that is published in the media – whether it be official statements or primary research. In other words – simulacrum. The map is most certainly not the territory. However, what the layperson in the street can do is connect some dots in order to triangulate some logical conclusion. For example, the author of the following tweet noticed that the quantity of videos published on channels with the notorious green-white “Syrian revolution” flag featuring the use of TOW-missiles against the Syrian Arab Army haven’t been as numerous as of late:

I haven't seen TOW missiles in Syrian combat film in at least a couple of months. I think president Trump stopped this practice

— Libertymark (@Libertymark8) July 4, 2017

And this observation is backed up by the fact that the number of documented TOW launches in February 2017 – the month Trump took office – was less then in previous months.

Source: @yarinah1 / Twitter

This observation of course does not directly prove that the US’ financing of groups in Syria has stopped at this or that time, but what it does show is that the number of documented launches reduced. It can be assumed that the armed groups didn’t suddenly lose the ability to record videos or were warned against filming, because TOW launches by either the “Free Syrian Army” or their jihadists comrades from Jabhat al-Nusra/Ahrar al-Sham have been captured on camera since February 2017.

combat vid 18+
Let's hope they just listened to the "Wax Tiger"?#ATGM targets a huge crowd of shia mercs in #Hama, followed by rout. pic.twitter.com/4qkxBsiPb5

— XI. (@Interbrigades) March 25, 2017

So, the short answer to the question earlier asked is: we can’t be sure when the funding stopped, because the Pentagon’s “arm and train” program is not transparent, for obvious reasons. But the number of TOW launches captured on video and posted online has in fact decreased.

Does this correlate with the events on the ground in Syria? Yes it does. The “FSA” structure itself has collapsed due to the Turkish pivot East since the coup attempt seemingly by the CIA back on 15th July, 2016. The recent Qatar-Saudi spat has also contributed to the decimation of the holographic so-called “Syrian revolution” – now, despite previous collaboration in supporting the terrorist groups in Syria, Saudi and allies are fighting (proxy, of course) against Qatar and allies in Idlib province, the result of which is Turkish domination of the Jihadist stronghold. This means that the US was presented with a choice: to try to mediate the infighting and repair the crumbling jihadist multi-headed hydra, or to place a stake on another actor. The Trump administration placed a stake instead on the Kurds. Why?

Because the project involving “Free Syrian Army” militants acting as a trojan horse to arm al-Qaeda affiliated groups like Jabhat al Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham is no longer viable. Thanks to social media proof that the weapons the US sent to the “FSA” intentionally ended up in the hands of jihadist groups was accumulating to levels that were becoming very dangerous for people like John McCain. The general public becoming aware that the US government was aiding and abetting the very terrorist organisations that – according to America itself – flew three planes into buildings in New York in 2001 is absolutely unacceptable for the war hawks in D.C. Thus, Kurdish militias such as the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) and the “People’s Protection Units” (YPG) present for Trump a much safer option to consolidate what is left, i.e. to occupy the northeast of the Syria. It’s a nice romantic story too – the Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group without a State, they were attacked by Saddam Hussein, they are being currently attacked by Turkey, etc. When compared to the narrative “supplying Al-Qaeda with weapons”, the Kurdish plot is much more digestible for the media consumers over the world.

So, in all likelihood because of the developments on the ground Trump most likely did cut funding to “moderate” groups in Syria – simply because the time came to cut losses. Instead, the Kurds now receive not only the weapons given in the past to the “FSA”, but also some bonus goodies that could not be given to “vetted moderate groups” like Nour al-Din al-Zenki, for fear of the US’ involvement with al-Qaeda being blatant:

According to the report published by Sabah, these are the weapons the U.S. military has given to the YPG: 1,000 AT-4 anti-tank missiles, 3,000 RPG-7 anti-tank weapons, 3,800 DShK heavy machine guns, 7,500 PK heavy machine guns, 350 SPG-9 recoilless guns, 120 60mm mortar systems, 75 82mm mortar systems, 450 night vision goggles and laser sights.

Why these reports about Trump cutting “rebel” funding were released in July 2017 can only but cause speculation. Whether it is because the Democrats in the US Congress and Senate want to make it look like Trump is colluding with Russia in Syria, or because the Gulf and Israeli lobbies desperately want the war to continue and thus feel the need to put Trump into a corner is the topic of another article. None of this changes the fact that the US tax payer was robbed of billions by the same people who have pushed for pointless wars for decades.

Ollie Richardson is a Paris-based geopolitical analyst.

Human beings are now waging war against life itself as we continue to destroy not just individual lives, local populations and entire species in vast numbers but also destroy the ecological systems that make life on Earth possible.

By doing this we are now accelerating the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history and virtually eliminating any prospect of human survival.

In a recently published scientific study ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ the authors Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo document the accelerating nature of this problem.

‘Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions…. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction … using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species.’

Their research found that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is ‘extremely high’ – even in ‘species of low concern’.

In their sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851 out of 27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which they had detailed data, all had lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species had experienced severe population declines. Their data revealed that ‘beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’

Lions in South and East Africa, like this male cat in Botswana, are better known than their cousins in West Africa, which tend to be smaller and are now highly endangered. (Source: PETE OXFORD, NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY/CORBIS)

Illustrating the damage done by dramatically reducing the historic geographic range of a species, consider the lion. Panthera leo ‘was historically distributed over most of Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East, all the way to northwestern India. It is now confined to scattered populations in sub-Saharan Africa and a remnant population in the Gir forest of India. The vast majority of lion populations are gone.’

Why is this happening? Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo tell us:

‘In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare vertebrate species.’

Further, however, the authors warn

‘But the true extent of this mass extinction has been underestimated, because of the emphasis on species extinction.’

This underestimate can be traced to overlooking the accelerating extinction of local populations of a species.

‘Population extinctions today are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’

Moreover, and importantly from a narrow human perspective, the massive loss of local populations is already damaging the services ecosystems provide to civilization (which, of course, are given no value by government and corporate economists).

As Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo remind us:

‘When considering this frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself.’

When public mention is made of the extinction crisis, it usually focuses on a few (probably iconic) animal species known to have gone extinct, while projecting many more in future. However, a glance at their maps presents a much more realistic picture: as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone, as are billions of populations.

Furthermore, they claim that their analysis is conservative given the increasing trajectories of those factors that drive extinction together with their synergistic impacts.

‘Future losses easily may amount to a further rapid defaunation of the globe and comparable losses in the diversity of plants, including the local (and eventually global) defaunation-driven coextinction of plants.’

They conclude with the chilling observation:

‘Thus, we emphasize that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short.’

Of course, it is too late for those species of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles that humans have already driven to extinction or will yet drive to extinction in the future. 200 species yesterday. 200 species today. 200 species tomorrow. 200 species the day after…. And, as Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo emphasize, the ongoing daily extinctions of a myriad local populations.

If you think that the above information is bad enough in assessing the prospects for human survival, you will not be encouraged by awareness or deeper consideration of even some of the many variables adversely impacting our prospects that were beyond the scope of the above study.

While Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo, in addition to the problems they noted which are cited above, also identified the problems of human overpopulation and continued population growth, as well as overconsumption (based on ‘the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet’) and even the risks posed by nuclear war, there were many variables that were beyond the scope of their research.

For example, in a recent discussion of that branch of ecological science known as ‘Planetary Boundary Science’, Dr Glen Barry identified ‘at least ten global ecological catastrophes which threaten to destroy the global ecological system and portend an end to human beings, and perhaps all life. Ranging from nitrogen deposition to ocean acidification, and including such basics as soil, water, and air; virtually every ecological system upon which life depends is failing’. See ‘The End of Being: Abrupt Climate Change One of Many Ecological Crises Threatening to Collapse the Biosphere’.

Moreover, apart from the ongoing human death tolls caused by the endless wars and other military violence being conducted across the planet– see, for example, ‘Yemen cholera worst on record & numbers still rising’ – there is catastrophic environmental damage caused too. For some insight, see The Toxic Remnants of War Project.

In addition, the out-of-control methane releases into the atmosphere that are now occurring – see ‘7,000 underground gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’ and ‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’– and the release, each and every day, of 300 tons of radioactive waste from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean – see ‘Fukushima Radiation Has Contaminated The Entire Pacific Ocean – And It’s Going To Get Worse’– are having disastrous consequences that will negatively impact life on Earth indefinitely. And they cannot be reversed in any time frame that is meaningful for human prospects.

Apart from the above, there is a host of other critical issues – such as destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, destruction of waterways and the ocean habitat and the devastating impact of animal agriculture for meat consumption – that international governmental organizations such as the UN, national governments and multinational corporations will continue to refuse to decisively act upon because they are controlled by the insane global elite. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane’ with more fully elaborated explanations in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So time may be short, the number of issues utterly daunting and the prospects for life grim. But if, like me, you are inclined to fight to the last breath, I invite you to consider making a deliberate choice to take powerful personal action in the fight for our survival.

If you do nothing else, consider participating in the fifteen-year strategy of ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. You can do this as an individual, with family and friends or as a neighbourhood.

If you are involved in (or considering becoming involved in) a local campaign to address a climate issue, end some manifestation of war (or even all war), or to halt any other threat to our environment, I encourage you to consider doing this on a strategic basis. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if you would like to join the worldwide movement to end violence in all of its forms, environmental and otherwise, you are also welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

We might be annihilating life on Earth but this is not something about which we have no choice.

In fact, each and every one of us has a choice: we can choose to do nothing, we can wait for (or even lobby) others to act, or we can take powerful action ourselves. But unless you search your heart and make a conscious and deliberate choice to commit yourself to act powerfully, your unconscious choice will effectively be the first one (including that you might take some token measures and delude yourself that these make a difference). And the annihilation of life on Earth will continue, with your complicity.

Extinction beckons. Will you choose powerfully?

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

Featured image: Picture of President Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Main Street, minutes before the assassination. Also in the presidential limousine are Jackie Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife, Nellie. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The US National Archives have made 3,810 CIA and FBI documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 public for the very first time. Among the trove are 400 documents previously unavailable in any form – the rest were hitherto redacted, in some cases heavily. The pile is likely to prove a goldmine to conspiracy theorists.

In 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then overseeing the Warren Commission, the US government’s first official public inquiry into the Kennedy assassination, was asked by journalists if the full record of their investigation would be made public.

“Yes, there will come a time… but it might not be in your lifetime,” Warren responded.

While the fate of the reporters is unknown, the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act stipulated all documents on the killing must be released by October 2017 — and the latest release marks the first document dump of the year.

The taking is modest — official estimates suggest around 40,000 documents remain classified, of the original five million — but nonetheless is undoubtedly chock-full of scintillating nuggets for conspiracists to get their collective teeth in to, particularly as 400 of the documents have never been seen by public eyes.

These documents were “withheld in full” as they contain information deemed at the time “security classified” — while a tantalizing classification, they may have been mundanely withheld to protect confidential sources, privacy, tax and grand jury information — all information routinely classified in the vast majority of criminal cases.

A cursory look at the contents of the files reveals that on top of CIA and FBI documents, included in the tranche are testimony and other records of the Warren Commission (which concluded alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald likely acted alone) and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the second official inquiry into Kennedy’s assassination, which concluded Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”), records from the National Security Agency and other Defense Department offices and files from the Church, Pike and Rockefeller Committees (which investigated the activities of US intelligence services), and many pages relating to the interrogation of Yuri Nosenko.

Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of Dallas City Hall pic.twitter.com/xY6zb1xDjD

— Memorable Moments (@MemorabIeM0MENT) June 22, 2017

Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the US shortly after the Kennedy assassination, was and is a controversial figure in both government and conspiracist circles.

He claimed to have seen KGB files on Oswald prior to the assassination, when the former US Marine briefly defected to the Soviet Union. He claimed while Soviet intelligence services had monitored Oswald, they had not attempted to recruit him.

Released today: Previously withheld #CIA #JFKAssassination files interviewing Yuri Nosenko refer to Oswald being a bad shot. 104-10297-10211 pic.twitter.com/CegzUsX0xn

— DocRock1007 ?? (@DocRock1007) July 25, 2017

However, other disclosures offered by Nosenko contradicted those of another Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn — which led the CIA to conclude Nosenko was a KGB plant.

As a result, he was incarcerated in solitary confinement for three and a half years, spending 16 months of this period in a small room with no windows, furniture, heat or air conditioning, or human contact, and four months in a ten-by-ten-foot concrete bunker. Allowed a shower once a week only, but permitted no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush, he was frequently and aggressively interrogated. Nosenko also claims he was tortured, and even dosed with LSD.

His allegation were flatly denied by Richard Helms, CIA Director during much of Nosenko’s internment — although Stansfield Turner, CIA Director 1977-1981, subsequently judged Nosenko’s treatment to be “excessively harsh” — and called on senior CIA officers to “make certain [it] will not again be repeated.”

It’s questionable whether the documents will shed conclusive light on the key questions which have hung over the assassination almost ever since that third fateful shot delivered a coup de grace to then-President Kennedy on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, much less offer a “smoking gun” for any them.

Did alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald act alone, or at all even? Did individuals or agencies within the US government have foreknowledge of the assassination? Did authorities collude and obfuscate to prevent a full investigation of the crime?

Nonetheless, they are also equally unlikely to quell the countless assassination conspiracy theories which have circulated.

Perhaps most popularly, researchers suggest JFK was killed in a plot engineered by CIA agents — Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mossad, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Mafia and Cubans (whether by Fidel Castro, or anti-Castro rebel groups) have all been fingered as potential directors and/or conspirators in the assassination.

Such suspicions are not restricted to the public. For instance, three of the Warren Commission’s seven members — Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana and and Senator Richard Russell of Georgia — doubted the inquiry’s single shooter conclusion, and Johnson later publicly voiced concerns about the Commission’s findings.

This article was first published in October 2016, in the weeks leading up to the US presidential elections

“A populace deprived of the ability to separate lies from truth, is no longer capable of sustaining a free society.” — Journalist Chris Hedges

As the ruling elite pushes its rigged election, forcibly cramming crime boss Hillary down our gullets against the people’s choice or will, so goes suppression of information rapidly shutting off the truth spigot, leaving Americans high and dry.

The latest over-the-top signs reflecting the globalists’ desperation are the UK’s RT bank closing its account and cutting off Julian Assange’s internet access in London. It’s bad enough that the WikiLeaks founder has effectively been imprisoned for over four years trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy, but now he’s apparently been cut off from internet contact with the outside world and media in Ecuador is swimming with the sharks eagerly urging reconsideration of his asylum status.

These two significant and most definitely intertwined events coming hours apart out of London are just the beginning of the elite’s major assault on free speech and freedom of the press, in effect putting a final cap on the truth ever leaking out to a truth-starved world.

The globalists’ fixation on absolute power and control is currently manifesting as deep state’s invasive silencing of any and all voices of truth and dissidence, starting with these two biggies.

Completely cutting off the world’s free access to accurate information from legitimate sources still authentically reporting world news events and developments past and present is the rulers’ highest priority right now on the eve of the election. And with both WikiLeaks and RT in their crosshairs, the elite has fired its first major shot across the bow. All totalitarian regimes suppress dissent and truth becomes their biggest enemy.

The timing of the Julian disconnect right after WikiLeaks’ release of Hillary’s homage to Goldman Sachs three speeches (each earning her on average a cool $200,000 a shot) is more than coincidental.

In response to the falling oil prices and mounting debt, in 2014 Ecuador agreed to transfer more than half its gold reserves, over 14.5 tons of gold, for three years to none other than Goldman Sachs. So through US Empire arm twisting by way of either Wall Street or the Pentagon or both, the ruling elite saw to it that Empire successfully pressured the Ecuadorian government to suspend Assange’s access to the internet. As an oligarch puppet, Hillary grew filthier and richer selling off America to highest bidders both foreign and domestic, furthering the interests of the corporate elite that own and control the international crime cabal shamefully pretending to still be the US government. Meanwhile, the West’s demonization of the actual good guys who’ve most exposed the demonic evil being committed by the ruling elite’s US Empire – Assad and Putin – are the world’s best and really only true crime fighters against global terrorism. Likewise, Julian Assange has been on the US hit list for all his noble efforts also exposing the cabal’s evildoing.

Ecuador’s excuse for selling out Assange at Empire’s behest came in a released statement:

WikiLeaks published a wealth of documents impacting on the US election campaign. The government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states and does not interfere in external electoral processes.

So no doubt knuckling under to hardball Empire threats, the Quito government decided to cut off Julian’s connectivity with the outside world just when WikiLeaks was moving into home stretch releasing the most damaging evidence against criminal gangster Hillary. Sadly, Ecuador’s President Correa lacks the balls of a Hugo Chavez or Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte to tell the US on no uncertain terms to “go to hell” when we most need that kind of courage to democratically stand up for the people’s right to know rather than cowardly kowtow to imperialistic master’s belligerence. By the way, Duterte just officially announced his “separation” from the US while visiting China, the nation he’s now aligning with.

Before respecting Correa’s rationale of “upholding his principle” of non-interference in other nations’ internal affairs, lest we remind him of how the US crime cabal led by Secretary of State Clinton herself brutally toppled another democratically elected Latin American leader Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. So Correa’s hypocritical stance feebly taking some moral high ground quickly caves in under his feet when the cold hard reality of the bigger picture is taken into account.

Might makes right arrogance and American exceptionalism has US Empire constantly interfering in the internal affairs of other nations with complete impunity for well over a century, be they elections, coups or assassinations in dozens of smaller nations. We’re left only to guess what threats were delivered to Correa that coerced him to bow down to the world’s biggest bullying murderer. Days after Assange’s connection went dead, his outfit is still dumping more damning emails from Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta. So I expect that even without its leader at the helm, the WikiLeaks contingency plan still possesses the means to be able to press forward with the grand finale exposing the evil Clinton-Bush-Obama crime syndicate in the final weeks running up to the November 8^th election.

At the exact same time Julian’s internet connection’s been unplugged, the UK bank that services the Kremlin’s state owned television news network RT has abruptly closed its account. Though the UK government was quick to respond claiming it had nothing to do with the decision, despite its recent order to RAF pilots in Syria to begin shooting down Russian planes killing their pilots, the British government insists that the National Westminster Bank acted alone. A-huh, just like when Ecuador decided to disconnect Julian it was acting alone. It’s so obvious what the elite is pulling here, for its cabal servants to pretend otherwise is an insult to anyone’s intelligence with half a brain function. As of last weekend without consultation, prior notice or any explanation, RT’s been handed official notice that its account has retroactively been closed by a majority owned British government bank.

Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, delivered the news via her Twitter:

They closed our accounts in Britain. All of them. ‘Decision not to be discussed’. Long live freedom of speech!

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated the obvious:

It’s as clear as day that this decision was not made by the bank. And not any other bank – banks don’t make such decisions on their own. I believe an old saying is appropriate here: don’t treat others the way you don’t wish to be treated yourself.

The United States and its Western vassals in Europe are upset because so many of their own citizens are tuning in daily to watch the Russian news network RT that draws the largest worldwide viewing audience of 70 million per week and over half that per day. The bottom line is people are recognizing that CNN and NBC along with the New York Times and Washington Post are merely serving as Washington’s lapdog propaganda department. So as a result, people are turning to RT believing that they are receiving far more accurate and objective coverage of daily world news events. On YouTube the most watched news channel isn’t the big networks, it’s The Young Turks. Alex Jones daily broadcasts best the commercial news networks these days.

Even elitists like Hillary admits “we are losing the information war.” The more the establishment media attempts to ridicule and denigrate these alternative outlets (similar to what’s being done to Trump), the more popular they become for exposing the truth about US Empire crimes against humanity. This fact is really scaring the global rulers and hence they’ve become ruthlessly desperate to destroy freedom of the press particularly against the internet.

The ruling elite realizes a growing segment of the global population is onto their psychopathic endgame of theft debt enslavement, filthy debauchery, irreparable corruption,  global warfare and genocide and skyrocketing tyranny fast leading us towards one world government. Afraid that the masses are awakening worldwide due to such important information disseminators as WikiLeaks, RT and the internet media exposing the elite’s widespread criminal activities, we’re now reaching critical mass and have the evil ones on the run. Terrified that we’re mobilizing against them on a massive worldwide grassroots scale, the handful of psychopaths who for centuries have owned and controlled the world are in a state of sheer panic and desperation. Among the most demonic is former President George H.W. Bush (left) who once said to a journalist asking him what would happen if US citizens knew of his prime role in Iran Contra scandal and his other nefarious crimes:

“If the American people ever find out what we have done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.”

After the electronic voting machines already stole the nomination from Sanders, in 16 critical states they’re set to ensure that Hillary cheats again to win next month. But if enough of us learn and know the truth, an educated, empowered global masses challenging and opposing deep state authority worldwide is the globalists’ worst nightmare. Between stealing another rigged election while forcing a global war against Russia just as the dominos begin falling to break their central banking system (vis-à-vis Deutsche Bank), amidst all these disasters, foremost is their information war to control our minds. As author Charles Hughes-Smith writes, “The ruling elite has lost the consent of the governed.” They know they cannot pull off their catastrophic perfect storm without controlling our minds.

Since 9/11 America has degenerated from a beacon of light and freedom (albeit up until less than a century ago only for a privileged majority of white males) to today’s malevolent darkness. But only a few decades ago the US was world renowned as a long reigning supreme bastion of top quality higher education. Now our college grads possess the academic skills of high school students in the rest of the industrial world. Besides the drastic IQ drop, the dumbed down United States has severely regressed from the days when academic freedom on college campuses was a cherished tradition above all else, when freedom rang out in passionate protest against the evils of war, spawning the peace movement during the Vietnam War (despite police just weeks apart in 1970 murdering students at both Kent State and Jackson State Universities as the ultimate totalitarian crime of gross First Amendment censorship violation and democide murder).

Politically Correct

Today censorship takes the form of militant Politically Correct (PC) fanaticism that’s gripping university life as yet another disgrace of our lost First Amendment rights. Behind the façade of Political Correctness, America’s thought control police are insidiously working overtime. And they are no more out of control than on college campuses where outspoken professors with integrity are being one by one muzzled or fired should they not comply with the C law that’s usurped our Constitution as our nation’s once rule of law. Excellent scholars and educators in good standing are being lost and destroyed in a witch hunt that would make Joe McCarthy proud. Educators across America and Canada are currently being targeted and victimized, suspended or terminated from their lifelong teaching positions at a number of universities where PC extremism rules the day.

Three such higher profile cases are James Tracy fired from Florida Atlantic University, Joy Karega from Ohio’s Oberlin College and Tony Hall from Canada’s University of Lethbridge. Each has been punished not for anything even remotely related to job performance but strictly for exercising their right to free speech. Being terminated for speaking against lies and injustices perpetrated by two of the world’s most corrupt and evil regimes – Washington and Tel Aviv – is a shameful violation of not just our First Amendment but academic freedom as well.

Among the foremost tenets of higher learning espoused on every college campus and mission statement is the notion that the university is supposed to represent a safe harbinger of free thought and free speech, unrestricted, honest inquiry and active pursuit of truth, ethics and high moral principle. But like virtually every institution in America, the pristine, sacrosanct image and lofty words on paper belie the much darker, sinister reality of bottom line institutionalized hypocrisy in practice.

For his scholarly accounts exposing the US government’s rampant anomalies and lies using false flags to promote mass paranoia and an unconstitutional gun control agenda as demonstrated by multiple, so called mass shootings and terrorist attacks at such places as Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon bombing, Charleston and San Bernardino, James Tracy was systematically harassed, unjustly fired eventually for the lame excuse of failing to fill out paperwork, deprived him of his academic career as an outstanding media professor at FAU.

As a prolific writer-activist, James Tracy also provides an excellent website called memoryholeblog.com that’s a treasure trove of incisive real news articles reflecting the world as it really is as opposed to the typical MSM bullshit propaganda. His “controversial” high profile was too much for university administration that succumbed to outside pressures directed by an exposed Sandy Hook crisis actor and the long arm of the shadowy, vindictive government. Earlier this year he filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination in efforts to get his job back.

Joy Karega and Tony Hall are the latest victims in this PC madness gone awry. Increasingly in America Political Correctness prohibits honest dialogue from being spoken on most any topic, for fear of having some “victim” somewhere on this planet’s feelings hurt and offended. It’s simply the deceptive pretext for shutting down our First Amendment rights. Joy criticized Israel for its alleged role in the inside 9/11 job. She also placed on Facebook her contention that ISIS is a creation by the CIA and Mossad, which happened to also be true. She implicated Israel in the Charlie Hebdo false flag and the fact that the staged shootings resulted right after France recognized the Palestinian State and moved to lift sanctions against Russia. All the high profile terrorist attacks are state sponsored, complete with intelligence agency handlers most often the CIA and Mossad.

The Rothschild fortune has owned and controlled central banks as well as governments for centuries. Recall the infamous quote by the godfather of Europe’s family banking cartel near the close of the 18^th century, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”  So Joy nailed that one too. Karega posted her largely true beliefs on her personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, thus exercising her right to free speech and never shared her views in the classroom. Even if her position toward Israel wasn’t accurate, she has the right to express herself. Yet she was immediately labeled a raving anti-Semitic and the Oberlin Board of Trustees pressured the college president to cut her loose. Ultimately she was suspended.

Tony Hall came to her defense also pointing out the hypocrisies of defending the Jewish State’s brutal oppression and war crimes. After teaching more than a quarter century at his university, Tony Hall was framed by an internet shill who posted a “Kill all Jews” graphic on the professor’s Facebook page that was then seized upon by the Jewish lobbyist group B’nai Brith with charges of anti-Semitism. The Lethbridge president knuckled under to outside PC pressure and suspended him without pay. Joy and Tony have both been rightfully critical of Israel for its atrocious human rights record of inhumane and aggressive policies toward Palestinians as well as clandestine Mossad operations around the world with the CIA as on the ground architects and handlers of state sponsored global terrorism.

It’s now reached the Orwellian point of no return, where if you dare speak out against Israel, it automatically invites the branding charge of anti-Semitism. For bravely telling the truth against a nation’s genocidal policies that are only rewarded by an imperialistic US Empire with the biggest military aid package in US history announced last month – $38 billion over the next decade – that’ll be used to kill even more innocent Palestinians, these good intelligent gifted people’s careers for speaking the truth are being ruined as free speech is rapidly being trampled upon and silenced in North America. It’s an abomination and miscarriage of justice of the worst order.

New World Order totalitarianism is outlawing free speech, freedom of the press and free internet all in one. Fools still paying attention to mainstream media propaganda is a 21^st century disappearing act. According to an April 2016 study from the Media Insight Project, a partnership of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute, only 6% of Americans actually are confident in their trust of mainstream media these days, which is about the same trust level as US Congress. A mid-September Gallup poll found less than a third of Americans have even a fair amount or more of trust toward media, an all-time low since Gallup began tracking this trust issue in 1972. Interestingly, Gallup speculates that the way the fawning press this election year is so blatantly pro-Hillary and biased against Trump has drastically turned off many Americans from believing mainstream media has any credibility.

Clearly the elite is growing increasingly agitated when so many of us neither trust our government leaders nor the six oligarch owned, Hillary-backing mega media corporations 24/7 pumping out propaganda lies and disinformation masquerading as news. Nowadays nearly two out of three Americans are relying on information outflow coming from internet news sources and social media sites as an important or primary method for news and information. And for that reason alone, today it’s being targeted for censorship like never before. If the globalists have their way, legit alternative news on the internet will be shut down shortly. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement undermines internet freedom.

While RT and WikiLeaks are just the first high profile victims in this stepped up war on the free press, on October 1^st Obama quietly handed over the web’s domain name system to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) led by the People’s Republic of China, a nation notorious for heavily censoring the web limiting its citizens to only what the Communist Party deems acceptable. This latest Obama move is but one more backdoor method leading to centralized UN censorship control over the internet.

Moreover, it’s become common knowledge that the internet has been invaded and saturated with tax funded paid government trolls to act as propagandists for the oppressive establishment. Their purpose is to confuse, misinform and manipulate and control public opinion, ultimately promoting conformity and obedience to deep state authority.

Thus, it was also no accident that the presidential destroyer of our nation and internet freedom Barack Obama gave a speech at an innovation conference in Pittsburgh last week reverberated that same theme of reigning in far stricter control over the internet:

“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to.”

This is his doublespeak encoded language for really saying “get ready for fulltime censorship on the internet so Big Brother can preapprove and spoon feed everything you have access to, all for your own good of course.” Like his war criminal predecessor, he argued his concerns “against conspiracy theorists” and manmade global warming skeptics, despite the global warming hoax that it is. A Pew Research poll showed that two years ago only 40% of Americans believe that global warming is actually manmade. Yet Obama’s former regulatory czar Cass Sunstein is even calling for a government ban on conspiracy theorizing. CNN’s Chris Cuomo just tried to convince viewers that it’s illegal to even look at the WikiLeaks emails.

You can see where all this is headed, the government will continue making more extreme draconian laws calling for our arrest as enemies of the state if we dare utter an inconvenient truth about anything deep state prohibits us from believing or talking about.

The feds are out to control our minds, our very thoughts, our perceptions, beliefs and our every behavior along with all access to information and knowledge so that we have no more capacity for individual critical thinking or freedom of choice. The elite’s agenda wants us to simply be dumbed down, unthinking, “do-as-you’re-told” robots. And through decades of social engineering as well as poisoning of our environment (i.e. fluoride, toxins in food, Monsanto and geoengineering-saturated soil, air and water), sadly too many of us are already there. Take away our last opportunity for information and truth and eventually all of us will turn into zombies.

If we choose to oppose their oppressive totalitarian NWO agenda, those social programming camps that Hillary referred to for grownups already have built-in tribunal and mortuary sections equipped to assassinate those of us who cannot be reprogrammed at the closest FEMA prison camp nearest you. There exists a 2009 Department of Defense FM 3-39.40 manual that details the full layout and function of these concentration camps waiting to be filled once the SHTF. And based on today’s dizzying events, it’s about to all break loose. Ultimately those humans left alive when all is said and done will be the dumbed down, lobotomized version of 21^st century human robots who along with their mechanized nonhuman counterparts will be slaves subserviently servicing the master class of psychopaths still left in charge.

Obama’s “Truthiness Tests:

All you have to do nowadays to learn the actual truth is take whatever Obama, Hillary and their minions say, and already knowing it’s all lies based on their irrefutable track records, you simply reverse whatever they say into the opposite, and just like that, you will then know the truth. Case in point, our Manchurian president Obama said:

There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world.

So what if Obama’s version of “the truth” consists only of lies? He believes we are incapable of discerning the truth for ourselves, so his Orwellian trained government will benevolently do that job for us.

In that same sermon on the propaganda mount, Obama repeated the boldface lie that what he’s calling for is not censorship. See what I mean, just reverse what he says and you’ve automatically arrived at the truth. Know for sure that what Big Brother “discards” will be the truth that you are prohibited from knowing and believing, leaving for your daily consumption just more of the same old, same old mind control mush read word-for-word from bimbos’ idiot cards on every channel at the same time… a real live version of “Ground Hog Day” played out the rest of our pathetically enslaved lives.

It all comes down to a mad race against time.

The global rulers are frantic to not just retain but fully tighten their already powerful grip of control over the masses.

The race that we citizens of the world are up against is not only trying to stay alive in the face of so much death and destruction the elite’s hurling at us but also to become empowered to play a major role in restructuring the reset button on a new system emerging from the ashes of the old, one that this time will be truly resource-based, equitable, fair-minded and etched in enduring principles of peace, cooperation, justice, compassion and honesty… that is if the homicidal maniacs don’t do us in first.

The prospect of nuclear annihilation is dangerously close, more real than ever before in our human history. Their tyrannical actions now being perpetrated on us means that we have limited time to counter their transgressions by open revolt. Just as our Founding Fathers were forced to fight for their freedom against their over-controlling oppressors, at this time and place in history, so must we citizens of the world fight for ours.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at: http://empireexposed.blogspot.co

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Rex Tillerson Rumoured to be on Verge of Quitting as Secretary of State

By Adam Garrie, July 25, 2017

The most interesting aspect of these rumours in respect of policy concerns is over the question of Iran. CNN reports that Tillerson has differences with others in the White House on Iran but they fail to report what Tillerson’s position is. Is it one of moderation vis-a-vis others in the White House or an even more militant position?

Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job? Intelligence Vets Challenge the Forensic “Evidence”

By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, July 25, 2017

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

Slaying in Minneapolis, A Horror Story of Law Enforcement

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, July 25, 2017

The individual who is said to have pulled the trigger was a black Somali-American, whose hiring by the police department supplied politically correct, multi-culti gold. Similarly, the victim was atypical for the cultural optics, a white Australian woman from Sydney involved in the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community, all-healing, all ashram, all therapeutic.

Brexit Counter-Revolution Still in Motion

By Prof. John McMurtry, July 25, 2017

No one seems to know on the public stage that the Brexit referendum ‘victory’ is legally non-binding from the start and has never been supported by the vast majority of British voters, with ever less support since the 37% peak of support in June 2016 referendum.

Death in the Congo, Why Did the US Want to Kill Patrice Lumumba?

By Bob A. Feldman, July 25, 2017

By August of 1960, former Columbia University President Eisenhower’s administration in Washington, D.C. “feared that Lumumba’s oratorical talent would make him a thorn in their side even if he were maneuvered out of power” and “decided it made more sense to kill him,” according to Mark Zepezauer’s 1994 book, The CIA’s Greatest Hits.

Will the CIA Obey a Trump Order to Stop Funding Terrorists?

By Rick Sterling and Ann Garrison, July 25, 2017

We are in a critical period where the enemies of Syria, including the CIA, may create a false flag incident to provoke and justify a direct intervention by the US, France, and others. Even if that does not happen, the pro-war elites clearly hope to use Kurdish forces to split off eastern Syria and install a puppet government.

Just at the time we really do need government to perform at its very best for Britain, politician’s have gone on holiday with the sole aim of plotting and planning the next Downing Street coup to replace the injured and limping Theresa May. Just as the predator in waiting is pushed to the front preparing for the kill, wolves are lurking in the shadows. Britain is more vulnerable now than ever and all politicians on both sides of the house can do is fight for personal glory.

It is bewildering the number of small and large sized projects the government (of both tribes) have completely screwed up and done so with spectacular aplomb. When you consider the sheer scale of planning done by professional experts and implementation carried out by highly skilled workers, you would think that disasters would be rare, unfortunately, history demonstrates something quite different.

Take software projects for instance, where the beleaguered and over-burdened taxpayer has been systematically fleeced by failure, whilst enriching private contractors.

The NHS national programme for IT was predicted to cost £6.4 billion. It actually cost more than £10 billion, was 56 percent over budget and then abandoned several years ago – the world’s largest computer system failure was then recorded for posterity.

Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the Public Accounts Committee, charitably said at the time the project was a “systemic failure” in the government’s ability to draw up and manage large contracts. “This saga is one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector.”

The Defence Information Structure plan wasn’t much better. It was budgeted at £4.8bn, cost £7.1bn and at £2.3bn it was over-budget by nearly 48 percent.

Then there was the defence overspend – just on its own kit. The FT reported in February this year that:

“A series of enormous British defence projects are at risk after the Ministry of Defence revealed that costs had risen by a fifth and that it has already eaten through the £10.7bn of “headroom” built into its budget last year. The projected spend on new equipment has risen by 20 per cent to £82bn over the next 10 years, while the spend on supporting the new kit has risen even further — up 30 per cent to £23.4bn, according to the latest annual equipment plan. As a result, the UK may have to choose between its new projects for ships, aircraft and tanks.”

‘Libra‘ – a fairly small project in the grand scheme of things was a new system for magistrates across England and Wales and was costed by the Conservative government at £246 million. It actually cost £389 million, was nearly 60 percent over budget and couldn’t produce basic information for its own accounts system, nor add up fines correctly, which was its primary role. Needles to say that caused chaos. The initial contractor was finally replaced by a Japanese one and now costs £10 million a year to maintain.

The E-Borders system cost £742 million and was abandoned.

The Police Crime & Criminal Intelligence Logging System was abandoned after 4 years of effort at a cost of £15 million.

£56m was spent on a Ministry of Justice back-office project that was cancelled after the department realised the Cabinet Office had a system doing exactly the same thing.  You couldn’t make it up!

The current Universal Credit system has universally failed. Its roll-out is now delayed until 2021. It is also destined for the record books one way or another. Hundreds of £millions have already been written off.

Whilst you wouldn’t expect The Guardian to compliment a Conservative plan to overhaul social security, it was fair of them to describe its performance as: “tens of thousands of appeals, many successful; considerable hardship; administrative chaos; and eventually the collapse of the DWP’s contract with Atos. And the long-term downward trend in the number of people on benefit has now actually reversed. Ministers have yet to explain why, if it is really the case that hundreds of thousands of people were receiving the benefit when they shouldn’t have been, the “reforms” are now actually seeing the numbers going up again.” That was in October 2014 and was then costing the taxpayer an additional £3billion a year. What it will actually cost by delivery date is anyone’s guess. Here’s a guess – lots we don’t have.

In 2014, the Major Projects Authority – a central body set up to monitor large-scale government projects was tracking almost 200 schemes with a total value of almost £400bn. At the time, only 17 of some 150 projects in the spotlight – with a value of less than 4% of the total amount being monitored got a green light as having “the lowest risks to success” by the authority.

What does this tell you other than 96 percent of projects have been incorrectly budgeted and are being so badly managed that millions more needs spending to determine just how badly they are going.

So badly in fact, you might  find it ironic that the the Major Projects Authority itself was scrapped and ended up becoming the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in January last year and almost immediately took its monitoring of those same projects worth £400bn and uprated them to £500bn. Can’ think why. It’s over-riding priority is to “build and develop a group of experienced project leaders, who can move across government to deliver our most important projects.” Hmm!

Brexit – The Challenge

The Tory leadership fight – more important than Brexit negotiations?

To put the challenge into context of the above project failures, the United Kingdom has an annual GDP of nearly £1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion), taking 3.2 percent of the global share, is ranked fifth with a population of 65.5 million. India is right behind Britain with a GDP of $2.4 trillion with a population of 1.32 billion. Only Germany, Japan, China and the US are ahead of Britain, but Britain lies third in terms of per capita wealth of those up front.

The day after triggering Brexit, the government published details of its “Great Repeal Bill”. Described by Theresa May as an “essential step” on the way to leaving the EU. What it wants to do is “amend, repeal and improve” the laws as necessary.

Here’s the first warning sign things will be difficult for the government. The Repeal Bill has been described as “one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK.” BBC correspondents describe it as “Swathes of UK law that will no longer work on exit, for example because they refer to EU institutions.”

Many are already questioning the government on this, not least because it gives the state the power to legislate by proclamation. This is something you do not want to give to extreme neoliberal capitalists or militant socialists.

In the meantime, The government’s own White Paper on the Repeal Bill alone believes there to be 12,000 EU regulations in force, while Parliament has passed some 7,900 statutory instruments implementing EU legislation, and 186 acts which incorporate a degree of EU influence.

The total body of European law, dating back to 1958, is known as the Acquis Communautaire, which covers about 80,000 individual pieces of legislation all told.

The Institute for Government think tank has warned that with thousands of pieces of legislation to be considered over the next 18 months, this will inevitably be a major drain on resources and just as inevitably push other government policies, and the management of ongoing ones aside.

There are other problems too. Somewhere between 10 and 15 other bills will be needed as well as the Great Repeal Bill just to help handle its tumultuous journey towards exit. For instance, as economia puts it “There will need to be a substantial financial bill, and ones concerning customs, immigration, farms and fisheries, and many other areas of regulation now prescribed from Brussels. In a normal year, any two or three of these would constitute a full year’s work.”

There are also other wide ranging implications here. Both Houses will have no available time to do anything else, probably until 2020 or so. The consequence is that Ministers are already quietly being told to pursue their own ambitions without the need for legislation.

Will the Conservatives ask Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in any meaningful way to pass their own bills on legislation that affects their own areas, but at the same time ask them to sign “legislative consent,” the motions required giving their approval to UK legislation that affects their powers? It’s complicated. And complicated is something politician’s don’t do well.

Changing minds – YouGov survey July 19th – Q: In hindsight do you think Britain was right to vote to leave the EU?

Given the legacy of non-stop government failures of budgeting, managing and implementing even mall scale projects, one can only come to the conclusion that delays to Brexit will be announced first, a sure first sign that the Brexit project is already in failure mode. And it will come soon. It will be called ‘evolutionary’ or ‘transitional.’

The other small matter to point out is this. The Tories, with unlimited government resources available, managed to dramatically miscalculate the Brexit result, then followed up that calamity with a totally unnecessary election bid that blew up in their faces. Why would anyone give them the job of managing exactly what they just screwed up in the first place? The fifth largest economy in the world now has probably the most complicated post war transformation project to be managed and it’s been placed into the hands of people who failed to outsource a logging system for the police at £15 million. This won’t end well in their hands.

All images in this article are from the author.

Rex Tillerson is reportedly deeply unhappy with the operational style of the Trump administration and has allegedly expressed disappointment that his State Department has been neglected by the White House. Furthermore, Tillerson is rumoured to be looking to quit his job as Secretary of State and possibly he is looking to do so quite soon.

While the source of these rumours are unnamed sources who spoke with CNN, not often a fully reliable way of deriving information, in this case there have been public indications from the very beginning of the Trump administration that Rex Tillerson was not altogether happy in his new position.

Before delving into the CNN rumours, here’s what we know for a fact.

1. No room for Rex at the Trump table 

During the dinner celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration, Tillerson did not sit with Trump at the top table nor with any of Trump’s associates or family. Instead he dined with his wife at an apparently distant table for two. Meanwhile, at the more raucous Trump table, even Nigel Farage (aka Mr. Brexit) joined the fun and posed for an now infamous photo.

As for the article, it was penned by Michael Snyder who has done some very good work in the past as he did with the leg work for this one. The problem(s) I see are that first, the mystery investor did not make a $262 million bet. This is the maximum amount he might be able to make between now and October. The original “investment” is far less than this and would normally be considered the amount of the “bet” if this was the amount they could possibly lose.

But herein lies the problem, the “bet” has literally an unlimited loss potential because in a complete blowout market, this trader is essentially short 262,000 VIX Oct. 25 call contracts. Never mind all the other bells and whistles in this trade, should the market crash and fear run unbridled, the net/net is this uncovered short call position of 262,000 contracts. So, the title is misleading in the first place because the original bet was only a small fraction of $262 million but the potential loss could certainly be in the multiple $billions … not like any lottery ticket I have ever seen or would even touch!

Taking this the extra yard, let’s talk about “what” this or any trader will “win” should they be that fortunate. First, you will notice I wrote “should they be that fortunate”… which means someone else (or collective someone elses) will be unfortunate enough to be standing atop an equal sized loss. The obvious question is whether they will have the ability to payout on the “lotto ticket”? From a systemic standpoint, I absolutely 100% guarantee in a free market not backstopped by central banks, another 2008 experience cannot be settled. 2008 could not be settled upon and thus the reason the Fed secretly lent out $16 trillion across the globe, settlement HAD TO OCCUR or the jig was up. The number this time around will have to be far larger and probably many multiples.

Now, carrying the question all the way through, traders, investors, money managers etc. who believe they are “hedged” or have safe strategies in place are sadly mistaken. How can I say this with such a broad brush and what makes me so smart? Don’t worry, I have not turned arrogant by any stretch, I can say this by looking at the problem with logic that long ago left our casino markets. You see, the problem is these players for the most part are playing for dollars, euros, yen etc. Even IF they believe they are playing for gold, I assure you they are not because out of the millions of ounces represented to create the current pricing, only a very small fraction and less than one percent of real metal exists and underlies the trades. 

Getting to the heart of what I wanted to convey, the bottom line is even if the winners all do get paid (a mathematical certainty they cannot because of defaults), they will be collecting fiat paper chits that will not perform in a credit meltdown. This is not rocket science or voodoo economics, all fiat currencies are “credit based” in the first place so their “value” only functions while credit markets are standing with good faith and confidence. When confidence in central banks and sovereign treasuries does break, so will all fiat currencies. This will appear to be a hyperinflation when in reality it will be the MOTHER OF ALL DEFLATIONS in terms of gold!

In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 “assessment” that Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year. 

.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled “Cyber-Forensic Investigation of ‘Russian Hack’ and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers,” and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA “alumni” in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings.

The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

NOTE: There has been so much conflation of charges about hacking that we wish to make very clear the primary focus of this Memorandum. We focus specifically on the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 “hack” of the DNC server. In earlier VIPS memoranda we addressed the lack of any evidence connecting the Guccifer 2.0 alleged hacks and WikiLeaks, and we asked President Obama specifically to disclose any evidence that WikiLeaks received DNC data from the Russians [see here and here].

Addressing this point at his last press conference (January 18), he described “the conclusions of the intelligence community” as “not conclusive,” even though the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6 expressed “high confidence” that Russian intelligence “relayed material it acquired from the DNC … to WikiLeaks.”

Obama’s admission came as no surprise to us. It has long been clear to us that the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a “Russian hack” to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer. Based mostly on the cumulatively unique technical experience of our ex-NSA colleagues, we have been saying for almost a year that the DNC data reached WikiLeaks via a copy/leak by a DNC insider (but almost certainly not the same person who copied DNC data on July 5, 2016).

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

***

Mr. President:

This is our first VIPS Memorandum for you, but we have a history of letting U.S. Presidents know when we think our former intelligence colleagues have gotten something important wrong, and why. For example, our first such memorandum, a same-day commentary for President George W. Bush on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech on February 5, 2003, warned that the “unintended consequences were likely to be catastrophic,” should the U.S. attack Iraq and “justify” the war on intelligence that we retired intelligence officers could readily see as fraudulent and driven by a war agenda.

The January 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” by “hand-picked” analysts from the FBI, CIA, and NSA seems to fit into the same agenda-driven category. It is largely based on an “assessment,” not supported by any apparent evidence, that a shadowy entity with the moniker “Guccifer 2.0” hacked the DNC on behalf of Russian intelligence and gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

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

The recent forensic findings mentioned above have put a huge dent in that assessment and cast serious doubt on the underpinnings of the extraordinarily successful campaign to blame the Russian government for hacking. The pundits and politicians who have led the charge against Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election can be expected to try to cast doubt on the forensic findings, if they ever do bubble up into the mainstream media. But the principles of physics don’t lie; and the technical limitations of today’s Internet are widely understood. We are prepared to answer any substantive challenges on their merits.

You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what he knows about this. Our own lengthy intelligence community experience suggests that it is possible that neither former CIA Director John Brennan, nor the cyber-warriors who worked for him, have been completely candid with their new director regarding how this all went down.

Copied, Not Hacked

As indicated above, the independent forensic work just completed focused on data copied (not hacked) by a shadowy persona named “Guccifer 2.0.” The forensics reflect what seems to have been a desperate effort to “blame the Russians” for publishing highly embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last July. Since the content of the DNC emails reeked of pro-Clinton bias, her campaign saw an overriding need to divert attention from content to provenance – as in, who “hacked” those DNC emails? The campaign was enthusiastically supported by a compliant “mainstream” media; they are still on a roll.

“The Russians” were the ideal culprit. And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, “We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own “forensic facts” and prime the media pump to put the blame on “Russian meddling.” Mrs. Clinton’s PR chief Jennifer Palmieri has explained how she used golf carts to make the rounds at the convention. She wrote that her “mission was to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.”

Independent cyber-investigators have now completed the kind of forensic work that the intelligence assessment did not do. Oddly, the “hand-picked” intelligence analysts contented themselves with “assessing” this and “assessing” that. In contrast, the investigators dug deep and came up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of the alleged Russian hack.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the third debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump. (Photo credit: hillaryclinton.com)

They found that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.

The Time Sequence

June 12, 2016: Assange announces WikiLeaks is about to publish “emails related to Hillary Clinton.”

June 15, 2016: DNC contractor Crowdstrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.

June 15, 2016: On the same day, “Guccifer 2.0” affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the “hack;” claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with “Russian fingerprints.”

We do not think that the June 12 & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to “show” that it came from a Russian hack.

The Key Event

July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

It thus appears that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a “Russian hack.” This was all performed in the East Coast time zone.

“Obfuscation & De-obfuscation”

Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled “Vault 7.” WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.

No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA’s Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015.

Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the “Marble Framework” program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as “news fit to print” and was kept out of the Times.

The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima, it seems, “did not get the memo” in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: “WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a media conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo credit: New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)

The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use “obfuscation,” and that Marble source code includes a “deobfuscator” to reverse CIA text obfuscation.

More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a “forensic attribution double game” or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

The CIA’s reaction was neuralgic. Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates “demons,” and insisting, “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

Mr. President, we do not know if CIA’s Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review.

Putin and the Technology

We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today’s technology enables hacking to be “masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin” [of the hack] … And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.”

“Hackers may be anywhere,” he said. “There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can’t you imagine such a scenario? … I can.”

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times. This is our 50^th VIPS Memorandum since the afternoon of Powell’s speech at the UN. Live links to the 49 past memos can be found here.

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY

William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center

Skip Folden, independent analyst, retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US (Associate VIPS)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Air Force Intelligence Officer (Ret.), Master SERE Resistance to Interrogation Instructor

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)

Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Edward Loomis, Jr., former NSA Technical Director for the Office of Signals Processing

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Cian Westmoreland, former USAF Radio Frequency Transmission Systems Technician and Unmanned Aircraft Systems whistleblower (Associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.); Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

Featured image: Justine Damond (Source: Four Gates)

It plays out as a horror story of law enforcement. A distress call to the Minneapolis police about activity taking place behind the house on Washburn Avenue, possibly a sound of intercourse, distress, or both, taking place after 11 during the night of July 15. “Hi, I’m, I can hear someone out back and I, I’m not sure if she’s having sex or being raped.”[1]

The caller, Justine Damond, had been spooked by the commotion. She had called her fiancé in Las Vegas who had, in turn, insisted she call the police. When the officers arrived, an unsuspecting Damond approached the police vehicle, came up to the open window of the driver, Officer Matthew Harrity, and was shot by his partner, Officer Mohamed Noor.

The unfurling story supplied commentators with a different combination from the usual anatomy of an American police shooting. Characters tend to be slotted along defined racial and demographic lines: the indigent black youth butchered in cold blood by a nerve wracked white officer who finds in his gun the most persuasive form of conciliation.

Not so on this occasion. The individual who is said to have pulled the trigger was a black Somali-American, whose hiring by the police department supplied politically correct, multi-culti gold. Similarly, the victim was atypical for the cultural optics, a white Australian woman from Sydney involved in the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community, all-healing, all ashram, all therapeutic.

With the reverse racial splash evident in this incident, comparisons were inevitably drawn. Now, it was time for the Somali-American community to lament. Minneapolis City Council member Abdi Warsame specifically noted remarks made by US Rep. Michele Bachmann that Noor may have had “cultural” reasons for gunning down Damond.

“What we are seeing is a lot of rhetoric in the media where this is a Somali issue, where this person is a Somali officer.”[2]

Bachmann sports her own extensive laundry list of laments, specifically about Minnesota’s shifting demographics.

“Minnesota is a state that now has a reputation for terrorism.”

Politically correct brigades were attempting to muzzle those “afraid of being called ‘racist’, ‘bigots’, ‘Islamaphobe’.” Fearing nothing of the sort, Bachmann described Noor as an “affirmative-action hire by the hijab-wearing mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges.”[3]

In the US, logistical matters were picked through with a procedural attention that has become common in these casual civilian executions. The officer, it was noted, had failed to turn on his body camera. The same went for his partner. Fire arm procedures were also pondered.

Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor (Source: Minnesota Public Radio News)

Both officers had been rather green on the beat. Officer Noor, during his short stint in the force, had already encountered three civilian complaints and a law suit regarding his treatment of a woman during the course of performing a mental health check-up.

In Australia, Damond’s death engendered a feeding frenzy across the tabloid scene, a chance to capitalise on America the violent, America the vicious. Christopher Dore of The Daily Telegraph, with stomach churching enthusiasm, called her killing “the best story for us that day. You know, here’s this Aussie girl who goes over to find love. And because of the complications of American policing and guns, she’s dead.”[4]

Others simply found the idea that such complications could never be replicated in idyllic Australia. An “unhinged gun culture,” asserted David Penberthy of Adelaide’s The Advertiser, “killed Justine Damond.”[5] With soft analysis, Penberthy asserted that she was “the first Australian victim of a gun culture that betrays the promise of America.”

The response from a police force caught off guard has also been rattling in its insensibilities. When a shooting incident takes place, blame the deceased whose guilt is taken to the grave. Noor, through his legal representatives, has suggested just that, claiming essentially two things: first, that Damond was in a drug-induced state when she approached the vehicle; second, that being in such a state somehow warranted his actions.

“It would be nice to know,” claimed Noor’s legal representative on Thursday, “if there was any (prescription sedative) Ambien in her system.” It would also be nice to know what darkened state of mind the officers in question were in answering the distress call put out by Damond.

The suggestion that Damond might have been on medication, let alone any bodily impurity, sparked something of a tussle: the world of clean living against that of the mind altering nightmare. A pure Australian, battling a contaminated culture.

“Justine,” claimed the family spokesman Tom Hyder, “was someone who only ate organic, she watched everything she ever put into her body. She is not someone who would have used drugs.”[6]

Heads have rolled. Police chief Janeé Harteau is, thus far, the most prominent scalp. Her own period had been marked by allegations of inappropriate handling regarding previous police shootings, notably that of Jamar Clark.

Mayor Hodges insisted that Harteau hang up her hat has chief.

“I’ve lost confidence in the Chief’s ability to lead us further… It is clear that she has lost the confidence of the people of Minneapolis as well.”

So, it would seem, have residents in Minneapolis with the whole law enforcement apparatus, having found reform in the police force lethargic at best, superficial at worse. Whether Damond’s death is accounted for in a legal sense will come down to the acceptable use of force by police, one governed by that ever precarious standard of “reasonableness”.[7] (Can a shooter ever be reasonable?)

In the US, the threshold on such reasonableness is so ground touchingly low as to be liberatingly violent.

“People just say, if a person was unarmed,” complained Jim Bueermann, former police chief of Redlands in California, “why would an officer have shot him or her?”

Best, then, never to call, approach or consult an officer on duty.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/public/@mpd/documents/webcontent/wcmsp-202070.pdf

[2] http://www.startribune.com/warsame-blasts-anti-somali-rhetoric-in-wake-of-damond-shooting/436190813/

[3] http://www.startribune.com/bachmann-praises-trump-blasts-political-correctness/435517653/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/us/minneapolis-police-shooting.html

[5] http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/rendezview/david-penberthy-an-unhinged-gun-culture-killed-justine-damond/news-story/891fc77a54f9daebcbcfd6de19dba490

[6] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/justine-damonds-death-police-search-for-more-clues-to-what-led-to-her-shooting-death/news-story/fa309ad74b331e89ab6a9db41d2d3164

[7] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/490/386/

In its attack on the very foundations of science, Trumpism constitutes an epistemic disaster: we are facing a crisis in terms of knowledge and objective inquiry. Epistemology (or the theory of knowledge) is concerned with, among other things, what right we have to the beliefs we hold – in other words, it is a normative enterprise: it asks not merely the descriptive-psychological question of how people happen to come to acquire their beliefs, but rather how they should do so. When the disinterested pursuit of knowledge is in effect denied and dismissed by our nation’s most powerful office, then it seems accurate to say that we are indeed facing a crisis of knowledge and science: an attack upon the very foundation of civil discourse.

On January 20th — the very moment Trump took office — all White House websites were scrubbed of information regarding climate change. The only mention was the following:

“President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan.”

In March, Scott Pruitt, Trump’s appointed director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), argued on CNBC that

“human activity [is not the] primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

In recent months, this illusion has led to further censorship of official websites, in which historical and factual information related to climate change has been removed. These changes are designed to deliberately politicize the most pressing crisis facing the U.S. and the world; by divesting the EPA of its regulatory functions these changes serve only to promote corporate interests.

The decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement was short-sighted and reckless; driven not by an honest assessment of the consequences of climate change, but instead by both a blind desire to undo Obama’s legacy wherever possible, as well as a hunger for short-term profits at the expense of geopolitical, social, and economic structures. The reality of anthropogenic climate change is no longer an object of serious scientific contention. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013 Summary for Policymakers states,

“Human influence in the climate system is clear…” as evidenced in the “…warming of the atmosphere and ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes.”

The refusal to acknowledge human-caused climate change is a denial in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Trump’s readiness to allow himself to hold beliefs that are motivated solely by self-interest and his complete disregard for the weight of evidence reflects not only an epistemic failure, but also a moral one. The philosopher William Clifford argued that to believe anything, anywhere, at any time on insufficient evidence is a moral wrong. With its basic assumption that knowledge is reducible to perception, Trumpism has created conditions in which our elected administration feels entitled to edit away inconvenient facts. In its defunding of climate change research (on May 5th, Congress ratified a federal budget that reduces EPA-funding for Earth science university research grants) and its flagrant redaction of climate change data and references from White House and EPA websites, the administration is acting in ways that willfully ignore a reality which is already upon us.

The scientific has predicted that we may be entering into the sixth mass extinction in the history of Earth – an event that will trigger a loss of biodiversity of unspeakable proportions. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,

“By the end of the century, climate change and its impacts may be the dominant direct driver of biodiversity loss and changes in ecosystem services globally.”

As biodiversity decreases there will undoubtedly be alarming consequences. This includes disruptions in the food chains – for example, changes in the insect species will decrease plant pollination. Further, the diminished plant diversity will impact our ability to produce essential medications to care for our aging population. Finally, naturally occurring biodiversity protects our planet from natural disasters, without which, our forests and coastlines more vulnerable than ever.

As Theodore Roosevelt observed,

“the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.”

The diversity and richness of life forms have value in themselves, as organs created by Nature to perceive Nature. With the extinction of a species the world itself has diminished in richness – for not only is it no longer perceived or approached in the way specific to the form of life, but the very interiority of Nature, we might say, has been reduced.

The administration’s response to what is currently happening is a moral outrage – and it was made possible by a readiness to forsake our epistemic duty to follow where the evidence leads. We are in the midst of a moral and epistemic crisis: this administration has to be held fully accountable for its foolish decision to ignore the reality and mock the scientific consensus.

Trump disgraces this nation everyday with his rejection of basic decency, his gross and palpable lying, his use of cruelty and humiliation in place of rational argumentation. In attacking the media and the freedom of the press, he disgraces his office: using it only to aggrandize himself and punish those with whom his personal interests conflict. But history may yet determine that his greatest disgrace was to willfully and gratuitously ignore the reality of anthropogenic climate change when the time to act was at its most critical.

Sam Ben-Meir, PhD is an adjunct professor at Mercy College. His current research focuses on environmental ethics and animal studies.
[email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

The self-maximizing growth of private-money power over all life and life support systems – life capital in a word – to exploit for non-producer profit is not yet recognized as a master degenerative trend built into the ruling meta program of which Brexit and Trump are the latest Anglo-American expressions. Central to this unseen meta trend is the compulsive dismantling of life-protective law and rights whose masking justification has shifted from ‘globalization’ to ‘nationalism’.

The Left is befuddled. It sees the anti-Labour implications in both the financialized EU and the de-regulating Brexit with no coherent program to overcome both. The Right blindly follows the inner logic of the ruling economic model while Liberals offer  only partial and incompetent market fixes for collective life capital sustainability. All fail to see Brexit’s giant step towards life capital degeneration and eco-genocide at the margins as environmental and civil commons are stripped of their public funding by privatization and de-regulation. The cumulative carcinogenic conversion of organic, social and ecological life organization into ever faster private money-profit sequences multiplying to the unproductive few is the predictable system result.

‘Brexit’ is now a house-hold word for anyone following world affairs. Yet its political, economic and cultural meaning for Britain, the US and globalization itself is tectonic, and no-one on the public stage or even the academy seems to get it– even after the huge upset loss of majority by the Tory party and PM May in the recent June 8 election.

Even after the Tories and May carry on with Brexit exactly as before the election they lost, the literally poisonous dispossession of life-serving civilization and revolution backwards that Brexit still leads are unfathomed by the commentariat.

“Brexit is Brexit”. No policy change is made. PM and the Brexit forces are still in charge. May can be dumped as a brand change, but not a policy one. The “Schedule of Negotiations” to leave the European Union proceeds as if nothing has happened. Even Corbyn Labour risen from the dead are so chuffed up by their spectacular rise they do not comprehend the Brexit coup d’etat still in motion.

Behind the scenes, there is clearly a very powerful separatist power including the press-lord media and allied bank and corporate rich with unbared interests pulling strings – as we see ahead – but no-one talks about it, including Marxists.

Who keeps on forcing a counter-revolution that is itself not yet understood with only a decisive minority ever voting for a policy-less separatist project funded and evidently orchestrated only by the rich with ‘nationalist’ demagoguery out front?

Source: Belfast Telegraph

Bribing the Northern Irish bigot rump, the Democratic Union Party (DUP), with public billions to vote for Tory Brexit in the House of Commons is the only way the Tories can get a majority. DUP is well known in the UK. It was formerly at war with the Catholic majority in Northern Ireland in virulent flag-waving aggression led by the extreme-right demagogue Ian Paislie, and is descended from Oliver Cromwell’s genocidal conquest sustained over centuries – more representative of the Brexit Tories than yet known.

Political and economic ignorance of Brexit meaning

Little or no common life substance, historical bearings, or defined policy grounds analysis of what is happening. Even 30 months after Brexit suddenly dominated  the news cycle as a marketing site for mass discontent and diversion from Britain’s real problems, there is no connection of the dots. Even the progressive net sites have little interest in Brexit, which is exactly what is needed for its dominant and unnamed interests to keep on forcing the rush agenda through.

US sites focus on US news and developments, not yet seeing the historic Brexit-Trump connection. Their connection is, in fact, a de-regulating nationalist-masked juggernaut reversing what good has been accomplished to protect citizens, the environment and the planetary life cycles themselves from cumulative despoliation and ruin. The European Union, despite its shocking neo-liberal financialization, has evolved such binding life-serving norms far ahead of the rest of the world over 70 years. This is not reported in the English-speaking world empire for an obvious reason.

There are so many dots to join, and all of them are compounded by the unseen program of Brexit – ever rising  inequality, publicly bankrupting tax cuts and subsidies to the corporate rich, cumulative dispossession of the poor by Tory “austerity”, runaway disease-causing industrial-chemical  farming  and frankenfoods growing into epidemics of obesity and other ills, London financial enrichment as the public sector shrinks, banks are recapitalized by public money, and – most unseen of all – mounting pollutions by multiplying carbon and waste miles built into vast unneeded commodity transportations across oceans that the Paris Agreement does not touch.

Why Brexit is an historic fraud 

No one seems to know on the public stage that the Brexit referendum ‘victory’ is legally non-binding from the start and has never been supported by the vast majority of British voters, with ever less support since the 37% peak of support in June 2016 referendum.

A demonstrator holds up a placard saying “Stand together Stop Brexit” at an anti-Brexit protest in Trafalgar Square in central London on June 28, 2016. (Source: Vanguard News)

So it follows that Brexit’s new leader since this poll, to which she was once opposed, PM Theresa  May, tells a big lie when she continually says that Brexit “is the will of the British people”. Her nose, and that of the Tory rich behind Brexit, grows longer when she keeps insisting on this falsehood after a British majority voted against her in the June 8 2017 election which she proclaimed the “defining election about Brexit”.

The multiple fraud is, however, important to keep alive. If the majority of the British people have never in fact supported Brexit nor the Great Repeal Bill PM May still takes forward to EU negotiation without any defined policy whatever, and she has a lost election that was about Brexit, then the whole house of cards on top of which she is visible queen falls into the bin of history where it now should go.

But who connects across the sudden and secretively funded and orchestrated 30-month movement of Brexit through all the lies it has spun – including the $450 million a day to be saved for the iconic but crumbling National Health Service (one fraudulent claim that has been noted in the corporate media). Who questions the legitimacy of the whole affair at all levels – including the leading liar rewarded as Foreign Minister even as his fellow cabinet members and the independent press show he is unfit to hold high public office.

Who brings up the connected facts that the big losers of Brexit are the 90% of farmers requiring its agricultural subsidy to survive, the young professional classes and students losing their precious passports to EU jobs and travel, the competitive green exporters who meet the strict EU market standards for renewable and non-toxic products which Big-Ag-Food specialize in, and the many millions very much in favour of the independent EU Court of Justice and of Human Rights with 60 years of legal standards and precedents on workers’ and citizens’ rights – – – not to mention the further millions who support EU Organic Agriculture and Endangered Species Directives leading the world against profitably ecocidal practices.

Who connects the widespread feeling that ‘things have gone wrong’ which the Brexit referendum capitalized on by scape-goating  the EU to the real causal factors of the long Great Recession brought on by Wall Street and the and the cruel Tory health, education, public service and social cutbacks to pay for it? Cause-effect thinking has been suspended all around by the Brexit diversion.

Who is behind it all? Boris Johnson’s and Nigel Farage’s London financial pals are front-line candidates but are not named, and the billionaire press tub-thumping for them and Brexit has sustained the great diversion from the UK’s real problems. PM May and Foreign Minister Johnson can even abet mass murder with no press follow-up as they approve billions of dollars of licensed armament sales to Saudi Arabia for its biblical eco-genocide of the poverty-stricken Yemini people.

Yet the unspeakable point about Brexit across domains is to make life-destructive London profit sovereign again against all international laws and regulation.

Cui Bono? The unseen beneficiaries of the Brexit coup

In the official background, Britain’s Electoral Commission has had to investigate Brexit’s voluminous and shady private financing with little luck given a campaign-long time limit on disclosure and other blocks. Transparency International has run into them too. There seems to be nothing on Brexit’s backroom origins before the double-talk lobby group, ‘Britain Great in Europe’, began its slickly promoted media-spectacle campaign with even its master slogan a brazen falsehood.

The mass media conversation is especially empty on the very big private money stakes that are at work in Brexit. After all the media’s major advertising spaces are bought by these very wealthy interests at very high returns. No-one in this company wants people to read that Brexit entails the legal erasure of  EU market rules protecting human rights, the environment and London financial inspections.

Private London financial interests are especially unexposed. Vast “investment banking, cross-border sales of securities, Euro liquidity to clearing houses, non-performing loan recognition, coverage and write-offs” all escape the planned independent EU inspection and supervision on these very defined issues at exactly the same time as Brexit started.

The EU Central Bank’s mandate to investigate and supervise “the business model, risk management, and capital, liquidity and funding” of private-profit bank and financial institutions via a rigorous “Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process” led by elite teams of professional accountants inside must strike terror and rage in the high echelons of the City. All such independent intervention, regulation and accountability is anathema to the unregulated daily trillions in hard currency substitutes that are bet and switched daily in the US-UK global financial matrix which can fabulously enrich London agents and hollow world economies overnight.

The dots are not joined

Few observe that Brexit is based on a non–binding referendum unsupported by two-thirds of the population, and finished with an eerily timed terrorist attack days before the June 8 2017 election to decide the Brexit go-ahead. Such terror attacks invariably spike polls upwards for governments, and it is revealing of the dark forces at work that PM May spookily blamed a “too tolerant” Opposition and “public sector” as encouraging the terrorists.

Even with almost all former UKIP votes, the Tory PM lost the majority counted to be overwhelming to cement Brexit in. To be exact on the historical figures here, the original 17, 410,742 voters supporting Leave in a rush referendum whose wording itself changed in the spectacle process hardly exceeded a third of the electorate (46,500, 001) as enumerated by the UK Electoral Commission. Moreover, no mainstream media ever featured the 12, 948,018 voters left out, nor the fact that those not voting later voted 2:1 against Brexit once the results were known.

In the June 8 2017 election, the Tories and PM May lost any majority whatever. even with a snap election against the promised 2020 date to exploit a 20+% poll lead, even with illegal financing and non-stop misrepresentations of the facts headlined in the press-baron media, and even with a sudden terrorist attack right before the election reliably known to boost leader polls.

All things considered, it is difficult to avoid concluding that ‘Brexit’ is a major political operation to end the established order of government from within ruling circles – a coup d’etat – which has proceeded by stunning positional switches, policy-empty promises, leadership flip-flops and lies, all outside of Parliamentary control, never supported by even 40% at any stage, and with no binding legitimacy any step of the way.

One is reminded here that such coups within the established political order have been recurrent in recent years against social democratic systems – as the EU is – in Brazil (with times more population and real wealth than the UK), as well as Argentina, Honduras, Paraguay, and Haiti.

The Nationalist Mask of Brexit

In this way, the long-established form of the UK’s EU governance in economic matters is overthrown for secretive and carte blanche rewrite covered up  nationalist slogans stirring imperial ego and pride. Yet who connects this built-in coup agenda to the transnational bank and corporate goliaths who most benefit from holus-bolus privatizing, de-taxing and de-regulating the UK economy?

The best way to divert any public from the hard facts of a coup by the unproductive rich is to attack a familiar enemy or scapegoat, and beat a nationalist tribal drum and bigot prejudices of superiority  to unify the many reliably ignorant dupes of the stratagem. The technique works across continents.

I have formally explained the inner syntax of this fallacy in a logic journal as the ad adversarium fallacy. Anyone can see it once it is exposed. In the Brexit gambit, the popular enemy has been a combination of EU nabobs grinding down poor countries to pay private banks, arrogant bureaucracy and oppressive regulations beyond tolerance, and – after years of catastrophe – globalizing rules hollowing out the true nation and its glory across time. The Trump-Brexit connections are clear.

They make for an explosive cocktail.

Both are recognized as populist nationalisms, but not the very powerful private interests they mask which in Brexit are relatively invisible in the media of record. Least of all is the cover-up itself recognized, never the logical disorder by which the mask is sustained. Almost always only personalities are engaged and yay-boo sides presented, while the actually determining policies and interests at a social-structure level are whited out.

The ad adversarium track-switch of thought drives the whole bandwagon diversion, and a nationalist mask over the real issues of private money interest versus common life interest is what is ultimately repressed and unspoken. Every step of the great lies and catastrophes of our time express some variation of this inner logic with “freedom” versus “dictatorship” the main ad adversarium switch of “globalization” which is now in question (but never defined), with Trump and Brexit the leading the charge of the new mask in place of the old to divert the public from what is really going on, again.

In short, the ‘nationalist’ mask is now adopted to distract the roll of real grass-roots outrage onto a convenient scape-goat kept down by political correctness before, with militant ignorance and – in Hannah Arendt’s lucid phrase – “negative solidarity” – to gain supreme rule for the historical moment.

What Brexit always divert from  

What is diverted from by this master-switch of thought is transiently game-winning for the blaming party, but ruinous in fact to the common life interest of the nation. In the case of Brexit more clearly than even Trump, the system payoff is the dominion of non-productive financial rule, de-regulation, de-taxation and privatization of the nation’s natural and social wealth, and war state methods to sustain and advance the life-blind system of unaccountable money-party rule.

Systemically understood, the UK and US ‘nationalist’ movements abolish life-serving law and regulations to engineer economic circuits to serve private money powers as the nation’s ‘freedom’. There are four degenerate trends:

1. sweeping income-tax reductions to private corporations and the rich to the lowest level in history of 10-15% (the “incentive” card);
2. ever more privatization and corporate public ‘partnership’ schemes that cost the public 30 to 50% more in hidden profit-levies, poorer services and upkeep investments (the “eliminate red-tape” card);
3. rising armed-force spending for pervasive policing at home and war-criminal threats and occupations abroad to enforce the growing life-system depredation (the ‘get tough’ card);
4. systemic deregulation as the need for more consumer, social and ecological life standards become more urgent (the “freedom” card).

The false justifications of Brexit 

There is certainly a widespread feeling in the UK that the movement of foreign-speaking cultures into everyday poorer Britain for social benefits and low-wage competition with UK workers has inflamed anti-EU passions.

A similar widespread feeling has inflamed anti-foreign passions in Britain in the past – with the xenophobic Enoch Powell who much impressed the City-based leader of  Brexit, Nigel Farage. Yet such ability to raise primal resentments against the foreign Other cannot justify a political counter-revolution against an evolved system leading the world in environmental, labour, and human rights.

Much too has been made of “Brussels” as an oppressive foreign rule choking Britain in “bureaucracy and red tape”. But this is the standard complaint against any public regulations perceived to lower private profits by increasing costs.

Michael Gove (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Research can find no sustainable example of such bureaucratic oppression. For example, the new EU regulation against massive throwing away of fish catches in falling-stock seas is despised by Brexit-UK Minster of the Environment Michael Gove. But his family business has long profited from this no-cost waste and  ignored the ecological necessity that the EU Common Fisheries policy prescribes.

Fury has been poured on ‘bureaucratic’ regulation against destroying (animal and bird habitat) of hedges and trees, and for  imposing genetically engineered seeds and methods on the countryside that become genetically dominant and contaminate other crops and natural ecocycles – two of the EU most condemned regulations in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and Organic Agriculture Regulations.

More sweepingly and eco-blindly, the current Tory Minister of Agriculture, George Eustace, publicly repudiates the precautionary principle itself as “the wrong way to go”. He wants to erase this central EU and scientific principle for corporate ‘risk assessment’ and other profit-friendly evasions of environmental responsibility.

As always with Brexit leaders, there is no coherently defined policy to replace the life-protective rule of law of over 45 years in the European Community and Union. All specific meaning disappears into vague PR sound-bites and slogans like “opportunity for innovation”, “lower regulatory burden”, and “less red tape”.

So too the financial suits behind Brexit. They want no regulations or costs for their specialty of trillions-a-day currency speculations (enabled and protected by public infrastructures), not even a small fraction of one percent proposed by the tiny Tobin tax over 40 years with near-unanimous public support.

The big banks and speculators have avoided, even after the 2008 collapse from historically unprecedented private big-finance fraud and predatory greed, any regulation requiring them to actually have the money they spend on derivative and other speculations to pay for their titanic gambles to enrich them alone with their biggest failures paid for by public bailouts.

If the “democratic accountability” of private banks and big finance promised by the EU and laboured on since 2008 by European experts (including British citizens) on behalf of the peoples of 26 nations destabilized by the greatest financial fraud in world history is stopped by Brexit, the City’s financial funnels into  the productive economy’s lifeblood will continue as usual

The overdue EU Capital Requirements Regulation and Directives on reporting and  supervising “risk management and capital, liquidity and funding” of each of the City’s big banks is intolerable to their long dominant culture. This upcoming supervision and regulation of London-cum-Wall Street by qualified international public servants not subjugated to City inducements and threats was under attack as soon as it was announced in 2015 with Brexit as the vehicle of overwhelming political pressures. The new $500 million Goldman-Sachs building in central London provides US-global back-up and partnership in the ‘too big to regulate’ scheme of an era of big-bank rule (or ‘financial fascism’, in the words of one EU minister).

Brexit and the Great Repeal Act are the master dodge by ‘the masters of the universe’ inside London against any incorrigibly independent and globally expert regulation in situ and backed by 70 years of international institutional experience.

Diversion to the populist enemy enables reverse of life-serving civilization

No one evidently connects across the dominant financial forces most of all gaining by Brexit clearance of over half a century of democratic civilization and binding life-protective norms at all levels.

Indeed there seems no media or political connection made of Brexit to the Big Banks and Big Agri-Chemical Food. They have overwhelming interests in stopping the evolved rule of EU law from regulating out their US-style methods and predatory profits.

The de-regulated system has cumulatively degenerated from production and reproduction of life means with cumulative gain – life capital – to ever-growing consumption and waste of social and ecological capital as far more profitable for private investment. Even the universal life support systems of breathable air, clean water, living oceans, rivers and aquifers are being degraded and despoiled at once.

Not even the same demagogic method in Trump and Brexit movements for massive de-regulation of an already insufficiently regulated and collapsing global life support base is deconstructed. Instead the ancient method of powering a movement against a vague enemy diverts everywhere– especially the desperate ignorance of dispossessed masses and the self-serving mendacity of the opportunistic well-off. If the divert-to-the-enemy movement is given enough publicity without public analysis of its derangement, it can undo a lot of life-coherent civilization to benefit  top dogs and their packs in unseen ways.

In the US, for example, the accepted enemy of Russia is the only diversion which has worked against Trump’s own spectacular success with this same population-firing psychological operation. The argumentum ad adversarium explained above is a universal, always diverting from a substantive life-and-death issue at stake to the evils or foibles of a well-known enemy of the audience who is being gulled.

If many have been dispossessed and are looking for a scapegoat, the animating diversion works like black magic. It is the master track-switch of history and wars hot and cold. Yet the designated enemy must have some bad karma for this ‘psy-op’ to prevail over time against exposure. For example, the European Central Bank’s post-2008 financial torture of Greece and other poorer EU nations has been so life-blindly vicious on behalf of big private banks that the bemused Left stumbles in its next steps. “Financial fascism”, the term deployed by Italy’s long-serving Economic Minister, Giulio Tremonti, is not easy to disagree with.

At the level of the realpolitik of the only beneficiaries of Brexit, European Union life-protective law and regulations themselves are attacked as the problem. The private money-sequencing mind in control cannot compute that European Community regulations and norms have managed over 70 years and better than any other continent to develop life-coherent regimes of production and products not systemically poisoning and destroying people’s health and environments.

This has long been a secret outside the EU. In America, only a few have the research backgrounds to know it. This is why Brexit run in a US-style attack campaign has almost succeeded in the leading the greatest step backwards in the evolution of homo regulans, the differentiating intelligence of the species.

What is not seen: the European Union’s rule of life-protective law

Unrelated to Brexit in the press are facts such as UK air pollution kills 50-60,000 people annually with the highest pollution content of all 28 EU states in violation of the EU standards with the EU now issuing a “final warning” before stiff fines against mass killing  – revealingly at the same time as Tory PM May is forcing Brexit as the “wide-open eyes” and “will of the British people”.

It is “oppressive EU regulatory burdens” which are alone set to solve the problem. The EU Ambient Air Quality Directive is exactly researched and covers all known emission sources, including all forms of factory and traffic emissions and the specific pollutions and acidifications, a decades-advanced scientific document with  the standard feedback documentation and incremental enforcement that normally characterize EU regulation and norms.

Yet government action on the worst lethal air pollution by the EU over decades is only one of many life-protective regulatory actions that Brexit stops. Less seen are the faster-rising deaths and diseases from junk-food obesity and cumulative ecological ruin by US-style toxic Big Agri-Food processes and products increasingly feeding Britain. They also pervade organic and ecological life organisation with growing chemical inputs, concoctions and wastes.

Yet already Tory demands have been made for UK hygiene standards to be changed from EU to US rules so as to permit chicken meat sanitized only by chlorinated water, to allow beef raised with growth hormones, and to free genetically engineered substitute foods or GMO’s from production and label restrictions. Already Big-Agri-Food US-style is setting up to compete outside the EU – Brexit’s “wider engagement with the world” – by far lower food, animal welfare and environmental standards.

These are the dark side meanings of the  “glorious new market opportunities”, “lack of red tape”, and “regulatory flexibilities” promised by Brexit.

The EU Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee is also moving to restrict advertising and sale of  high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) foods and beverages to children with the UK set to comply just when Brexit is force-moving negotiations to end EU standards in Britain.

Even more pervasive noise pollution is exactly targeted at source by EU regulations, including on auto-vehicles, lawn-mowers and boat motors (compare Brexit-supporter Donald Trump’s Harley-Davidson inaugural salute and full-blasting 6-foot amplifiers in hotels). But where in the ad-filled media have you ever read about this EU standard of civilization?

In renewable energy too, EU Directives lead the UK and the world again by a strict Renewable Energy Directive which requires 20% renewable energy in all 26 states by 2020. This may seem inadequate in our carbonized world where the air and oceans acidify and trillions of carbon miles are built into transcontinental commodity shuttles while only downstream ‘climate change’ is targeted. In deeper fact, destabilized hydrological and weather cycles increasingly destroy the very conditions of life. At least the EU Directives are not more markets in rights to pollute which do not reduce carbon gases.

The Tory UK’s planned exit from the most developed rule of life-protective law is set to spike carbon-miles further by every “wider trading opportunity” it brings  outside of short-miles Europe where the distance between London and Berlin is a very small fraction of the carbon miles to and from Chicago or Toronto. Brexit is yet another crank up of the de-regulating US model where big finance, agri-food and military-industrial drivers rush further out of control at a tipping point of cumulative stress on local and planetary life supports.

For the wider view, EU life standards have evolved over many decades of painstaking regulation of material processes and products to be a social immune system of the most productive and efficiently recycling system in the world – despite their deadly internal conflict with Wall-Street financialization since its 2008 crash which has since hollowed out the public sectors of the developed world by at least $26 trillion in transfer of money demand from the public to private banks and unproductive private financial accounts.

The argument that REACH is one of the most burdensome EU regulations has been a hot topic of discussion in the run up to the EU referendum, where the UK voted to leave the EU. (Source: Chemical Watch)

Most impressive in ‘social immune’ terms is the EU’s world-leading Organic Agriculture Directives and, more deeply, its REACH regulation of hazardous chemicals (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals). Over 20 years in the making involving lead British scientists, REACH has instituted regulations across domains in licensing processes and commodities in the legal market to stop every man-made chemical life insult now pervading the world in tens of thousands of forms.

Yet in every case of life-serving norm and regulation in which the EU leads the world in pollution reduction – including the near-pervasive commodity toxification and invasion subsidized and normalized elsewhere as ‘the free market’ and ‘growth’ – the EU’s detailed and scientifically validated regulations actually do reduce pollutions and life hazards by exact targeting and enforcement. They step-by-step require life-coherent standards to be applied – as opposed to the regulation-bashing and swashbuckling ignorance of the Brexit-Trump forces as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘freedom’.

Conclusion

Brexit exemplifies the pathogenic pattern which is not seen by the private ad-driven press, the corporatized academy, or the captive state. The life-and-death meaning is blinkered out, the binding power of all EU life standards by the omnibus Great Repeal Act is abolished in equivocal style, all losses of voting support are arrogantly ignored, and life-serving democratic civilization is reversed.

The macro-economic pattern is carcinomic. Masked to surrounding life as “Great Britain’s sovereignty”, unprecedentedly dominant private transnational money sequences grow and multiply in nano-second speculations, unproductive titanic takeovers and debt-powered dispossessions to metastacize unseen into all corners with no defined policy, democratic mandate or committed life function whatever.

Dr. John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and author of the three-volume study, Philosophy and World Problems of UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS). His most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure.

Featured image: Former Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Patrice Lumumba (Source: Bob Feldman 68)

“…I have learned much about William A.M. Burden II from Peggy and I… I was best acquainted with his 20-year tenure… as Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] and his contribution to the quality of the output of this “think tank’s serving the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff…His government service reached its apogee during his two years, 1959-61, as Ambassador to Belgium…He has been most responsive over these years also to the needs of Columbia University which he has served as a trustee…” – General and former IDA President Maxwell Taylor in foreword to Columbia University Life Trustee William A.M. Burden’s 1982 book, Peggy and I: A Life Too Busy For A Dull Moment

“Before I accepted my ambassadorship in Belgium I had been given in 1957…appointment as ‘a public trustee’ of the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]. It became one of the top priorities of my life…I…was elected chairman in May, 1959…One of the unfortunate side-effects of the student protest movement against the Vietnam War was that IDA itself became a target for anti-war protests, and its member universities were subjected to faculty and student pressure to cancel their ties…” – Columbia University Life Trustee William A.M. Burden in his 1982 book, Peggy and I

“Only prudent, therefore to plan on basis that Lumumba Government threatens our vital interests in Congo and Africa generally. A principal objective of our political and diplomatic action must therefore be to destroy Lumumba government as now constituted…” – Columbia University Life Trustee and U.S. Ambassador to Belgium William A.M. Burden in a July 19, 1960 cable to the U.S. State Department

“The Belgians were sort of toying with the idea of seeing to it that Lumumba was assassinated. I went beyond my instructions and said, well, I didn’t think it would be a bad idea either, but I naturally never reported this to Washington—but Lumumba was assassinated. I think it was all to the good…” – Columbia University Life Trustee William A. M. Burden in a 1968 Oral History Interview with Columbia University School of Journalism’s Advanced International Reporting Program Director John Luter

***

When Columbia and Barnard students first occupied Hamilton Hall on Columbia University’s campus on Apr. 23, 1968, one of their six demands was “that the university sever all ties with the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] and that [then-Columbia] President Kirk and Trustee Burden resign their positions on the Executive Committee of that institution immediately.”

Columbia Life Trustee William A.M. Burden (Source: Find A Grave Memorial)

Coincidentally, besides representing Columbia University—with the (now-deceased) Grayson Kirk—on the Executive Committee of the Pentagon’s IDA weapons research think-tank in 1968, Columbia Life Trustee William A.M. Burden was also the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium who recommended fifty-seven years ago, in July 1960, that “a principal objective” of the Republican administration in Washington, D.C. of former Columbia University President Eisenhower “must therefore be to destroy” the democratically-elected “Lumumba government as now constituted” in Belgium’s former Congo [Zaire] colony. As David Talbot recalled in his 2015 book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government:

“Dulles, Doug Dillon (then serving as a State Department undersecretary), and William Burden, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, led the charge within the Eisenhower administration to first demonize and then dispose of [Patrice] Lumumba. All three men had financial interests in the Congo. The Dillon family’s investment bank handled the Congo’s bond issues. Dulles’s old law firm represented the American Metal Climax (later AMAX), a mining giant with holdings in the Congo…Ambassador Burden was a company director…Ambassador Burden was a Vanderbilt heir…

“Burden, who had acquired his ambassadorship by contributing heavily to the 1956 Eisenhower campaign, spent his days in Brussels attending diplomatic receptions…It was the ambassador who first raised alarms about the rising Patrice Lumumba…Burden began sending agitated cables to Dulles in Washington well before Lumumba’s election…By the…summer [of 1960], Burden was cabling Washington ‘to destroy Lumumba government’ as a threat to ‘our vital interest in Congo.’…”

“…At an NSC [National Security Council] meeting in August 1960, Eisenhower gave [CIA Director Allen] Dulles direct approval to ‘eliminate’ Lumumba. Robert Johnson, the minutes taker at the NSC meeting…said there was nothing ambiguous about Eisenhower’s lethal order. ‘I was surprised that I would ever hear a president say anything like this in my presence or the presence of a group of people’…

“…Lumumba ‘would remain a grave danger,’ Dulles told an NSC meeting on Sept. 21, 1960, ‘as long as he was not yet disposed of.’…”

A Life Trustee of Columbia University since 1956, Burden (who died in 1984) was among the “people in the Eisenhower administration” who “hunted for ways to reduce Lumumba’s influence” and, along with CIA Director Allen Dulles “and the CIA’s man in Leopoldville [Kinshasa],” Larry Devlin, “devised actions,” according to Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Professor of History Emmanuel Gerard and University of Pennsylvania Professor of History Bruce Kuklick’s 2015 book, Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba.

The same book also noted that Devlin, was “a CIA agent from the late 1940s” who “began spying for the CIA in Brussels, where he had a cover position as an attaché’” in 1958 and where he “made contacts with the Congo’s politicians, who came to Belgium for various deliberations.” After his appointment as the CIA’s chief of station in the Congo in “the second part of 1959,” Devlin “went there with Burden” in March 1960, when the Columbia Life Trustee and his wife traveled through the still not-yet independent Belgian Congo. Coincidentally, besides being a Columbia trustee in 1960, Burden was also a trustee of the Farfield Foundation that was utilized by the CIA, during the Cold War Era of the 1950s and 1960s, as a conduit for covertly financing projects and journals, like the American Congress of Cultural Freedom [CCF] and Encounter magazine, which promoted U.S. power elite foreign policy objectives.

Following his March 1960 trip to the Congo with CIA Station Chief Devlin, “Burden told the Department of State that America could not permit the Congo to go left after independence,” according to Death in the Congo. And after the Congo [Zaire] was granted its formal independence on June 30, 1960, the Columbia Life Trustee–who also “maintained during his ambassadorship, a directorship in American Metal Climax, whose Rhodesian copper interests were to make it the leading corporate defender of a conservative order…in Katanga (where Belgian troops began supporting an illegally-established secessionist regime on July 11, 1960), according to Roger Housen’s 2002 paper “Why Did The US Want To Kill Prime Minister Lumumba Of The Congo?”–began pushing for the removal of the democratically-elected anti-imperialist Lumumba as Congolese Prime Minister in July 1960. As Madeline Kalb observed in her 1982 book, The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa:

“The U.S. Embassy in Brussels, replying to the U.S. State Department’s query on July 19…took a very strong line regarding Lumumba, recommending openly for the first time that the United States try to remove him from office. The U.S. ambassador,William Burden, said he believed the situation called for ‘urgent measures on various levels.’…Burden concluded by noting that while the U.S. Embassy in Leopoldville [Kinshasa] had the primary responsibility for dealing with the internal political situation in the Congo, the CIA in Brussels would be ‘reporting separately some specific suggestions.’”

The Death in the Congo book also noted:

“…Burden barraged Washington with memos asking greater sympathy for the [Belgian] imperialists…He understood, he told [then-U.S.] Secretary [of State Christian] Herter, why the United States would look at issues from the point of view of the Congo. Nevertheless, America should instead pressure the UN to support Belgium. At the end of July Burden briefed Dulles when returned to Washington for discussions. From Europe, Burden would continue as a mouthpiece for the more rabid anticommunism guiding Dulles’s report to the NSC [National Security Council]…”

Lawrence R. Devlin in the early 1960s when he was station chief in Congo. (Source: The New York Times)

Columbia Trustee Burden also apparently pressured Time magazine’s then-owner, Henry Luce, to not do a Lumumba cover story, with Lumumba’s picture on the front of the magazine, during July 1960 discussions in Paris about the Congolese political situation between Burden and U.S. Ambassador to France Amory Houghton, U.S. Ambassador to the Congo  Clair “Tim” Timberlake and CIA Chief of Station in the Congo Larry Devlin. As Devlin recalled in his 2007 book Chief of Station, Congo: A Memoir of 1960-67:

“We [Devlin and “Tim” Timberlake] moved to Ambassador Houghton’s office where we were joined by Ambassador Burden for more detailed talks concerning the Congo and its problems. We were provided lodging at Ambassador Houghton’s residence and dined there with the two ambassadors. During our discussions, Tim brought up a delicate matter: ‘Time magazine plans to do a cover story on Lumumba with his picture on the front of the magazine.’ He continued, ‘Celebrity coverage at home will make him even more difficult to deal with. He’s a first-class headache as it is.’

“’Then why don’t you get the story killed?’ Burden asked. ‘Or at least modified?’

“’I tried to persuade the Time man in Leopoldville [Kinshasa] until I was blue in the face,’ Tim replied. ‘But he said there was nothing he could do about it because the story had already been sent to New York.’

“’You can’t expect much from a journalist at that level,’ Burden said pulling out his address book and flipping through the pages. He picked up the phone and put a call through to the personal assistant of Henry Luce, Time’s owner.

“Luce soon returned the call. After a brief, friendly exchange that made clear his personal relationship with Luce, Burden bluntly told him that he would have to change the Lumumba cover story. Luce apparently said that the magazine was about to go to press. ‘Oh, come on, Henry,’ Burden said, ‘you must have other cover stories in the can.’ They chatted for a few more minutes before Burden hung up.

“A few days later in the United States we picked up a copy of the magazine with a new and different cover story. Lumumba had been relegated to the international section…”

The Death in the Congo book indicated one reason that Columbia Life Trustee Burden was influential enough in U.S. Establishment circles to be able to stop Time magazine from putting Patrice Lumumba’s picture on the magazine’s front cover in the summer of 1960:

“Burden was born into the colossally rich Vanderbilt family. He had a background in aviation and finance…Burden used his great wealth and the contacts that came from it to secure upper-level governmental experience, socializing with moneyed internationally oriented Republicans…”

In 1973, for example, besides still being both a Columbia trustee and the honorary chairman of the board of the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think tank, Burden–a former Assistant for Research and Development to the Secretary of the Air Force–also sat on the board of directors of Lockheed, CBS, Manufacturers Hanover Trust and Allied Chemical and was still a director of American Metal Climax [AMAX], according to a Feb.6, 1973 Columbia Daily Spectator article. In addition, the former U.S. ambassador to Belgium also sat on the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in 1973.

By August of 1960, former Columbia University President Eisenhower’s administration in Washington, D.C. “feared that Lumumba’s oratorical talent would make him a thorn in their side even if he were maneuvered out of power” and “decided it made more sense to kill him,” according to Mark Zepezauer’s 1994 book, The CIA’s Greatest Hits. After CIA Chief of Station in the Congo Devlin met with CIA Director Dulles at CIA headquarters and then returned to the Congo in August 1960, Eisenhower called for the elimination of Lumumba at an Aug. 18, 1960 meeting of the National Security Council, and the following happened, according to Death in the Congo:

“Project Wizard had come into being. It grew out of Devlin’s ideas but also out of proposals of the Brussels CIA…The next day the CIA cabled Devlin to move forward with various ramped-up dirty tricks…Ultimate formal approval of the government’s most unpleasant jobs came through a standing four-person subcommittee of the National Security Council, the ‘Special Group.’ In addition to a note-taker, it consisted of a top man of the Department of State and of Defense; Dulles; and [White House National Security Adviser] Gordon Gray, who spoke for the president. On August 25 [1960],  Dulles had his regular meeting with the Special Group. He outlined the mounting anti-Lumumba exercises of Project Wizard…After some discussion, the Special Group agreed not to ‘rule out’ consideration…of ‘any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba.’

“The next day Dulles himself wired Devlin about the ‘removal’ of Lumumba as ‘an urgent and prime objective.’ With a State Department nod, Dulles allowed Devlin some freedom of operation and stipulated ‘more aggressive action if it can remain covert.’ The CIA also awarded …an additional $100,000 [equivalent to over $821,000 in 2017 US dollars] to accomplish these goals should a ‘target of opportunity’ present itself and should Devlin not have time to sound out either the embassy in the Congo or the CIA at home…”

As the now-deceased Devlin recalled in his 2007 book Chief of Station, Congo:

“…To the best of my knowledge, no other station chief had ever been given such latitude…If further evidence was required that Washington supported our own conclusion about replacing Lumumba, that was it…We were already monitoring parliament and encouraging and guiding the actions of various parliamentary opposition groups that we had penetrated…We were also using [a Belgian citizen and CIA agent named] Jacque to insert anti-Lumumba articles in the country’s leading newspaper…

“With the full backing of Headquarters, the station began to work on a plan to remove Lumumba from power. One of our early operations, organized by Jacque who provided…financial support, was an anti-Lumumba demonstration when the latter spoke at meeting of African foreign ministers held in Leopldville [Kinshasa] on Aug. 25 [1960]. On his arrival, hostile demonstrators shouted ‘a bas Lumumba’ (‘down with Lumumba’), and when he began to speak to the delegates, the mob drowned him out shouting anti-Lumumba slogans.”

Then, according to Death in the Congo, “on the evening of Sept. 3 [1960], Congolese President Joseph Kasa-Vubu summoned” the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Leopoldville [Kinshasha] during the first two weeks of September 1960, Andrew Cordier, for a meeting. Coincidentally, the Columbia University board of trustees (that included by-then former U.S. ambassador to the Congo Burden), would later appoint Cordier to be the Dean of its School of International Affairs [School of International and Public Affairs] between 1962 and 1968, to be the Columbia President who succeeded Grayson Kirk between August 1968 and September 1970 and to again be School of International Affairs Dean between September 1970 and 1972. The same book also observed:

“Cordier and Kasa-Vubu had more meetings over the next two days, Sept. 4 and 5 [1960]…A few minutes before 8 p.m. on Sept. 5, Kasa-Vubu sent his Belgian adviser Jef Van Bilsen to Cordier with a formal written exhortation. Cordier should close the airports and monitor the Leopoldville radio station. Then, at 8:12, Kasa-Vubu appeared at the station…He nervously asserted that he was sacking Lumumba…Cordier immediately implemented Kasa-Vubu’s written solicitations…The firing was invalid…Lumumba made the illegality of Kasavubu’s ploy clear in a letter…delivered to Cordier at 4 a.m. on Sept. 6 [1960]…On Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 7 [1960], in the Congo’s house of representatives Lumumba yet again explained the illegality of Kasa-Vubu’s acts…For 5 days Cordier took instructions from politicians who had no justifiable authority. He had closed the radio station and shut the airports because Kasa-Vubu asked him…When Kasa-Vubu pitched Lumumba out [as Congolese prime minister], the Congo’s [ceremonial] president had the help of Belgian and UN authorities…and also the goodwill of the CIA. At this time the Americans put Joseph Ileo, Kasa-Vubu’s choice for prime minister, on the payroll, although he had already been funded to secure his election as president of the Congo’s senate…”

According to Professor of Political Science George Nzongola-Ntalaja’s 2003 book, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History, however, “both houses of” the Congo’s “parliament, where Lumumba still had a working majority gave him a vote of confidence and rejected Kasa-Vubu’s decision as null and void.” But on Sept. 14, 1960, future Congolese/Zairean dictator Mobutu “pulled off his first military coup with the help of the CIA.” Prior to Mobutu’s Sept. 14, 1960 military coup, CIA Director Dulles had flown to Brussels to brief Burden “on the recent decisions of the National Security Council” and told Burden that “he believed the leader we could depend on in a showdown with Lumumba was young Colonel Joseph Mobutu, second in command of the Congolese army,” according to Burden’s Peggy and I book.

Back in the United States on Sept. 19, 1960, “Dulles and his immediate subordinates launched a top-secret communication channel to Devlin called PROP, which would only discuss assassination” of Lumumba, according to Death in the Congo;” while “in a document signed in October 1960, the then-Belgian minister for African Affairs, Count Harold d’Aspremot Lyden, stated explicitly that Belgian interests “required ‘the final elimination of Lumumba,’ according to The Congo from Leopold to Kabila. And by the end of January 1961, the democratically-elected and illegally ousted Congolese prime minister had been physically “eliminated.”

Coincidentally, in a 1968 oral history interview with former Newsweek editor and Columbia University Journalism School faculty member Joel Luter, less than 8 years later, Columbia Life Trustee and then-IDA Executive Committee member and chairman of the IDA board of trustees Burden made the following comment about the murder of Lumumba and two colleagues, Congolese Senate Vice-President Joseph Okito and Congolese Youth and Sports Minister Maurice Mpolo, on Jan. 17, 1961 in the Katanga area of the Congo[Zaire]:

“The Belgians were sort of toying with the idea of seeing to it that Lumumba was assassinated. I went beyond my instructions and said, well, I didn’t think it would be a bad idea either, but I naturally never reported this to Washington—but Lumumba was assassinated. I think it was all to the good…”

Bur in his 1967 book, Challenge of the Congo, Kwame Nkrumah (the democratically-elected Ghanaian head of state who was forced out of office in a 1966 CIA-orchestrated military coup) wrote the following about what happened in the Congo during Columbia Life Trustee Burden’s term as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium and during the period when former Columbia University President Cordier was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in the Congo:

“Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo…three of our brother freedom fighters have been done to death…They have been killed because the United Nations…denied to the lawful Government of the Congo…means of self-protection…The murder of Patrice Lumumba and of his two colleagues…is unique in that it is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organization in whom that ruler put his trust…Kasa-Vubu illegally tried to remove Patrice Lumumba from office and to substitute another Government. When Lumumba wished to broadcast to the people, explaining what had happened, the United Nations…prevented him by force from speaking…

“…The United Nations, which could exert its authority to prevent Patrice Lumumba from broadcasting, was, so it pleaded, quite unable to prevent his arrest by mutineers or his transfer, through the use of airfields under United Nations control…The United Nations would not effectively intervene to save the life of the Prime Minister or his colleagues…Our dear brothers Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito are dead…”.

And as Ludo De Witte recalled in his 2001 preface to the English edition of his book The Assassination of Lumumba:

“…Without the steps taken by Washington and the United Nations during the preceding months, the assassination could never have been carried out. In July 1960, after Belgium intervened in the Congo and after the rich copper state of Katanga seceded, the United States went into action…U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had instructed his aides to liquidate Lumumba and a top secret CIA unit was given the task of eliminating him…Lumumba’s transfer to Katanga, delivering him into the hands of his worst enemies, was done with the full knowledge of Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief…UN complicity is demonstrated by the help given to Mobutu’s soldiers in capturing Lumumba…The assassination of Lumumba and tens of thousands of other Congolese nationalists, from 1960 to 1965, was the West’s ultimate attempt to destroy the continent’s authentic independent development…”

This article was originally published by Bob Feldman 68.

One mystery trader has made an extremely large bet that the stock market is going to crash by October, and if he is right he could potentially make up to 262 million dollars on the deal.

Fortunes were made and lost during the great financial crisis of 2008, and the same thing will happen again the next time we see a major stock market crash. But will that stock market crash take place before 2017 is over? Without a doubt, we are in the midst of one of the largest stock market bubbles in U.S. history, and many prominent investors are loudly warning of an imminent stock market collapse. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this stock market bubble is going to end very badly just like all of the other stock market bubbles throughout history have, but if you could know the precise timing that it will end you could set yourself up financially for the rest of your life.

I want to be very clear about the fact that I do not know what will or will not happen by the end of October. But one mystery investor is extremely convinced that market volatility is going to increase over the next few months, and if he is correct he will make an astounding amount of money. According to Business Insider, the following is how the trade was set up…

• To fund it, the investor sold 262,000 VIX puts expiring in October, with a strike price of 12.
• The trader then used those proceeds to buy a VIX 1×2 call spread, which involves buying 262,000 October contracts with a strike price of 15 and selling 524,000 October contracts with a strike price of 25.
• For reference, bullish call spreads are used when a moderate rise in the underlying asset is expected. Traders buy call options at a specific strike price while selling the same number of calls of the same asset and expiration date at a higher strike.
• In a perfect scenario, where the VIX hits but doesn’t exceed 25 before October expiration, the trader would see a whopping $262 million payout.

I will be watching to see what happens. If this mystery investor is correct, it will essentially be like winning the lottery.

But just because he has made this wager does not mean that he has some special knowledge about what is going to happen.

For example, just look at what Ruffer LLP has been doing. They are a $20 billion investment fund based in London, and they have been betting tens of millions of dollars on a stock market crash which has failed to materialize so far.  But even though they have lost so much money already, they continue to make extremely large bearish bets…

As of earlier this week, Ruffer had spent $119 million this year betting on a stock market shock, $89 million of which had expired worthless, according to data compiled by Macro Risk Advisors. The investor has gradually amassed holdings of about 1 million VIX calls through three occasions so far in 2017, and each time a significant portion expired at a loss.

Blame a subdued VIX for the futility. The fear gauge was locked in a range of 10 to 14 for the first three months of 2017, and while it has since climbed to as high as 15.96, it has been stuck well below 14 since a single-day plunge of 26% nine days ago. Earlier this week, the index closed at its lowest level since February 2007.

But that doesn’t mean Ruffer is giving up. Already loaded up on May contracts, the firm has continued to buy cheap VIX calls expiring later in the year — wagers costing about 50 cents.

I can understand why Ruffer has been making these bets. In a rational world, stocks would have already crashed long ago.

The only way that stock prices have been able to continue to rise is because of unprecedented intervention by global central banks. They have been pumping trillions of dollars into the financial markets, and this has essentially completely destroyed normal market forces. The following comes from David Stockman…

The Fed and its crew of traveling central banks around the world have gutted honest price discovery entirely. They have turned global financial markets into outright gambling dens of unchecked speculation.

Central bank policies of massive quantitative easing (QE) and zero interest rates (ZIRP) have been sugar-coated in rhetoric about “stimulus”, “accommodation” and guiding economies toward optimal levels of inflation and full-employment.

The truth of the matter is far different. The combined $15 trillion of central bank balance sheet expansion since 2007 amounts to monetary fraud of epic proportions.

In the “bizarro world” that we are living in today, many companies are trading at prices that are more than 100 times earnings, and some companies are actually trading at prices that are more than 200 times earnings.

Stock prices have become completely and totally disconnected from economic reality. As I discussed the other day, U.S. GDP has only risen at an average yearly rate of just 1.33 percent over the past 10 years, but meanwhile stock prices have been soaring into the stratosphere.

Nobody in their right mind can claim that makes any sense at all. Just like in 2000, and just like in 2008, this absolutely ridiculous stock market bubble will have a horribly tragic ending as well.

Once again, I don’t know what the exact timing will be. Stocks could start crashing tomorrow, but then the Swiss National Bank could swoop in and buy 4 million shares of Apple just like they did during the months of January, February and March earlier this year.

The biggest players in this ongoing charade are the global central banks. If they decide to keep pumping trillions of dollars into global financial markets, they may be able to keep the bubble going for a little while longer.

But if at any point they decide to withdraw their artificial assistance, those that have placed huge bets against the market are going to make absolutely enormous piles of cash.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Featured image is from the author.

Late last week, the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump will end covert support of militias attempting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I spoke to Rick Sterling, investigative journalist for Consortium News and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, about the report.

Ann Garrison: Rick Sterling, what’s your first reaction to the Washington Post’s claims?

Rick Sterling: If Trump orders the CIA to stop training and equipping extremists in Syria, that will be a good thing. We will have to see if this is implemented because sometimes they say one thing publicly but do other things secretly. For example, starting in late 2011, the CIA was coordinating the shipment of weapons from Libya to the armed opposition in Syria—in secret.

AG: The White House has refused to confirm the Washington Post report. If it is true, why do you think Trump won’t confirm?

RS: This is partly reflective of the power elites’ internal battle over foreign policy and whether Trump will actually move away from the aggressive “regime change” foreign policy. Those who favor escalation in Syria dominate discussion in the Washington Post and on CNN and MSNBC.

AG: And if this is true, won’t Trump be keeping at least one of his campaign promises?

Rick Sterling

RS: Yes, Trump would be taking a step that is in keeping with his campaign promise on Syria. It should be popular in the US because it’s a move away from war, and the CIA has wasted billions of dollars that have effectively ended up supporting Al-Qaeda/Nusra/HTS. Jabhat al-Nusra was the official branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, but now it calls itself “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” (HTS).

AG: What’s your response to corporate press and politicians calling this a concession to Russia?

RS: The anti-Russia McCarthyism is so extreme that Trump seems almost afraid to announce the termination of the CIA program. Neoconservatives are framing the decision as a concession or even “appeasement” of Putin because they want to continue the conflict. They want to stop Trump from de-escalating tension with Russia and withdrawing from Syria.

AG: And what about those who are loathe to acknowledge that Trump could ever make a good decision about anything?

RS: Whether it’s Obama or Trump or John McCain, one should evaluate policies and actions and criticize or support them on their specific merits and faults. If Trump is really trying to de-escalate the Syrian conflict, that is a good policy. One can support that and remain critical of his policies and actions in other areas.

AG: The one time that corporate press, Democrats (excepting Tulsi Gabbard), and pro-war Republicans have applauded Trump’s foreign policy was when he launched 59 cruise missiles worth $60+ million dollars at Syria over their unproven use of chemical weapons. Your response?

RS: The attack on Syria was an illegal act of war without any justification. And there is increasing evidence that the Syrian government was NOT responsible for the chemical weapons deaths. The fact that western media congratulated Trump on that illegal action shows what their true goals are: to continue US “regime change” foreign policy and specifically to attack Syria no matter the cost in blood and treasure.

AG: Aren’t the Syria Solidarity Movement—and any of the rest of us who think that the US should stop arming terrorists—certain to be branded “pro-Trump” and “pro-Putin”?

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)

RS: Yes, but that should not stop anyone. The aggression against Syria needs to stop—that is in our American interests as well as those of all people in the Middle East. Tulsi Gabbard’s “Stop Arming Terrorists” legislation is common sense and should be supported.

AG: And what can the anti-war community—insofar as it exists—do to encourage Trump in this one policy from outside the power elite argument in Washington D.C.? A bill creating new sanctions against Russia, Syria, and Iran got such overwhelming support in Congress that President Trump doesn’t dare veto it because Congress has the numbers to override a veto. Only Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voted against it in the Senate, and Sanders said that he voted no only because he supports sanctions on Russia and Syria but not Iran.

RS: Again, it’s not about the person, it’s about the policy. People who are concerned about international politics, peace, and justice should be writing, speaking out, and lobbying for de-escalation, and promoting more discussion and negotiation, including with Russia. When Trump encourages this, it’s a good thing and we should do whatever we can to support it.

AG: It’s often hard to believe that they give a damn about what those of us out here in the cheap seats think, but if they didn’t, they wouldn’t work so hard to control the narrative.

RS: We can all do a little bit, and when more and more people join in, we can make a difference. Just entering the debate changes the discussion.

AG: Last question: If Trump really does want to stop arming and funding Al-Qaeda/Nusra/HTS and other jihadist militias, won’t Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE step into the breach so they can keep fighting Assad—or the Kurds—with weapons that the US sold them?

RS: Yes, all those countries have been funding terrorists in Syria to attack and overthrow the Damascus government. Sometimes they work together; sometimes not. No matter, the Syrian Army and their allies have weathered the worst period and now are on the offensive. The mercenaries are in retreat, and the influx of brainwashed new recruits is drying up.

AG: Anything else you’d like to say?

RS: We are in a critical period where the enemies of Syria, including the CIA, may create a false flag incident to provoke and justify a direct intervention by the US, France, and others. Even if that does not happen, the pro-war elites clearly hope to use Kurdish forces to split off eastern Syria and install a puppet government. However, on the positive side, increasing numbers of Syrians who fled abroad are now returning to Syria. The reconciliation program is expanding. These are positive signs. After six years of bloodshed, it’s way past time for the enemies of Syria to stop supporting terrorism and let the Syrian people determine their own destiny.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist for the Consortium News and a member of the Syria Solidarity Movement based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be reached at [email protected].

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected].

What might simply be dismissed by many as an inconsequential and petty spat between two former Yugoslav Republics is actually shaping out to be a pivotal event that could determine the future trajectory of EU-Intermarium relations.

Slovenia and Croatia are two tiny countries that most Americans can’t locate on a map, though they’re becoming ever more important in the context of European geopolitics and relations between the blocs two increasingly divergent camps. Both states are EU and NATO members, and they closely coordinated with one another in seceding from Yugoslavia and sparking the deadly series of wars that was to follow in their wake. This makes it somewhat odd to the casual observer that these two previous comrades-in-arms are in a heated disagreement with one another over maritime rights and wine sales, but the fact of the matter is that Slovenia believes that its core national interests are threatened by its much larger Croatian neighbor in both disputes.

Balkan Bickering

The Permanent Court of Arbitration issued a non-binding decision late last month in Slovenia’s favor which granted Ljubljana a thin maritime corridor in the Gulf of Piran to international waters in the central section of the Adriatic Sea. Croatia immediately rejected the ruling on the grounds that Zagreb believes that the legal process was flawed due to the controversial interaction between a Slovenian judge on the panel and Ljubljana in 2015, a scandal which prompted Croatia to withdraw from the arbitration and insist on bilateral talks to settle this spat. Obviously, much smaller Slovenia would be incapable of squeezing any concessions from Croatia on its own, hence why it internationalized the border problem in the first place; likewise, Croatia was opposed to this because it seems to have rightly predicted that the international body would side with Slovenia.

Slovenia, with its narrow stretch of coastline, stands to reap disproportionate benefits after the court’s ruling and sees the matter as an issue of grand strategic importance. Croatia, however, already controls a broad swath of the Adriatic Sea and won’t receive any significant advantage to its economy or geopolitical standing through the addition of a few dozen more kilometers of maritime territory. It would, however, be able to retain a symbolic semblance of control over its smaller northern neighbor, which could be one of the driving motivations behind Zagreb’s perplexing position on this issue. Another possible explanation could be that Croatia seeks to uphold the sanctity of national sovereignty in dealing with issues on a bilateral basis and not deferring to international third parties for final judgement.

Whatever the true reason may be, it’s likely that Croatia will seek to push the latter as its tacit or official standpoint in order to boost its soft power appeal within the Intermarium, which will be discussed at length later on in this analysis.

Pertaining to the second pressing issue of discord between Slovenia and Croatia, Ljubljana just announced that it will take Brussels to court because of its willingness to allow Zagreb to pass off Slovenia’s protected Teran wine designation as Croatia’s own. The product is a national export of Slovenia, and Ljubljana believes Zagreb’s de-facto expropriation of it will have major consequences for the much smaller Slovene economy. The reason why Slovenia is suing the EU and not Croatia, however, is because Brussels has no problem with Zagreb stealing Ljubljana’s rights to this wine due to the exploitation of several legal loopholes that Slovenia says it wasn’t aware of prior to Croatia’s 2013 accession to the bloc. This developing case therefore isn’t just about two seemingly irrelevant countries arguing over a bottle of wine, but about the EU’s power to deceive member states by cutting deals behind their back.

Furthermore, the pair of issues currently roiling Croatian-Slovenian relations – the Gulf of Piran maritime dispute and the Teran wine controversy – interestingly places both countries in different positions vis-à-vis the EU. Slovenia wants the bloc to back it up by forcing Croatia to recognize the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling while simultaneously suing the EU for disingenuously favoring Croatia as regards the secret legal workarounds that allow Zagreb to sell Teran wine as its own. Accordingly, Croatia is opposed to the EU’s intervention in what it believes to be a strictly bilateral border issue with Slovenia, while ironically wanting the bloc to support it in a similarly bilateral economic one. The double standards of both Balkan countries are glaring and speak to their opportunistic nature to exploit the EU and then hypocritically rail against it whenever it’s convenient.

The Shadow Of The Three Seas Initiative

The pair of problems unfolding between Slovenia and Croatia is taking place in the context of a continentally revolutionary proposal called the “Three Seas Initiative”, which was analyzed by the author in a recent article for the Centre for Global Research about the “Geostrategic Insights Into the Joint Polish-Croatian ‘Three Seas Initiative’”. The general idea is that Poland has once more resurrected its long-held dream of uniting the “Intermarium” states between the Baltic and Black Seas, except this time it innovatively decided to expand it to include the Adriatic by bringing Croatia and Slovenia on board. The aforementioned article explains how this revived proposal essentially calls for closer strategic coordination between three extant interest groups/blocs within the EU and a pair of two “balancers”.

In pertinence to Croatia and Slovenia, both states are party to the Three Seas Initiative, which gives the Intermarium a stake in the resolution of their bilateral problems. Zagreb is part of the historical Hungarian sphere of influence that the author terms as “St. Stephen’s Space” while Ljubljana is one of the “balancer” states that has excellent relations with the US, EU, and even Russia, which thus allows the Intermarium to straddle between the three without appearing overly antagonistic to any of them. Each of these two countries is important to the Three Seas Initiative for their own reasons, but what really interests the Intermarium is how Croatia and Slovenia are experiencing their own relative falling outs with the EU, however hypocritical and characterized by shameless double standards they may be.

Although the Intermarium is officially “neutral”, it’s recognized as having a decisively anti-Brussels purpose in the sense of furthering its leading Polish and Hungarian members’ vision to reform the EU into a more decentralized union like the one described by the author in last summer’s analysis for The Duran about the “Post-Brexit EU: Between Regional Breakdown And Full-Blown Dictatorship”. The EU’s joint Franco-German hegemons want to centralize the bloc to the point of turning it into a full-blown dictatorship as a means of countering the regional breakdown the Polish-Hungarian alliance is advancing. Both camps are scrambling for organizational allies to help promote their respective agendas within the EU, which explains why Warsaw prudently crafted its new Intermarium project to be as inclusive as possible in successfully gathering together 12 states across Central and Eastern Europe.

Poland’s ambitious plans to assemble and keep together a grand coalition to reform the EU could be offset by the developing rift between the Intermarium’s two West Balkan members, though it could also give the Three Seas Initiative a renewed sense of urgency and strategic importance if events play out in the right direction. Depending on what happens, the Intermarium will either be strengthened or weakened by the outcome of the two Croatian-Slovenian disputes and Brussels’ role in handling each of them, which will consequently impact on the balance of power between the Intermarium and the Franco-German duopoly in determining the prospects of the EU’s intra-organizational future. In other words, the EU will either move further along the path of reform and decentralization or will double down even more on its dictatorial tendencies.

Pivot Potential

There are three scenarios that could predictably unfold as regards the resolution of the Croatian-Slovenian spats and the EU’s role in shaping their outcome, and each of these will have their own effect on the bloc’s overall unity. The presumption is that the Gulf of Piran issue is much more important to both countries than the Teran wine one, and the forecasting exercise below proceeds from the possible positions that Brussels may take regarding the former:

Pro-Slovenia:

If the EU sides with Slovenia against Croatia, then this could set into motion a fast-moving process by which Zagreb becomes “isolated” from the EU if it doesn’t abide by the bloc’s decision. This could set Croatia on the way to becoming another “black sheep” in the EU just like its fellow Intermarium members of Poland and Hungary are regarding their resistance to the resettlement of illegal migrants/”refugees” and Warsaw’s refusal to bend to Brussel’s judicial demands concerning its Supreme Court. Understanding that would be in league with other “EU bad boys” if it defies the EU and/or the Franco-German duopoly, Croatia might wisely seek to exploit its position by emphasizing the previously mentioned interpretation that the border dispute with Slovenia is a strictly bilateral affair and not one in which  Brussels has any business getting involved.

This stance would instantly appeal to Poland and Hungary and probably cause them to come out in vocal support for Croatia, which would then strengthen the Intermarium by reinforcing the strategic convergence between the Warsaw-led Neo-Commonwealth and the Budapest-backed St. Stephen’s Space (the latter of which includes Croatia). However, Slovenia might not take too kindly to the two most influential members of the Three Seas Initiative sharply criticizing any actions or statements that the EU makes in Ljubljana’s favor regarding its maritime dispute with Croatia, and might resultantly withdraw its support for the Intermarium. If this happens, then it would diminish the “neutrality” of the Polish-Hungarian initiative by removing one of its two “balancing” actors which allowed it to retain a pretense of impartiality towards Russia.

This scenario is very likely and would be negative for Russia and the EU, but positive for the Intermarium.

Pro-Croatia:

The state of affairs would be markedly different if the EU takes Croatia’s side of Slovenia’s, however, as this would undermine the anti-Brussels and pro-reform capabilities of the Intermarium. Croatia would experience delight at the EU’s decision to stay away from this bilateral spat, and Zagreb would lose much of whatever suspicion it may have previously held against the bloc. This in turn would diminish the attractiveness of the Intermarium’s agenda to change the internal workings and power arrangements within the EU, thereby striking a blow to its Polish and Hungarian leaders’ vision of using the platform as a regional counterbalance to the Franco-German duopoly in Western Europe. This doesn’t mean that they surely won’t try, but just that one of its most important geopolitical pillars – St. Stephen’s Space – won’t be anywhere as cohesively integrated on the ideological level as they would prefer.

Slovenia, in the face of what it would consider as Brussels’ betrayal, could take action to deepen its integration with the Intermarium in protest, but it wouldn’t be able to compensate for the strategic damage that Croatia’s apathy to the initiative would result in following the EU’s pro-Zagreb actions. Furthermore, while Poland and Hungary would surely be pleased if Slovenia echoes their regular bouts of Brussels bashing, there wouldn’t be much in Ljubljana’s rhetoric for them to embrace aside from the symbolism of yet another EU member openly lambasting the bloc. In fact, Warsaw and Budapest would probably be proud of Brussels if it refrains from getting involved in enforcing the International Court of Arbitration’s non-binding decision against Zagreb and might even seek to take credit for, as they might frame it, setting the “principled precedent” for forcing Brussels to “back down”.

This scenario is unlikely but would be positive for Russian and EU interests, though negative for the Intermarium’s.

“Neutral”:

It’s not known exactly how this could play out, but there’s a conceivable chance that the EU might make an attempt to be “neutral” by “balancing” its interests between Croatia and Slovenia, but inadvertently behaving in such a clumsy and ill-thought-out way that it ends up angering both of them and accomplishing none of the lofty goals that it intended to do. This outcome would be totally counterproductive to its interests by driving both states deeper into the Intermarium’s embrace for separate reasons, potentially because they would each feel slighted in their own way based on how Brussels dealt with the Gulf of Piran and Teran wine issues. The Intermarium would happily welcome this development because it would serve as a convincing ‘proof of concept’ for the Polish-Hungarian initiative by showcasing the reason why Central and Eastern Europe needs to band together to reform the EU.

Russia, being suspicious about the long-term geostrategic goal of the Three Seas Initiative and uncertain about the success that its more “mild” members will have in restraining the rabidly Russophobic ones, would probably have no clearly defined interest as of now in terms of this particular scenario, though the same can’t be said for the EU, which stands to experience a double whammy of strategic losses if Croatia and Slovenia “defect” even more to the Intermarium. Poland and Hungary would be elated because their joint dream of restoring the historic Polish-Hungarian Strategic Partnership in modern-day conditions and with game-changing implications would become more viable than ever before, bestowing them with a boost of confidence in believing that their long-heralded vision of a Central European “renaissance” is right around the corner.

For these reasons, this scenario is probable despite it being difficult to accurately ascertain its prospects. If fulfilled, it would work to benefit of the Intermarium’s grand strategic interests while contrarily harming the EU’s, but the effect that it would have on Russia is mixed and incapable of being forecasted at this time.

Concluding Thoughts

On the surface of things, the bickering between two tiny Balkan countries over maritime territory and wine sales doesn’t seem like all that big of a deal in the larger context of European and global geopolitics, but upon further examination, the case can solidly be made that the resolution of the Croatian-Slovenian spat will have profound consequences on the ideological-strategic balance of power within the EU.

Depending on Brussels’ role in determining the outcome of these two increasingly bitter disagreements, the Polish-Hungarian Intermarium of “EuroRealist” (“Euroskeptic”) interests will either be weakened or strengthened, which would then impact on the odds that the Central and Eastern European countries gathered together in the Three Seas Initiative can succeed in reforming the EU along the lines of their decentralized regionally-focused vision.

Whether or not the Intermarium ultimately achieves its goal is another matter, but it’s this indirect and sequentially related dynamic which imparts the Croatian-Slovenian disputes with far-reaching importance and makes them worthy of monitoring as bellwethers of the EU’s possible future.

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

Introduction

One of the most important outcomes of the Trump Presidency are the revelations describing the complex competing forces and relations engaged in retaining and expanding US global power (‘the empire’).

The commonplace reference to ‘the empire’ fails to specify the interface and conflict among institutions engaged in projecting different aspects of US political power.

In this essay, we will outline the current divisions of power, interests and direction of the competing configurations of influence.

The Making of Empire: Countervailing Forces

‘The empire’ is a highly misleading concept insofar as it presumes to discuss a homogeneous, coherent and cohesive set of institutions pursuing similar interests. ‘The empire’ is a simplistic general phrase, which covers a vast field contested by institutions, personalities and centers of power, some allied, others in growing opposition.

While ‘the empire’ may describe the general notion that all pursue a common general goal of dominating and exploiting targeted countries, regions, markets, resources and labor, the dynamics (the timing and focus of action) are determined by countervailing forces.

In the present conjuncture, the countervailing forces have taken a radical turn: One configuration is attempting to usurp power and overthrow another. Up to this point, the usurping power configuration has resorted to judicial, media and procedural-legislative mechanism to modify policies. However, below the surface, the goal is to oust an incumbent enemy and impose a rival power.

Who Rules ‘the Empire’

In recent times, executive officials rule empires. They may be prime ministers, presidents, autocrats, dictators, generals or a combination of them. Imperial rulers largely ‘legislate’ and ‘execute’ strategic and tactical policies. In a crisis executive officials may be subject to review by competing legislators or judges, leading to impeachment (soft coup d’état).

Normally, the executive centralizes and concentrates power, even as they may consult, evade or deceive key legislators and judicial official. At no point in time or place do the voters play any significant role.

The executive power is exercised via specialized departments or secretariats – Treasury, Foreign Affairs (Secretary of State), Interior, and the various security services. In most instances there is greater or lesser inter-agency competition over budgets, policy and access to the chief executive and leading decision makers.

In times of crises, when the ruling executive leadership is called into question, this vertical hierarchy crumbles. The question arises of who will rule and dictate imperial policy?

With the ascent of Donald Trump to the US Presidency, imperial rulership has become openly contested terrain, fought over amid unyielding aspirants seeking to overthrow the democratically elected regime.

While Presidents rule, today the entire state structure is riven by rival power centers.

At the moment, all of the power seekers are at war to impose their rule over the empire.

In the first place, the strategically placed security apparatus is no longer under Presidential control: They operate in coordination with insurgent Congressional power centers, mass media and extra-governmental power configurations among the oligarchs (business, merchants, arms manufacturers, Zionists and special interest lobbies).

Sectors of the state apparatus and bureaucracy investigate the executive, freely leaking damaging reports to the media, distorting fabricating and/or magnifying incidents. They publicly pursue a course with the goal of regime change.

The FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA and other power configurations are acting as crucial allies to the coup-makers seeking to undermine Presidential control over the empire. No doubt, many factions within the regional offices nervously look on, waiting to see if the President will be defeated by these opposing power configurations or will survive and purge their current directors.

The Pentagon contains both elements that are pro as well as anti-Presidential power: Some active generals are aligned with the prime movers pushing for regime change, while 3 others oppose this movement. Both contending forces influence and dictate imperial military policies.

The most visible and aggressive advocates of regime change are found in the militarist wing of the Democratic Party. They are embedded in the Congress and allied with police state militarists in and out of Washington.

From their institutional vantage points, the coup-makers have initiated a series of ‘investigations’ to generate propaganda fodder for the mass media and prepare mass public opinion to favor or at least accept extraordinary ‘regime change’.

The Democratic Party congressional – mass media complex draws on the circulation of selective security agency revelations of dubious national security value, including smutty gossip, which is highly relevant for overthrowing the current regime.

Presidential imperial authority has split into fragments of influence, among the legislative, Pentagon and security apparatus.

Presidential power depends on the Cabinet and its apparatus in a ruthless fight over imperial power, polarizing the entire political system.

The President Counter-Attacks

The Trump regime has many strategic enemies and few powerful supporters. His advisers are under attack: Some have been ousted, others are under investigation and face subpoenas for hysterical McCarthyite hearings and still others may be loyal but are incompetent and outclassed. His Cabinet appointees have attempted to follow the President’s 4 stated agenda, including the repeal of Obama’s disastrous ‘Affordable Care Act’ and the rollback of federal regulatory systems, with little success, despite the fact that this agenda has strong backing from the Wall Street bankers and ‘Big Pharma’.

The President’s Napoleonic pretensions have been systematically undermined by continuous disparagement from the mass media and the absence of plebian support after the election.

The President lacks a mass media base of support and has to resort to the Internet and personal messages to the public, which are immediately savaged by the mass media.

The principal allies supporting the President should be found among the Republican Party, which forms the majority in both the Congress and Senate. These legislators do not act as a uniform bloc – with ultra-militarists joining the Democrats in seeking his ouster.

From a strategic perspective, all the signs point to the weakening of Presidential authority, even as his bulldog tenacity allows him to retain formal control over foreign policy.

But his foreign policy pronouncements are filtered through a uniformly hostile media, which has succeeded in defining allies and adversaries, as well as the failures of some of his ongoing decisions.

The September Showdown

The big test of power will be focused on the raising of the public debt ceiling and the continued funding of the entire federal government. Without agreement there will be a massive governmental shutdown – a kind of ‘general strike’ paralyzing essential domestic and foreign programs – including the funding of Medicare, the payment of Social Security pensions and the salaries of millions of government and Armed Forces employees.

The pro-‘regime-change’ forces (coup makers) have decided to go for broke in order to secure the programatic capitulation of the Trump regime or its ouster.

The Presidential power elite may choose the option of ruling by decree – based on the ensuing economic crisis. They may capitalize on a hue and cry from a Wall Street collapse and claim an imminent threat to national security on our national borders and overseas bases to declare a military emergency. Without support from the intelligence services, their success is doubtful.

Both sides will blame each other for the mounting breakdown. Temporary Treasury expedients will not save the situation. The mass media will go into a hysterical mode, from political criticism to demanding open regime change. The Presidential regime may assume dictatorial powers in order ‘to save the country’.

Congressional moderates will demand a temporary solution: A week-to-week trickle of federal spending.

However, the coup-makers and the ‘Bonapartists’ will block any ‘rotten compromise’. The military will be mobilized along with the entire security and judicial apparatus to dictate the outcome.

Civil society organization will appeal to the emerging power configurations to defend their special interests. Discharged public and private employees will march as pensioners and schoolteachers go without funding. Lobbyists, ranging from oil and gas interests to defenders of Israel, will each demand their priority treatment.

The power configuration will flex their muscles, while the foundations of Congressional, Judicial and Presidential institutions will shake and shutter.

On the positive side, internal chaos and institutional divisions will relieve the mounting threat of more overseas wars for the moment. The world will breathe a sigh of relief. Not so the world of stock markets: The dollar and the speculators will plunge.

The dispute and indecisions over who rules the empire will allow for regional powers to lay claims on contested regions. The EU, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Israel will face off with Russia, Iran and China. No one will wait for the US to decide which power center will rule.

Featured image from One World of Nations

Jared Kushner, US President Trump’s son-in-law, has published a lengthy and detailed statement setting out his contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 Presidential election.

The statement is published immediately prior to Kushner giving evidence to a closed session of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is one of the Congressional committees carrying out the multiple investigations into the Russiagate scandal.

The statement – if its contents are accurate, which I have no doubt they are – exposes possibly more clearly than any other document the sheer absurdity of the whole scandal.  In view of this I have attached the complete text of this statement to this article (see below).

Here are a number of quick points about this statement:

(1) I have no doubt that the statement is a truthful and essentially accurate account of what happened. 

Kushner is very careful throughout the statement to corroborate what he says by referring to written evidence set out mainly in email chains, and to refer to witnesses who were also present at the various meetings he describes. One of them – Dmitri Simes – is known to me by reputation, and I have no doubt whatever of the truth of anything he says.

Though Kushner’s statement has obviously been carefully and thoroughly prepared and is obviously drafted by lawyers, it is possible that in such a lengthy statement one or two factual mistakes may have slipped through. If so I am sure they are inconsequential and inadvertent.

(2) The statement provides details of all Kushner’s contacts with persons who were either unequivocally Russian officials or who had a connection to Russia, both during the election campaign and the transition period. 

I shall ignore the brief and irrelevant blackmail contact by “Guccifer400” which may have nothing to do with Russia.

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (Source: The Inquisitr)

(3) It turns out that Kushner only had four such contacts with Russian officials or persons who had a connection to Russia. Two were with ambassador Kislyak, one was the now famous meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya – which was properly speaking a meeting between her and Donald Trump junior, which Kushner merely attended – and the fourth was with a Russian banker called Gorkov, which was set up at the insistence of Kislyak.

(4) Kushner makes the demonstrably true point that these were a very few meetings and contacts compared to the huge number of meetings and contacts he had during the election and the transition period, which included many contacts and meetings with officials and representatives of foreign states and of foreign governments.  

Of these only one of these meetings – the one in December with Kislyak, which General Flynn also attended – looks to have been at all substantive.  

(5) The meeting with Gorkov is curious since nothing of substance seems to have been discussed during it. This despite the fact that Gorkov was introduced to Kushner by Kislyak as someone personally close to Putin.  

In my opinion it was a ‘sizing up’ meeting, with Gorkov – who may indeed be a Russian intelligence official – on a mission from Putin to get a sense of what sort of a person Kushner is.  

(6) As Kushner rightly says he had many other meetings and contacts with many other officials of many other countries, both during the election and during the transition period. One of these meetings was incidentally with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a far more senior official of his government than any of the various Russians Kushner met with.

(7) It is now clear that some of the information that has been fed to the media by our old friends the “anonymous sources”during the Russiagate scandal is either grossly inaccurate or simply false, and Kushner’s statement provides two examples of this.

The “anonymous sources” have either invented two telephone conversations Kushner is supposed to have had with the Russians during the election campaign or else Reuters, which reported this story, has invented both it and them.

It is now also clear that the notorious meeting between Kislyak, Kushner and Flynn which took place in December has been totally misrepresented.

It seems that there was no discussion of setting up a ‘back channel’ between the Trump administration and the Kremlin was discussed during this meeting as our old friends the “anonymous officials” reported. Rather there was a discussion – which went nowhere – about how the Russian military would convey a message to General Flynn about the situation in Syria.

(7) It is in fact clear that the main topic of the discussion between Kislyak, Kushner and Flynn – and I suspect of the equally notorious telephone conversations between Kislyak and Flynn which eventually caused Flynn’s resignation – was Syria.

This makes total sense. In October 2016 the US and Russian militaries faced off against each other in Syria, with the Russians deploying advanced anti aircraft missiles to Syria to deter any US attempt to intervene in the ongoing battle in eastern Aleppo. The leaders of both the US and the Russian militaries have spoken repeatedly of the extreme tension during that time, when the world’s two most powerful militaries came closer to armed conflict with each other than they have done at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War.

It is completely understandable in light of this that the Russian military would be anxious to talk to the military leadership of the incoming Trump administration – which in this context would have meant General Flynn, who was soon to become President Trump’s National Security Adviser – and that they were looking to do this as soon as possible.

Here we see a further pernicious consequence of the way news of the confrontation between the US and Russian militaries in Syria in October 2016 – and the US climbdown which followed it – has been suppressed in the West, so that the US and Western publics are entirely unaware of it.

Since the US and Western publics do not know what happened in Syria in October 2016 they do not know the context in which the meetings and contacts between Kislyak, Kushner and Flynn took place.

The result is that it is very easy to misrepresent these meetings and contacts by falsely relating them to the entirely different and wholly unrelated question of the election campaign.

(8) In my previous discussion of the Kislyak – Kushner meeting in December I made known my strong doubts that the claims that US intelligence had picked up the details of this meeting from intercepts of Kislyak’s presumably encoded communications to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow could possibly be true. I speculated that it was more likely that the meeting itself had been listened into.

That was based on the assumption that the meeting really was about the setting up of a ‘back channel’ between the Trump administration and the Kremlin. Now that we know that this was not really the case and that there was nothing actually secret about this meeting, I think it far more likely that US intelligence obtained information about the meeting from things Kushner and Flynn said or wrote about it after the meeting, which US intelligence either saw or overheard.

Of course if that is what happened then it would mean that Kushner and Flynn were under some sort of surveillance, possibly by a foreign intelligence agency acting on US intelligence’s behalf, or possibly by US intelligence itself.

If the latter then since there was no warrant authorising such surveillance that would have been on the face of it illegal. US intelligence might have a defence that it was trying to find out what Kislyak – who is a legitimate surveillance target – was up to. However that still looks dubious.

Whatever the truth I still think that the highly improbable story of Kislyak’s communications being intercepted is a cover story to conceal what really happened, and what Kushner says in his statement about this meeting reinforces that view.

(9) Since we now know that far from everything our old friends the “anonymous sources” are reported as saying is true, there is no need to waste time looking into their recent claims that Jeff Sessions contrary to his denials “discussed” the Trump campaign during his now notorious meeting with ambassador Kislyak in his office.

Sessions categorically denies that the Trump campaign was discussed during this meeting. Two US military officers also attended the meeting, providing independent witnesses who can presumably corroborate what he says.

Wherever there is a conflict between what someone says publicly and openly, and what is being said anonymously, the proper thing to do is to assume that what is being said publicly and openly is the truth. That ought to apply both to Kushner and Sessions.

The fact that the same highly improbable cover story of Kislyak’s messages to Moscow being intercepted is being used to source the latest story about what Sessions is supposed to have told Kislyak is a further reason to doubt it is true.

(10) Kushner provides no further information about the meeting  between Donald Trump junior and Natalya Veselnitskaya beyond what has been provided already, but what he says corroborates Donald Trump junior’s account of this meeting, which I have discussed in detail previously.

In summary, Jared Kushner has provided what any reasonable person would accept as a thorough and comprehensive account of his dealings with the Russians both during the election and after it.

Not only does it show that he personally never colluded with the Russians at any point during the election about anything, but given his central role in the Trump campaign any reasonable person reading his statement would conclude that no one in the Trump campaign did either.  In Kushner’s own words

I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.

Set against this straightforward statement, which is corroborated by a mountain of fact, we have the two documents which between them have generated the entirety of the Russiagate scandal. These are the report from CrowdStrike claiming it was Russian intelligence which hacked the computers of John Podesta and the DNC, and the Trump Dossier, which was compiled though apparently not authored by Christopher Steele and Orbis.

Neither of these documents originates with any official agency of the US government or indeed of any other government. Both are the products of private enterprise paid for by persons having or apparently having some connection to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Both have however been treated as authoritative by believers in the Russiagate scandal, which it turns out includes many people within the US intelligence community, even though there are serious doubts about the methodology of the first, whilst the second is not merely uncorroborated but looks in large part invented.

Over and above these two inherently unreliable documents there is a mountain of uncorroborated leaks and innuendo, some of which as Kushner’s statement shows are simply wrong.

It says volumes about the collapse of intellectual integrity in the United States that most of the political class – including the entire Democratic Party and much of the intelligence community – still continues to believe the fantasies of these two documents, and will continue to do so, even after they have been provided with this clear and straightforward statement of fact by Jared Kushner, which shows the illogic and absurdity of what they say.

Statement of Jared Kushner

July 24, 2017

I am voluntarily providing this statement, submitting documents, and sitting for interviews in order to shed light on issues that have been raised about my role in the Trump for President Campaign and during the transition period.

I am not a person who has sought the spotlight. First in my business and now in public service, I have worked on achieving goals, and have left it to others to work on media and public perception. Because there has been a great deal of conjecture, speculation, and inaccurate information about me, I am grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight.

My Role in the Trump for President Campaign

Before joining the administration, I worked in the private sector, building and managing companies. My experience was in business, not politics, and it was not my initial intent to play a large role in my father-in-law’s campaign when he decided to run for President. However, as the campaign progressed, I was called on to assist with various tasks and aspects of the campaign, and took on more and more responsibility.

Over the course of the primaries and general election campaign, my role continued to evolve. I ultimately worked with the finance, scheduling, communications, speechwriting, polling, data and digital teams, as well as becoming a point of contact for foreign government officials.

All of these were tasks that I had never performed on a campaign previously. When I was faced with a new challenge, I would reach out to contacts, ask advice, find the right person to manage the specific challenge, and work with that person to develop and execute a plan of action. I was lucky to work with some incredibly talented people along the way, all of whom made significant contributions toward the campaign’s ultimate success. Our nimble culture allowed us to adjust to the ever-changing circumstances and make changes on the fly as the situation warranted. I share this information because these actions should be viewed through the lens of a fast-paced campaign with thousands of meetings and interactions, some of which were impactful and memorable and many of which were not.

It is also important to note that a campaign’s success starts with its message and its messenger. Donald Trump had the right vision for America and delivered his message perfectly. The results speak for themselves. Not only did President Trump defeat sixteen skilled and experienced primary opponents and win the presidency; he did so spending a fraction of what his opponent spent in the general election. He outworked his opponent and ran one of the best campaigns in history using both modern technology and traditional methods to bring his message to the American people.

Campaign Contacts with Foreign Persons

When it became apparent that my father-in-law was going to be the Republican nominee for President, as normally happens, a number of officials from foreign countries attempted to reach out to the campaign. My father-in-law asked me to be a point of contact with these foreign countries. These were not contacts that I initiated, but, over the course of the campaign, I had incoming contacts with people from approximately 15 countries. To put these requests in context, I must have received thousands of calls, letters and emails from people looking to talk or meet on a variety of issues and topics, including hundreds from outside the United States. While I could not be responsive to everyone, I tried to be respectful of any foreign government contacts with whom it would be important to maintain an ongoing, productive working relationship were the candidate to prevail. To that end, I called on a variety of people with deep experience, such as Dr. Henry Kissinger, for advice on policy for the candidate, which countries/representatives with which the campaign should engage, and what messaging would resonate. In addition, it was typical for me to receive 200 or more emails a day during the campaign. I did not have the time to read every one, especially long emails from unknown senders or email chains to which I was added at some later point in the exchange.

With respect to my contacts with Russia or Russian representatives during the campaign, there were hardly any. The first that I can recall was at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in April 2016. This was when then candidate Trump was delivering a major foreign policy speech. Doing the event and speech had been my idea, and I oversaw its execution. I arrived at the hotel early to make sure all logistics were in order. After that, I stopped into the reception to thank the host of the event, Dimitri Simes, the publisher of the bi-monthly foreign policy magazine, The National Interest, who had done a great job putting everything together. Mr. Simes and his group had created the guest list and extended the invitations for the event. He introduced me to several guests, among them four ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. With all the ambassadors, including Mr. Kislyak, we shook hands, exchanged brief pleasantries and I thanked them for attending the event and said I hoped they would like candidate Trump’s speech and his ideas for a fresh approach to America’s foreign policy. The ambassadors also expressed interest in creating a positive relationship should we win the election. Each exchange lasted less than a minute; some gave me their business cards and invited me to lunch at their embassies. I never took them up on any of these invitations and that was the extent of the interactions.

Reuters news service has reported that I had two calls with Ambassador Kislyak at some time between April and November of 2016. While I participated in thousands of calls during this period, I do not recall any such calls with the Russian Ambassador. We have reviewed the phone records available to us and have not been able to identify any calls to any number we know to be associated with Ambassador Kislyak and I am highly skeptical these calls took place. A comprehensive review of my land line and cell phone records from the time does not reveal those calls. I had no ongoing relationship with the Ambassador before the election, and had limited knowledge about him then. In fact, on November 9, the day after the election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador. When the campaign received an email purporting to be an official note of congratulations from President Putin, I was asked how we could verify it was real. To do so I thought the best way would be to ask the only contact I recalled meeting from the Russian government, which was the Ambassador I had met months earlier, so I sent an email asking Mr. Simes, “What is the name of the Russian ambassador?”

Through my lawyer, I have asked Reuters to provide the dates on which the calls supposedly occurred or the phone number at which I supposedly reached, or was reached by, Ambassador Kislyak. The journalist refused to provide any corroborating evidence that they occurred.

The only other Russian contact during the campaign is one I did not recall at all until I was reviewing documents and emails in response to congressional requests for information. In June 2016, my brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. asked if I was free to stop by a meeting on June 9 at 3:00 p.m. The campaign was headquartered in the same building as his office in Trump Tower, and it was common for each of us to swing by the other’s meetings when requested. He eventually sent me his own email changing the time of the meeting to 4:00 p.m. That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time. As I did with most emails when I was working remotely, I quickly reviewed on my iPhone the relevant message that the meeting would occur at 4:00 PM at his office. Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as “Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner.” No one else was mentioned.

I arrived at the meeting a little late. When I got there, the person who has since been identified as a Russian attorney was talking about the issue of a ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children. I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well-spent at this meeting. Reviewing emails recently confirmed my memory that the meeting was a waste of our time and that, in looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work, I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote “Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.”

I had not met the attorney before the meeting nor spoken with her since. I thought nothing more of this short meeting until it came to my attention recently. I did not read or recall this email exchange before it was shown to me by my lawyers when reviewing documents for submission to the committees. No part of the meeting I attended included anything about the campaign, there was no follow up to the meeting that I am aware of, I do not recall how many people were there (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted. Finally, after seeing the email, I disclosed this meeting prior to it being reported in the press on a supplement to my security clearance form, even if that was not required as meeting the definitions of the form.

There was one more possible contact that I will note. On October 30, 2016, I received a random email from the screen name “Guccifer400.” This email, which I interpreted as a hoax, was an extortion attempt and threatened to reveal candidate Trump’s tax returns and demanded that we send him 52 bitcoins in exchange for not publishing that information. I brought the email to the attention of a U.S. Secret Service agent on the plane we were all travelling on and asked what he thought. He advised me to ignore it and not to reply — which is what I did. The sender never contacted me again.

To the best of my recollection, these were the full extent of contacts I had during the campaign with persons who were or appeared to potentially be representatives of the Russian government.

Transition Contacts with Foreign Persons

The transition period after the election was even more active than the campaign. Starting on election night, we began to receive an incredible volume of messages and invitations from well-wishers in the United States and abroad. Dozens of messages came from foreign officials seeking to set up foreign leader calls and create lines of communication and relationships with what would be the new administration. During this period, I recall having over fifty contacts with people from over fifteen countries. Two of those meetings were with Russians, neither of which I solicited.

On November 16, 2016, my assistant received a request for a meeting from the Russian Ambassador. As I mentioned before, previous to receiving this request, I could not even recall the Russian Ambassador’s name, and had to ask for the name of the individual I had seen at the Mayflower Hotel almost seven months earlier. In addition, far from being urgent, that meeting was not set up for two weeks — on December 1. The meeting occurred in Trump Tower, where we had our transition office, and lasted twenty- thirty minutes. Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.), who became the President’s National Security Advisor, also attended. During the meeting, after pleasantries were exchanged, as I had done in many of the meetings I had and would have with foreign officials, I stated our desire for a fresh start in relations. Also, as I had done in other meetings with foreign officials, I asked Ambassador Kislyak if he would identify the best person (whether the Ambassador or someone else) with whom to have direct discussions and who had contact with his President. The fact that I was asking about ways to start a dialogue after Election Day should of course be viewed as strong evidence that I was not aware of one that existed before Election Day.

The Ambassador expressed similar sentiments about relations, and then said he especially wanted to address U.S. policy in Syria, and that he wanted to convey information from what he called his “generals.” He said he wanted to provide information that would help inform the new administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S. to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation. General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines. I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration. Nothing else occurred. I did not suggest a “secret back channel.” I did not suggest an on-going secret form of communication for then or for when the administration took office. I did not raise the possibility of using the embassy or any other Russian facility for any purpose other than this one possible conversation in the transition period. We did not discuss sanctions.

Approximately a week later, on December 6, the Embassy asked if I could meet with the Ambassador on December 7. I declined. They then asked if I could meet on December 6; I declined again. They then asked when the earliest was that I could meet. I declined these requests because I was working on many other responsibilities for the transition. He asked if he could meet my assistant instead and, to avoid offending the Ambassador, I agreed. He did so on December 12. My assistant reported that the Ambassador had requested that I meet with a person named Sergey Gorkov who he said was a banker and someone with a direct line to the Russian President who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together. I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent, said he had a direct relationship with the President, and because Mr. Gorkov was only in New York for a couple days. I made room on my schedule for the meeting that occurred the next day, on December 13.

The meeting with Mr. Gorkov lasted twenty to twenty-five minutes. He introduced himself and gave me two gifts — one was a piece of art from Nvgorod, the village where my grandparents were from in Belarus, and the other was a bag of dirt from that same village. (Any notion that I tried to conceal this meeting or that I took it thinking it was in my capacity as a businessman is false. In fact, I gave my assistant these gifts to formally register them with the transition office). After that, he told me a little about his bank and made some statements about the Russian economy. He said that he was friendly with President Putin, expressed disappointment with U.S.-Russia relations under President Obama and hopes for a better relationship in the future. As I did at the meeting with Ambassador Kislyak, I expressed the same sentiments I had with other foreign officials I met. There were no specific policies discussed. We had no discussion about the sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration. At no time was there any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind. At the end of the short meeting, we thanked each other and I went on to other meetings. I did not know or have any contact with Mr. Gorkov before that meeting, and I have had no reason to connect with him since.

To the best of my recollection, these were the only two contacts I had during the transition with persons who were or appeared to potentially be representatives of the Russian government.

Disclosure of Contacts on My Security Clearance Form

There has been a good deal of misinformation reported about my SF-86 form. As my attorneys and I have previously explained, my SF-86 application was prematurely submitted due to a miscommunication and initially did not list any contacts (not just with Russians) with foreign government officials. Here are some facts about that form and the efforts I have made to supplement it.

In the week before the Inauguration, amid the scramble of finalizing the unwinding of my involvement from my company, moving my family to Washington, completing the paper work to divest assets and resign from my outside positions and complete my security and financial disclosure forms, people at my New York office were helping me find the information, organize it, review it and put it into the electronic form. They sent an email to my assistant in Washington, communicating that the changes to one particular section were complete; my assistant interpreted that message as meaning that the entire form was completed. At that point, the form was a rough draft and still had many omissions including not listing any foreign government contacts and even omitted the address of my father-in-law (which was obviously well known). Because of this miscommunication, my assistant submitted the draft on January 18, 2017.

That evening, when we realized the form had been submitted prematurely, we informed the transition team that we needed to make changes and additions to the form. The very next day, January 19, 2017, we submitted supplemental information to the transition, which confirmed receipt and said they would immediately transmit it to the FBI. The supplement disclosed that I had “numerous contacts with foreign officials” and that we were going through my records to provide an accurate and complete list. I provided a list of those contacts in the normal course, before my background investigation interview and prior to any inquiries or media reports about my form.

It has been reported that my submission omitted only contacts with Russians. That is not the case. In the accidental early submission of the form, all foreign contacts were omitted. The supplemental information later disclosed over one hundred contacts from more than twenty countries that might be responsive to the questions on the form. These included meetings with individuals such as Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Luis Videgaray Caso and many more. All of these had been left off before.

Over the last six months, I have made every effort to provide the FBI with whatever information is needed to investigate my background. In addition, my attorneys have explained that the security clearance process is one in which supplements are expected and invited. The form itself instructs that, during the interview, the information in the document can be “update[d], clarif[ied], and explain[ed]” as part of the security clearance process. A good example is the June 9 meeting. For reasons that should be clear from the explanation of that meeting I have provided, I did not remember the meeting and certainly did not remember it as one with anyone who had to be included on an SF-86. When documents reviewed for production in connection with committee requests reminded me that meeting had occurred, and because of the language in the email chain that I then read for the first time, I included that meeting on a supplement. I did so even though my attorneys were unable to conclude that the Russian lawyer was a representative of any foreign country and thus fell outside the scope of the form. This supplemental information was also provided voluntarily, well prior to any media inquiries, reporting or request for this information, and it was done soon after I was reminded of the meeting.

As I have said from the very first media inquiry, I am happy to share information with the investigating bodies. I have shown today that I am willing to do so and will continue to cooperate as I have nothing to hide. As I indicated, I know there has been a great deal of speculation and conjecture about my contacts with any officials or people from Russia. I have disclosed these contacts and described them as fully as I can recall. The record and documents I am providing will show that I had perhaps four contacts with Russian representatives out of thousands during the campaign and transition, none of which were impactful in any way to the election or particularly memorable. I am very grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight. I also have tried to provide context for my role in the campaign, and I am proud of the candidate that we supported, of the campaign that we ran, and the victory that we achieved.

It has been my practice not to appear in the media or leak information in my own defense. I have tried to focus on the important work at hand and serve this President and this country to the best of my abilities. I hope that through my answers to questions, written statements and documents I have now been able to demonstrate the entirety of my limited contacts with Russian representatives during the campaign and transition. I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.

Alexander Mercouris is Editor-in-Chief at The Duran. 

I write this as a Democrat who rejects the Party as it has become — controlled by and representing the Party’s billionaire donors, against the American public.

That Party — the Clintonite Democratic Party, which deregulated Wall Street and allowed no regulation at all of financial derivatives, and ended FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act, and invaded Serbia, and increased the size of NATO (which should have ended when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance did, in 1991) — served superbly well the interests of America’s billionaires, but not of the American people, whose wages flatlined as Wall Street’s bonuses soared, and as that Democratic-Republican orgy of deregulation paved the way for the reckless lending that produced the 2008 crash, from which we’re still recovering. (America’s billionaires, however, did just fine from it all — and is that any wonder?)

The era of endless war didn’t really begin only with George W. Bush; the Clintons too were and are part of it and support every measure to ratchet-up military spending and turn America into the weapons-exporter to all of the world in order (not just to fatten the bottom lines of firms such as Lockheed Martin but) to “regime-change” every head-of-state that our billionaires or their ‘allies’ want removed from power and replaced by their chosen stooges.

What, then, do the Democrats in Congress propose in order to address the Party’s rot? Their proposed ‘Better Deal’ is summarized by Jeff Stein, at Vox, under the headline “Democrats’ Better Deal, Explained”, and consists of promises that the Democratic Party has consistently made and always (behind the scenes) helped the Republicans to block, because Democratic Party mega-donors don’t want it any more than Republican Party ones do. For examples:

Remember the promises by Barack Obama, and by his 2008 Presidential-primary opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, their promises that they’d institute for health insurance a “public option,” which Obama promised would compete against the profit-making insurers and “will keep them honest and it will help keep their prices down”, but which he stopped pushing for at the very moment when he won the White House — and so he chose the conservative Senator Max Baucus (a strong opponent of any public option) to write the Obamacare legislation, and turned down (the strong public-option-supporter) Senator Ted Kennedy’s bid to do that? How can anyone trust the Democratic Party’s Establishment, after that? Did they then abandon him on the matter, and push him to be real? Not at all! Obama was and is a sell-out at least as bad as the Clintons were and are. And, on Wall Street reform, Obama lied through his teeth, constantly, the Liar-in-Chief throughout his Presidency; but, many of my fellow-Democrats say, he was ‘pushed to it by the Republicans’. Not really so: see this — it came from him, and the Republicans never criticized him for it, because on those actions, he was secretly working behind-the-scenes for their agenda. (Almost all of the Republicans’ criticisms of Obama were lies — his true evils they were silent on, because these were policies that had been drawn up in Republican back-rooms during prior years but had failed to pass under Republican Presidents.) And the few honest and knowledgeable bloggers who still remain Democrats are deeply distrustful that any credence whatsoever should be given to the Party’s statements about the policies that it allegedly intends — such as the Party Establishment’s ‘Better Deal’ this time.

So: What are the Democratic Party Establishment promising now? Who really cares, other than suckers? Most of the incumbents are so bad they should be primaried, at this stage; and few Democratic voters should trust the incumbent any more than they trust any challenger to that person. This is how bad things have become, in the Democratic Party, today. There needs to be an almost-total root-and-branch replacement of the DNC, to start with. Then, we can begin to talk — meet together, as Democrats, without the rot that stinks the place up. The lobbyists control both Parties; and both Party-Establishments — both parts of The Establishment, all of America’s billionaires (and all of their numerous agents) — need to be kicked-out of our Parties, and replaced. Which group first — which of the two groups of billionaires (including the billionaires’ agents)? The ones that are symbolized by “Koch,” or the ones that are symbolized by “Soros”? Does it really make any difference? Maybe one type (the Koch group) is more blatant about their fascism, and the other type (the Soros group) is more deceptive about it, but they’re really far more similar to each other than they want the public to know, or (at all) to understand.

This is a pre-revolutionary situation. Frank discussions — which have been prohibited till now — must start. Everything should be open for debate, without the ideological censors. There is more to fear about continuing on the present course, than about refusing to and demanding instead its repudiation and replacement. The first question will be: replacing them with what, and by whom? Democracy needs a rebirth in America, or else it will go down completely. We already have the highest percentage of our citizens in prisons of any other of the world’s 223 countries except for tiny Seychelles (the total population of which is under 100,000, low enough for the Somali pirates whom the UN imprisons there to produce an even higher imprisonment-rate than the United States has). So, what have we got left to lose, except our chains (or private prisons)? Anyway, we’ve not got the world’s worst healthcare: we’re #37 on quality. However, we do have by far the world’s per-capita costliest healthcare (and also the costliest as a percentage of a nation’s GDP). How much worse than this should things be allowed to go? Maybe go to spending even more, for even worse? When and where will it stop? What would stop it? And how many more coups and invasions will our rulers perpetrate, and countries destroy, before we finally say: no more of their rule? The time has come.

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 RINF. 

Featured image from Davis Vanguard

Featured image: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Source: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

US intelligence services, the Democratic Party, some Republicans including members of President Trump’s own government, and the presstitute US media are conspiring against American democracy and the President of the United States.

We know this from a public letter to Trump published today, July 24, 2017, on consortiumnews.com by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Unlike the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the veteran intelligence professionals performed forensic investigations. They found conclusive evidence that the alleged “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server [these are the emails that show the DNC working for Hillary against Sanders] was not hacked but leaked. The leaked documents were copied onto an external storage device and doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia as having hacked the documents. 

In other words, the alleged hack was instead a copy from the inside that was subsequently doctored to reflect Russian origin. The veteran intelligence professionals surmise that this was done in order to focus attention away from the embarrassing content of the emails, placing attention instead on “Russian interference in the US presidential election.” 

As I see it, the success of this false and orchestrated story of Russian hacking, for which not a scrap of evidence exists, revealed to the military/security complex the opportunity to remove Trump and thus protect the oversized budget and power of the military/security complex that is threatened by Trump’s intention to normalize relations with Russia. It revealed to the Hillary forces the opportunity to vindicate themselves with the argument that Russia stole the election for Trump. It revealed to Israel the opportunity to put an end to Trump’s withdrawal of US interference in the Middle East, thus enabling Israel to continue to use the US military to clear away obstacles to Israeli expansion. It provided the presstitutes, who hate Trump and “the deplorables” who elected him, with a headline story for months and months to be followed in their expectations with the story of Trump’s removal from the presidency.

The retired intelligence professionals are too circumspect to tell President Trump outright that a conspiracy is underway to remove him from office whether by impeachment or assassination by a right-wing “lone nut” enraged at the traitorous president, but this does seem to be the message between the lines. As I have provided the link to the letter, you can read it and come to your own conclusion.  

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces and tribal forces, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, have liberated Al-Dakhilah, Bir Al-Sabkhawi, and Al-Sabkhawi from ISIS terrorists in the southern countryside of Raqqah and, according to pro-government sources, reached the Euphrates River and cut off the Al-Bukamal-Aleppo highway.

Thus, the army and its allies repeated the al-Bab-style operation when they built a buffer zone in order to stop a possible Turkish advance into central Syria. Control over the Al-Bukamal-Aleppo highway prevents a possible US-led operation in the direction of Deir Ezzor from the area of Raqqah.

The SAA, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army, backed up by the Syrian Air Force, have launched a large coordinated operation against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and ISIS members in the area of Jaroud Arsal at the Syrian-Lebanese border. The SAA and Hezbollah have liberated Jorud Flitah and the nearby points in the Syrian territory. At the same time, Hezbollah supported by the Lebanese Army has liberated over 70% of the Lebanese part of Jaroud Arsal. The militant defense in the area is rapidly collapsing.

On Sunday, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) got a full control over the city of Idlib after capturing the remaining HQs and checkpoints of Ahrar al-Sham in the area. The HTS faced little resistance and Ahrar al-Sham members withdrew from the city after a series of firefights. Meanwhile, a VBIED attack killed 13 HTS members and injured dozens at the Al-Zira’a roundabout in Idlib. It’s not yet known whether ISIS or Ahrar al-Sham was behind the attack. ISIS may seek to fuel tensions among Idlib militants in order to expand own influence in the province.

Since the start of the ongoing intra-militant clashes, HTS has the entire Syrian-Turkish border line in the Idlib province and the city of Idlib. At least 19 armed groups have defected from Ahrar al-Sham and 15 of them have joined HTS. The al-Qaeda linked group has always been a de-facto leader of the so-called Idlib opposition. However, now it’s closer than ever to a full military and political dominance in the province.

On Sunday, another truce was implemented in the Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus. The truce had been negotiated between the government and local militants in the Egyptian capital of Cairo and was backed up by Russia. Clashes continued only in areas of Ayn Tarma and Jobar mostly controlled by HTS and allied units.

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The Republican Party prepares to violate the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution: Social Security — the 14th amendment and “odious debt”.

For decades the working people have been paying millions more than was needed into Social Security and for years the excess money has been borrowed by the government. Presently there is almost $3 trillion owed by the government to the Social Security Trust Fund. The Republican Party now controls the government and has a budget plan that will give less than was promised to millions of people who have paid excess into Social Security for years.¹ This proposed budget is, in fact, a default on the debt owed to the Social Security Trust Fund and the people of the United States. The proposed Republican budget cut to Social Security is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The 14th amendment reads as follows:

“the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, includes debts incurred for payments of pensions….. shall not be questioned.”

For decades the politicians have not only borrowed from Social Security to run the government, but 70% of the national debt has been borrowed from banks, financial institutions, corporations and rich individuals. The politicians borrowed because instead of taxing the rich banks and corporations, they cut their taxes. As a result, workers’ taxes and Social Security payments provide almost 90% of the federal government’s revenues.² Over decades the politicians have allowed major corporations to escape paying billions in taxes, they have given subsidies in the billions to corporations and agribusiness, and they have allowed tax breaks for the oil and gas companies in the billions of dollars.³ The Government has also spent trillions of dollars for multiple wars and on bailing out banks and insurance companies.

Politicians have borrowed money and spent it on the military industrial complex. Over half the national budget goes to the military in spite of the fact that over the past 46 years the general population has been opposed to the government’s decision to spend so much money on the military, and have repeatedly indicated that they would rather the money be spent on social services, healthcare and education.

A 2014 study by Princeton University came to the conclusion that the majority of the American public actually has little influence over the policies the government adopts. The study concluded that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impact on US government policies while the average citizen have little or no independent influence.”⁴

Politicians now tell us that there is too much debt and they want to pay off the creditors rather than provide public service to the average citizen. This debt is clearly against the interests of the general population. This debt was obtained without the people’s consent and with the full awareness of the creditors. Thus this fulfills the International Legal Definition of an “odious debt”. We, the people have no obligation to pay and consider this debt invalid. We will not pay this debt; the rich who benefited from this debt must repay it!

Stand together for a Stronger, Improved and Expanded Social Security!!

Dr. Nayvin Gordon is a Family Physician in California who has written many articles on Health and Politics. He can be reached at [email protected] Read other articles by Dr. Nayvin.

Notes

1. New York Times, July 19, 2017

2. The White House Office of Management and Budget, “Historical Tables”, Table 2.1 

3. “Take The Rich off Welfare”, by Mark Zepezaur and Arthur Naiman, 1996, The New York Times, 3/10/17. 

4. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens”, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, American Political Science Association 2014. 

On CNN’s State Of The Union, Anthony Scaramucci said that someone called him yesterday questioning Russia’s attack on the 2016 election. When host Jake Tapper pressed him, Scaramucci admitted that the person questioning whether or not Russia attacked the US was Trump.

Video:

Scaramucci said,

“Somebody said to me yesterday, I won’t tell you who, that if Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it. You have never had any evidence of them. Meaning that they’re super confident in their deception skills and hacking. My point is, all of the information isn’t on the table yet.”

Jake Tapper broke in and said,

“Anthony, you’re making a lot of assertions here. I don’t know who this anonymous person is that said that if the Russians would have actually done it, we wouldn’t have been able to detect it.”

Scaramucci spilled the beans,

“How about it was the President, Jake? He called me from Air Force One, and he basically said to me, hey this is, maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it.”

Tapper pointed out that Trump’s denial that Russia attacked the election is the central issue here.

Trump’s new communications director couldn’t resist shooting off his mouth and disclosing a private conversation with the President. The result is that investigators now know that Trump has more faith in Russian intelligence than he does in the US intelligence community, and he is working behind the scenes to discredit the investigations into the Russia scandal.

Donald Trump’s communications director just set his boss up for a new obstruction of justice charge.

Just when you think, Trump and his people can’t get any more self-incriminatingly incompetent than they already are, Anthony Scaramucci goes on CNN and proves you wrong.

Featured image from the author