Global Research

Featured image: American Journalist Robert Parry (Source: Consortiumnews)

There are too many awards for journalism. Too many simply celebrate the status quo. The idea that journalists ought to challenge the status quo — what Orwell called Newspeak and Robert Parry calls ‘groupthink’ — is becoming increasingly rare.

More than a generation ago, a space opened up for a journalism that dissented from the groupthink and flourished briefly and often tenuously in the press and broadcasting. Today, that space has almost closed in the so-called mainstream media. The best journalists have become – often against their will — dissidents. 

The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism recognises these honourable exceptions. It is very different from other prizes. Let me quote in full why we give this award:

‘The Gellhorn Prize is in honour of one of the 20^th century’s greatest reporters. It is awarded to a journalist whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth – a truth validated by powerful facts that expose what Martha Gellhorn called “official drivel”. She meant establishment propaganda.’

Journalist Martha Gellhorn (Source: Bio.com)

Martha was renowned as a war reporter. Her dispatches from Spain in the 1930s and D-Day in 1944 are classics. But she was more than that. As both a reporter and a committed humanitarian, she was a pioneer: one of the first in Vietnam to report what she called ‘a new kind of war against civilians’: a precursor to the wars of today.

She was the reason I was sent to Vietnam as a reporter. My editor had spread across his desk her articles that had run in the Guardian and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A headline read, ‘Targeting the people.’ For that series, she was placed on a black-list by the US military and never allowed to return to South Vietnam.

She and I became good friends. Indeed, all my fellow judges of the Martha Gellhorn Prize – Sandy and Shirlee Matthews, James Fox, Jeremy Harding — have that in common. We keep her memory.

She was indefatigable. She would call very early in the morning and open up the conversation with one of her favourite expressions – ‘I smell a rat’.

When, in 1990, President George Bush Senior invaded Panama on the pretext of nabbing his old CIA buddy General Noriega, the embedded media made almost no mention of civilian suffering.

My phone rang. ‘I smell a rat’, said a familiar voice.

Within 24 hours Martha was on a plane to Panama. She was then in her 80s. She went straight to the barrios of Panama City, and walked from door to door, interviewing ordinary people. That was the way she worked – in apartheid South Africa, in the favelas of Brazil, in the villages of Vietnam.

She estimated that the American bombing and invasion of Panama had killed at least 6,000 people.

She flew to Washington and stood up at a press conference at the Pentagon and asked a general:

‘Why did you kill so many people then lie about it?’

Imagine that question being asked today. And that is what we are honouring this evening. Truth-telling, and the courage to find out, to ask the forbidden question.

Robert Parry is a very distinguished honourable exception.

I first heard of Bob Parry in the 1980s when he broke the Iran-Contra scandal as an Associated Press reporter. This was a story as important as Watergate. Some would say it was more important.

The administration of Ronald Reagan had secretly and illegally sold weapons to Iran in order to secretly and illegally bankroll a bloodthirsty group known as the Contras, which was then trying to crush Nicaragua’s Sandinista government — on behalf of the CIA. You could barely make it up.   

Bob Parry’s career has been devoted to finding out, lifting rocks – and supporting others who do the same.

In the 1990s, he supported Gary Webb, who revealed that the Reagan administration had allowed the Contras to traffic cocaine in the US. For this, Webb was crucified by the so-called mainstream media, and took his own life.

Lifting the big rocks can be as dangerous as a warzone.

In 1995, Parry founded his own news service, the Consortium for Independent Journalism. But, really, there was just him. Today, his website consortiumnews.com reflects the authority and dissidence that marks Parry’s career.

What he does is make sense of the news – why Saudi Arabia should be held accountable; why the invasion of Libya was a folly and a crime; why the New York Times is an apologist for great power; why Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have much in common; why Russia is not our enemy; why history is critical to understanding.

For his journalism, Robert Parry is the winner of the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize. He joins the likes of Robert Fisk, Iona Craig, Patrick Cockburn, Mohammed Omer, Dahr Jamail, Marie Colvin, Julian Assange, Gareth Porter and other honourable exceptions.  

Unlike Oliver Stone, who knew how to interview Vladimir Putin, Megyn Kelly did not. Thus, she made a fool of herself, which is par for her course.

Now the entire Western media has joined Megyn in foolishness, or so it appears from a RT report. James O’Keefe has senior CNN producer John Bonifield on video telling O’Keefe that CNN’s anti-Russia reporting is purely for ratings:

“It’s mostly bullshit right now. Like, we don’t have any big giant proof.”

CNN’s Bonifield is reported to go on to say that

“our CIA is doing shit all the time, we’re out there trying to manipulate governments.”

https://www.rt.com/usa/394233-russia-cnn-ratings-veritas/

And, of course, the American people, the European peoples, and the US and European governments are being conditioned by the “Russia did it” storyline to distrust Russia and to accept whatever dangerous and irresponsible policy toward Russia that Washington comes up with next.

Is the anti-Russian propaganda driven by ratings as Bonifield is reported to claim, or are ratings the neoconservatives and military/security complex’s cover for media disinformation that increases tensions between the superpowers and prepares the ground for nuclear war?

RT acknowledges that the entire story could be just another piece of false news, which is all that the Western media is known for.

Nevertheless, what we do know is that the fake news reporting pertains to Russia’s alleged interference in the US presidential election. Allegedly, Trump was elected by Putin’s interference in the election. This claim is absurd, but if you are Megyn Kelly you lack the IQ to see that. Instead, presstitutes turn a nonsense story into a real story despite the absence of any evidence.

Who actually interfered in the US presidential election, Putin or the presstitutes themselves? The answer is clear and obvious. It was the presstitutes, who were out to get Trump from day one of the presidential campaign. It is CIA director John Brennan, who did everything in his power to brand Trump some sort of Russian agent. It is FBI director Comey who did likewise by continuing to “investigate” what he knew was a non-event. We now have a former FBI director playing the role of special prosecutor investigating Trump for “obstruction of justice” when there is no evidence of a crime to be obstructed! What we are witnessing is the ongoing interference in the presidential election, an interference that not only makes a mockery of democracy but also of the rule of law.

The presstitutes not only interfered in the presidential election; they are now interfering with democracy itself. They are seeking to overturn the people’s choice by discrediting the President of the United States and those who elected him. The Democratic Party is a part of this attack on American democracy. It is the DNC that insists that a Putin/Trump conspiracy stole the presidency from Hillary. The Democrats’ position is that it is too risky to permit the American people—the “deplorables”— to vote. The Democratic Party’s line is that if you let Americans vote, they will elect a Putin stooge and America will be ruled by Russia.

Many wonder why Trump doesn’t use the power of the office of the presidency to indict the hit squad that is out to get him. There is no doubt that a jury of deplorables would indict Brennan, Comey, Megyn Kelly and the rest. On the other hand, perhaps Trump’s view is that the Republican Party cannot afford to go down with him, and, therefore, as he is politically protected by the Republican majority, the best strategy is to let the Democrats and the presstitutes destroy themselves in the eyes of flyover America.

What our survival as Americans depends on is the Russians’ view of this conflict between a US President who intended to reduce the tensions between the nuclear powers and those determined to increase the tensions. The Russian high command has already announced its conclusion that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. It is not possible to imagine a more dangerous conclusion. So far, no one in Washington or any Western government has made an effort to reassure Russia that no such attack is being prepared. Instead, the calls are for more punishment of Russia and more tension.

This most extraordinary of failures demonstrates the complete separation of the West from reality.

It is difficult to imagine a more extreme danger than for the insouciant West to convince Russia that the West is incapable of rational behavior. But that is precisely what the West is doing.

Featured image: UAE crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed (Source: Wikipedia)

Abu Dhabi’s crown prince asked the US to bomb Al Jazeera as America was planning its invasion of Iraq, according to a diplomatic cable detailing his conversation with a top US state department mandarin.

According to the cable, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) “laughingly recalled” to Richard Hass a conversation between his father, Sheikh Zayed, and the emir of Qatar, Hamad Al-Thani, in which Hamad had complained MBZ had asked for the US “to bomb Al Jazeera”.

“According to MBZ, Zayed [his father] derisively responded: ‘Do you blame him?'”

In his comments, made in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, MBZ warned that public opinion in the Arab world over the invasion – which he described as “containable” if the war was short and efficient – could be heavily inflamed by the Qatar TV network’s coverage and advised that its influence be reined in.

MBZ said

“it was a mystery to him why the Qataris continued to inflame public opinion” through Al Jazeera… “and suggested that the US use its weight to pressure Doha”.

The cable added that MBZ had “emphasised the need for US engagement with the Qataris to rein in Al Jazeera”.

In April 2003, the Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was struck by a US missile killing one staff member and wounding another, though a US Central Command spokesman told BBC News the station “was not and never had been a target.” In 2001 the station’s Kabul office was hit by two bombs in another US attack, although there were no casualties.

The statement appears to show decades-long enmity between Qatar and the UAE over Al Jazeera, which has boiled to the surface once again with a Saudi, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt-led blockade of Qatar and demands to close the network down.

Last week Riyadh laid down a list of 13 demands for Qatar, which also included ending Doha’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a downgrade of diplomatic ties with Iran and the shutting of a Turkish military base outside Doha.

According to the cable, however, MBZ downplayed tensions between the Saudis and Qataris, noting the two populations “share Wahhabi roots”.

More concerning, he said, were UAE-Saudi relations, which MBZ reportedly described as “far more complex”.

He drew his attention to Abu Dhabi’s “nagging bilateral border dispute with Riyadh (the al-Shayba oil field)”.

“Nevertheless, the ever pragmatic Emiratis recognised the need to deal with the Saudis and have thus maintained good relations with Riyadh.”

However, the cable noted that MBZ took a “dim view” – in one case literally – of some senior members of the Saudi government – “sardonically noting that interior minister Nayef’s bumbling manner suggested that ‘Darwin was right’,” and went on to say that King Fahd was not “in complete control of his faculties”.

Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud is the father of Mohammed bin Nayef – who was last week stripped of his position of crown prince by the king, Salman, who instated his son Mohammed bin Salman as heir.

Bin Nayef is thought to have held personal antipathy to MBZ.

Recently leaked emails sent from the Emirati ambassador to the US indicated that the UAE was involved in trying to move bin Salman into a position of power in Saudi Arabia.

“I think we should all agree these changes in Saudi are much needed,” said Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the US.

“Our job now is to do everything possible to ensure MBS succeeds.”

The 2003 cable also highlights MBZ’s then apparent tacit support for the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whose removal from power the Gulf nations are now officially committed to.

MBZ “encouraged continued USG (US government) engagement with Bashar, noting that otherwise, ‘the wrong guys’ will fill the vacuum.”

“In MBZ’s estimation, Bashar is active and ‘wants to do good,’ although his relative youth and inexperience are real drawbacks.”

Featured image: The slogan on a wall in Paris, means – “F**k, we’re in reverse.” (Source: Socialist Project)

“Putain, nous sommes en marche arrière” — Slogan on a wall in the 20th district of Paris.

“I really hope Macron can reform France, which is not doing well, you know.” These were the words of a young and stylish corporate lawyer, who started chatting with me during lunch in the cafeteria of the French national library. Emmanuel Macron‘s La République En Marche had just won the Parliamentary elections. The lawyer tried to convince me of the benefits of liberalism but also expressed anxiety about whether Macron would manage to do what previous Presidents have not: overcome all the various social and institutional obstacles in the way of a full-fledged neoliberalism.

His ambivalence captured the tone of those capitalists and financial journalists who voice cautious optimism about Macron’s capacity to restore the confidence of global investors and the European Troika in France. But, in their tunnel vision of an impossible liberal utopia, these commentators typically gloss over the thorny problem of political rule. Macron is both a symptom and cause of the current political crisis in France: a decomposition of the party system alternating between the right and the (nominally) left, reinforced by systemic uncertainty about the future of the European Union and Euro-American imperialism. This crisis is expressed most clearly by the angst-driven willingness of most French politicians to normalize rules of exception in order to bypass parliament and perpetuate the state of emergency in place since 2015.

The 2017 Legislative Elections

In the second round of the French legislative election, newly-elected President Macron’s ad hoc political formation En Marche managed to win 308 seats in the French National Assembly. While less than the predictions made after the first round, this is an absolute majority of the 577 seats in the Assembly. Given the comparatively low percentage of the vote En Marche managed to gather in the first round of the legislative elections (32.2%), this result was made possible by France’s two-stage majoritarian electoral system. Macron’s majority increases further (to 350) if one counts the 42 seats won by Francois Bayrou‘s centrist MoDem (Mouvement Démocratique), with whom Macron struck an electoral agreement.

Compared to Macron’s and Bayrou’s success, France’s other political formations suffered major setbacks. While the bourgeois right – Les Républicains (LR) and Union des Démocrates et Indépendents (UDI) – was not decimated, its combined seat total shrank to 136, compared to 196 in 2012 when they lost their parliamentary majority to Parti Socialiste (PS). This defeat has already prompted a formal split. 38 centre-right politicians from the LR and the UDI have formed a separate, ‘Macron-compatible’ parliamentary group willing to work with the new majority.

On May 1st, 2012, as every year, the Front National activists marched in Paris and met before the Opéra Garnier for a meeting. Jean-Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen each delivered a speech in the middle of the campaign between the two presidential towers. (Source: Blandine Le Cain / Wikimedia Commons)

The Front National failed, once again, to translate promising results in the Presidential election into real parliamentary weight. While they increased their presence in the Assembly to 8 seats, this is still not enough to form a parliamentary group. As a result, internal struggles over the direction of the party, which resurfaced after Marine Le Pen‘s defeat by Macron in the Presidential election, are sure to intensify in the near future. Will Le Pen and chief strategist Florian Philippot‘s already weakened line (a critique of the EU, the old fascist slogan ‘neither left nor right’) hold against those who want to re-situate the FN more decisively on the extreme right, with even fewer ideological concessions to economic sovereignty and social questions, and forge a strategy to begin collaborating formally with the populist wing of the LR?

The left, meanwhile, was reduced to a strikingly low overall proportion of the Assembly – 12.6% of all seats. Since 1981, when the PS and the PCF won the elections, the left dipped this low only once, in 1993 (16.1%). Otherwise, the total proportion of the left fluctuated between 30.9% and 67.8% in that time period. So what explains their recent performance? Simply speaking, the Socialist Party (PS) and the Greens (Europe Ecologie/Les Verts) received the bill for the disastrous François Hollande years. The PS lost 250 of its 295 seats in the pre-election Assembly. The Greens, which won 18 seats and formed a parliamentary group for the first time in 2012, were shut out entirely.

The two left formations that did not participate in the Hollande government – the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon‘s France Insoumise (FI) – fared better, with 10 and 17 seats respectively. The PCF and the FI (which ran under the common banner of the Front de Gauche in 2012) failed to reach an electoral agreement prior to the first round, after which many of their candidates were eliminated and thus could not capitalize on Mélenchon’s promising result. Despite this failure, which many grassroots organizers deplored bitterly, the PCF and the FI managed to increase their total number of seats from 15 to 27, the total of the Front de Gauche in 2012. The weight within the (now much diminished) parliamentary left has shifted to the left of the Socialists in ways unseen since the 1970s. This puts the Mélenchon’s FI in an enviable position when it comes to discussions about a potential recomposition of the parliamentary left in France.

A New Ruling Bloc?

Bruno Amable and Stefano Palmobarini have pointed to a persistent feature of French politics since the late 1970s – the difficulty of forging a neoliberal social bloc with relatively predictable electoral capacities. They argue that the social components of a potential ‘bourgeois bloc’ (factions of the bourgeoisie and its upper-middle class allies) have been torn between the major forces of left and right, the Socialist Party, and its right-wing equivalent (which changed its name a few times, from the RPR to the UMP and now the LR). In this context, Macron’s En Marche, built as it was upon the marginalization of the PS left under the Hollande-Valls-Macron leadership and the subsequent implosion of the PS as a whole, promises to liberate neoliberals in various camps from what remains of the already greatly weakened left-right social and ideological cleavage. These shackles have stood in the way of a French version of British Blairism or a German-style Grand Coalition.

Amable and Palombarini’s neopluralist (and neo-institutionalist) analysis is too mechanical (treating alliances as static aggregates of pre-existing social interests) and too idealist (abstracting from the contradictions and struggles which, in a capitalist context, corrode ruling blocs). It is also one-sided in neglecting other political forces central to French politics. For example, they ignore what Sadri Khiari has called the colonial counter-revolution: France’s response to decolonization, Third World aspirations, and migrant mobilizations since the late postwar period. Still, Amable and Palombarini provide a welcome, longer-term context for all those who have written about the crisis of rule in the current conjuncture. They show that hegemonic instability in France (as posited by Stathis Kouvélakis), which has indeed intensified under Sarkozy and Hollande, builds upon deeper cracks in the foundation of bourgeois rule in France.

Amable and Palombarini also provide proper context to what Gramsci would call Macron’s ‘transformism’ – his capacity to absorb or neutralize elements of existing parties (Socialists, centrists and liberals) while also recruiting people without strong ties to these political formations. Some of this capacity results from painstaking labour (undertaken by many, including Macron’s wife Brigitte Macron) building social ties between their own provincial worlds and Parisian bourgeois circles. Thus embedded, Macron’s government and the newly elected parliamentary group En Marche could become a key component of a new ruling bloc, one that links a new cross-partisan mix of politicians and operators to new political recruits. It would be a bloc, therefore, that is younger, more entrepreneurial, a bit more female, and less beholden to the interpersonal feuds and sectarian allegiances that have immobilized existing political apparatuses.

A Thin Majority

Macron’s rapid rise from the senior state bureaucracy to President (via banking and the Hollande government) may turn out to be too good to be true. Three days after the Parliamentary election, Macron already had to regroup his government. Four ministers and state secretaries, including MoDemchief Bayrou, had resigned from cabinet. They had run afoul, individually or through their party MoDem, of a top Macronite electoral promise: to bring moral integrity to public office, a promise which Bayrou himself was charged with implementing. Like the Front National, MoDem is being investigated for using the labour of EU Parliamentary assistants paid by Brussels to support their national party apparatus instead of the work of their European deputies. Clearly, Macron’s image of political renewal is already tarnished by ‘old’ practices. Given that links between business and government are particularly systemic in Macron’s regime, these resignations are unlikely to remain the only ones in his term.

Macron himself is split between two contradictory orientations. While declaring the renewal and broadening of the French ruling class, he enthusiastically supports the deeply undemocratic features of the Fifth Republic – the heavy bias toward the office of the President, which lends itself to personalized rule and curtails Parliament in several acute ways. Macron has admitted to his (quasi-)royalist, or, perhaps more accurately put, Bonapartist leanings. These leanings are now infused with the business-oriented managerial practices that permeate Macron’s government and the enthusiasm by which Macron extends France’s imperial foreign policy, pushing for a proper EU security and military apparatus while sustaining France’s military missions in Africa.

Authoritarianism is indeed second nature to Macron. After prolonging the state of emergency for a sixth term, he has already embarked on a project to enshrine in regular legislation key provisions of the state of emergency law, including pre-emptive house arrest, house searches, the closure of places of worship (i.e. mosques) and a newly added provision to define zones where police have special powers to search people and property. He thus proposes to make permanent the very rules of exception that undermine basic principles of the separation of powers and habeas corpus. These have been used during the Hollande years not primarily to pursue perpetrators of terrorist attacks but more frequently to criminalize Muslims, residents of segregated neighbourhoods, and protestors of police violence, climate change and labour laws.

Macron’s strategy to radicalize Hollande’s record (which he himself carried to a significant extent) has a second, closely related plank: his promise to accelerate the deconstruction of France’s social security system, shrink the public sector, and deepen labour law reforms to further buttress the power of employers in various ways. One such way is to decentralize collective bargaining to the enterprise level, thereby undercutting the capacity of French labour unions to compensate for very low unionization rates with sector-wide strategies or national political action. As Amable and Palmobarini have pointed out, there is no social majority for such reforms in France. The modernizing, so-called social-liberal wing of the Socialist Party, and the neoliberal currents in the French centre and right (both of which Macron draws upon), have faced this resistance repeatedly since the 1980s. Under Hollande, this lack of solid social and parliamentary support for economic liberalism explained the recourse to constitutional mechanisms to bypass Parliament and new levels of repression to curtail and divide mass protests.

The project of building a more integrated socio-political bloc to sustain Macron’s liberal political synthesis is thus fraught with deep obstacles. Everyday entrepreneurialism has made headway among the French population, including in segregated neighbourhoods with non-white majority populations. Yet this daily entrepreneurialism, which is sometimes a matter of survival and an obvious feature of social media dynamics and mass-produced pop culture, does not in itself indicate a widely shared, deeply held and unequivocal commitment to neoliberalism. Many indications, including surveys and exit polls, suggest that Macron’s Presidential and Parliamentary majorities do not reflect a profound appeal of his ideas or programme.

Macron won the elections to a large extent because French voters rejected his opponents (the PS, the right, and the Front National) and withdrew from elections on a mass basis. In the second round, 57.4% of registered voters refused to cast a ballot, a rate that exceeds the record set in 2012 by a whopping 13.7%. 440 of 577 deputies were elected by fewer than 25% of registered voters. If one takes into account rates of non-registration, Macron’s support drops even further. In the first round, when people could choose from the full range of parties, less than 11% of eligible voters cast a ballot for En Marche. The party of abstention, not Macron, was the winner of the 2017 vote. In contrast to the UK, where Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign was carried by a remarkable surge in participation by young people, the electoral behaviour of French citizens, particularly the young and members of the working class, is more volatile than ever.

Macron 2017 = Le Pen 2022?

Macron and Le Pen

As Emmanuel Macron faced Marine Le Pen in the second round of the Presidential election, a slogan started appearing on the walls of central Paris: Macron 2017 = Le Pen 2022. This equation underestimated the dangers of the Front National. Yet it still has the great propagandistic merit of establishing a relationship between neo-fascism or authoritarian populism and less openly nationalist and socially conservative forms of neoliberalism. This relationship has been endemic to Euro-American politics since the 1980s. The ongoing instability of political rule, widespread social precarity, and an embrace of imperial war and anti-Muslim racism by liberals, centrists and Socialists suggest Macronism will indeed further fertilize the ground for the Front National and its potential future allies on the populist Sarkozyist or Catholic right.

It is important not to forget another key fact from the 2017 French elections: the Front National established itself for the first time as a party that could win the Presidential election. Within a week of the run-off vote, Marine Le Pen polled within 18% of Macron. At the end, she garnered 34%, not 41% of the vote. Still, a record 10.6 million French voters cast their ballots for Marine Le Pen, almost twice as many as the 5.5 million (17.8%) who voted for her father in 2002. Marine Le Pen’s result builds upon the FN’s record-breaking results in the European and municipal elections of 2014 and 2015. The FN’s relatively weak performance in the two rounds of the Legislative election (13.2% and 8.8% respectively) thus does not mean that the FN is on its way out. In fact, the election has shown that it is more difficult now than at any other time since the FN emerged on the electoral scene in the early 1980s to contain the spread of the party.

In the end, left and popular-democratic forces are the only ones with the potential to break the link between Macron and Le Pen. Crucial questions impose themselves in this context.

• Will the organized, parliamentary or non-parliamentary left undergo a process of recomposition to avoid further marginalization and fragmentation?
• Will the forces who have confronted Hollande and Macron’s labour law reforms in the street (for example the union activists and autonomists in the newly formed Front Social) muster the energy to defeat Macron on this point and the broader austerity agenda, the divisions in the labour movement notwithstanding?
• Will the coalition that managed to pull off an impressive mass march against racism and police violence on March 19 build on its efforts?
• Will it be feasible to mount a significant resistance against the normalization of the state of emergency proposed by Macron, a normalization that is keeping far-right demands to permanently and pre-emptively intern the ‘radicalized’ alive?
• Finally, will it be possible, in this broader context, to focus anti-fascist energies (yes, on the FN and the galaxy of fascist groups surrounding it, but also), as Saïd Bouamama has urged repeatedly, against the acts of everyday violence (against burkini-wearing Muslim women, Roma campers, or refugees) which have helped implement, as it were, racist and Islamophobic policies while legitimizing the FN?

Stefan Kipfer is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto. He is currently on sabbatical leave in France.

Sources

Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini. L’illusion du bloc bourgeois. Alliances sociales et avenir du modèle Français. Paris: Raison d’Agir, 2017.

Bruno Amable, “Le candidat d’En Marche champion d’un bloc bourgeois,” Libération, 25 April 2017.

Hacène Belmessous, “En banlieue, autoentrepreneur faute de mieux,” Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2017.

Saïd Bouamama, “Leçons et conséquences d’un été révélateur. La construction progressive des conditions d’un pogrome,” 31 August 2016, at Le blog de Saïd Bouamama.

Saïd Bouamama, La Manipulation de l’identité nationale, Editions du Cygne, 2011.

André Chenin, “L’électeur se rebiffe,” Le Monde, 1 April 2017.

Jean-Michel Dumay, “CFDT, un syndicalisme pour l’ère Macron,” Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2017.

Pierre Duquesne and Lionel Venturini, “L’électorat gagne par l’extinction de voix,” l’Humanité, 20 June, 2017.

Louise Fessard, “Une atteinte à la séparation des pouvoirs inimaginable (Interview with Serge Slama),” Mediapart, 8 June.

Philipp Hildebrand, “C’est le moment idéal pour réformer la France,” Le Monde, 11-12 July 2017.

Jerome Hourdeaux, “Contre le terrorisme, l’état d’urgence s’incruste,” Mediapart, 23 June, 2017.

Kareen Janselme, “La bombe à retardement contre le modèle social est enclenchée,” L’Humanité, 7 June 2017.

Sadri Khiari, La contre-révolution coloniale en France. Paris: La Fabrique, 2008.

Stefan Kipfer, “‘Things are serious’: A very brief update on the French Presidential election campaign,” The Bullet, No. 1406, 2 May 2017.

Stefan Kipfer, “Projecting Shadows: France before the 2017 elections,” The Bullet No. 1378, 5 March 2017.

Stathis Kouvélakis, “What’s next for Nuit Debout?” Interview, Jacobin, 16 May 2016.

Roger Martelli, “PCF et France insoumise: données complémentaires,” regards.fr, 15 June 2017.

Le Monde, Résultats législatives 2017, 13 June 2017.

Le Monde, Résultats législatives 2017, 20 June 2017.

Ugo Palheta, “Vers l’autoritarisme? Crise de la démocratie libérale et politique d’émancipation,” Contretemps 31, 2017.

Pierre Rosanvallon, “Lignes brisées,” Le Monde, 17 June, 2017.

Lola Ruscio, “Les classes supérieures confisquent la représentation nationale,” L’Humanité, 20 June 2017.

Jacques Toubon, “Loi antiterroriste: ‘une pillule empoisonée’,” Le Monde, 24 June 2017.

It is expected that demand for gas will rise, especially in the longer term. It is cleaner, more efficient and cheaper than oil. (The cost of heating an average American house is three times more expensive using oil rather than gas).

Europe has become addicted to gas consuming 447 Billion cubic meters in 2016 (a 6% annual increase), and Russia, is the biggest supplier delivering, via established pipelines, one third of European demand. It now plans to build a new pipeline (Nord Stream 2) from Russia to Germany to supplement the existing network and ensure uninterrupted supply as future demand grows.

But Europe is unhappy with this plan (especially Eastern Europe). Obliged to strictly observe and follow US anti-Russian policies which aim to weaken Russia economically and militarily and dislodge it from its high geopolitical perch. Accordingly, The EU countries have not only blindly applied US sanctions on Russia, to the detriment of their economies, but also, have exposed their citizens to the danger of total annihilation and destruction, by hosting US nuclear missiles and armies directed at Russia. As such, the EU has obediently toted the line and for has years thrown multiple wrenches in the pipeline project cogs. Existing EU laws were negatively misinterpreted, or new unfavorable laws and regulations were promulgated.

Source: http://world.bymap.org/NaturalGasProduction.html

But now, the latest straw seems to have broken the camel’s back. Trump’s election as president has brought in someone whose demands on the EU are not just excessive, but also are presented in a roughshod manner. And, to top it all, the US has suddenly changed from a generous leader who always picks up the tab, to a penny-pinching scrooge demanding the economically sick EU pay to billions more for NATO’s and their own defense expenses. He also managed to hit the sorest possible spot, by criticizing Germany for its excessive exports to the US with minimal balancing imports, blaming it for exacerbating the US balance of trade deficit and its crimson balance of payments.

The final straw was last week, when the US senate passed with an overwhelming majority (98 to 2) a new set of Russian sanctions that penalize any company that participates in the construction of the new Russian pipeline or provides any financing services to it. This law is primarily directed at German and European companies, and although it has temporarily stumbled due to procedural errors in Congress, it is likely to be represented and passed.

The estimated costs of the Nord Stream 2 project are 8 – 9 Billion Dollars, and that is mouthwatering even for rich countries. Germany and Austria immediately reacted violently, and for the first time in seventy years (since the end of the WW 2) retorted by threatening to counter such sanctions, insinuating that they would reciprocate with sanctions against the US!! They also, accused the US of using politics to further their economic interests and forcing the EU to buy more expensive US LNG gas. The moral here seems to be: “Do what you wish, but stay clear of my pocket”.

As for Russia, it continues to progress the project and is not worried about the construction part as it has ample specialized contracting companies ready to break ground on short notice. It has also restructured the project financing to a part self-finance and part financing from Chinese banks with whom it is presently in communication with.

Russia did not stop there, but went further and negotiated late last year with the Turkish government to build the “Turkish Stream Pipeline” to transport gas from Russia to Turkey. After satiating Turkish demand, the excess gas will be piped to Southern Europe, with lucrative transit fees to Turkey. Work on this project recently broke ground, a mere seven months after signing the accords!

But hark, where are all the other gas producers? Where are the US ambitions to shrink Russian gas sales and substitute Arab, American and even Iranian gas sales? Where are the gas pipeline projects via Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean and hence Europe? Are any of these still likely or even valid? Will these be reasons and justification for the continuation of the current conflicts, or create new ones? Or will the US issue new sanctions on whoever consumes Russian gas anywhere in the world?

Marwan Salamah, is a Kuwaiti economic consultant and publishes articles on his blog: marsalpost.com 

In a series of almost unprecedented events among Washington’s regional allies, the crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar seems to worsen by the day. The long-awaited list of demands presented to Doha by Riyadh seem to be intentionally impractical, as if to oblige Qatar to plead guilty to the crimes alleged by the Saudi kingdom or face the consequences, still unknown.

The surreal requests start with demands to close the international television network Al Jazeera, as well as halt the financing of the Muslim Brotherhood. At the heart of the issue remains the question of political and diplomatic relations with Iran, the bane of the Saudi royal family’s existence. The House of Thani that controls Qatar has until July 3 to accept all the demands presented. At the moment, Doha seems to be sending mixed messages, announcing that it wants to evaluate the Saudis’ proposals, but also letting it be known that most of the demands are “not reasonable“.

Prince Mohammad bin Salman and former crown prince Muhammed bin Nayef (Photo from PressTV)

Another interesting tidbit concerns the removal of Muhammed bin Nayef by the Saudi king as his successor to the throne. Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the young 31-year-old nephew, replaces Muhammed bin Nayef, the former Crown Prince and major ally of the CIA and European and American governments. Mohammad bin Salman is currently the most controversial figure in the Middle East. Responsible for the devastating war in Yemen and the desperate financial state of Riyadh’s finances, he oscillates between his Vision 2030 and an anti-Iranian preoccupation that is likely to bring his kingdom to bankruptcy. In Yemen, he waged a military campaign costing in the tens of billions of dollars, only to lose against the poorest Arab country in the world. His irrational anti-Iranian stance has even led him to risk a conflict within the GCC (thanks to the precious lobbying role of the UAE ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba) over the excessive freedom of Doha’s foreign policy.

Initially, this disaster appeared to be limited only to the two Gulf nations, with Trump’s Twitter account signalling Washington’s immediate backing of Mohammad bin Salman’s crusade against Iran and Qatar. The severity of the situation was immediately perceived by Turkey. Ankara and Doha have always played a leading role in the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious group that Riyadh considers to be terrorist organization and a threat to their Salafi realm.

Turkey reiterated its support for the House of Al Thani by deploying about 3,000 military personal to Doha in the country’s new military base, at the same time dismissing as “useless and unresponsive” the Saudis’ requests to abandon the base and withdraw their troops. In a series of unprecedented moves, bin Salman mooted the possibility of supporting Kurdish troops in Iraq and Syria if Ankara should continue to support Doha. What once seemed to be an indissoluble union between Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia today presents far more than fracture and tension, all to the benefit of the likes of Iran and Russia fighting terrorism in Syria alongside the legitimate government in Damascus. It is a nightmare for those like the United States who hoped to continue to impose their will on the Middle East through the blind obedience of certain vassals like Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With each one battling the other, the US’s role becomes much more complicated to influence events.

An aerial overhead view of”Ops Town”at at Al Udeid Air Base (AB), Al Rayyan Province, Qatar (QAT), taken from a US Air Force (USAF) KC-135 Stratotanker during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. (Source: US Gov / Wikimedia Commons)

Tensions between Washington’s allies are creating a situation of all against all, indeed a sense and feeling that is all too commonly reflected in Washington these days. After days of silence, the State Department and the Pentagon expressed their support for Qatar, contradicting the President’s indications that Qatar was a terrorist-financing state. Confusion and contradictions in the United States are increasingly having a destabilizing effect, showing a country without a strategic direction. The State Department has strongly criticized Saudi Arabia for its attitude towards Qatar over the last two weeks. This is by no means surprising, as the US Department of State is still infiltrated by former Obama administration loyalists, who themselves are heavily tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, as was the former nominee Hillary Clinton together with her trusted assistant Huma Abedin. The Pentagon, in this deep-state civil war, considers Qatar primarily from a tactical perspective: 90% of US aircraft directed against Syria take off from the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The sale of $12 billion worth of jets to Qatar is evidence that Qatar is one of the military-industrial complex’s best customers. The contradictory messages emanating from this US administration, unable to speak with one voice, continues to destabilize America’s closest allies in the region.

Another move that has certainly not gone unnoticed concerns the deployment of several Israeli tactical and operational aircraft in Saudi Arabia. The process of rapprochement between these two nations continues unabated, creating even more distrust in the region.

What now seems irreversible is the attitude of Doha’s authorities, who seem to have decided to use this opportunity to chart their own course independently of Riyadh. The Qatar Airways CEO, when interviewed by Al Jazeera, reiterated that, thanks to Iran, there is a chance for the operator to circumvent the skies illegally closed to it by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The CEO, when questioned on how he would proceed given the expected huge losses, stated that the company intends to broaden its horizons towards new routes so far unexplored.

Saudi tactics are likely to create difficulties and problems for Qatar, even with support from Iran and other regional countries. For the moment, Doha’s ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) continue to operate freely. In a country that receives almost 90% of its revenue from the sale of LNG, blocking its ships would mean pushing Qatar into a corner, a state of affairs that would closer resemble conventional warfare. Bin Salman’s inexperience and bungling will end up creating problems with Egypt, which currently allows transit of Qatar’s LNG through the Suez Canal to reach the Mediterranean and deliver gas to European customers. A request from Riyadh to Cairo to block Qatari ships would hardly be accepted, creating further fractures and tensions among those participating in the blockade of Qatar.

Perhaps Trump has only now realized how unhelpful these rifts are to his Arab NATO plan. If Turkey and Israel are on opposite sides, and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are on the verge of a war, it is unlikely that Washington could continue to try impose its strategic vision in all the Middle East in the intention of safeguarding its interests.

In this chaotic mess for the US and its allies, as always, the axis of the Shiite resistance benefits the most, especially in Syria with the advancement of Assad’s troops in the province of Deir ez-Zor, after almost five years of its absence there. Where Turkey, Iran and Russia have achieved ceasefire agreements, signed in Astana, the majority of remaining problems lie with the terrorist groups supported by Qatar and Turkey or Saudi Arabia. In addition to a series of skirmishes a few days ago, mistrust and the swapping of sides seem to be on the agenda, with Syria decreasingly under the control of terrorists and the prospect of the entire country being liberated coming into vision.

Washington is once again getting itself into an almost unprecedented situation. Whether or not Trump has given his blessing to Saudi Arabia’s actions against Qatar, what matters are the consequences for the region. Iran seems to play more and more the role of a moderate force ready to engage in dialogue with all parties. The Saudi attitude is likely to disaffect two strategic partners, Turkey and Egypt, with the latter ready to abandon the Saudis if pushed too far. Turkey, after intense Russian diplomatic efforts, seems to be on the verge of abandoning its support for anti-Assad forces, but prudence dictates that it tarries awhile before proceeding with these changes. Erdogan has often played a double or triple game.

Bin Salman’s strategy began with the Yemen war, continued with hostility against Qatar, and is now culminating with his appointment as Crown Prince. Trump seems to have climbed onto the chariot of losers, and now it is harder than ever to support a loose cannon like bin Salman who seems to show little hesitation in destroying his kingdom as well as undoing fundamental relations among Washington’s allies.

It is a struggle against time for the American deep state in fight against itself and spinning around in conflict. The risks of Bin Salman’s disruptive actions and Trump’s incompetence could have unimaginable consequences, as the possible collapse of the whole Anglo-American Middle East architecture constructed over a hundred years of wars and abuses.

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

Featured image from Strategic Culture Foundation

Featured image: The Leppings Lane end inside Hillsborough Stadium during the disaster (Source: Wikipedia)

“It is also a story of deceit and lies, of institutional defensiveness defeating truth and justice. It is evidence of a culture of denial within South Yorkshire Police.” – Anne Burkett, BBC, Apr 27, 2016

It took 28 years for the tables to turn on the South Yorkshire police regarding the Hillsborough disaster that took the lives of 96 fans. The 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest saw a sporting catastrophe that was portrayed as less a matter of institutional accountability as the consequence of loutish, irresponsible fans.

The finger pointing began instantly, with the police arguing that the bad behaviour of the fans, fuelled by alcohol consumption, was the primary cause. (This, notwithstanding the fact that some of the injured and dead were children.)

There were, in fact, no limits as to what the fans had done wrong. They supposedly arrived too late; they obstructed the police in accomplishing their tasks; they forced open a gate; many were supposedly ticketless. What mattered in the police narrative and technique was not safety but control.[1]

The ground was laid after the finding by inquest jurors in April 2016 that the fans in question had been unlawfully killed. It had been the longest jury case in British legal history, involving the families and supporters of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) and Hillsborough Justice Campaign.

Interest naturally turned towards police conduct not merely on the day itself, but subsequently. The latter point was of particular interest to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which was charged with the task of investigating allegations of a cover-up.

On Wednesday, six people, including two former senior police officers, were charged for criminal offences linked to the disaster. Significant here was the alleged cover-up that ensued. Sue Hemming of the Crown Prosecution Service’s head of special crime and counter-terrorism, after reviewing the material, “decided that there is sufficient evidence to charge six individuals with criminal offences.”

Prominently featured is David Duckenfield, the South Yorkshire officer who oversaw policing at the semi-final, charged for the manslaughter of 95 people. (The 96th, Tony Bland, would only die four years after the incident, making a charge of manslaughter inapplicable.) He had eluded the clutches of a private prosecution in 1999 with a stay by the senior judicial officer. For a prosecution to take place, that stay will have to be lifted by application from the prosecutors.

Duckenfield, the grim star of a very grim show, received specific mention from Hemming. During proceedings, the CPS intends to show that Duckenfield’s conduct that day was “extraordinarily bad and contributed substantially to the deaths of each of those 96 people who so tragically and unnecessarily lost their lives.”[2]

The focus on Sir Norman Bettison, former chief constable of Merseyside and West Yorkshire police, an inspector in the South Yorkshire force during the disaster, was one of misconduct. He faces four counts of the offence in public office.

“Given his role as a senior police officer,” stated Hemming, “we will ask the jury to find that this was misconduct of such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.”

Donald Denton and Alan Foster, both former police chiefs, were charged with perverting the course of justice in allegedly fiddling witness statements used during the original investigation and inquest into the deaths. Dozens of such statements were allegedly doctored to suggest a picture of police control rather than lethal chaos. The police lawyer, Peter Metcalf, was charged for allegedly assisting the enterprise.

Completing the institutional circle is Graham Mackrell, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club’s company secretary and safety officer that day. His charges are less grave, but no less significant: the alleged contravention of safety rules and failing to take appropriate reasonable care for the health and safety of those on the grounds.

This is the season for a reckoning. The charred ruins of Grenfell Tower have drawn necessary accusations about public safety across London. The cult of the cheap and expedient is being challenged; the wisdom of authorities questioned.

Source: Spiked

The Hillsborough families proved relentless in seeking accountability for the losses of 1989, showing that doing things by the book in calmly directed rage transformed the alleged responsibility of the victims to accountability of the authorities. It is with some historical irony, given the state of Brexit, that these efforts would been further hampered but for the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights via the Human Rights Act 1998.

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

Notes

[1] http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-hillsborough-96-and-the-struggle-for-truth-and-justice/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/28/hillsborough-six-people-including-two-senior-police-officers-charged

According to Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, journalists at The National Interest, conducting ambitious policy, aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government headed by Syrian President Bashar Assad, and confronting Iran is an extremely dangerous step of the U.S.

In their article Miller and Sokolsky reported that such kind of policy would lead to a chaos, in the conditions of which there won’t be any organized force, capable of countering terrorism in the Middle East. The overthrow of the Syrian government will entail an endless power struggle between radical Sunni jihadists and Shia militant groups.

In its turn, this will inevitably lead to the further spread of the terrorist threat, as well as the flow of refugees to Europe and the United States. Such a scenario may be traced in Libya.

After the violent and humiliating overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country is still unable to get over the deepest crisis. Nowadays, Libya is ruled by the numerous criminal groups. They support al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists, who consider Libya as a province of their self-declared caliphate. Besides, because of the current situation in the country, more and more refugees, among whom there is a great number of terrorists, are fleeing to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea.

In addition, Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky stressed that Washington’s desire to weaken Iran and counter its attempts to control the border between Iraq and Syria will also not promote victory over terrorists.

It should be mentioned that such predictions don’t seem so unlikely. In an interview with Neuen Osnabrücker Zeitung, Director of Europol Rob Wainwright said that today the level of terrorist threat is extremely high. According to Wainwright, only last year in Europe, 718 people were involved in relation to radical groups. Europol chief also warned of threat of new terror attacks.

Obviously, now there is only one way to stop the increasing threat: Washington needs to abandon the idea of overthrowing the legitimate government of Syria, and begin coordinating its actions with those, who really fight terrorism. This is the only way to prevent the devastating consequences that threaten the security of the whole world.

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

Featured image: Additional units of US marines assisting the fight in Raqqa (Source: South Front)

The US is actively preparing public opinion for a direct military aggression against Syria. The White House claimed on Monday that it has a “potential” evidence that the Bashar Assad government was preparing for another chemical weapons attack that “would likely result if the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.” Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that if “Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.” US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley further accused Russia and Iran for any future “chemical attacks” that may take place in Syria. However, no evidence was provided.

UK Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said on Tuesday that the US had not shared any specific evidence with the British Government, but the UK is ready to support any US military actions against Syria.

Earlier this month, Army Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the US-led coalition, admitted that the US and its allies had lost a race for the Syrian-Iraqi border to government forces and that the Pentagon has no problems with the anti-ISIS operation of the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance in the area. But, it looks that somebody in the White House has a problem with this.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army and its allies have further advanced against ISIS terrorists in the countryside of Palmyra and along the border with Iraq. An intense fighting took place near the Arak field while another group of government fighters continued pushing towards the T2 pumping station.

Tensions increased between Turkey-led forces and Kurdish militias that compose a core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkish artillery units have shelled Tell Rifat, Sheikh Issa, Harbul, Maranaz, Minaq and Ayn Daqnah in northern Aleppo.

Earlier this month, reports appeared that the Turkish military deployed a large number of military equipment, including T-155 Firtina howitzers and ACV-15 armoured vehicles, to the area of the militant-held town of Azaz. According to multiple pro-Kurdish media outlets, Turkey and pro-Turkish militant groups were preparing for a large advance against Kurdish militias in the area of Afrin. However, no large attack has taken place so far.

The SDF media wing has not reacted to the recent shelling but some unofficial Kurdish sources indicated that the SDF is not going to halt the Raqqah advance even if Ankara launches the expected operation in the Afrin area. If this is true, this will open a window of opportunities for the Erdogan government that has a long-standing aim of retaking Tell Rifat from Kurdish units.

In the city of Raqqah, the SDF continued clashing with ISIS terrorists encircled in the urban area. However, the ISIS resistance did not allow the US-backed force to make gains. The US-led coalition increased airstrikes on ISIS targets in the provinces of Raqqah and Deir Ezzor.

The Monday airstrikes on Mayadeen hit the ISIS prison and killed at least 42 prisoners and only 15 the terrorist group’s members according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a hardcore anti-Assad media outlet. In turn, the US-led coalition described the target as ISIS “command and control” facilities.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Featured image: Theatrical trailer of Fences starring Denzel Washington (Source: Movie Insider)

Both of these award-winning new releases are exclusively acted by Black Americans and could be seen as slices of African American life. Each focuses on the life of a man, the life of an individual that’s offered to us with such a high level of acting that the black in the story disappears. 

I have long respected the talent of actor Denzel Washington despite his appearance in so many films with violent themes, and even though he usually plays noble men. The first time I saw him was in Mira Nair’s 1991 film Mississippi Masala in the role of Demetrius Williams.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102456/plotsummary

There and his many superb performances thereafter is why I decided to view Fences http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/peter-travers-fences-movie-review-w455997. I wanted to hear his consummate voice again. Washington’s familiar timbre is barely recognizable in Fences. But I was not disappointed.

As strong as Viola Davis is as his co-star, Washington is outstanding, arguably because he’s able to totally disembody himself and build the complex character of Troy Maxson, the central figure in Fences. That performance stands out for me because I forgot that his skin color and that of the other characters is black. Not only this; I forgot that Troy Maxson is the actor Denzel Washington. In Fences, Troy completely overtakes Washington; moreover, we recognize him as a type of man who to one degree or another we feel we know personally. Troy is a person I know.

If you’re familiar with the narrative of Fences, you’ll understand what I mean. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/09/fences-review-denzel-washington-viola-davis. What many reviews overlook is the complexity of the character Maxson, a hard working man, but a man bent, wasted, and embittered. Troy Maxson is a man with unrealized expectations as a baseball player, a father unable to inspire his sons, a brother carrying a shame he cannot hide; he’s a father who does not enjoy the pride he desperately needs. Thanks to Washington’s artistry, we may walk away from the film reflecting on some failure in ourselves or someone close to us, how we manifest our letdown, and perhaps like Troy, inflict hardships on those dear to us. I hadn’t seen this human experience played so powerfully on screen in many years.

Few actors can transcend either their race or their celebrity with a performance like Washington gives us in Fences. Which takes me to Moonlight, another outstanding recent film with a full cast of African Americans and centered on a Black American family. Mahershala Ali, best known for his fine performance as the self-serving lobbyist in the televised series House of Cards, was awarded an Oscar for his supporting role in Moonlight.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-oscars-mahershala-ali-janelle-monae-moonlight-hidden-figures-20170219-htmlstory.html.

But the real talent there is exhibited by the three actors who play the boy, the teen, and the adult ‘Chiron’ whose painful growth we follow into adulthood. Moonlight is also a story about manhood, about feelings unrealized (labeled by others as a “gay coming of age film”). Beautifully constructed and with restrained, spare dialogue, most of the film seems to be a story about one corner of Black American life. But with the final scene when Chiron, powerfully played by Trevante Rhodes, now transformed into a man, confronts his first love, a childhood friend, it rises to another level. It is a love story, pure and subtle. No race, no class; just two men quietly finding each other.

ALSO: listen every Monday morning at 7:45 am for my weekly commentary on WBAI Radio, New York  City.

Both movie posters above are from Wikipedia.

Featured image: Improvised explosive device camouflaged as a toy (Source: Inside Syria Media Center)

It’s not a secret for anyone, how much hardship, how much grief and suffering people endure as they confront many various explosive devices, booby-traps and other deadly bombs especially on the territory of settlements. Aleppo, the largest city of Syria, was literally loaded and the fields strewn with all kinds of explosives and mines left by terrorists. Syrian sappers recently shared the first results of their activities on mine clearance in the territory of Aleppo and also their impressions and experience from the missions in a discussion moderated by Inside Syria Media Center’ military correspondents.

The Syrian sappers have already cleared hundreds of the settlements mined. One of the last is the settlement of Tiyarah which is to the east of Aleppo. It had been under the control of ISIS for several years. Sappers have already cleared also the Ancient City of Aleppo and the town’s landmark, the Citadel.

Locals highly respect sappers, because only after a full verification of cleaning all the buildings from all the explosive devices people will be able to return their homes. Often they try to give the last thing they have in mind, give their eyeteeth to the sappers to express gratitude for their work. Often people even organize crowdfunding with the only aim to purchase some kind of equipment for sappers. However, a special heavy protective suit (and a helmet with a visor and a stylus similar to a spear) that can safeguard from flying glass, debris and splinters when a small landmine or grenade is blown up, well you shouldn’t imagine this equipment come cheap.

Syrian Army Special Forces backed by allied engineer units organized round-the-clock search and neutralization of mines, bombs, booby-traps and other improvised explosive devices at newly liberated areas. And judging by the nature of the mining, the terrorists’ miners are not amateurs. They have passed training in special military camps. While retreating, the terrorists turned a number of Aleppo’s neighborhoods into a minefield.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On the left is a homemade mine in a bucket, which was placed under a staircase with bomb explosive power of which is about 15 kg of TNT. The explosive was placed so that it couldn’t be removed. It is a complex mining system, when the detonator is on a spring and it is impossible to get to it without moving the bucket. The spring is ready to detonate from any vibration.

The sappers have to blow up the land mine on the ground. First of all to carry out this mission it is necessary to set up a cordon and then evacuate civilians in a radius of up to 500 m from the place of the bomb area. Then they put the other  detonating charge of TNT on it and blast it.

For the past three month the Syrian experts have inspected more than 5,000 hectares in Aleppo, detecting and defusing up to 40,000 different explosives. Now the engineer units have to defuse thousands hectares of fields. Only after this work the local farmers will be able to continue cultivating land and harvesting crops.

Syrian sappers have gained self-confidence and a bit of an eye for finding various traps. They even visually can determine the places where booby-traps or other land mines were planted. For example, the burnt-out wreckage probably wouldn’t be mined. Explosives are placed under the things that could be useful in everyday life most often.

Mahmoud, a six-year-old Syrian boy found such a toy that was a booby-trap, actually, planted by the militants in Syria’s Aleppo in fact. Mahmud was born without arms, and recently lost both of his legs after touching the toy attracted his attention by foot.

Through hard experience, the older guys have already learned to move away from these terrible finds. Most of the boys and the girls in Aleppo know a lot of stories similar to the tragedy with Mahmoud.

“My younger brother and I came to our house to move things around and run into a land mine in the bathroom. There was another one in the kitchen and the wires leading to the third one,” says Ahmad, the young resident of Aleppo.

Syrian sappers discovered a lot of insidious traps of militants and saved thousands of lives in the latest three months. The experience of demining shows that the planting of the mines by ISIS and the Free Syrian Army was carried out with extreme violence that knows no boundaries. In addition, the sappers claim Western-made weapons were often used when mining the infrastructure. So, it is the very time for the West (who has fostered IS and FSA) to think about how to help the Syrian Arab Army to reduce the danger of landmines and other traps.

Follow the latest developments by reading Inside Syria Media Center.

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center.

All images in this article are from the author.

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan – Lt. General William Odom said in 2008:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.

(audio here).

General Odom is absolutely right …

And because the U.S. itself uses terrorism, it’s very hesitant to get others in trouble for using terrorism.

And that’s why Congress is refusing to pass a bill agreeing to stop funding terrorists. Specifically, Senator Rand Paul and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced bills to whose simple name accurately describes what they want:  The “Stop Arming Terrorists Act”.

But neither bill looks like it has any chance of being passed right now:

• The House bill has only 14 co-sponsors, and was given a mere 6% chance of passing by Skopos Labs

• The Senate bill has NO co-sponsors, and was given a measly 3% chance of passing by

How pathetic is that?

Featured image from Counter Information

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

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to review lower court injunctions against Trump’s travel ban in October.

US District and Appeals Courts blocked them temporarily. Countries affected include Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, banning travel to the US for 90 days, imposing a 120-day ban on refugees.

Iraq was removed from the initial order because of its involvement in the battle for Mosul, America’s phony war on ISIS, the scourge it supports.

In a unanimous per curiam opinion, High Court justices partly lifted an injunction preventing Trump’s travel ban from taking effect.

The administration cannot enforce the ban against anyone with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in America, the Supreme Court opinion stated.

It can against all others in the targeted countries, Muslim majority ones, their people victimized by US imperialism, four of the six raped by US aggression, the other two threatened by Washington.

None of the six or their citizens pose any threat to US national security. In contrast, Trump’s ban targets people on the basis of their religious beliefs in nations ravaged by US aggression and/or opposed to its imperial agenda – no other legitimate reasons.

A justifiable travel ban would prohibit US government officials from traveling to these countries because of the enormous threat they pose – not the other way around as Trump’s travel ban ordered, partly supported by the nation’s highest court, complicit with administration “religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination” as the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

Judge Roger Gregory (Source: richmond.com)

Its chief Judge Roger Gregory added:

“Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute.”

“It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation.”

Law Professor Emeritus Marjorie Cohn argued against Trump’s travel ban, saying:

It “violates the Establishment Clause, the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.”

“It also violates the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); both are treaties the United States has ratified, making them part of US law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.”

“The EO violates the Immigration and Nationality Act as well.” High Court justices ignored all of the above, their ruling politically motivated, rule of law principles ignored.

The Supreme Court consolidated cases from the US Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal, Trump v. Hawaii and Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project.

Justices will hear arguments for and against the travel ban when they reconvene in October. ACLU and National Immigration Law Center lawyers will contest the ban. Administration attorneys led by Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall will support it.

Trump said his revised ban will take effect in 72 hours following partial approval by the High Court.

Claiming it’s to protect national security is fabricated nonsense. It continues post-9/11 Islamophobic rage, used as a pretext to wage naked aggression against one Muslim-majority nation after another – raping and destroying them, the highest of high crimes.

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

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

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

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

Featured image from Huffington Post

Featured image: Hundreds of people from the eastern countryside of Damascus who fled military conscription and service have joined “Qalamoun Shield” forces so that they can have their legal status settled. (Source: SANA)

The Qalamoun Shield Forces (QSF) appeared as a noticeable auxiliary force of the Syrian military in the first half of 2016, with the goal of protecting the Al-Qalamoun areas from terrorist threats and securing the Syrian-Lebanese border.

The group includes approximately 2800 fighters, most of whom are volunteers from the eastern towns of Al-Qalamoun, along with a few hundred former fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA). A number of FSA fighters had joined the QSF after a reconciliation agreement with the Syrian government.

The QSF is linked to the Third Armored Division of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), and works with both the Syrian Republican Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah.

The QSF has several bases in Yabroud and Al-Nabak. It’s led by Lieutenant Firas Khaza’a, and mainly funded by the Syrian Ministry of Defense. The QSF is one the groups supported by the Russian military, which armed and trained all of its fighters in the early 2017.

The QSF controls a number of important border points in eastern Qalamoun, especially the area of Flitah, near the Lebanese area of Jurod Arsal, the stronghold of ISIS militants. It has managed along with the Syrian Republican Guard and Hezbollah to repel several attacks of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the vicinity of Flitah.

The QSF has also foiled several infiltration attempts between Lebanon and Syria, as well as prevented several drug smuggling operations, which are often considered means of financing terrorist groups in the Lebanese area of Jurod Arsal.

In 2017, the QSF participated in its first battle outside eastern Al-Qalamoun area. In the middle of March 2017, QSF units deployed to the Hama front, where QSF participated in repelling the second joint attack of HTS, Jaish al-Izza and other militant groups on the strategic town of Qomhana in the northern Hama countryside.

The QSF continued its operations alongside the SAA’s Tiger Forces, the National Defense Forces and other pro-government groups and took part in restoring control and security of Khattab village on March 31, Mahardeh village on April 11, Souran on April 16, the towns of Taibat al-Imam and Halfaya on April 22 and 23. Then the QSF took part in capturing the Al-Zalaqiat village and hill. In case of continuation of clashes in northern Hama, the QSF will likely participate in future government attacks aimed at capturing Morek and Lataminah.

In May 2017, a part of QSF fighters were redeployed from northern Hama to the province of Homs in order to participate in a widely-expected government advane on the city of Deir Ezzor besieged by ISIS.

In early April 2017, a new pro-government group appeared in the Syrian-Lebanese border area, “The Homeland Shield Forces – Special Tasks”. The force consists of 400 fighters from 14 Lebanese villages from the Al-Beka’a area on the Syrian-Lebanese border. It is led by al-Haj Muhammad Jaafar and was founded with the direct support of the Russian military to secure the Al-Beka’a area.

The force may work in the future with the QSF in an expected operation to secure the Syrian side of Jurod Arsal in order to prevent any terrorists infiltrating the Syrian territory in case the Lebanese Army launches an operation against ISIS and HTS militants in the region.

The QSF is armed with medium weapons, such as vehicles armed with 23/14.5 guns; it is also armed with Konkurs ATGM. The forces also use heavy Syrian Bourkan(Volcano)-type rockets.

The QSF is a successful example of a rapid reaction force protecting the Syrian border and has proven that it can support the SAA in any area when necessary. The forces have carried out offensive and defensive missions in the northern Hama countryside very successfully. It could be expected that its financing and fighter numbers will be expanded if the joint Syrian, Iranian, Russian and Turkish efforts aimed at imposing ‘de-escalation zones’ will not been able to launch a successful peace process in Syria.

The further expansion of the QSF and other QSF-style groups, that would include former “moderate rebels”, will be clearly linked to a possibility of the Syrian government and its allies to implement their reconciliation agreements strategy in the countryside of Damascus and across Syria.

Voiceover by Oleg Maslov

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Japan has found a way to write off nearly half its national debt without creating inflation. We could do that too.

Let’s face it. There is no way the US government is ever going to pay back a $20 trillion federal debt. The taxpayers will just continue to pay interest on it, year after year.

A lot of interest.

If the Federal Reserve raises the fed funds rate to 3.5% and sells its federal securities into the market, as it is proposing to do, by 2026 the projected tab will be $830 billion annually. That’s nearly $1 trillion owed by the taxpayers every year, just for interest.

Personal income taxes are at record highs, ringing in at $550 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2017, or $1.6 trillion annually. But even at those high levels, handing over $830 billion to bondholders will wipe out over half the annual personal income tax take. Yet what is the alternative?

Japan seems to have found one. While the US government is busy driving up its “sovereign” debt and the interest owed on it, Japan has been canceling its debt at the rate of $720 billion (¥80tn) per year. How? By selling the debt to its own central bank, which returns the interest to the government. While most central banks have ended their quantitative easing programs and are planning to sell their federal securities, the Bank of Japan continues to aggressively buy its government’s debt. An interest-free debt owed to oneself that is rolled over from year to year is effectively void – a debt “jubilee.” As noted by fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article:

The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BoJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage.

If the Federal Reserve followed the same policy and bought 40% of the US national debt, the Fed would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs.

Eight trillion dollars in money created on a computer screen! Monetarists would be aghast. Surely that would trigger runaway hyperinflation!

But if Japan’s experience is any indication, it wouldn’t. Japan has a record low inflation rate of .02 percent. That’s not 2 percent, the Fed’s target inflation rate, but 1/100^th of 2 percent – almost zero. Japan also has an unemployment rate that is at a 22-year low of 2.8%, and the yen was up nearly 6% for the year against the dollar as of April 2017.

Selling the government’s debt to its own central bank has not succeeded in driving up Japanese prices, even though that was the BoJ’s expressed intent. Meanwhile, the economy is doing well. In a February 2017 article in Mother Jones titled “The Enduring Mystery of Japan’s Economy,” Kevin Drum notes that over the past two decades, Japan’s gross domestic product per capita has grown steadily and is up by 20 percent. He writes:

It’s true that Japan has suffered through two decades of low growth . . . . [But] despite its persistently low inflation, Japan’s economy is doing fine. Their GDP per working-age adult is actually higher than ours. So why are they growing so much more slowly than we are? It’s just simple demographics . . . Japan is aging fast. Its working-age population peaked in 1997 and has been declining ever since. Fewer workers means a lower GDP even if those workers are as productive as anyone in the world.

Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank, concurs. In a June 2013 article titled “Japan Is a Model, Not a Cautionary Tale,” he wrote:

Along many dimensions — greater income equality, longer life expectancy, lower unemployment, greater investments in children’s education and health, and even greater productivity relative to the size of the labor force — Japan has done better than the United States.

That is not to say that all is idyllic in Japan. Forty percent of Japanese workers lack secure full-time employment, adequate pensions and health insurance. But the point underscored here is that large-scale digital money-printing by the central bank used to buy back the government’s debt has not inflated prices, the alleged concern preventing other countries from doing it. Quantitative easing simply does not inflate the circulating money supply. In Japan, as in the US, QE is just an asset swap that occurs in the reserve accounts of banks. Government securities are swapped for reserves, which cannot be spent or lent into the consumer economy but can only be lent to other banks or used to buy more government securities.

The Bank of Japan is under heavy pressure to join the other central banks and start tightening the money supply, reversing the “accommodations” made after the 2008 banking crisis. But it is holding firm and is forging ahead with its bond-buying program. Reporting on the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting on June 15, 2017, The Financial Times stated that

BoJ Governor Kuroda “refused to be drawn on an exit strategy from easy monetary policy, despite growing pressure from politicians, markets and the local media to set one out. He said the BoJ was still far from its 2 per cent inflation goal and the circumstances of a future exit were too uncertain.”

Rather than unwinding their securities purchases, the other central banks might do well to take a lesson from Japan and cancel their own governments’ debts. We have entered a new century and a new millennium. Ancient civilizations celebrated a changing of the guard with widespread debt cancellation. It is time for a twenty-first century jubilee from the crippling debts of governments, which could then work on generating some debt relief for their citizens.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, a Senior Fellow of the Democracy Collaborative, and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

Featured image: Japanese national flag at the Bank of Japan (BoJ) (Photo from The Conversation)

The Norwegian air force is in the process of redeploying the operational centre of its forces. Earlier, during the cold war, the main air bases were located in northern towns, such as Bodø and Andenes. The new main air base will be located at Ørland, situated 500 kilometres further south, in the middle of this long country, at the entrance of the Trondheim-fjord.

The area around this fjord has been subject to heavy US interest. Since January, a deployment of US marines has been stationed close by, in Værnes, formally on a ‘rotational’ basis. This force is set to double in size, now to 650 marines. The Marine Corps is enthusiastic about their new base, and hope to make it into a major hub for their forces in Europe. Amongst other things, this area offers easy access roads to Sweden, where these forces will participate in a major military exercises this coming September.

For planners in Washington, the Scandinavian peninsula is obviously regarded as a strategically important area, and they give it attention. They envision this base area to be part of the strategic encirclement of Russia. Especially important is the enhancement of ABM-systems that are being built all around the Russian borders. Both Denmark and Norway are contributing seaborne parts to the US ABM-shield, based on frigates. Another place the US would really like to build a base is the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, as described by this author earlier.

Marines on May 8, 2017, walk away from the entrance of Frigaard Cave, where the service stores hundreds of vehicles and other gear as part of Marine Corps Prepositioning Program-Norway. (Source: Hope Hodge Seck/Military.com)

These forces are a part of the drive to militarize the Scandinavian peninsula. One major objective is to get Sweden (and Finland) to join NATO. Since this cannot be done easily without a referendum (which they might lose), the Swedish and NATO military leadership hope to integrate Sweden and Finland in NATO-structures to such an extent that the line between formal neutrality and membership in the alliance will not be discernible.  Sweden recently said it wishes to join a British-led “Joint Expeditionary Force”, making Swedish participation in a general European war all but inevitable.

Places mentioned in the text: Evenes to the north; Ørland furthest west; Verdal a bit to the right of Ørland; Gotland to the south. (Source: Midt i fleisen)

In May, Ørland was host for the biennial military exercise “Arctic Challenge Exercise 2017”, where over 100 planes from 12 nations participated,  including fighter jets, transport aircrafts, tankers, AWACS, helicopters and aircrafts for electronic warfare. ACE “provides the participants a great opportunity to plan and engage in a big scenario exercise close to the reality”. This year, for the first time, a US bomber plane of the model B-52H participated. This only illustrates that nuclear forces will be an integral part of any future war. Influential Norwegian officers have also mooted the idea that Norwegian forces should rely more on nuclear weapons in the future, which ties in neatly with the purchase of the F-35s.

The area offers several other advantages. It can easily be resupplied from the Atlantic Ocean by sea or air, as it offers excellent harbours, access to blue water, and several developed airfields. As a historical aside, the area’s convenient strategic location was noted by the Germans navy during the occupation, 1940-45. Albert Speer planned to build a major city and naval base, “Nordstern“, on the south side of the fjord, but the plan never got off the drawing board, since the changing fortunes of war made construction unrealistic.

“Time is on their side”

One of the  main reasons for the expansion of the base is that Norway bought 56 planes of the type “F-35 Lightning” from Lockheed Martin. The deal was originally announced to cost NOK 18 billion kroner, but it quickly became clear the the real cost in fact was NOK 62.7 billion ($ 7.5 billion). The official cost estimates were NOK 248 billion ($ 29 billion) “over their lifetime.”

Not calculated in this price, or well hidden from scrutiny, was the need to build a new airbase to accommodate these planes. Ørland was chosen in 2012, with the original price tag of NOK 5 billion, although this sum was disputed by some experts as too optimistic. The older base in Bodø was seen as too difficult to expand, (but maybe Washington had a say in this decision as well). By 2014, the price had doubled, to close to NOK 11 billion ($ 1.3 billion). By April 2016, it was clear that the costs would be NOK 18 billion ($ 2.1 billion). According to independent expert Cato Monrad, the costs may well be “over NOK 25 billion ($3 billion), and this is just the start”. He writes:

First things first: One already knows in advance the Parliament never would approve an investment of NOK 40 billion ($ 4.7 billion) when there exists a better alternative. So then one needs a plan…

To reach a political objective that doesn’t make sense economically {…] the cost overrun in the project is explained, or explained away, in many different ways: unexpected expenses, a changed security situation, stricter environmental rules, new NATO-demands, etc. One favourite sentence much used is: ‘the minister did not then have information about increased costs, and can therefore not be held responsible for the overruns’. In addition, time is on the Defence Ministry’s side.

The Defence Ministry strenuously denies these charges, saying the costs were already known to Parliament when the decision was made.

Of course, cynics might say that freely spending from the sovereign wealth fund with an estimated value of 1 trillion dollars helps to smooth over these cost overruns and make them less of a political issue.

AEGIS ashore or not, “this is not a missile shield”

The location is also generally out of range of the Russian Iskander missile (range: 500 kilometres), but missiles strikes against the air base are no doubt a worry for planners. The location might give them hope of enough reaction time against incoming missiles in case of war. At least this seems to be the official reasoning.

The Norwegian defence forces regard Ørland as one of the most natural places for deployment of a recently announced new long range air defence missiles. Another natural location is Evenes, another air base 500 kilometres to the north, next to another major forward deployment area for US forces and a heavily militarized area.

The Norwegian defence chief Haakon Bruun-Hanssen says

Haakon Bruun-Hanssen, Chief of Defence of Norway (Source: NATO)

“this is not a missile shield. We are talking about air defences to protect our bases, which are important for all air operations. They will also protect these same areas which are important to receive allied support.”

Researcher Ståle Henriksen at the government research agency NUPI is excited about which system which will be chosen.

“The most provoking system for the Russians would be a system that is able to shoot down their strategic missiles in the launch phase on their way to the US. This could be the air defence system AEGIS, but only long range missiles, and not of the type that already exists on the frigates.”

The frigates in question have the system AGEGIS afloat.

To sum up, Norwegian forces seem to suffer from the same problem with procurement bloat as US forces, where seemingly generous funding does not deliver the wanted operational ability. Cost overruns, bad planning and acquisitions based on both national and international politics and lobbying are perennial problems in the defence sector.

The land forces have  tied up their resources in rapid response units with anything but territorial defence missions. Since May this year, some of the forces are stationed Lithuania as part of a NATO multinational force under German command. The most recent adventure is officially to train and support groups of Syrian opposition fighters near the Syrian town of al-Tanf.

The air force have chosen to put all their eggs in one basket with the acquisition of these new still unproven F-35 5th generation fighters.

The result is a forced reliance on US expeditionary forces. Since Norwegian and NATO forces become more operationally interdependent, it will be harder and harder to deny future US requests. Theoretically this might even include being pressured into a more assertive nuclear posture.

(All sums quoted in the article use June 2017 exchange rates, and might not reflect the cost at the time.)

Terje Maloy is a Norwegian/Australian translator and blogger.

Featured image: Norwegian Air Force F-16BMLU (Source is Wikimedia Commons)

Did you know that:

1. In October 2010, United Nations troops introduced Vibrio cholerae to Haiti, infecting over one million men, women and children, killing over 30 thousand people. Have your local, national, or international media ever reported on this fact?

2. Since the first outburst of the UN cholera epidemic to the present day, Haitians took incessant action to identify the culprits, stop the spread of the disease and help the survivors secure reparations.

3. Haitian and foreign lawyers, activists, artists have valiantly tried to force the United Nations to stop covering up the mess they’ve caused to Haiti, only to have their efforts thwarted by powerful U.S. Lawyers and politicians.

4. Over 20 Latin American organizations issued a June 23, 2017 statement calling on U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to end the 13 year illegal and violent foreign occupation of Haiti, pay long overdue reparations to the numerous victims it has caused since 2004, by murder, rape, pedophilia and cholera contagion.

5. One of the powerful and authoritative voices on this topic is currently in Canada. Kebert Bastien, a dynamic Haitian University student who has been denouncing U.N. crimes in Haiti, will be at Ottawa’s St-Paul University, on July 8, 2017. From 8 pm onward, KEB will sing, play his guitar and engage in open dialogue with you.

Please, help us have your local, national & international media report on this!

PARTEZ

Featured image: UN troops in Haiti (Photo from the UN)

Poet Ben Okri on the June 2017 Grenfell Tower London fire, and how profiteering kills the poor.

“If you want to see how the poor die, come to Grenfell Tower”

“Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation from its secret shame.”

Poet Ben Okri reads from his extraordinary new work, Grenfell Tower: June 2017.

Video is from Channel 4

Featured image from Launch Good

The crooks who run the Western financial system set up the gold market in a way that lets them control the price.

Gold is not priced in the physical gold market where bullion is bought and sold.

Gold is priced in a futures market where uncovered contracts that are settled in cash are bought and sold.

As the futures contracts do not have to be covered in the way that shorting a stock has to be covered, the bullion bank agents of the central banks can create paper gold by printing naked contracts.

In other words, it is possible to inflate the supply of gold in the market in which the gold price is determined by dumping futures contracts on the market. The huge increase in supply of paper gold drives down the futures price of gold. This Western policy is stupid, because it drives down the price of real gold for the major Asian purchasers—China, India, and Turkey. But the policy protects the value of the US dollar by preventing a rising gold price that would show the growing lack of confidence in fiat paper currencies.

The European, UK, and Japanese central banks have protected the US dollar’s exchange rate vis-a-vis other reserve currencies by indulging in quantitative easing themselves. With all fiat currencies inflating, the exchange rates stay relatively stable. The central banks prevent the rise in the price of gold by printing paper gold for the paper gold market.

It is my view that bitcoin is the beneficiary of this rigging of the prices of gold and fiat currencies.
Bitcoin cannot increase in supply, and bitcoins are not priced in future markets that permit naked shorts.

Dave Kranzler explains today’s central bank takedown of gold. In order to protect their own irresponsible and probably illegal behavior, the central banks are committed to a policy that frustrates the efforts of people to find refuge in gold from fiat paper currency inflation. The policy of the central banks proves that the elite work assiduously against the interest of the people.

Why do people tolerate the central banks which only serve the One Percent? Thomas Jefferson understood that as did President Andrew Jackson, but in the Western World insouciance has replaced intelligence. The One Percent know what they are doing. The 99 Percent are locked up in The Matrix.

Here is Kranzler’s clear explanation of the rigging of gold markets by central banks. Of course, nothing whatsoever will be done about the crimes as they are crimes against the helpless 99 Percent, a collection of “deplorables.” Who cares about them? Certainly no Western government.

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/central-bank-intervention-slams-paper-gold/

Russia-gate, the sprawling investigation into whether Russia meddled in last year’s U.S. election, is often compared to the two big political scandals of the latter half of the Twentieth Century, Watergate and Iran-Contra. Sometimes you even hear that Russia-gate is “bigger than Watergate.”

Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about those two Twentieth Century scandals is how little Official Washington really understands them – and how these earlier scandals significantly contrast, rather than compare, with what is unfolding now.

Although the historical record is still incomplete on Watergate and Iran-Contra, the available evidence indicates that both scandals originated in schemes by Republicans to draw foreign leaders into plots to undermine sitting Democratic presidents and thus pave the way for the elections of Richard Nixon in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The bugged phone from the Watergate office of Democratic Party official Spencer Oliver. Placed on the phone during a May 1972 break-in, the bug was the only device that worked. A second break-in on June 17. 1972, led to the capture of Richard Nixon’s Watergate burglars. (Source: Consortiumnews)

As for Russia-gate, even if you accept that the Russian government hacked into Democratic emails and publicized them via WikiLeaks, there is still no evidence that Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to do so. By contrast, in the origins of Watergate and Iran-Contra, it appears the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, respectively, were the instigators of schemes to enlist foreign governments in blocking a Vietnam peace deal in 1968 and negotiations to free 52 American hostages in Iran in 1980.

Though Watergate is associated directly with the 1972 campaign – when Nixon’s team of burglars was caught inside the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building – Nixon’s formation of that team, known as the Plumbers, was driven by his fear that he could be exposed for sabotaging President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks in 1968 in order to secure the White House that year.

After Nixon’s narrow victory over Vice President Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 election, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed Nixon that Johnson had a secret file, complete with wiretapped phone calls, detailing the Nixon campaign’s backchannel messages to South Vietnamese officials convincing them to boycott Johnson’s Paris peace talks. Later, Nixon learned that this incriminating file had disappeared from the White House.

So, in 1971, after the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, which recounted the lies that had been used to justify the Vietnam War through 1967, Nixon fretted that the missing file about his peace-talk gambit in 1968 might surface, too, and would destroy him politically. Thus, he organized the Plumbers to find the file, even contemplating fire-bombing the Brookings Institution to enable a search of its safe where some aides thought the missing file might be found.

In other words, Watergate wasn’t simply a break-in at the Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972, in pursuit of useful political intelligence and Nixon’s ensuing cover-up; the scandal had its origins in a far worse scandal, the derailing of peace talks that could have ended the Vietnam War years earlier and saved the lives of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and possibly more than 1 million Vietnamese.

Iran-Contra Parallels

Similarly, the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in 1986 with revelations that President Reagan had authorized secret arms sales to Iran with some of the profits going to fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, but the evidence now indicates that the connections between Reagan’s team and Iran’s revolutionary regime traced back to 1980 when emissaries from Reagan’s campaign worked to stymie President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

According to multiple witnesses, including former Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs Nicholas Veliotes, the pre-election contacts led to the opening of a weapons pipeline to Iran (via Israel), after Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981, which was the precise moment when Iran finally released the American hostages after 444 days.

Some key players in the 1980 Reagan-Iran contacts reappeared four years later at the start of direct (again secret) U.S. arms shipments to Iran in 1985, which also involved Israeli middlemen. These key players included Iranian CIA operative Cyrus Hashemi, former CIA clandestine services chief Theodore Shackley, Reagan’s campaign chief and then-CIA Director William Casey, and former CIA Director and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

In other words, the Iran-Contra weapons shipments of 1985-86 appear to have been an outgrowth of the earlier shipments dating back to 1980 and continuing under Israeli auspices until the supply line was taken over more directly by the Reagan administration in 1985-86.

Thus, both the Watergate scandal in 1972 and the Iran-Contra Affair in 1986 could be viewed as “sequels” to the earlier machinations driven by Republican hunger to seize the enormous powers of the U.S. presidency. However, for decades, Official Washington has been hostile to these underlying explanations of how Watergate and Iran-Contra began.

For instance, The New York Times, the so-called “newspaper of record,” treated the accumulation of evidence regarding Nixon’s 1968 peace-talk gambit as nothing more than a “rumor” until earlier this year when a scholar, John A. Farrell, uncovered cryptic notes taken by Nixon’s aide H.R. Haldeman, which added another piece to the mosaic and left the Times little choice but to pronounce the historical reality finally real.

Grasping the Watergate Narrative

Still, the Times and other major news outlets have failed to factor this belated admission into the larger Watergate narrative. If you understand that Nixon did sabotage President Johnson’s Vietnam War peace talks and that Nixon was aware that Johnson’s file on what LBJ called Nixon’s “treason” had disappeared from the White House, the early “Watergate tapes” from 1971 suddenly make sense.

President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972. (Source: Consortiumnews)

Nixon ordered White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to locate the missing file but their search came up empty. Yet, some Nixon aides thought the file might be hidden at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington. So, in his desperate pursuit of the file, Nixon called for a break-in at Brookings, possibly even fire-bombing the building as a cover for his team of burglars to slip in amid the confusion and rifle the safe.

The old explanation that Nixon simply wanted to find some file related to Johnson’s 1968 pre-election Vietnam bombing halt never made sense given the extreme steps that Nixon was prepared to take.

The relevant portions of Nixon’s White House tapes include an entry on June 17, 1971, coincidentally one year to the day before the Watergate burglars were caught. Nixon summoned Haldeman and Kissinger to the Oval Office and pleaded with them again to locate the file.

“Do we have it?” Nixon asked Haldeman. “I’ve asked for it. You said you didn’t have it.”

Haldeman: “We can’t find it.”

Kissinger: “We have nothing here, Mr. President.”

Nixon: “Well, damn-it, I asked for that because I need it.”

Kissinger: “But Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together.”

Haldeman: “We have a basic history in constructing our own, but there is a file on it.”

Nixon: “Where?”

Haldeman: “[Presidential aide Tom Charles] Huston swears to God that there’s a file on it and it’s at Brookings.”

Nixon: “Bob? Bob? Now do you remember Huston’s plan [for White House-sponsored break-ins as part of domestic counter-intelligence operations]? Implement it.”

Kissinger: “Now Brookings has no right to have classified documents.”

Nixon: “I want it implemented. Goddamn-it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”

Haldeman: “They may very well have cleaned them by now, but this thing, you need to “

Kissinger: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Brookings had the files.”

Haldeman: “My point is Johnson knows that those files are around. He doesn’t know for sure that we don’t have them around.”

But Johnson did know that the file was no longer at the White House because he had ordered his national security adviser, Walt Rostow, to remove it in the final days of Johnson’s presidency.

Forming the Burglars

On June 30, 1971, Nixon again berated Haldeman about the need to break into Brookings and “take it [the file] out.” Nixon suggested using former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt to conduct the Brookings break-in.

“You talk to Hunt,” Nixon told Haldeman. “I want the break-in. Hell, they do that. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them in. Just go in and take it. Go in around 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock.”

Haldeman: “Make an inspection of the safe.”

Nixon: “That’s right. You go in to inspect the safe. I mean, clean it up.”

For reasons that remain unclear, it appears that the Brookings break-in never took place (nor did the fire-bombing), but Nixon’s desperation to locate Johnson’s peace-talk file was an important link in the chain of events that led to the creation of Nixon’s burglary unit under Hunt’s supervision. Hunt later oversaw the two Watergate break-ins in May and June of 1972.

While it’s possible that Nixon was still searching for the file about his Vietnam-peace sabotage when the ill-fated Watergate break-ins occurred a year later, it’s generally believed that the burglary was more broadly focused, seeking any information that might have an impact on Nixon’s re-election, either defensively or offensively.

However, if you think back on 1971 when the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart and massive antiwar demonstrations were descending on Washington, Nixon’s desperation to locate the missing file suddenly doesn’t seem quite so crazy. There would have been hell to pay if the public learned that Nixon had kept the war going to gain a political advantage in 1968.

Through 1972 – and the early days of the Watergate scandal – former President Johnson had stayed silent about Nixon’s sabotage of the Paris peace talks. But the ex-President became livid when – after Nixon’s reelection in 1972 – Nixon’s men sought to pressure Johnson into helping them shut down the Watergate investigation, in part, by noting that Johnson, too, had deployed wiretaps against Nixon’s 1968 campaign to obtain evidence about the peace-talk sabotage.

Walt Rostow’s “‘X’ Envelope” (Source: Consortiumnews)

While it’s not clear whether Johnson would have finally spoken out, that threat to Nixon ended two days after Nixon’s second inaugural when on Jan. 22, 1973, Johnson died of a heart attack. However, unbeknownst to Nixon, Johnson had left the missing file, called “The X-Envelope,” in the care of Rostow, who – after Johnson’s death – gave the file to the LBJ presidential library in Austin, Texas, with instructions that it be kept under wraps for at least 50 years. (Rostow’s instructions were overturned in the 1990s, and I found the now largely declassified file at the library in 2012.)

So, with the “The X-Envelope” squirreled away for more than two decades at the LBJ library and with the big newspapers treating the early sketchy reports of Nixon’s peace-talk sabotage as only “rumors,” Watergate remained a scandal limited to the 1972 campaign.

Still, Nixon’s cover-up of his campaign’s role in the Watergate break-in produced enough clear-cut evidence of obstruction of justice and other offenses that Nixon was forced to resign on Aug. 9, 1974.

A Failed Investigation

The 1979-81 hostage confrontation with Iran was not nearly as devastating a crisis as the Vietnam War but America’s humiliation during the 444-day-long ordeal became a focus of the 1980 election, too, with the first anniversary of Iran’s seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran coincidentally falling on Election Day 1980.

President Carter’s failure to gain freedom for the 52 embassy personnel turned what had been a close race into a landslide for Ronald Reagan, with Republicans also gaining control of the U.S. Senate and ousting some of the most influential Democratic senators.

In 1984, Reagan won reelection in another landslide, but two years later ran afoul of the Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan’s secret arms sales to Iran and diversion of profits to the Contras “broke” in November 1986 but focused only on Reagan’s 1985-1986 arms sales and the diversion. Still, the scandal’s crimes included violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the so-called Boland Act’s prohibitions on arming the Contras as well as perjury and obstruction of justice. So there was the prospect of Reagan’s impeachment.

But – from the start of Iran-Contra – there was a strong pushback from Republicans who didn’t want to see another GOP president driven from office. There was also resistance to the scandal from many mainstream media executives who personally liked Reagan and feared a public backlash if the press played an aggressive role similar to Watergate.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana. (Source: Consortiumnews)

And, moderate Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana who co-chaired the congressional investigation, sought to tamp down the Iran-Contra fires and set up firebreaks to prevent the investigation from spreading to related crimes such as the Reagan administration’s protection of Contra cocaine traffickers.

“Ask about the cocaine,” pleaded one protester who was dragged from the Iran-Contra hearing room, as the congressional investigators averted their eyes from such unseemly matters, focusing instead on stilted lectures about the Congress’s constitutional prerogatives.

It was not until 1990-91 that it became clear that secret U.S.-approved arms shipments to Iran did not start in 1985 as the Iran-Contra narrative claimed but traced back to 1981 with Reagan’s approval of arms sales to Iran through Israel.

Reagan’s politically risky move of secretly arming Iran immediately after his inauguration and the hostage release was nearly exposed when one of the Israeli flights strayed into Soviet airspace on July 18, 1981, and crashed or was shot down.

In a PBS interview nearly a decade later, Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said he looked into the incident by talking to top administration officials.

“It was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment,” Veliotes said.

In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan camp’s dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election.

“It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration,” Veliotes said. “And I understand some contacts were made at that time.”

However, in 1981, Veliotes said, the State Department issued misleading press guidance to cover the administration’s tracks and the Washington media failed to follow up. Thus, the U.S.-Israeli arms pipeline to Iran stayed secret from the American people until November 1986 when — despite Reagan’s long-running insistence that he would never trade arms with a terrorist state like Iran — the operation was exposed.

When I re-interviewed Veliotes in 2012, he said he couldn’t recall who the “people on high” were who had described the informal clearance of the Israeli shipments of U.S.-manufactured weapons, but he indicated that “the new players” were the young neoconservatives who were working on the Reagan campaign, many of whom later joined the administration as senior political appointees.

Documents that I discovered at the Reagan presidential library revealed that Reagan’s neocons at the State Department, particularly Robert McFarlane and Paul Wolfowitz, initiated a policy review in 1981 to allow Israel to undertake secret military shipments to Iran.

McFarlane and Wolfowitz also maneuvered to put McFarlane in charge of U.S. relations toward Iran and to establish a clandestine U.S. back-channel to the Israeli government outside the knowledge of even senior U.S. government officials.

Another Failed Investigation

In 1991, faced with the accumulating evidence of a prequel to the Iran-Contra scandal, Congress grudgingly agreed to take a look at these so-called “October Surprise” allegations. But Republicans, then led by President George H.W. Bush and his White House team, mounted an aggressive cover-up to “spike” the story.

And, with the congressional inquiry largely in the hands again of Rep. Hamilton, the Democrats timidly folded their tent despite a growing body of evidence that the Reagan team was indeed guilty.

Much of that evidence flowed into the House Task Force in December 1992 when President George H.W. Bush had already been defeated for reelection and the Democrats were looking forward to their renewed control of Washington. So, instead of giving a careful review to the new evidence, the House Task Force ignored, disparaged or buried it.

The late-arriving material included sworn testimony on Dec. 18, 1992, from David Andelman, the biographer of French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches, describing how deMarenches had confided that he had helped arrange the Republican-Iranian contacts. Andelman, an ex-New York Times and CBS News correspondent, said that while he was working on deMarenches’s autobiography, the arch-conservative spymaster admitted arranging meetings between Republicans and Iranians about the hostage issue in the summer and fall of 1980, with one meeting held in Paris in October.

Andelman said deMarenches ordered that the secret meetings be kept out of his memoirs because the story could otherwise damage the reputations of his friends, William Casey and George H.W. Bush. Andelman’s testimony corroborated longstanding claims from a variety of international intelligence operatives about a Paris meeting involving Casey and Bush. But the Task Force report brushed this testimony aside, paradoxically terming it “credible” but then claiming it was “insufficiently probative.”

The Task Force’s report argued that Andelman could not “rule out the possibility that deMarenches had told him he was aware of and involved in the Casey meetings because he, deMarenches, could not risk telling his biographer he had no knowledge of these allegations.”

In the last weeks of the investigation, the House investigators also received a letter from former Iranian President Bani-Sadr detailing his behind-the-scenes struggle with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his son Ahmad over their secret dealings with the Reagan campaign. But the House investigators dismissed Bani-Sadr’s first-hand account as hearsay and thus also lacking “probative value.”

I later unearthed some of the evidence in unpublished Task Force files. However, in the meantime, Official Washington had dismissed the “October Surprise” and other Iran-Contra-connected scandals, like Contra drug trafficking, as conspiracy theories.

The Russian Report

Ironically, another piece of late-arriving evidence was a January 1993 report from a national security committee of the Russian parliament about the Kremlin’s intelligence data confirming that key Republicans, including George H.W. Bush and William Casey, had met with Iranian officials in Europe regarding the hostages during the 1980 campaign.

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

Hamilton had requested the Russian assistance before the U.S. election in 1992, but the report was not sent until there were only two weeks left in George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

Lawrence Barcella, who served as the Task Force chief counsel, later told me that so much incriminating evidence arrived late that he asked Hamilton to extend the inquiry for three months but that Hamilton said no (although Hamilton told me that he had no recollection of denying Barcella’s request).

The other fatal flaw of the House investigation was that it left much of the actual investigating up to President George H.W. Bush’s White House counsel’s office and the State Department, although Bush was one of the chief suspects and, in 1991-92, was running for re-election, a campaign that would have been derailed if the 1980 October Surprise allegations were confirmed.

The naivete of this decision was underscored years later when I located a memo at Bush’s presidential library stating that the State Department had informed the White House counsel’s office that Casey had traveled to Madrid in 1980, corroborating a key October Surprise allegation.

The confirmation of Casey’s trip was passed along by State Department legal adviser Edwin D. Williamson to Associate White House Counsel Chester Paul Beach Jr. in early November 1991, just as the October Surprise inquiry was taking shape, according to Beach’s “memorandum for record” dated Nov. 4, 1991.

Williamson said that among the State Department “material potentially relevant to the October Surprise allegations [was] a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown,” Beach noted.

Two days later, on Nov. 6, 1991, Beach’s boss, White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, arranged an inter-agency strategy session and explained the need to contain the congressional investigation into the October Surprise case. The explicit goal was to ensure the scandal would not hurt President Bush’s reelection hopes in 1992.

In 2013, when I interviewed Hamilton about the Beach memo, he lamented that the Madrid information had not been shared with his investigation, saying “you have to rely on people” in authority to comply with information requests.

“We found no evidence to confirm Casey’s trip to Madrid,” Hamilton told me. “We couldn’t show that. The [George H.W. Bush] White House did not notify us that he did make the trip. Should they have passed that on to us? They should have because they knew we were interested in that.”

Asked if knowledge that Casey had traveled to Madrid might have changed the Task Force’s dismissive October Surprise conclusion, Hamilton said yes, because the question of the Madrid trip was key to the task force’s investigation.

Not Moving the Needle

However, the Madrid trip revelation and other post-investigation disclosures failed to move the needle on Official Washington’s disdain for the October Surprise story.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in 1982. (U.S. government photo)

The later disclosures included a 1993 interview in Tel Aviv in which former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said he had read the 1991 book, October Surprise, by Carter’s former National Security Council aide Gary Sick, which made the case for believing that the Republicans had intervened in the 1980 hostage negotiations to disrupt Carter’s reelection.

With the topic raised, one interviewer asked,

“What do you think? Was there an October Surprise?”

“Of course, it was,” Shamir responded without hesitation. “It was.”

And, there were other corroborating statements as well. In 1996, for instance, while former President Carter was meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Arafat in Gaza City, Arafat tried to confess his role in the Republican maneuvering to block Carter’s Iran-hostage negotiations.

“There is something I want to tell you,” Arafat said, addressing Carter in the presence of historian Douglas Brinkley.

“You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal [for the PLO] if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the [U.S. presidential] election,” Arafat said, according to Brinkley’s article in the fall 1996 issue of Diplomatic Quarterly.

In 2013, after the movie “Argo” appeared regarding an early facet of the Iran-hostage crisis, former Iranian President Bani-Sadr elaborated on his account of Republican overtures to Iran in 1980 and how that secret initiative prevented release of the hostages.

In a Christian Science Monitor commentary, Bani-Sadr wrote,

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation which prevented the attempts by myself and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 U.S. presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

Then, Bani-Sadr added a new detail, that “two of my advisors, Hussein Navab Safavi and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by Khomeini’s regime because they had become aware of this secret relationship between Khomeini, his son Ahmad, … and the Reagan administration.” [For more details on the October Surprise case, see Robert Parry’s Trick or Treason and America’s Stolen Narrative.]

Compare and Contrast

So how do Watergate and Iran-Contra compare and contrast with Russia-gate? One key difference is that in Watergate in 1972-73 and Iran-Contra in 1985-86, you had clear-cut crimes (even if you don’t want to believe the two “prequels” from 1968 and 1980, respectively).

In Watergate, five burglars were caught inside the DNC offices on June 17, 1972, as they sought to plant more bugs on Democratic phones. (An earlier break-in in May had installed two bugs, but one didn’t work.) Nixon then proceeded to mount a cover-up of his 1972 campaign’s role in funding the break-in and other abuses of power.

In Iran-Contra, Reagan secretly authorized weapons sales to Iran, which was then designated a terrorist state, without informing Congress, a violation of the Arms Export Control Act. He also kept Congress in the dark about his belated signing of a related intelligence “finding.” And the creation of slush funds to finance the Nicaraguan Contras represented an evasion of the U.S. Constitution.

There was also the attendant Iran-Contra cover-up mounted both by the Reagan White House and later the George H.W. Bush White House, which culminated in Bush’s Christmas Eve 1992 pardons of six Iran-Contra defendants as special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was zeroing in on possible indictment of Bush for withholding evidence.

By contrast, Russia-gate has been a “scandal” in search of a specific crime. President Barack Obama’s intelligence chieftains have alleged – without presenting any clear evidence – that the Russian government hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and released those emails via WikiLeaks and other Internet sites. (The Russians and WikiLeaks have both denied the accusations.)

The DNC emails revealed that senior Democrats did not maintain their required independence regarding the primaries by seeking to hurt Sen. Bernie Sanders and help Clinton. The Podesta emails pulled back the curtain on Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street banks and on pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.

Hacking into personal computers is a crime, but the U.S. government has yet to bring any formal charges against specific individuals supposedly responsible for the hacking of the Democratic emails. There also has been no evidence that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russians in the hacking.

Lacking any precise evidence of this cyber-crime or of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, Obama’s Justice Department holdovers and now special prosecutor Robert Mueller have sought to build “process crimes,” around false statements to investigators and possible obstruction of justice.

Railroading Flynn

In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, i.e., after Trump’s election but before the Inauguration.

Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn attending a dinner marking the RT network’s 10-year anniversary in Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Source: Consortiumnews)

The Logan Act, which has never resulted in a prosecution in 218 years, was enacted during the period of the Alien and Sedition Acts to bar private citizens from negotiating on their own with foreign governments. It was never intended to apply to a national security adviser of an elected President, albeit before he was sworn in.

But it became the predicate for the FBI interrogation — and the FBI agents were armed with a transcript of the intercepted Kislyak-Flynn phone call so they could catch Flynn on any gaps in his recollection, which might have been made even hazier because he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic when Kislyak called.

Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn’s account of the call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work – since the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak’s calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained.

Still, Flynn’s failure to recount the phone call precisely and the controversy stirred up around it became the basis for an obstruction of justice investigation of Flynn and led to President Trump’s firing Flynn on Feb. 13.

Trump may have thought that tossing Flynn overboard to the circling sharks would calm down the sharks but the blood in the water only excited them more. According to then-FBI Director James Comey, Trump talked to him one-on-one the next day, Feb. 14, and said,

“‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Trump’s “hope” and the fact that he later fired Comey have reportedly led special prosecutor Mueller to look at a possible obstruction of justice case against Trump. In other words, Trump could be accused of obstructing what appears to have been a trumped-up case against Flynn.

Of course, there remains the possibility that evidence might surface of Trump or his campaign colluding with the Russians, but such evidence has so far not been presented. Or Mueller’s investigation might turn over some rock and reveal some unrelated crime, possibly financial wrongdoing by Trump or an associate.

(Something similar happened in the Republican investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, a largely fruitless inquiry except that it revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent and received official emails over a private server, which Comey decried during last year’s campaign as “extremely careless” but not criminal.)

Curb the Enthusiasm

Another contrast between the earlier scandals (Watergate and Iran-Contra) and Russia-gate is the degree of enthusiasm and excitement that the U.S. mainstream media and congressional Democrats have shown today as opposed to 1972 and 1986.

The Washington Post’s Watergate team, including from left to right, publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Howard Simons, and executive editor Ben Bradlee. (Source: Consortiumnews)

Though The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein aggressively pursued the Watergate scandal, there was much less interest elsewhere in major news outlets until Nixon’s criminality became obvious in 1973. Many national Democrats, including DNC Chairman Bob Strauss, were extremely hesitant to pursue the scandal if not outright against it.

Similarly, although Brian Barger and I at The Associated Press were pursuing aspects of Iran-Contra since early 1985, the big newspapers and networks consistently gave the Reagan administration the benefit of the doubt – at least before the scandal finally burst into view in fall 1986 (when a Contra-supply plane crashed inside Nicaragua and a Lebanese newspaper revealed U.S. arms shipments to Iran).

For several months, there was a flurry of attention to the complex Iran-Contra scandal, but the big media still ignored evidence of a White House cover-up and soon lost interest in the difficult work of unraveling the convoluted networks for arms smuggling, money laundering and cocaine trafficking.

Congressional Democrats also shied away from a constitutional confrontation with the popular Reagan and his well-connected Vice President George H.W. Bush.

After moving from AP to Newsweek in early 1987, I learned that the senior executives at Newsweek, then part of The Washington Post Company, didn’t want “another Watergate”; they felt another such scandal was not “good for the country” and wanted Iran-Contra to go away as soon as possible. I was even told not to read the congressional Iran-Contra report when it was published in October 1987 (although I ignored that order and kept trying to keep my own investigation going in defiance of the wishes of the Newsweek brass until those repeated clashes led to my departure in June 1990).

So, perhaps the biggest similarity between Russia-gate and Watergate is that Richard Nixon and Donald Trump were both highly unpopular with the Washington establishment and thus had few influential defenders, while an important contrast with Iran-Contra was that Reagan and Bush were very well liked, especially among news executives such as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham who, by all accounts, did not care for the uncouth Nixon. Today, the senior executives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major news outlets have made no secret of their disdain for the buffoonish Trump and their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In other words, what is driving Russia-gate – for both the mainstream news media and the Democrats – appears to be a political agenda, i.e., the desire to remove Trump from office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with Russia, a priority for Washington’s neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks.

If this political drama were playing out in some other country, we would be talking about a “soft coup” in which the “oligarchy” or some other “deep state” force was using semi-constitutional means to engineer a disfavored leader’s removal.

Of course, since the ongoing campaign to remove Trump is happening in the United States, it must be presented as a principled pursuit of truth and a righteous application of the rule of law. But the comparisons to Watergate and Iran-Contra are a stretch.

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

Featured image from Quora

In the latest season of the Netflix drama House of Cards, the fictional administration of President Francis Underwood and Vice President Claire Underwood, facing a domestic political crisis, uses a manufactured chemical weapons attack in Syria to declare war on the country.

In a case of politics following art, the Trump administration has accused the Syrian government of “preparing” to use chemical weapons against the civilian population. No evidence has been presented to back up the concocted threat.

On Monday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared that the US had

“identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.” If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons,” the statement continued, “he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, added Tuesday,

“The goal is at this point not just to send Assad a message, but to send Russia and Iran a message… That if this happens again, we are putting you on notice.”

In other words, any alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria could be used to justify war against Iran and Russia.

Pressed to substantiate the White House’s allegation, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis refused to produce any evidence. He said the alleged intelligence was from “the past day or two” and regarded “specific aircraft in a specific hangar, both of which we know to be associated with chemical weapons use.” This was a reference to the Shayrat airfield, which the US targeted with a cruise missile strike on April 6.

Some military officials said they had “no idea” what the White House was referring to. British defense officials said they had not seen the evidence, but would support US military escalation regardless—meaning they do not care whether the allegations are true or false.

The White House statement followed by just one day the publication of a detailed article in Die Welt by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, the reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, which demonstrated that the allegations used by the Trump administration to justify the April 6 missile attack on Syria were entirely unsubstantiated.

Seymour Hersh

Drawing on background interviews with military and intelligence personnel, Hersh wrote that the administration possessed no evidence to back up its claims that the Syrian government had launched a sarin gas attack on April 4.

The false allegations of a chemical attack and subsequent bombardment of the Syrian airbase were so brazen that they provoked opposition from within sections of the military/intelligence apparatus.

“None of this makes any sense,” Hersh cited one officer as saying. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack…”

At the time, Trump was under immense pressure from the Democratic Party and intelligence agencies to shift to a more aggressive stance against the Syrian government. Just days before, the Senate Intelligence Committee had held a hearing at which it was alleged that Trump had effectively collaborated with Russian efforts to undermine the 2016 US election. Columnists and pundits painted the president as little more than an agent of the Kremlin.

But that all changed—at least for a few days—after the attack. As Hersh put it,

“The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war… One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word ‘beautiful’ to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: ‘I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.’ A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.”

At the time, no major US news publication even raised the question of whether the White House’s allegations were credible. They were simply accepted as good coin, demonstrating that the media’s role as a propaganda organ for war had not abated.

Indeed, Hersh was unable to find a news source to publish his most recent article in the United States. The story was also rejected by the UK’s LondonReview of Books, which published earlier investigative reports by Hersh, forcing him to turn to the German newspaper.

As shown by the latest fabricated Syrian “atrocity”—this time, supposedly in “preparation”—nothing has changed in regard to the media’s readiness to serve as a sounding board for government propaganda.

But the media’s acceptance of the administration’s concocted claims about weapons of mass destruction in Syria cannot hide the fact that they are, in fact, concocted. In what has become standard operating procedure, the administration has not attempted to present a shred of evidence, making only the most general allegations, which the American population is expected to swallow whole.

Fourteen years ago, the Bush administration used lies about weapons of mass destruction to start a war in Iraq that led to the deaths of millions. Now the Trump administration, with the full support of the media and the entire political establishment, is using equally groundless claims to escalate a war that could result in a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, the world’s second biggest nuclear power.

Far from opposing the escalation of war, the Democratic Party has made this its central demand since the election of Trump and the focus of its opposition to his administration. In an article published this month in Foreign A ffairs, Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, spelled out the aggressive foreign policy aims that underpinned Clinton’s candidacy and are at the center of the present hysterical campaign over Trump’s alleged “collusion” with Russian President Putin.

Kaine pilloried the Obama administration’s foreign policy, declaring that Obama’s “unwillingness to forcefully intervene early in the Syrian civil war will come to haunt the United States in the future.” He excoriated Obama’s “lackadaisical response to Russia’s cyberattacks and its unprecedented interference in the 2016 election,” concluding,

“The United States must always send a clear message to those who mean Americans harm: don’t mess with us.”

As a recent article in the Washington Post makes clear, the Obama administration had expected to transfer power to a Clinton White House that would immediately begin preparing a major escalation in Syria, entailing a possible clash with Russia. Trump’s surprise election victory disrupted these plans, which were well advanced. Hence the ferocity of the efforts by the Democrats and the intelligence agencies to pressure Trump to carry out a shift to a more aggressive and more anti-Russian foreign policy—efforts that appear to be succeeding.

The deepening tensions between the US and Russia over Syria pose an existential danger to humanity. The only way to avert the catastrophe to which the US political establishment is rushing is for the working class to intervene independently, on the basis of its own socialist, internationalist and revolutionary program.

Featured image: House of Cards season 5 poster (Photo from Amazon)

Global Research strives for peace, and we have but one mandate: to share timely, independent and vital information to readers across the globe. We act as a global platform to let the voices of dissent, protest, and expert witnesses and academics be heard and disseminated internationally.

We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.

Stronger together: your donations are crucial to independent, comprehensive news reporting in the ongoing battle against media disinformation. (click image above to donate)

*     *     *

Hersh: Trump Ignored Intel Before Bombing Syria

By Seymour M. Hersh and The Real News Network, June 28, 2017

In this article is the full transcript of the interview with Seymour Hersh on his report about the western allegations on Syria.

Trump Plays Nuclear ‘Chicken’ with Putin Over Syria

By Eric Zuesse, June 28, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump is playing a game of nuclear “chicken” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, regarding Putin’s threat on June 19th to go to war against the United States if the U.S. again shoots down, inside Syria — in the sovereign territory of the internationally-recognized-as-legal sovereign Syrian government — Syrian aircraft, or the aircraft of any of the foreign governments that have allied with Syria: Russia, Iran, and China.

Hersh’s New Syria Revelations Buried From View

By Jonathan Cook, June 28, 2017

According to US intelligence, Hersh reports, the Syrian air force was able to target the site using a large, conventional bomb supplied by the Russians. But if Assad did not use a chemical warhead, why did many people apparently die at Khan Sheikhoun from inhalation of toxic gas?

After Getting Busted for Bombing Syria Based on a Lie, Trump Doubles Down … Threatens to Bomb Syria Even Harder for the Same Bogus Reason

By Washington’s Blog, June 28, 2017

Trump said the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians. But U.S. military and intelligence officials say that they told Trump there was no evidence for that claim … and they say that what really happened is that Syria bombed Islamic terrorists, and that accidentally released chemicals being stored by the terrorists.

Protecting the Terrorists: US-led Coalition’s ‘Very Dangerous Game’ of Sparing Al-Nusra in Syria – Lavrov

By RT News, June 28, 2017

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov has accused the US-led anti-terrorist coalition of being reluctant to bomb positions of the former Al-Nusra Front in Syria, and has urged them to ditch “double standards” for the sake of an “uncompromising” fight against terrorism.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will cast votes on 30 July to determine its fate as President and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Nicolás Maduro continues to battle neoliberal opposition party Popular Will (VP), who has received Washington’s blessings.

Since 19 April, spontaneous “uprisings” have erupted in affluent barrios of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and Socopó, a small town strategically located in Barinas, where protesters have cut off food and medical supplies, killed over 80 people, and injured hundreds more.

Opposition protesters hijacked a PDVSA tanker truck on May 24 and use it to cut off the highway which runs through Socopo. (Source: Green Left Weekly)

Historically, Venezuelans are no stranger to US-orchestrated coups, which began during the Bush Administration’s 2002 putsch against PSUV founder and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and subsequent riots in 2014; many carried out by senior officials in the US government.

“[The] crucial figure around the coup was [Elliot] Abrams, [the] senior director of the National Security Council for ‘democracy, human rights and international operations’” and “has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair,” the Guardian highlights.

US congressmen have also drafted a bill (S.1018) that “would allocate £7.8m for the Department of State and USAid to provide ‘humanitarian assistance’ — code for funding rightwing activities”, the Morning Star highlighted.

“If this Bill is approved, the Caribbean region would also come under renewed lobbying by the US government to strengthen its ‘energy security initiative’ (CESI) project — a move designed to undermine Venezuela’s support in the region and opening up new markets for the US”, it continued.

Fortunately, the US failed to coerce the Organisation for American States (OAS) to approve a resolution condemning Venezuela’s election during their 20 June meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

“Mexico’s position on Venezuela is a position that will not waver […] representative democracy is the only form of government acceptable in the Western Hemisphere,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray exclaimed, remaining completely mum on the 129 Azinoyapa students found dead in over 60 mass graves throughout Iguala several years ago.

Videgaray was not convincing enough to secure a majority vote, Venezuela Analysis noted:

“[It] secured the support of 20 OAS member states, falling short of the required two thirds majority by three votes [where] Bolivia, Nicaragua and a handful of small Caribbean states outright rejected the proposal, while Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, the Dominican Republic and others abstained.”

After lambasting Videgaray, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez reminded him of Venezuela’s departure from the OAS, “which […] began on April 27 [and] will continue since it takes two years for a country to withdraw from the organization,” CaribFlame reported.

Venezuela’s election would secure popularly appointed representatives for a Constituent National Assembly to replace the current parliament now controlled by opposition parties.

It would organise 540 constituent parliamentarians, with 346 from all territorial municipalities and 186 MPs from seven key sectors, into communes, TeleSUR notes.

constitutionnet.org elucidates the reasons for these reforms:

One of [Chavez’s] 1998 campaign promises was that he would [organise] a referendum asking the Venezuelan people if they wish to convene a National Constituent Assembly [in order to] to open up political discourse to independent and third parties by changing the national political process and eliminating political corruption of the past.

However, what Venezuelans need is less, not more dialogue with the opposition, if any at all.

Material Reasons for the US-led Coup

When analysing US imperialism, one must consider that American invests in ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘human rights’ for purely materialistic (resource-based) and geopolitical reasons.

As noted in previous Duran articles, the Trump Doctrine prioritises its economic policy, which combines the vast privatisation of public infrastructure with control of the petrodollar by opening domestic oil production and consumption—both to stave off an economic collapse.

They also criticise the failures of both the Peronist Argentinian government under Christina Fernandez Kirchner and Brazilian Worker’s Party (PT) with Dilma Rousseff, as they were both overthrown by US-led political coups; the very same that Venezuela faces today.

Maduro’s snap elections have not provoked the US; this is a superstructural casus belli. Rather, the PSUV has been moving away from Western financial institutions, selling off USD, nationalising capital, and forming solid partnerships with Iran, China, Russia, and others.

A month before the protests began, The World Bank International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled in Venezuela’s favour after Chavez nationalised the Cero Negro and La Ceiba ExxonMobil refineries in mid-2000 “as part of a strategy to redirect the profits away from Venezuela’s mineral resources, telecoms, and agriculture industries and toward social programs”.

“[…] even at $1.6 billion, the compensation was substantially lower than what Exxon had asked for: $14.7 billion,” Oilprice insinuates. The US—mainly US Secretary of State (and former ExxonMobil CEO) Rex Tillerson—was left fuming by the ruling.

In May 2007, the PSUV government also parted with the IMF and World Bank after paying off all its outstanding debts, in response to the 2002 US-backed coup.

“Venezuela recently repaid its debts to the World Bank five years ahead of schedule. In doing so it saved $8m (£3.99m) and cleared all its debts to the IMF shortly after Mr Chávez was elected,” the Guardian noted.

The gesture empowered Venezuela to seek new fiscal ventures following a period of “high public spending and private consumption, fuelled by high oil prices and historically low interest rates.”

The following December, Chavez inaugurated plans with six South American presidents to create the Bank of the South (BancoSUR), the central bank of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and a rival institution to its former creditors.

“The bank is a political fact and is part of an economic war that is also social and ideological,” Chavez mentioned.

A 2015 Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) article specifies the bank’s nature:

The bank will have an authorized capital of $20 billion USD, with 20,000 trade shares, each with a par value of $1 million USD [and whilst] only UNASUR member states may hold the main shares, every state in the world may be a purchaser of secondary shares.

“Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela will provide 20 percent of the subscribed capital one year after the agreement [and become] endorsed for $7 billion USD shares,” it explained.

These three nations are the largest shareholders of the bank and, subsequently, became targets of former US President and counterintelligence laureate Barack Obama. US President Donald Trump continued these attacks by picking Rex Tillerson over Elliot Abrams, as Tillerson’s oil market experience took precedence following the 2015 Saudi oil glut.

Ninth Summit of UNASUR in Ecuador (Source: Carib Flame)

As a result, Venezuela has been left at the helm of Bolivarian regional integration with only its secondary shareholders remaining, and was also forced to prioritise UNASUR after its primary shareholders became US vassals and suspended the country’s participation in Mercosur.

However, BancoSUR has yet to find suitable replacements for the gap in primary shareholder capital, and to further expedite regionalisation, needs to fully implement the Regional Compensation Unique System (SUCRE) for Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our Americas (ALBA) members.

The SUCRE, a virtual currency, would help avoid “the dollarization of Latin American economies [and] the ebb and flow of foreign capital that causes economic bubbles [and] volatility,” and move “towards a more decisive monetary edifice [for] regional trade requirements,” COHA explained.

However, corruption within Ecuador and Venezuela emerged after white collar criminals used it to launder money via “ghost companies”, where they “over-invoiced for goods received and took advantage of favourable exchange rates” and, by 2014, “up to 5% of Sucre transactions were suspicious in nature,” prompting a thorough joint investigation, FINTRAIL highlighted.

The Saudi oil glut ravaged global oil markets and Venezuela’s petrol revenues, prompting Maduro to discuss matters with Russia, Iran and other Persian Gulf states to stabilise production.

Obama first exploited Venezuela’s fiscal problems by imposing unilateral sanctions, and later, Trump hastily targeted the PDVSA, ultimately damaging American markets as well.

“Some 95 percent of its foreign incomes results from the export of crude oil with 40 percent of sales coming from the United States,” Deutsche Welle reports.

Luckily, banning PDVSA crude will, in the long term, force Venezuela to diversify clientele; something Russia and Iran are wholly familiar with. Obviously, the best way to achieve this is via the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); however, Venezuela requires something more.

Resolving the Crisis of Bolivarian Socialism

Latin American socialism is dying because of its social-democratic nature. Its leaders have prioritised Bolivarian ‘regional integration’ over all other necessities, foregoing a dictatorship of the proletariat (DotP), which has allowed reactionary forces to flourish with impunity.

Consequently, the Latin American bourgeoisie are more aptly trained in the ‘international, violent character’ of revolution than their hosts, and Venezuela is no exception.

For these reasons, VP spokespersons Henrique Capriles and Leopold Lopez openly command Venezuela’s far-right, “[asking] his supporters to keep up the almost daily street mobilizations.”

US-backed death squads can murder innocent Venezuelans, attack supply routes, and enjoy the good graces of the US State Department and its invasive, lickspittle press with few consequences.

The opposition claims that Maduro does not respect ‘constitutional democracy’; yet, Venezuela’s constitution needs to be rewritten, as it is the very obstacle hindering the security of the country.

Constitutional democracy has permitted neoliberal MPs 167 seats in parliament and the Supreme Court to reverse Maduro’s transfer of powers from the National Assembly to the judiciary branch, with spectators clasping hands and rejoicing, “the people have spoken!”

Had the PSUV been more Bolshevik and less Narodnik in its views, it could have achieved the same level of success as its ALBA comrades in Cuba, whose only concession to the bourgeoisie was providing transport for a permanent settlement in Little Havana.

Instead of following Cuba’s example, the PSUV have instead relied on economism, regionalism, and legalism to secure its revolutions. What it has failed to do is utilise the entire state apparatus to eliminate class divisions and wither away the state.

A furious Karl Marx addressed a similar leader, Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen, in the Neue Rheinsiche Zeitung with his essay, “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution”.

Hal Draper invokes Marx’s definition of a ‘proper’ dictatorship:

Every provisional state setup after a revolution requires a dictatorship [and] taxed Camphausen […] with not immediately smashing and eliminating the remnants of the old institutions.

Lenin elaborates this in precise detail in State and Revolution:

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes […] only then “the state… ceases to exist”, […] only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse […] without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.

This is precisely what Latin America, save for Cuba, has failed to do. They call themselves “socialists” without following socialism’s basic tenants—smashing the state as prescribed by Marx.

Following the 26 July revolution, Republic of Cuba founders Fidel and Raul Castro expropriated the bourgeoisie, nationalised foreign capital, and abolished private property without hesitation.

Venezuela must act just as decisively after the 30 July elections.

Once (if!) the new Constituency Assembly convenes, the government should propose the following resolutions via popular vote, executive orders, and intergovernmental dialogue:

1. Rewrite Venezuelan constitution to reflect socialist ambitions of the public.
2. Designate Popular Will as a terrorist organisation for treason and collusion with the US.
3. Initiate military campaign to root out Popular Will collaborators and saboteurs. Establish a humanitarian corridor and provide timely updates to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
4. Jail key Popular Will members and fully establish DotP via new constituencies.
5. Create a 5-year plan with direct consultation from the public. Strengthen international alliances.
6. Negotiate with the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to denominate national oil in alternative currencies. Float SUCRE on Yuan or Euros.
7. Work with global partnerships throughout AIIB to oversee construction of refineries, pipelines, and infrastructure. Offer oil security and secondary shares to collaborators in return. Renegotiate relationship to private sector.
8. Prepare to leave the OAS and MercoSUR. Prioritise and build UNASUR.

Venezuelans must restore democracy after 30 July. No longer can neoliberal elements lie in wait like a chronic illness amongst the people. Maduro must take the steps to learn from the mistakes of Brazil and Argentina, as well as follow Cuba’s example, in order to become a true socialist state.

For the sake of its bright future, it must take action, and whilst its task is daunting, it can prevail.

Haneul Na’avi is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in the United Kingdom. He has previously written for RT, Press TV, Global Research, and the Pravda Report.

Featured image: President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Source: Wikipedia)

“You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.”  – Henry Kissinger

In Egyptian mythology, gods were considered heroes. In more modern times, it is men who are the heroes. Without a doubt, General Gamal Abdul Nasser has secured his legacy as a hero – a revolutionary who fought for Egypt and strived for Arab unity against Israel and Western imperialism. This month marks the 50^th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war; a pre-planned war of aggression and expansion by Israel against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, aided by the US and Britain. 

Israel’s cronies assisted in the planning and execution of the war which led to the seizure and occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Syria Golan (Golan Heights) and the Sinai Peninsula. Prior to the start of the war, as early as May, Lyndon Johnson who assumed the presidency after the tragic assassination of JF Kennedy, authorized air shipment of arms to Israel [1]. Furthermore, the United States facilitated Israeli air attacks and advances by sending reconnaissance aircraft to track movement of Egyptian ground forces and American spy satellites provided imagery to Israel [2]. According to reports American and British carrier-based aircraft flew sorties against the Egyptians and U.S. aircraft attacked Egypt. Judging by their cover-up, the American leadership had as little compassion for American blood as it did for Arab blood. The Israeli attack against USS Liberty that killed and injured American servicemen was buried in a sea of lies.

Fifty years on, the war rages on and Israel has a different set of cronies. In sharp contrast to Nasser, el-Sisi, Egypt’s antihero has thrown his lot in with Israel and Saudi Arabia against his Arab brethren. El-Sisi’s betrayal has been so outlandish and stark that even the neocon leaning New York Times published a scathing article titled: “Egypt’s Lost Islands, Sisi’s Shame” by Adhaf Soueif. This is a remarkable piece rarely seen in the pages of the NYT given its reputation (see LOOT for example).

Saudi King Salman and Egyptian President El-Sisi at a meeting in Cairo (Source: Geopolitical Intelligence Services)

Soueif rightly calls el-Sisi’s to task for handing over the Tiran and Sanafir Islands at the mouth of Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia. More telling is the fact that the transfer had been discussed with, and had received the blessings of Israel, according to Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. The implications of an Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian alliance are enormous; though hardly the first act of treason by el-Sisi.

In his article Soueif also touches on the dam being built by Ethiopia (the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam) which was opposed to by former President Mohamed Morsi who was ousted in a coup by el-Sisi. It is crucial that this project be further explored as it relates not only to Egypt, but also the past and future politics and geopolitics of the region.

Former President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi (Source: Wikipedia)

Before moving on however, it is important to recall that Morsi was democratically elected to office in the aftermath of the Egyptian ‘revolution’. His support of the Palestinians and his opposition to the dam did not sit well with Israel. Morsi had even called “Jews descendants of pigs and apes”. Both HAMAS and the U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Morsi’s election. Abbas called Morsi “the choice of the great people of Egypt” while one of his senior aides, Saeb Erekat, said the democratic vote for Morsi “meant the Palestinian cause was the Number One priority for all Egyptians“. Though perhaps the greater concern for Israel was Morsi’s opposition to the construction of the dam. A construction favored by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In 2012, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had claimed a stake in the Nile. Israel’s ambitions went much further back. First initiated by Theodore Herzl in 1903, the diversion plan was dropped due to British and Egyptian opposition to it only to be picked up again in the 1970s. At that time, Israeli’s idea was to convince Egypt to divert Nile water to Israel. In 1978, President Anwar Sadat “declared in Haifa to the Israeli public that he would transfer Nile water to the Negev. Shortly afterward, in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Sadat promised that Nile water would go to Jerusalem. During Mubarak’s presidency, published reports indicated that Israeli experts were helping Ethiopia to plan 40 dams along the Blue Nile.”[3]

On May 30, 2013, The Times of Israel reported that the construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (on the Blue Nile) had sparked a major diplomatic crisis with Egypt. The article also reported (citing Al-Arabiya) that Major General Mohammed Ali Bilal, the deputy chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, had said Egypt was not in a position to confront the project (countries).

“The only solution lies in the US intervening to convince Ethiopia to alleviate the impact of the dam on Egypt.”

No such solutions from the U.S.

On June 3^rd,  Morsi met with his cabinet to discuss the dam and its implications. Cabinet members were surprised to learn that the meeting was aired live. During the meeting, a cabinet member said:

“Imagine what 80 million of us would do to Israel and America if our water was turned off”.

Morsi contended that

“We have very serious measures to protect every drop of Nile water.”

With el-Sisi’s “democratic coup” which was handsomely rewarded, the dam project is on schedule to be completed by year’s end. As Israel has expands and accelerates its wars of aggression, the wider implications of el-Sisi’s will reverberate throughout the region as serve-serving Arab leaders fight their own to execute Israel’s agenda.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups. 

Notes

[1] Camille Mansour. “Beyond Alliance: Israel and U.S. Foreign Policy”  Columbia 1994, p.89

[2]  Stephen J. Green. “Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With A Militant Israel”.  William Morrow and Co., NY 1984

[3] “Will Nile water go to Israel? North Sinai pipelines and the politics of scarcity”, Middle East Policy  (Sep 1997): 113-124.

The French capitalist elite that sponsored Macron’s meteoric rise is acutely aware that the European Union is in serious trouble. They chose Emmanuel Macron to save it. His success or failure depends on whether he can persuade the rest of the EU, notably Germany, to let it be saved.

In Trouble Politically

The EU is in serious trouble politically, because the elites love it, and ordinary people do not. A poll published June 20 by the Chatham House Royal Institute of international affairs found a “simmering discontent” with the EU among ordinary Europeans. Over 70% of people classified as decision-makers and opinion influencers – leading politicians, journalists, CEOs and leaders of major civil society organizations such as university presidents– welcomed European integration as beneficial, whereas only 34% of ordinary citizens agreed. On immigration, 57% of the elite consider immigration good for their country compared to 34% of the rest of the population. In short, the “decision-makers and opinion influencers” agree with the decisions they have been making and the opinions they have been advocating, while most other people are not convinced.

This is scarcely surprising since for over half a century the elites “who know what is best for the people” have been forcing European integration down their throats, with massive propaganda to justify major binding decisions taken without consulting the people (or, when the people are consulted, the result is ignored). Member States’ democratic procedures were essentially nullified over half a century ago by the unelected European Court of Justice when it ruled that European laws prevailed over national laws. The vast majority of Europeans were not even aware of how their democracy was being overruled and made obsolete. “Europe” meant escape from the bad past and the promise of a beautiful future of peace and prosperity. The elites saw to it that the real existing “Europe” is based on two principles: “free movement” of everything and absolute respect for “competition”. Presented as the apex of European values, these principles are neither moral nor democratic.  They simply give all power to international financial capital.

In Trouble Economically

The elites have long been able to live comfortably with popular discontent. But economic troubles threaten to wreck the whole setup. Throwing together countries with deeply rooted differences in social philosophy and practice, binding them together with a common currency and rules that prohibit adaptation, does not work. As the spearhead of globalization, Europe’s dogmatic enforcement of both competition and “free movement” of goods and capital is enabling foreign capital – Chinese, Qatari, U.S., etc. – to buy up much of its productive resources piece by piece. Instead of growth, the euro has brought stagnation. The reign of unlimited “competition” promotes beggar-thy-neighbor practices rather than solidarity. Germany has lowered its labor costs, and continues to maintain large export surpluses with its neighbors, whose own budgets are broken by the trade imbalance. Concentration of wealth and lowered income decreases consumption and causes businesses to failure and tax revenues to shrink. The European Union finds itself on the edge of a perilous downward spiral.

France’s position in the troubled European Union was the overriding issue in recent French presidential elections.  The issue was obscured by trivialities, such as media-inflated “scandals” over politicians hiring their wives and children, or non-issues such as “the fascist threat”. Yet the issue was there. Among leading candidates, both Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen flirted with the notion of leaving the euro, or even the EU itself, but neither had a clear handle on the issue. In her decisive final debate with Macron, Marine Le Pen proved incapable of clarifying her own position on the euro. In the absence of any clear alternative to EU membership, voters were more frightened than seduced by the notion of getting out. Seeing no clear choice, voters massively abstained.

As a result, the European Union won the French election, in the person of Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s mission is to bring the alienated couple, the EU and the French people, together – by persuading both to do what they don’t want to do.

Macron’s Protection Strategy

Macron’s June 21 interview with the French daily Figaro and seven other major European newspapers clarified his salvage strategy. The key word is “protection”. The idea is that people can develop loyalty toward institutions that protect them, and people do not feel protected by the EU.

This interview included significant foreign policy statements, notably a change in France’s policy toward Syria.  Macron announced that “imported neoconservatism” is no longer welcome in France.

In all our EU societies, “the middle classes have begun to doubt”, Macron observed. “They have the impression that Europe is being built in spite of themselves. This Europe is dragging itself down.” Thus Europe must be made to provide both physical and economic security in order to reassure the citizens and regain their support.The physical protection involves controlling migration and cooperating in eradicating terrorism. The political impact of recent terrorist attacks ensured that any new French government would have to take moves to secure borders and control immigration, but Macron chooses to try to accomplish this at the European level. So far, disagreements between Member States have prevented effective measures from being taken.

Economic Protection

As a slight dissonant note in the usual rhapsody praising unspecified “Western values”, Macron made a subtle distinction between European and American “values”, implying a special European identity. “Americas love freedom as much as we do. But they do not have our taste for justice. Europe is the only place in the world where individual freedoms, the democratic spirit and social justice have been wedded to such a point.”

This implies that there must be limits to demolishing French social benefits in order to satisfy German demands for lower labor costs and a balanced budget. Meeting those demands is seen as the necessary condition for gaining German confidence in order to shift from austerity to prosperity programs. But it requires a quid pro quo. “The strength of some cannot feed for long on the weakness of the others.” In other words, German political leaders need to accept the fact that an EU which benefits Germany at the expense of other member States cannot last forever.

Specifically, Macron denounced the rules on “detached workers” which enable employers to evade the social costs of labor in countries like France by hiring foreign workers from countries like Rumania under the rules of their own country. “Detached labor leads to ridiculous situations. Do you think I can explain to the French middle classes that businesses shut down in France in order to go to Poland because it’s cheaper there, and that the construction industry hires Poles because they are paid less? This system is not fair.” (Such observations were denounced as “racist” when made by Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but are in fact totally consensual.)

Macron’s Foreign Policy

Macron’s statements on foreign policy could be seen as hints of a possible joint European foreign policy, partially independent of the United States, at a time when Washington appears to be paralyzed by deep state efforts to overthrow the President.

Former Foreign Minister of France Laurent Fabius (Source: Wikipedia)

For the last six years, Paris has been at the forefront of the get-rid-of-Assad propaganda. Former foreign minister Laurent Fabius notoriously declared that Bashar al Assad “has no right to be alive on earth”. In a clear break, Macron said that trying to settle the Syrian problem militarily was “a collective mistake” and stressed his aggiornamento:

“I do not proclaim that the destitution of Bashar al Assad is the precondition for everything. For nobody has shown me his legitimate successor!”

His first priority is fighting terrorist groups, with the cooperation of everybody, “particularly Russia”. His second is

“Syria’s stability, as I don’t want to see another failed State. With me, there will be an end to the sort of neoconservatism imported into France for the last ten years. Democracy cannot be imposed on people from outside. France did not take part in the Iraq war and was right not to. France was wrong to wage that sort of war in Libya.”

The result was failed states where terrorist groups prosper.

Somewhat ambiguously, Macron professed to be “aligned with the United States” on setting a “red line” against use of chemical weapons in Syria.

“If it turns out that chemical weapons are used and we know how to trace where they came from, then France will proceed to carry out air strikes to destroy the identified stocks of chemical weapons.”

Yet this statement is not precisely aligned with U.S. practice, which has always automatically blamed Assad for chemical weapons attacks, without ever bothering to “trace where they came from” or to limit retaliation to the arms stocks themselves.

Understanding Putin

As for Russia, Macron was also ambiguous, stressing unspecified “disagreements” with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, while distancing himself from current anti-Putin hysteria in Washington by observing that Putin’s objective is to ensure the survival of his country, not to weaken the West.

Any one of the other leading candidates for the French presidency would almost certainly have gone farther toward rapprochement with Russia. While neoconservative influence has permeated French media and the Socialist Party, it does not control the French establishment as in the United States. Macron’s statements are a long overdue recognition of reality in harmony with informed opinion in France, notably in the diplomatic, military and business communities, which see the U.S.-induced Russian bashing as unjustified, contrary to French interests, and dangerous. These shifts in foreign policy were probably an inevitable reaction against the past ten years of Sarkozy-Hollande’s absurd role as puppy dog running ahead of its American master, yapping at Washignton’s chosen enemy.

Such concessions to reality could contribute to working out a common foreign policy with Germany, which has tended to keep its distance from certain U.S.-led military adventures. However, they are accompanied by urgent appeals to Germany to increase its military spending, at a time when the United States is making similar demands, in order to strengthen NATO against the Russian “threat”. Macron in contrast seems to have in mind the prospect of strengthening Europe by providing it with a strong military defense of its own, presumably not totally under U.S. command. The current struggle for power in Washington favors moves toward European independence. This can sound good if indeed it allows Europe to bow out of various U.S.-incited wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. But military buildups are costly and dangerous in themselves, and not the appropriate way to promote peace in Europe and beyond. The arms race that United States threats have incited in Russia and China shows signs of spreading.  There are forces in Germany all too willing to seize any pretext to revive German military strength.

Resistance To Macron

Macron’s efforts to save the EU marriage will encounter stiff resistance from both sides – and not least from the European side.

The resistance in France will be minimal in a parliament entirely under his control. The largest “opposition” party, the Republicans, are moving toward supporting him. The Socialist Party is decomposing rapidly, and the rest of the opposition is tiny and divided. Opposition in the streets sounds revolutionary, but it is not favored by the current relationship of forces, notably the weakness of the unions and the strategic disadvantages of a diminished industrial working class.

The resistance to Macron’s projects in Europe stems from the mere fact that the EU includes too many nations with conflicting interests and cultures. On the issue of control of migration, for example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has opened wide the gates to refugees, whereas Hungary is intent on keeping them out. Germans, or at least some of them, consider mass migration good for a country with a low birthrate. Hungarians, in contrast, want above all to preserve their cultural identity. The Baltic States, many of whose current leaders were nurtured in Cold War America, as well as Poland, with its bitter historic rivalry with Russia, support U.S. demands for a defensive/aggressive military posture against Russia. This has virtually no support in France, Italy or Spain. As for economic interests, they are widely contradictory, with important differences between North and South, East and West, that cannot easily be unified. And finally, except for the mobile, multilingual elite, people in Europe do not feel European: they feel French, or Italian, or whatever.  Macron’s mission is clear, but it might turn out to be mission impossible.

Diana Johnstone is author of the introduction to her father’s book, From MAD to Madness, by Paul H. Johnstone (Clarity Press, 2017), and author of Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (CounterPunch, 2016).

She can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image: President of France Emmanuel Macron (Photo from Twitter / @claudiomurabo)

Below is the full transcript of the interview with Seymour Hersh on his report about the western allegations on Syria.

AARON MATÉ: It’s the Real News. I’m Aaron Maté. When the US bombed a Syrian military airfield in April, the White House said US intelligence had confirmed the Assad regime used chemical weapons in the town of Khan Shaykhun. Well a new report says the opposite is true. Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh reports US intelligence actually warned president Trump it had no evidence that the Syrian military had used sarin gas.

Hersh writes that Russia had warned the U.S. about a Syrian military strike before Khan Shaykhun was bombed, and he says that bombing set off secondary explosions that released poisonous gases on the ground. Seymour Hersh’s article, “Trump’s Red Line,” was published by the German newspaper [Die Welt]. Earlier he joined me to discuss it. Welcome Sy..

SEYMOUR HERSH: Hello.

AARON MATÉ: Thank you for joining us. You’re reporting that Trump ordered the attack on the Syrian military airfield, despite US intelligence doubts that it was in fact Assad who had used chemical weapons in Idlib. Can you explain what that intelligence was?

SEYMOUR HERSH: It was a pre-planned mission. Very simply, it was a secret mission. One of the reasons that a lot of people, even in Syria and Russia didn’t know what was going on, it was a mission, we had, the Russians … Look, first of all you have to understand Russia, Syria, America, we work very closely together on bombing attacks and operations inside the country. I know some people find that surprising. By the way we also, a part of our American support team, we have planes from the UK, the Brits, the Aussies. Canadians also fly some missions.

They’re all guided and monitored by a process known as deconfliction, which just simply means that everybody who moves any place lets one central body which is a group, a group we control, an office we control, a computer center, computers, we all know where everybody is. There’s not only not been a crash since the bombing began. Russia began bombing almost it will be two years ago this fall. A lot of bombing going on, constantly on ISIS targets and al-Nusra targets, et cetera, rebel targets that we consider to be our enemy, which they are.

So it’s monitored. This is a special [inaudible 00:02:36] because Russia’s, Russian intelligence service gave our intelligence service some information about a secret high level meeting taking place in this town. It’s a pretty large city. It was pretty bombed. A lot of bombings been going on there. There’s a lot of bombing. It’s all in Idlib Province. This is, Idlib Province, this is the last outpost, the last sort of holding place outside of Raqqa for the rebel outfits, the crazies, the jihadists, the sulafists. Not so much, al-Nusra’s very big there. ISIS is very big in Raqqa but those are the last two places.

Bashar is going to hold on. He’s going to hold the country together. He’s going to start a rebuilding program. Whether we like him or don’t like him, that’s a reality. The Russians have been effective in bombing in a way that we have not been effective in Afghanistan and in the war in Iraq. They’re quite effective which is also a blow to our ego. If you remember when Russia began bombing, President Obama said it’ll be a quagmire for them. Well it hasn’t been. They pulled, they pulled Bashar … I guess the cliché is “up by his bootstraps” or whatever. He’s now in a dominant position.

There was, we knew about a meeting. The word was from the Russians to us, our intelligence services, was if you have a guy there, you’re buying somebody, we, you, like to pay money to get information or other reasons, if you have somebody going to that meeting on April 4th, in this town, in a command and control center, don’t let him go. Find a way to get him out gracefully. And so that was kept very secret.

So the planning was done for days because it involved, the zone is called, it’s at the operational zone six, really is what they call it. It’s a Russia operational zone. Syria operational zone. We do not operate there, militarily, with planes, bombing. That’s done by the other services. It was a Syrian plane, an upgraded Syrian plane with a special Russian bomb, laser guided bomb. Russia, unlike us, Russia’s, they don’t spend the money we do on laser guided stuff. The Russians tend to be cherry about it but this is going to be laser guided. They brought in a better version of an old MIG called an SU24 Syrian jet with a very senior Syrian General piloting.

All this was pre-planned and staffed. The target was pre-planned. It was done early in the morning because command and control centers have a lot of people around. There’s shops there where they supply medicines and food. They, al-Nusra will keep control of the population by having goods, by having cooking oil and propane gas and medicines and foods and disinfectants, which are based in chlorine for washing bodies. There, in that society, as you all should know, when you get killed in a bombing raid in the Muslim world, you have to wash the body and bury it right away. That’s a big reason for the command control centers to have control.

Victims of Khan Shaykhun suspected chemical attack transported (Source: One News Page)

They have the right, they have the right soaps and cleaners for this kind of work. All chlorine based by the way. Anyway, so everybody knew what the target was. The president was told when the incident happened, and the other side began talking about, “We know nothing about what really happened because no independent unit has been, no UN unit has been allowed to go into the area. It’s too dangerous. You could lose your head easy.” And not just emotionally. We mean literally.

There’s been no real primary … I have no idea what happened. The other side claims sarin was used. It’s very possible there was some local sarin there. I just don’t know, but the bomb that was dropped was not sarin. There was no intent by Syria to do anything other than destroy, early in the morning, a meeting of the leadership of the local jihadist groups there. They had a meeting about what to do.

AARON MATÉ: So here’s my question. If Russia warned the U.S. beforehand about this pending strike by the Syrian military on that rebel location, why hasn’t Russia come out and said, “Hey, you know, we even warned the U.S. about this so they knew in advance that the strike was coming?” Why hasn’t Russia said that because it would further their argument that they, that the U.S. acted erroneously in targeting Assad?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, do you really want the other side to know you have inside information on a meeting? I mean, just think it through. If you have a covert, if you’re running people, you’re running agents, intelligence agents inside, let’s say al-Nusra. If you’re running operations inside their operations, why would you want to talk about it before or after? You don’t. You wouldn’t. Just like, you don’t think we … We clearly have had people in strange places and have learned stuff in advance. We do not talk about it, even after the fact. There’s not reason to talk about it, because at this point you jeopardize those people that are there, although it’s pretty obvious that once the bombing took place, there was this secret meeting. A lot of people know somebody betrayed it, but why would you want to talk publicly about it? That doesn’t surprise me as being such an anomaly.

AARON MATÉ: Right. Okay. Those cleaning agents that you mentioned were present in that building, are you suggesting that that might have been the source of the chemicals that killed and wounded so many people?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I don’t know anything about what happened there. There’s been no independent investigation. The one thing we know about is that the power and water was pretty much knocked out in that city. It’s a city, at one time, of 48,000. A large city. Big farming community. We know that, we do know from academic studies by a number of people … There’s a guy named Sam Howler has written about it, out of Yale who’s living in Beirut now. We know that the one way you maintain control of Idlib Province, which has a lot of independently minded people, not everybody there is interested in Sharia law. Many are just … It’s a farming community. We know that command and control centers, which was targeted also have foodstuffs and other stuff and the understanding was that there either was a two story building that was a target. There was a basement there. Very likely there would be a lot of stuff supplied there, stored there, including, plastic containers full of cooking oil.

You may know under a lot of heat, in an explosion, plastic develops into something that in World War I was know as phosgene, another poisonous chemical. Any cloud can be … We all know from fires, that people die from smoke inhalation. Any cloud can be very damaging. The strike took place in April, one of those days in April which apparently is very not unusual in that region, that area, northern area of Syria … They were close to 60, 70 miles away from the the Turkish border, Hatay Province. You get a lot of inversions, a lot of cold air, holding clouds down.

Once you bombed, there were, we have … We saw some bomb damage, I haven’t seen it but I’ve been told that there were, a cloud was formed because there were probably munitions also in the basement. Nobody is quite sure what. The Russians had put up a drone before that for a few days to just see the pattern of life there, what was going on. It’s called POL. They monitor what, who goes in and out, when the stores open. I think that, my guess is, I don’t know this … One reason for making the strike so early in the morning was before shops nearby.

There was, I understand there was a shop in which you could buy batteries, a shop in which you could buy fabrics. There was a shop where you could get food stores, so there was a lot stuff they had to blow up. You generated a cloud full of a lot of stuff. Chlorine because chlorine disinfectant is used for the bodies, other stuff. Do I know if there were the precursors for sarin? I would doubt it. Sarin’s pretty lethal. You have to be pretty sophisticated, but there could have been.

Is it possible for some of that stuff to melt and form a less, not a … I did a book about chemical and biological warfare way back in ’68, a few thousand years ago and that was my first book. One thing about military grade sarin. It doesn’t take a lot to wipe out a population. You’re talking about a small container would wipe out, you know, hundreds if not a thousand, couple thousand people. It’s very lethal. Within minutes.

This wasn’t the most advanced form of sarin if there was sarin. But we really don’t know. That’s not the issue. The issue in my story, is not to try and explain what happened but to explain what did not happen. What did not happen is Syria did not drop a sarin bomb that morning. It was known to everybody in the command. Period.

AARON MATÉ: Okay. Let’s talk about how the White House dealt with this. Can you talk about the internal deliberations inside the White House? Did President Trump receive intelligence that some analysts believed it was inconclusive, or it was conclusive on the fact that Assad had not dropped the weapon? Did Trump know that?

SEYMOUR HERSH: The story’s all about the briefing he got. He did get told beforehand, a day beforehand. There’s no evidence to support what you want to believe. There were photographs shown by the ambassador, Ambassador Haley, were beamed up. As I said, I started to say earlier, I didn’t finish the thought. There was no electricity or water there. We bombed it so much. It wasn’t until a team, they call them white helmets, a rescue team. They’re first responders who respond primarily in rebel held territory. That’s the best thing to say about them.

There’s been reports about them being supported by us and the United Kingdom, but they’re certainly there in the rebel territories. They came and they had generators and they had water tanks too I gather. By ten, eleven o’clock, YouTube stuff was going up. I don’t know anything about the origin of the photographs, about their … I just don’t know. All I know is they began to show some photographs of people suffering badly. I don’t know. There were reports, they were taken to hospitals. Some places, they were showing signs of chlorine poisoning. Other signs were what they called near sarin or sarin neurotoxic.

Sarin causes you to have a bunch of things happen. Eyeballs dilate, you defecate. There’s a whole series of symptoms from sarin. Even light form of sarin, but a lot of people survived it, which makes the sarin that was used not the most potent.

AARON MATÉ: So on Trump’s decision making, he basically tells his advisors, that no matter what, we’re going to launch a strike so I want some options. Can you walk us through that?

SEYMOUR HERSH: You’re dealing now with the reason I’m writing this story, and the reason why people wanted me to write this story even though I had a hell of a time getting it published. The president ignored the intelligence. The intelligence was there, I think he made up his mind, they believed the people involved. Some of them believe he made up his mind right away when he saw photographs whose providence, whose chain of custody was not known. We don’t know where they came from or when they came from. They could have been from that day. I’m not an expert on it. I’m just telling you nobody knew where they came from.

If sarin was used, it wasn’t, but they knew it wasn’t from the bomb, so there’s a lot of confusion but the one point they made is that sarin, Syria did not drop a sarin bomb. He didn’t care. He’d seen the photographs. That’s basically what happened. So they gave him a series … He didn’t ask for options. They gave him a series of options for them. The most extreme being decapitation. Kill Bashar Assad, assassinate him. Two, put the bomb, or bomb every place where he lived.

The first one was do nothing. The second was what they called the gorilla option, bang your chests, hit a target that’s not very significant and that’s what they did. They warned the planes that did the bombing took off from an airbase a few hundred kilometers, less than that, away, near homes, farther north, northwest. They bombed that airbase after telling the Syrians and the Russians what they were going to do in advance and minimized the damage there.

He got to do some bombing. He got to go on television. He got to get good ratings. He got to look like a serious leader, which is what happens when you, when in America we tend rally around our captain. A lot of people were very troubled by the fact that he just overlooked the intelligence. The purpose of me writing the story really is nothing more than to say presidents should not do that. That’s not what you do. You listen to the people who give you the intelligence. That gets muddled in a lot of issues because a lot of people see the story as somehow reflecting not as badly as they want the world to reflect on Syria.

If you remember, the cry immediately was that Bashar had gassed his own people again with sarin as he allegedly did four years earlier. Then the Russians chimed in by denying it. Here you had Syria which is obviously very much hated by most Americans I guess. The polls probably show that. We don’t like Bashar Assad, and so for the president it was the easy win. He’d bomb somebody nobody likes. From the press reaction today, it’s clear that not liking Syria and not liking Russia for the mainstream press is much more important than what the president did which always surprises me but maybe it shouldn’t.

AARON MATÉ: Sorry. On this point, you report about how the White House did some briefings for the media and push on them this line that Assad had definitely used chemical weapons and they were just responding. You write about, very critically about how the media went along with it without asking some basic questions.

SEYMOUR HERSH: What else, what else do I do for a living? Pick on the media because they don’t ask basic questions? Because they harden up stories? Look, you know, you’re a reporter. You want to be on page one. I worked at the New York Times for years. The drive to get on page one is pretty acute.

AARON MATÉ: Can you explain though what happened there in terms of the vague and qualified language that the White House used but still got turned into front page news on the New York Times?

SEYMOUR HERSH: All that happened was the White House never said it was an official intelligence report. They said it was intelligence information because there was no report that said Syria did it. They had to go and … They were, the briefer, to his credit … I don’t know who he was. Everybody does but they have a name, I’ll go along with that. I don’t, it’s okay. The briefer was very careful to say this is intelligence information. He did not say it’s the conclusion or the recommendation or the assessment. They didn’t even bother with that. He then had a lot of qualifiers. He said, we believe, we suspect, we, we did say we assess here and there. He never, if you actually looked at it, he never really made the claims, and the reporters in generally … I picked on the New York Times but they did the same thing everybody else did. They’re the best paper we have and I always think, I always think, I always like to hold them to the highest possible standard.

Most of the time, they meet that standard. This is a one off. When you get a crisis like this, it seems to me, not matter what, no matter how much you believe or don’t believe the president, you can call him a liar everyday but when there’s a crisis like this, everybody gloms at any word that’s said and just immediately rush into print, put in the headlines. It’s too bad because it leads to a lot of sort of vague reporting and inaccurate reporting. The paper’s hard mode is that … They even went to the point they suspected that there could be a Syrian sarin depot, sarin processing point at the airfield.

OPCW Training Course (Source: UN)

Well let me tell you something about the real stuff, the military stuff, which of course the United Nations knows more about. If you remember after the incident in 2013, the alleged sarin attack by Syria, a group called the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, it’s a UN group, they’re responsible for monitoring something called the Chemical Weapons Convention. They took out, oh I think 14 months they spent taking out all of the chemical weapons known to be in Syria’s arsenal, including all of the gases and chemicals that when melded together make sarin and nobody knows more about the sarin that’s in the Syrian arsenal than that group, the prohibition group, the OPCW.

They know whether, there’s a big difference between military grade sarin, which had additives in it for toxicity, lethality, to make it easier to handle and what we call kitchen sarin. We know that al-Nusra for example, there’s been intelligence reporting, I’ve written about it. I mean I actually have the reports. There’s been intelligence reporting since earlier, early in ’03, June of ’03, June of ’13 rather, and we know that it goes back even further with al Qaeda that there’s been a great interest in chemical weapons including nerve gas, by the jihadists.

AARON MATÉ: My last question. This attack on the Syrian air base and what Trump is doing right now in Syria, do you think Trump is escalating military conflict inside Syria and toward Assad and Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Doesn’t matter what I think. Only matters what I know. I don’t watch cable television anymore because reporters and politicians go on and they begin every time they have a panel, they ask the panel a question, in the nightly, those shows and the first two words everybody says is “I think.” I don’t care what somebody thinks about politics. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know. I don’t think many of us do. I think probably Trump doesn’t either. So there we are.

AARON MATÉ: We’ll leave it there. I want to thank Seymour Hersh, legendary investigative journalist. His latest piece for [Die Welt] is “Trump’s Red Line.” Thank you Sy.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Tell your boss hello.

AARON MATÉ: Will do. And thank you for joining us on The Real News.

***

Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh born April 8, 1937, is an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, DC. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. His work first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military’s mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention. Hersh received the 2004 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting given annually by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. This was his fifth George Polk Award, the first one being a Special Award given to him in 1969.

After the U.S. had shot down a Syrian government plane on June 19th, which was bombing jihadists whom the U.S. government backs in order to overthrow the Syrian government, Russia announced:

“In areas where Russian aviation is conducting combat missions in the Syrian skies, any flying objects, including jets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the international coalition discovered west of the Euphrates River, will be followed by Russian air and ground defenses as air targets” — meaning ordered out, or else immediately shot down.

That would place the U.S. and Russia in a traditional war against each other, over Syrian territory (Russia to protect Syria’s government, U.S. to replace it by a Saudi-allied jihadist one). The loser in that war, over the battlefields in Syria, would then have only one way to prevent defeat, which is a blitz nuclear attack against the other’s homeland, World War III between Russia and U.S., which would be ‘won’ by whichever of the two sides suffered the less damage (irrespective of whether the entire planet and ultimately all life will then have actually been destroyed by the exchange). The first side to attack would knock out many of the other side’s retaliatory silo-based ICBMs and thus probably be the ‘winner’, though that’s not certain (since most nukes aren’t silo-based).

Russia’s announcement is basically saying that direct war between Russia and the U.S. will result if the U.S. persists in its effort to conquer Syria, but the Washington Post has said that it’s really only a ‘bluff’, and CNBC has said that it’s only ‘bluster’, and Trump is now splitting hairs over whether he goes with that view (the neoconservative view) to continue the war against Assad, or whether Trump instead will abandon the neoconservative effort and withdraw American forces from Syria once ISIS there is defeated.

Whereas Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has served as Trump’s mouthpiece to allege that the U.S. will not conquer and has no intention to conquer Syria, Trump’s press-spokesman and also his U.N. Ambassador have threatened that the U.S. will again directly attack Assad’s forces if and when it wants to do so. 

Both President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Prime Minister Theresa May of UK, have already gone on record as supporting the neoconservative position, that the U.S. and its allies should dictate to the sovereign government of Syria, and that Syria’s government should obey. Macron himself has even warned that “the use of chemical weapons will be met with a response, and even if France acts alone.” 

The summit meeting of the heads of state of the G20 countries will take place in Hamburg on 7 and 8 July 2017. Included there will be not only the U.S.-allied leaders — especially Macron, May, and Saudi Arabia’s King and Crown Prince — but also Putin, and also China’s Xi Jinping. There is some press-speculation that Trump wants to negotiate a deal there for Russia to abandon its alliance with Syria, and also its alliance with Iran. President Obama had tried to do that, but Putin declined the proposal. Perhaps the Western alliance is making these soundings of moving forward despite the Russian warning, so as to increase the pressure on Putin to cave, to crack him. In any event, the jihadists (agents of the Sauds) in Syria know that if they again set up a chemical attack so as to blame it on Assad, the U.S. and its allies have already committed themselves to go to war to overthrow Syria’s government (for ‘humanitarian reasons’). Any jihadist group there could thus pull the trigger even prior to the G20 Summit.

Perhaps a jihadist will indeed pull the trigger, but would the U.S. then serve as the gun that some of Trump’s federal employees have promised the U.S. will be in such an instance? In a game of chicken, each side threatens, and maybe also deceives, so that its opponent will believe the worst; but the individual who pulls the trigger might turn out to be an obscure person about whom the general public knows nothing. It happened in WW I, and there is no reason why it couldn’t happen again. Furthermore (as that linked-to source also well documents), underestimating the seriousness of a head-of-state’s commitments, can produce global catastrophe.

A huge difference exists between knowing what a document says and understanding what it says means, as is demonstrated by the vast amount of exegetical works in existence. And the kinds of techniques used by exegetes is as varied as the creative abilities of the human mind. Among these techniques is a relatively recent innovation called the word cloud. It consists of a list of key words found in a document and is often displayed in graphical form. This approach is useful when describing a document by its “key” words. A simple variation on this procedure is often more revealing.

For instance, consider the Constitution of the United States. Search it for words which express moral or intellectual values. The findings are highly revealing.

The words true/truth, honest/honesty, fair/fairness are nowhere to be found, and the words just and justice occur only once each, once in the Preamble and once in the requirement that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. Although one reason the nation was founded is to “establish Justice,” nowhere does the Constitution require the judiciary to issue just opinions. As a result, the federal courts have a history of issuing patently unjust decisions, some so blatantly unjust that they are paradigms of judicial injustice. Lists of such opinions are easily found. Search for “worst decisions of the Supreme Court.”

A more interesting passage, however, is the First Amendment which states that “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech or of the press,” which means, of course, that the press can be as dishonest and unfair and untruthful as any reprobate. What’s worse, if anyone tries to require that the press be honest and fair and truthful, that requirement would be rendered unconstitutional. The faults of the American press, established or alternative, cannot be addressed. The Constitution insures the existence of a dishonest America, and dishonest it has always been.

What does the absence of moral and intellectual values tell us about the people who drafted the Constitution? Well, it tells us that they had no concerns for the state of the human condition in America at the time or its improvement. Apparently they were willing to condone the hardships, slavery, and killing (especially of natives) that was prevalent at the time. Making life better was something the Founding Fathers were not interested in. All they made was another eighteenth century England without its king. America was a harsh place. It still is! The culture, if it can be called that, embodied no moral or intellectual values. It embodies none today!

William Marbury (Source: Wikipedia)

In 1803, William Marbury, who had been appointed Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia but whose commission had not been delivered petitioned the Supreme Court to order its delivery. The Court found that the government’s refusal to deliver the commission was illegal and that Marbury was entitled to it but did not order its delivery. Instead it worked some legal hocus pocus in order to claim that it lacked the power to do so. To ordinary people, justice is an outcome. A person should receive what he is due. Marbury did not receive what the Court said he was due. The Court issued an unjust opinion. In America, justice is never an outcome; it is always a legal procedure; it is always legal hocus pocus.

You think not? Consider this:

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled its oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The spill destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of people. In Exxon v. Baker, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages. Exxon appealed, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the trial court to reduce the punitive damages. On December 6, 2002, they were reduced to $4 billion, Exxon appealed again and again as rulings were issued. After approximately 20 years of legal hocus pocus about decades old maritime law, the Supreme Court reduced the punitive damages to about $500 million, a mere sliver of the original 5 billion award.

People with legalistic mindsets can perhaps find a compelling justification for the Court’s opinion, but no one can justify the hardship the courts imposed on the plaintiffs during the case’s litigation. While awaiting their awards, many plaintiffs died and all suffered. No jurist has ever accepted any responsibility for this hardship. The welfare of the plaintiffs in this case was of no concern to the jurists involved. Just as the framers of the Constitution were not interested in the well being of the Americans about to be governed by the United States of America, the judiciary has no concern for the welfare of plaintiffs. The legal hocus pocus is its only concern. In America, what happens to people is of no concern to those who populate its institutions. The absence of moral and intellectual values in the Constitution is what makes this lack of concern possible.

The Sixth Amendment gives criminal defendants the right to speedy trials which is often expressed by saying justice delayed is justice denied. Unfortunately Exxon v. Baker is not a criminal proceeding. The fair Constitution gives criminals rights that injured plaintiffs don’t enjoy. In this litigation, the plaintiffs who died did not receive their due and those that lived through the litigation received only a pittance. The judiciary’s fixation on the law trumped any concern for the sufferings of the people involved. Instead of the outcome the plaintiffs sought, the court produced a 20 year long procedure. Does the Preamble say establish justice or establish procedures? The American courts are judicial travesties. What people understand as justice does not exist in America.

This American fixation on the law is often expressed by saying that America is a nation of laws. Unfortunately that notion is often used to justify extreme evil. For instance, slavery is evil and the Supreme Court justified it in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856). Laws can be and often are immoral! A nation of immoral laws is immoral too. Law does not make right. To conclude, what it does is a classical non sequitur. Much that is legal is absolutely wrong.

Tom Price (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Tom Price, as a Congressman, invested $90,000 in six pharmaceutical companies shortly before leading a legislative effort that benefited those specific companies. Perfectly legal, he claimed. Perhaps! Moral? Absolutely not! American corporations when accused of wrongdoing routinely plead that all laws and regulations were properly followed. Being legal does not make a wrong right and never will.

American politicians wallow in corruption and no one seems to care. No one ever asks how Congressmen become rich on modest Congressional pay. Where are the investigative journalists? Well, not on “60 Minutes” or CNN. Unfortunately, corrupting the Congress was made into a Constitutional Right by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Life for most people is a hardship that needs to be ameliorated. If improving the human condition is not a goal of a culture, the culture is fraudulent. The words ‘culture’ and ‘cultivate’ are used to express the same concept. These words denote the medium for growing, nurturing the attributes and activities that make human beings superior to beasts. The words differ only as grammatical units. If a culture does not promote and cultivate the moral and intellectual achievements of its people, it is not a culture at all.

Constitutional Rights to engage in immoral activity are standard American principles. Vendors are allowed to lie to consumers. Legally, the lying is called puffery. Legislators can lie to their constituents. It’s called fauxmissing! Clerics lie to their congregations. It’s called gantreeing. What’s worse, professors lie to their students.

Oh no, you say.

Oh yes!

Just ask yourselves what the American colleges and universities teach their students. How would one find out? Well, the proof is in the pudding!

The Congress is comprised of people all or most of whom have one or more degrees from American institutions of higher learning. Were they taught to be honest, truthful, just, kind, and compassionate? If so, why aren’t they? So called “educated Americans” are the pudding. This pudding lacks any proof that the colleges and universities cultivate truth, honesty, fairness, compassion, sympathy, or any other moral or intellectual values. The proof of what these institutions teach is manifested by how the educated act. Their actions show that they have only been taught the sanitized conventional American myths, not the raw and ugly reality.

Despite what is commonly believed, the Puritans were not nice people seeking religious freedom. The American Dream for most people has been an absolute disappointment. The Shining City on a Hill in reality is something more like a slum in a swamp. America did not save the world from fascism in World War II. The free market can not solve social problems. These conventional myths are all false.

American history is a lie taught by American historians in every college in America. But the bigger lie is the myth that American colleges and universities are swarming hives of liberalism. Although many colleges and universities were openly founded in America to promote religious ideologies and vocational training, not one was openly founded to promote enlightenment principles. None overtly promotes those principles today. As a result, Americans lack an intelligentsia. The academic community’s voice is politically silent. It has no influence on policy.

The much praised and highly venerated American Constitution is an often ambiguous and deeply flawed document. Its lack of moral and intellectual values makes it a license for wrongdoing by those with base motives. The absence of standards makes the quality of policies impossible to measure thereby making outcomes irrelevant, so facts never matter. Cruelty is just as acceptable as kindness.

The reality is that America has no culture and is not even a society. It is a nociety! Americans do not live together, they live side by side. Caring about the welfare of your neighbor is impossible if you don’t know him.

Churchill is reputed to have said,

“Americans can be relied upon to do the right thing after they’ve exhausted all alternatives.”

More likely, the truth is that they will do the wrong thing until they’ve exhausted all alternatives. Of course, this makes reforming America very difficult.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Featured image: US Constitution (Photo from The White House)

The hype and unsubstantiated hope behind the self-driving car movement continues unabated, distracting from addressing necessities of old “mobilities” such as inadequate public transit and upgrading highway and rail infrastructure.

At a conference on Driverless Cars sponsored by the George Washington University Law School earlier this month, the legal landscape of unresolved problems and unasked questions were deliberated for a full day:

What are the legal requirements that should be applied to the testing phase, the deployment phase, liability and insurance, impacts on displaced workers, cyber-security, privacy, and antitrust? A takeaway from this gathering was the number of mind-numbing unresolved systems awaiting this new, untested technology.

First, a little background – car ownership and car sales are expected to flatten or decline due to ride-sharing and a new generation of consumers that is less inclined to purchase motor vehicles. How is the industry to react? By adding high-priced value to motor vehicles, already described as computers on wheels. Voilà, the race for the driverless car! The mass media took the bait and over-reported each company’s sensationalized press releases, announcing breakthroughs without disclosing the underlying data. The arrogance of the algorithms, among many other variables, bypassed simple daily realties, such as bustling traffic in cities like New York.

In the shadows were the daily tribulations of Americans just trying to get to and from work, especially the poor and those who don’t own a vehicle.

Don’t expect driverless cars to be taking over anytime in the next few decades. Autonomous vehicles do not exist in the autonomous contexts of daily life. Start with how to fit these futuristic vehicles in a sea of over two hundred fifty million driven vehicles in the US. It’s easy to score driverless vehicles in well-orchestrated courses with minimum traffic over low mileage. Apply that controlled scenario to the scale and complexity of  actual roads with actual drivers in actual conditions and the difficulties multiply enormously.

The industry–from Silicon Valley to Detroit—argues safety. Robotic systems do not get drunk, fall asleep at the wheel or develop poor driving skills. But computers fail often; they are often susceptible to hacking—whether by the manufacturers, dealers or deadly actors. Hacking is a driverless car industry’s nightmare and American motorists can see why. They like to remain in control and not have their engine stop, accelerate or be turned in disastrous directions by remote interventions.

Already, Volkswagen and other companies have been caught by law enforcement manipulating software emission controls on a gigantic scale.

Until that distant dream by the technocrats when all vehicles are driverless is realized, there may be less safety because of the mix of autonomous and human-operated vehicles.

On top of all this is the emerging demand to rewrite the rules so that there is less mandatory regulations (to be replaced by mere guidelines), less tort liability, less clear contractual responsibility between the many inputting companies, less openness for the data, far less privacy protections, and little attention to the awesome public investment needed for preparing highways and other facilities.

Already, Level Three—an autonomous vehicle needing emergency replacement by the surrogate human driver—is being viewed as unworkable by specialists at MIT and elsewhere. The human driver, lulled and preoccupied, can’t take back control in time.

Modern mass transit has shown how drivers who choose to become passengers can relax and not have to drive. Why won’t we concentrate on what can be improved and expanded to get safer, efficient, less polluting mobility?

Over forty years ago Northwestern University transportation specialists developed a plan for “personalized public transit,” meaning, for example, connecting your car to a monorail system for daily commutes!

The driverless car is bursting forth without a legal, ethical and priorities framework. Already asking for public subsidies, companies can drain much-needed funds for available mass transit services and the industry’s own vehicle safety upgrades in favor of a technological will-o’-the-wisp.

For a clear, detailed look at the risks posed by driverless cars, read the new report, Self-Driving Vehicles: The Threat to Consumers, by Harvey Rosenfield of Consumer Watchdog.

Featured image: Google’s driverless car (Photo from Zipcar)

Featured image: An area allegedly hit by the “sarin gas” attack in Khan Sheikhoun (Photo from Zaman al-Wasl)

Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the man who exposed the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the US military’s abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004, is probably the most influential journalist of the modern era, with the possible exception of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the pair who exposed Watergate.

For decades, Hersh has drawn on his extensive contacts within the US security establishment to bring us the story behind the official story, to disclose facts that have often proved deeply discomfiting to those in power and exploded the self-serving, fairy-tale narratives the public were expected to passively accept as news. His stature among journalists was such that, in a sea of corporate media misinformation, he enjoyed a small island of freedom at the elite, but influential, outlet of the New Yorker.

Paradoxically, over the past decade, as social media has created a more democratic platform for information dissemination, the corporate media has grown ever more fearful of a truly independent figure like Hersh. The potential reach of his stories could now be enormously magnified by social media. As a result, he has been increasingly marginalised and his work denigrated. By denying him the credibility of a “respectable” mainstream platform, he can be dismissed for the first time in his career as a crank and charlatan. A purveyor of fake news.

Nonetheless, despite struggling to find an outlet for his recent work, he has continued to scrutinise western foreign policy, this time in relation to Syria. The official western narrative has painted a picture of a psychotic Syrian president, Bashar Assad, who is assumed to be so irrational and self-destructive he intermittently uses chemical weapons against his own people. He does so, not only for no obvious purpose but at moments when such attacks are likely to do his regime untold damage. Notably, two sarin gas attacks have supposedly occurred when Assad was making strong diplomatic or military headway, and when the Islamic extremists of Al-Qaeda and ISIS – his chief opponents – were on the back foot and in desperate need of outside intervention.

Dangerous monsters

Seymour Hersh (Photo from Truth And Action)

Hersh’s investigations have not only undermined evidence-free claims being promoted in the west to destabilise Assad’s government but threatened a wider US policy seeking to “remake the Middle East”. His work has challenged a political and corporate media consensus that portrays Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Assad’s main ally against the extremist Islamic forces fighting in Syria, as another dangerous monster the West needs to bring into line.

For all these reasons, Hersh has found himself increasingly friendless. The New Yorker refused to publish his Syria investigations. Instead, he had to cross the Atlantic to find a home at the prestigious but far less prominent London Review of Books.

Back in 2013 his contacts within the security and intelligence establishments revealed that the assumption Assad had ordered the use of sarin gas in Ghouta, outside Damascus, failed to stand up to scrutiny. Even Barack Obama’s national intelligence director, James Clapper, was forced to admit privately that Assad’s guilt was “not a slam dunk”, even as the media widely portrayed it as precisely that. Hersh’s work helped stymie efforts at the time to promote a western military attack to bring down the Syrian government.

His latest investigation questions whether Assad was responsible for another alleged gas attack – this one in April, at Khan Sheikhoun. Again a consensual western narrative was quickly constructed after social media showed dozens of Syrians dead, apparently following a bomb dropped by Syrian aircraft. For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump received wall-to-wall praise for launching a military strike on Syria in response, even though, as Hersh documents, he had no evidence on which to base such an attack, one that gravely violated international law.

Hersh’s new investigation was paid for by the London Review of Books, which declined to publish it. This is almost disturbing as the events in question.

What is emerging is a media blackout so strong that even the London Review of Books is running scared. Instead, Hersh’s story appeared yesterday in a German publication, Welt am Sonntag. Welt is an award-winning newspaper, no less serious than the New Yorker or the LRB. But significantly Hersh is being forced to publish ever further from the centres of power whose misinformation his investigations are challenging.

Imagine how effective Woodward and Bernstein would have been in bringing down Richard Nixon had they been able to publish their Watergate investigations only in the French media. That is the situation we have reached now with Hersh’s efforts to scrutinise the west’s self-serving claims about Syria.

US-Russian cooperation

As for the substance of Hersh’s investigation, he finds that Trump launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in April “despite having been warned by the US intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.”

In fact, Hersh reveals that, contrary to the popular narrative, the Syrian strike on a jihadist meeting place in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 was closely coordinated beforehand between Russian and US intelligence agencies. The US were well apprised of what would happen and tracked the events.

Hersh’s sources in the intelligence establishment point out that these close contacts occurred for two reasons. First, there is a process known as “deconfliction”, designed to avoid collisions or accidental encounters between the US, Syrian and Russian militaries, especially in the case of their supersonic jets. The Russians therefore supplied US intelligence with precise details of that day’s attack beforehand. But in this case, the close ties also occurred because the Russians wanted to warn the US to keep away a CIA asset, who had penetrated the jihadist group, from that day’s meeting.

“This was not a chemical weapons strike,” a senior adviser to the US intelligence community told Hersh. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon … would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear.”

According to US intelligence, Hersh reports, the Syrian air force was able to target the site using a large, conventional bomb supplied by the Russians. But if Assad did not use a chemical warhead, why did many people apparently die at Khan Sheikhoun from inhalation of toxic gas?

The US intelligence community, says Hersh, believes the bomb triggered secondary explosions in a storage depot in the building’s basement that included propane gas, fertilisers, insecticides as well as “rockets, weapons and ammunition, … [and] chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial”. These explosions created a toxic cloud that was trapped close to the ground by the dense early morning air.

Medecins Sans Frontieres found patients it treated “smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” Sarin is odourless.

Hersh concludes that the

“evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.”

Political suicide

Hersh’s main intelligence source makes an important contextual point you won’t hear anywhere in the corporate media:

“What doesn’t occur to most Americans is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar [Assad], the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?”

When US national security officials planning Trump’s “retaliation” asked the CIA what they knew of events in Khan Sheikhoun, according to Hersh’s source, the CIA told them

“there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian bombers had taken off] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.”

The source continues:

“No one knew the provenance of the photographs [of the attack’s victims]. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a [toxic] cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.”

Trump, under political pressure and highly emotional by nature, ignored the evidence. Hersh’s source says:

“The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity. It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit’.”

Although Republicans, Democrats and the entire media rallied to Trump’s side for the first time, those speaking to Hersh have apparently done so out of fear of what may happen next time.

The danger with Trump’s “retaliatory” strike, based on zero evidence of a chemical weapons attack, is that it could have killed Russian soldiers and dragged Putin into a highly dangerous confrontation with the US. Also, the intelligence community fears that the media have promoted a false narrative that suggests not only that a sarin attack took place, but paints Russia as a co-conspirator and implies that a UN team did not in fact oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile back in 2013-14. That would allow Assad’s opponents to claim in the future, at a convenient time, yet another unsubstantiated sarin gas attack by the Syrian government.

Hersh concludes with words from his source that should strike fear into us all:

“The issue is, what if there’s another false-flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys [Islamist groups] are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.”

Four questions

Hersh’s investigation contributes to a more complex and confusing picture of events in Khan Sheikhoun. In the absence of an independent investigation, there is still no decisive physical evidence to confirm what happened. That makes context and probability important factors for observers to weigh.

So let us set aside for a moment the specifics of what happened on April 4 and concentrate instead on what Hersh’s critics must concede if they are to argue that Assad used sarin gas against the people of Khan Sheikhoun.

1. That Assad is so crazed and self-destructive – or at the very least so totally incapable of controlling his senior commanders, who must themselves be crazed and self-destructive – that he has on several occasions ordered the use of chemical weapons against civilians. And he has chosen to do it at the worst possible moments for his own and his regime’s survival, and when such attacks were entirely unnecessary.

2. That Putin is equally deranged and so willing to risk an end-of-times conflagration with the US that he has on more than one occasion either sanctioned or turned a blind eye to the use of sarin by Assad’s regime. And he has done nothing to penalise Assad afterwards, when things went wrong.

3. That Hersh has decided to jettison all the investigatory skills he has amassed over many decades as a journalist to accept at face value any unsubstantiated rumours his long-established contacts in the security services have thrown his way. And he has done so without regard to the damage that will do to his reputation and his journalistic legacy.

4. That a significant number of US intelligence officials, those Hersh has known and worked with over a long period of time, have decided recently to spin an elaborate web of lies no one wants to print, either in the hope of damaging Hersh in some collective act of revenge against him, or in the hope of permanently discrediting their own intelligence services.

Hersh’s critics do not simply have to believe one of these four points. They must maintain the absolute veracity of all four of them.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

First published in June 2014

The truth is that no government will allow a protest to go on endlessly to the extent that it begins to destabilise the country and economy. — Wei Ling Chua, Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence, 100.

Last Sunday, I was with an American gentleman in downtown Chengdu, Sichuan, and during our conversation he mentioned that his Chinese wife had never heard of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I proposed that it is because it never happened, that it is a western media campaign of disinformation, and why should the Chinese media permit the dissemination of lies. In fact, hearing about any massacre at Tiananmen Square will surprise the vast majority of Chinese people, including those who live near Beijing and who participated in the demonstrations.

What really happened at Tiananmen Square? Australian-based writer Wei Ling Chua challenges the western mass media and western government narrative in his well researched and analyzed book, Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence (Amazon, 2014). Reading it is sure to give pause to anyone who swallowed the western mass media disinformation.

Chua reveals the western mass media disinformation and compellingly offers a narrative that aligns with the facts.

• Tiananmen Square protests were not about democracy; they were protests of poor economic conditions.
• There was no massacre at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.
• The protestors were not unarmed.
• It was the violent protesters that caused the mayhem and not the soldiers.
• Western journalists provided accounts replete with words, but incriminating photographic and video evidence is lacking;
  E.g., Chua relates how the BBC manufactured the perception of a “Massacre” in 1989 through the power of words – without any footage of a dead person.
• Viciousness of some student leaders. Said Chai Ling, one such “leader”: “Actually our wish is to see blood; that is to frustrate our government to the extreme that they will eventually butcher their citizens. I believe that only through a river of blood in the Square, will the nation then open their eyes and unite, but how could we tell our fellow students our intention?” (84)
• “[F]orces in America, Taiwan and Hong Kong (Hong Kong was still under the British control at the time) actively instigat[ed] the situation.” (89)
• There was CIA involvement in Tiananmen Square. (89-90)

Chua begins his book by putting China into a historical and cultural perspective, such as being “…the first human civilisation to overcome tribalism and become a united people in 221 BC; while most European countries could only achieve that in the last 150 to 500 years.” (i) He notes the unity despite that the “so-called ‘Han Chinese’ is actually a mixture of a dozen or more ethnic groups with their own distinctive languages, traditions and cultures, and yet happily regard themselves as ‘Han’.” (i)

He challenges the media portrayal of a brutal Chinese regime: “there are good reasons why the Communist Government in China has consistently led the world in citizen satisfaction in a number of opinion surveys, including the annual American-based PEW survey, while countries under Western democracies are persistently receiving very low ratings in citizen satisfaction in the same survey. (ii-iii)

Three years back on the outskirts of Wujiang, a Canadian woman complained to me about Chinese dictatorship. I asked her if a nugatory vote under delimiting circumstances every few years in Canada constituted a democracy. Nowadays, I might buttress the lack of “democracy” in Canada by pointing to a majority government in place despite having received less than 50% of the votes, and having achieved this electoral success abetted by a robocall scandal that diverted unfriendly voters to the wrong voting centers. Chua writes, “The surprise is that the Communist Party of China (CCP or CPC) has successfully practised such a higher form of democracy and is in the process of perfecting the political process through the internal design of the party system and public administration.” (iii)

From 15 April to 4 June, 1989 protests took place in the venerable Tiananmen Square which fronts the Forbidden City of the Ming Dynasty. Wikipedia, in another example of the bias and lack of fastidiousness plaguing the web encyclopedia, disinforms of “a pro-democracy movement which ended on 4 June 1989 with the declaration of martial law in Beijing by the government and the shooting of several hundred or possibly thousands of civilians by soldiers.” Chua argues the protests were similar to the Occupy protests in America against classism, based on the unequal wealth allocations between the 99%-ers and the 1%-ers. (2)

As he does throughout the book, Chua uses mass media sources to undermine the mass media’s own disinformation. For instance, he quotes Financial Postwriter James Kynge who cites Ma Jian, a Chinese writer present at the demonstrations:

The truth is that the students in the square had only the haziest understanding of western-style democracy. To the extent that the protests were directed at abuses of an existing system by an emerging elite, they were motivated more by outrage at the betrayal of socialist ideals than by aspirations for a new system. (10)

Chua contends that China’s economic success has demonstrated that it selected the right path “of a strong and competent political leadership, adherence to the principle of socialism with a mix economy which includes some elements of free market and the continuing State control of strategic industries and resources.” (3)

WikiLeaks released cables that there was no blood-spilling inside Tiananmen Square. A leaked US government document affirmed the Chinese contention that no one was killed at Tiananmen Square in 1989. (12)

BBC journalist, James Miles wrote a confession 20 years later: “There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre.” (13)

Writes Chua, “years before the above 2011 WikiLeaks-leaked US government document that confirmed the Chinese side of the story, there was ongoing emerging evidence that contradicted the reports in the Western media. Such evidence included declassified Western government documents, confessions made by individual protesters and journalists, eye witness accounts and the work of some historians.” (14-15)

On 4 June 2009, Richard Roth, a CBS News correspondent in Beijing in 1989, wrote an article titled “There Was No ‘Tiananmen Square Massacre.’” (15)

While many media types have backed down from the story of a Tiananmen Square massacre, they instead point to a massacre outside the square. When someone propounds one story and then recants and offers another version, what is the verisimilitude of the second version?

Chua does not cover up that killings occurred outside Tiananmen Square, but he asks who was being killed and by who. Chua debunks the media depiction of unarmed student protestors and staunchly insists that the PRC army was extremely restrained and acted in self-defense. Chua cites Washington Post’s first Beijing bureau chief Jay Mathews from the Columbia Journalism Review(September/October 1998) titled “The Myth of Tiananmen And the Price of a Passive Press”:

some of the soldiers were forced into firing for self-defence or to protect the lives of their fellow soldiers. According to the declassified US government’s Document 15: Cable, From: US Embassy Beijing, To: Department of State, Washington DC, SITREP No. 33: June 4 Afternoon and … (June 4, 1989) (22)

As an example of the pacifism of the PRC army, Chua writes of “the iconic stand-alone tankman who managed to stop the entire column of tanks without being beaten up or killed by authorities.” (39) However, who the tankman is and what happened to him are matters of conjecture to this day.

Chua examines corporate media photos and video evidence and analyzes for evidence of what transpired and reaches the conclusion opposite that of the corporate media and US government. Analyzing a selection of photos in The Atlantic, Chua contends, “virtually all the videos and photo images of the People’s Liberation soldiers produced by the Western media show them either unarmed, or demonstrating a very high level of restraint, discipline, patience and a non-violent attitude towards protesters.” (46)

Chua concludes, “The Atlantic shows that it was the protesters who acted violently against the law enforcers – the People’s Liberation Army instead of the other way round.” (46) Chua’s conclusion might be valid, but I wonder how he deduces this. It seems a chicken and egg situation. It does, however, cast the western media assessment into ridicule.

Five photos according to Chua show “that it was the so-called ‘peaceful’ and ‘unarmed’ protesters being violent against the soldiers instead of the other way round.” (50) I wonder how one can be so sure from a snapshot. Of course one can deduce that someone is striking a person in a photo, but whether that person is striking in anger, self-defense, vengeance, or whatever reason is difficult to state with conviction, and the possibility of an alternative explanation must be acknowledged.

Chua finds that the declaration of martial law was legitimate. Maybe so, but Chua also seems to acknowledge that the protestors had a legitimate beef: economic difficulties. In general, I share a conviction with Mark Twain who said: “I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.”¹ I do, however, realize that revolutions can be instigated and steered by malevolent forces, such as the spate of color revolutions seen in the 21st century.

Did the protestors have any other avenue to express their grievances? Chua points out that Chinese authorities were open to dialogue with the protestors — as early as April 1989. (94) The protestors refused and continued to occupy Tiananmen Square. It seems clear that after a few months of one group monopolizing public space to express dissent with economic conditions – not for democracy – that someone or something had to give.

There have been patches of honesty in corporate media. A Japan Times article wrote of the disinformation: “This effort is impressive, especially considering the overwhelming evidence that there was no Tiananmen Square massacre.” (57-58)

Chua decries the double standard in western reporting, citing the sympathetic tone struck by an Independent headline to a soldier’s massacre of Afghanis: “Soldier accused of massacre pushed to limit by Afghan war.”

“Soldiers killed, tanks lit afire belie the western media claim of unarmed protestors. Pointedly some among the protestors had weapons, as was clear from images in western media.” Chua asks, “Aren’t all the images produced by the Western media silent evidence of reversed roles: protester mayhem and soldier restraint?” (67)

Other accounts pin blame on student sources for disinformation. Robert Marquand wrote for the Christian Science Monitor:

No ‘rivers of blood’ flowed on the square. No rows of students were mowed down by a sudden rush of troops, as reported in European, Hong Kong, and the US publications in the days, months and years that followed… (68)

However, Marquand contends that there was a massacre outside Tiananmen Square.

Nine years later, Jay Mathews, the Washington Post’s first Beijing Bureau chief, wrote a defense of his initial erroneous reporting:

It is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression. Rereading my own stories published after Tiananmen, I found several references to the ‘Tiananmen massacre.’ At the time, I considered this space-saving shorthand. I assumed the reader would know that I meant the massacre that occurred in Beijing after the Tiananmen demonstrations. But my fuzziness helped keep the falsehood alive. (71)

Chua is sympathetic to Chinese government censorship: “Given the amount of relentless agenda-based disinformation against the Chinese government, it is not hard to understand why China needs to counter such disinformation with censorship to protect its own society from undue influence by the ill-intended and well-funded Western propaganda machine.” (76)

While I prefer to err on the side of freedom of expression; I do not fence-sit when it comes to the insidiousness of disinformation. I shared the unanimous declaration of participants at the Halifax International Symposium on Media and Disinformation that disinformation should constitute a crime against humanity.²

Then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping gave a statement that Chua avers “is an accurate reflection of the situation on the ground, and the attitude of the Chinese government and soldiers towards the protesters”:

In the course of quelling this rebellion, many of our comrades were injured or even sacrificed their lives. Their weapons were also taken from them. Why was this? It also was because bad people mingled with the good, which made it difficult to take the drastic measures we should take.

Handling this matter amounted to a very severe political test for our army, and what happened shows that our PLA passed muster. If we had used tanks to roll across [bodies?], it would have created a confusion of fact and fiction across the country. (78)

According to Chua, “The Chinese media and government are in fact far more honest and accurate with their description of events, and it is therefore important for us to read and listen to the Chinese side of the story instead of relying exclusively on the Western media.” (92) That seems an eminently sensible, circumspect, and open-minded position to take – and since Chua is bilingual, he is in good standing to understand and analyze the language surrounding the event at Tiananmen Square.

Just how malevolent were Chinese government intentions to the students? Chua recounts how the Chinese government sent 80 public buses to the Square so hunger strikers would not get wet on a rainy day and that workers were sent to clean the Square for the sake of the protesters’ hygiene. (98)

The students and protestors were not in solidarity on tactics. Chua asks, “in 1989, many protesters who disagreed with the radical element amongst the students left the Square, but the efforts of the radical few with foreign backing had fuelled the situation, leading to the eventual crackdown. So, who should be accountable for the inevitable? Foreign-backed radicalism or the Communist Party?” (106)

He makes a comparison, noting that Chinese authorities “began to arrest and prosecute those who were involved in looting, burning, beating and killing soldiers, which is the natural course of action to be taken by any government including the British government in the aftermath of the 2011 England unrest.” (106-107)

Writer Gregory Clark noted the behaviour of western journalists in his “Pack Journalism can be Lethal”:

Instead of checking facts, the media prefer to follow what others are saying. And what others are saying is often inspired by establishment hardliners seeking to impose their agendas with the help of bogus news agencies, subsidized research outfits and hired scribblers. Beijing is a frequent victim. One example is the pack journalistic myth of a Tiananmen Square massacre of students in 1989. All one needs to do to get the true story is insert “Tiananmen” into Google and read the reports at the time from none other than the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. You will discover that the so-called massacre was in fact a mini civil war as irate Beijing citizens sought to stop initially unarmed soldiers sent to remove students who had been demonstrating freely in the square for weeks. When the soldiers finally reached the square there was no massacre. There were in fact almost no students. (108)

The author looks deeper for what underlies the protests at Tiananmen Square in the heady days of 1989: “What happened in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square incident was mainly a problem driven by the first stage of economic reform where the cost of living was driven up by resource scarcity.”

Why was China wracked by economic difficulties? History has relevance. Chua points to the middle 19th century when China, the world’s wealthiest nation with a self-sufficient economy, was attacked by Britain in the First Opium War. China “was bullied, exploited, invaded and semi-colonised by dozens of imperial powers at the time with 22 unequal treaties.” (115)

The background of China’s poverty — the 343 unequal treaties imposed upon China before 1949, and the period of trade and technological restrictions imposed by the West against communist China – were somehow totally ignored as a factor for poverty in China. It is exactly like criticising Cuba, Iran and North Korea’s human rights records using the issue of poverty without any reference to the history of Western lootings and economic sanctions.

China is still under siege by western imperialistic ambitions.³ For the West, China is a source for corporate exploitation. Chua relates, “Apple is an iconic US corporation that only allowed their Chinese factory to earn $4 per iPhone, while retailing them for $260 each.” (120) However, the Chinese are not stupid, by allowing western corporations to initially exploit the Chinese market, China gains access to the technology and can later develop Chinese versions with much cheaper pricing. Thus, now I see many Chinese with Huawei mobile phones — stylishly appear similar to iPhones.

Many Western countries are now moving towards an age of mass poverty with a series of problems including severe income inequality, slave wages, the rising cost of living, debt, welfare cuts, unemployment, and homelessness. (122) China is heading progressively toward income redistribution, pensions, education, affordable healthcare, spending on infrastructure projects. There is no neoliberal austerity in China, and no imminent danger of it.

At times Chua could be perceived as a bit of an apologist for China. He writes, “One should not overlook another source of dissatisfaction in 1989; that is, by allowing the unproductive state enterprises to close down and be responsible for their own operating costs, many people were forced out of their comfort zone and into self-reliance. This was a necessary step in unleashing individual creativity and energy that enabled China to experience more than three decades of economic miracles since 1978.” (127) It appears as if Chua is saying that SOEs stifle individual creativity. If this were true, then shouldn’t all SOEs be shut down? But why shut down any SOEs? Why not simply turn SOEs over to the workers instead of closing them down? Would the workers not then be able to assert their creativity unfettered by government?

On page 127 he laments, “Managing a country with a population of more than a billion people is never an easy one.” This comes across as a weak excuse. No one ever said governing was easy at any size.

In defense of sending in troops to end the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Chua argues,

A crackdown on a radicalised protest movement may sometimes be the most humane thing a government can do to stop a country from sliding into anarchy. It is a necessary step to restore order, enhance political stability so as to continue reform for the common good of the entire society. It is too easy to demonise a good government using images of tanks and soldiers, and listen to the shallow and simplistic statements made by some radicalised protesters, or some parents of protesters who lost their lives during the unrest. (130)

Chua buttresses this by noting — among other things — over 600 million Chinese lifted out of poverty between 1981 and 2004, China’s becoming the world’s engine for economic growth, and poll results that indicate that the Chinese government enjoys over 80% public approval year-after-year in contrast to around 30% or below for Western governments. (131-132)

In a world where western imperialism and warring still reigns, Chua emphasizes, “It is important for one to always bear in mind the fact that China managed to achieve all the above without resorting to slavery, colonialism, wars and the exploitation of others.” (133) I would quibble somewhat. The status of many workers is still so bleak that slave conditions can be argued to exist in China.⁴ Then again, China was put into the economic doldrums largely by foreign exploitation, and the dire plight of workers has roots in this malevolent history.

Asks Chua, “What do ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ mean to people who cannot even find jobs, put food on the table, send their children to school, and provide a decent place for their family to rest and learn?” (134)

Chua cites a report by Gallup World titled “Chinese Struggling Less Than Americans to Afford Basics” (12 October 2011) that, in fact, Chinese people may already be better off than Americans. (135)

With such results China poses a grave threat to neoliberal capitalism. It would be easy to discount “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as Orwellian for “capitalism.” However, China is an example of most boats rising. For instance, one commonly comes across homeless people in capitalist-inspired Hong Kong, but I seldom am confronted by homelessness in China.

Writes Chua, “As a socialist country with a communist ideology, the policy makers in China formulated a housing policy to look after the needs of all people. For the rich who can afford, the government allows the market to dictate the house price. However, for those who need help, the government will find ways to look after them.” (138) Contrariwise, Chua writes that helping the homeless has even been criminalized in the US. (185-187)

Most brilliantly, Chua puts the Tiananmen Square protests in a comparative context with protests in the western world, in particular with the recent Occupy protests.

Chua writes that the West controls protests with weaponry, a compliant media, and “brutal force.”

Police brutality, says Chua, is “a commonly used tactic in the West to upset the life of protesters, drain their energy and time, so as to demoralise them and hinder their ability to balance their work life, family life, and their enthusiasm to protest against their government’s corruption, corporate greed, income inequality, unemployment and rising cost of living.” (198)

The evidence of police brutality is ubiquitous. Evidence, says Chua, is readily accessible on the internet. This I can vouch for; I feel completely safe and at ease in the presence of police in China, something I would not say I feel in Canada.⁵

Chua asks:

I often wonder: if so-called “dissidents” across the world (including China), did not receive funding from the US government, and had to work like the average person to earn a living like the protesters in the US, would they still be so active inside their own country to promote hatred against their own government on behalf of the US government? (198) (emphasis in book)

Chua confidently declares ‘the 1989 Tiananmen protesters enjoyed a far higher level of freedom, democracy, and human rights then the 2011 Wall Street protesters in the US.” Among the reasons are:

1. Freedom of protesters

“For almost seven full weeks, including two weeks after martial law was declared protestors were allowed in Tiananmen Square. Whereas, the Occupy Wall Street protesters found themselves victims of police crackdowns and mass arrests early on.”

2. The rule of law

“In 1989, the Tiananmen protesters were allowed to violate martial law for two weeks, and resist the legal authority of the Chinese government to plead for their co-operations to leave the Square over the entire seven weeks of mayhem. However, during the 2011 Occupy protests, it was the US government that abused its laws to arrest, jail, beat, pepper spray, taser and make hell to the lives of the protesters by the creative use of laws.”

3. The barricade strategy

“During the 1989 Tiananmen incident, it was the protesters who set up barricades against the authorities; whilst during the 2011 Occupy protests, it was the US government who set up barricades against protesters. A simply walk across a police line would mean being arrested in the name of the law.”

4. Brutality by authorities

“Despite harassment and hostility from the protesters, there are absolutely no images of any kind that explicitly show the soldiers being violent against protesters. On the contrary, the overwhelming amount of images produced by the Western media actually tell the story of violence against soldiers by the so-called ‘unarmed’ and ‘peaceful’ protesters.”
(212-213)

5. Media freedom

Chua contends that the China State-controlled media was very open in reporting dissent and the details of Chinese leaders dialogues with student representatives. He contrasts this with the antagonism of the US corporate media towards the Occupy movement. (217)

Chua has pulled together the western media threads, the disinformation, the recantations, and the biases in a campaign to demonize China – a fast-rising challenger to the hegemony of western capitalism. It is a must-read book for people wanting a perspective outside the controlled negative western media portrayal. After reading Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence, the second book in the The Art of Media Disinformation is Hurting the World and Humanity series by Chua — I immediately knew I had to read the first book in the series.

Notes

1. In Maxwell Geismar, ed., Mark Twain and the Three Rs: Race, Religion, Revolution and Related Matters (Indianapolis: Bobs-Merrill, 1973), p. 159. [↩]
2. See Kim Petersen, “Disinformation: A Crime against Humanity and a Crime against Peace,” Dissident Voice, 17 February 2005. [↩]
3. See Kim Petersen, “Chine et dragons sinophones,” in Atlas Alternatif (Le Temps des Cerises: 2006), 303-313. [↩]
4. See, e.g., Jonathan Watts, “Modern Slavery in China: Status of Chinese Worker, Guardian, UK, 16 June 2007. [↩]
5. See, e.g., “Vancouver Airport Taser/Tazer Killing of Dziekanski by Cops.” [↩]

Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen. Read other articles by Kim.

A report yesterday by the Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who broke some of the biggest stories of the Vietnam and Iraq wars showed that Trump bombed Syria on April 4th based upon false pretenses.

Specifically, Trump said the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians. But U.S. military and intelligence officials say that they told Trump there was no evidence for that claim … and they say that what really happened is that Syria bombed Islamic terrorists, and that accidentally released chemicals being stored by the terrorists.

So how does Trump respond to the report?

He doubles down on the bull …

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said tonight:

The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.

The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack.

***

If … Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.

After Spicer’s statement, Neocon warmonger – and U.S. representative to the U.N. – Nikki Haley tweeted:

Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.

Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.

— Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) June 27, 2017

Notice that Haley does not say:

Any further attacks CARRIED OUT BY THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT and done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.

Anything bad happens – whether it’s carried out by Assad, or ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or outside forces trying to destabilize Syria – it will be blamed on Assad as a justification for a lot more bombing.

Postscript: This little game has been going on for 68 years. Specifically, the U.S. government has been trying to replace the Syrian government with folks who will be subservient to America since 1949 … 3 years after Syria became an independent nation.

The CIA succeeded in carrying out a coup in Syria 1949.

In 1957, the American president and British prime minister agreed to launch regime change again in Syria using a false flag. (False flags are not only historically documented, but presidents, prime ministers, congressmen, generals, spooks, soldiers and police have ADMITTED to planning and carrying out false flag attacks).

In 1983, 1986, 1991, 2001, 2009 and 2012, American officials again schemed about regime change in Syria.

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov has accused the US-led anti-terrorist coalition of being reluctant to bomb positions of the former Al-Nusra Front in Syria, and has urged them to ditch “double standards” for the sake of an “uncompromising” fight against terrorism.

As the majority of the world’s countries have been gathered at the United Nations negotiating the nuclear weapon ban treaty, the Center for Public Integrity has been releasing installments of a new report about workplace hazards at the US nuclear weapon laboratories. Monday’s installment of the report reveals a “litany of mishaps” across the eight sites that involve workers inhaling radioactive particles, receiving electrical shocks, being burned by acid or in fires, splashed with toxic chemicals, or cut by debris from exploding metal drums. Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the plutonium cores for nuclear warheads are produced, has “violated nuclear industry rules for guarding against a criticality accident three times more often last year” than any of the country’s other 23 nuclear installations combined.

Contractors run Los Alamos and the other nuclear weapon labs. These corporations make between 15–60 million USD a year in pure profit. The work of making nuclear weapons is viewed as “extremely low risk,” financially-speaking—“contractors commit ‘virtually no financial investment,’ contribute only a limited number of top executives, enjoy legal indemnification protections, and have ‘relatively few’ costs that are not completely reimbursed,” explains the report. Violating safety standards and exposing workers or local communities to risk does not seem to hamper these profits at all. Los Alamos’ criticality safety shortcomings have been so persistent that two years ago the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) threatened to fine the lab’s managing contractors more than a half-million dollars. However, “In the end, the NNSA administrator decided to not to impose the fine, exemplifying what critics allege is a climate of impunity for mistakes.”

Midwest City, Okla., Fire Department members use sandbags to stop simulated radioactive liquid waste from a spill from flowing downstream during the 2014 Hazmat Challenge. (Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

Before Los Alamos took over the production of the plutonium component for US nuclear bombs, Rocky Flats near Denver Colorado was the nation’s sole facility for plutonium core manufacturing. This facility, also managed by various contractors, had multiple fires including two major accidents involving plutonium in 1957 and 1969; on-site storage and burial of transuranic materials in leaking drums and unlined trenches contaminating the land and groundwater; radioactive contamination of nearby creeks and reservoirs; plutonium trapped in building ductwork, missing plutonium and so-called infinity rooms deemed too highly radioactive and dangerous to enter; and the incineration of plutonium contaminated waste—which eventually brought the attention of the FBI, leading to a raid.

In 1989, Rocky Flats shuttered its operation, the buildings were taken down, and much radioactivity was borne away from the site, but much remains. The first six feet of level earth were partially “cleaned” of contamination, but below that, any amount of plutonium and other radioactive and toxic materials have been left on-site. The surface of land that comprises the former facility shifts often due to bioturbation, the handy work of burrowing animals. Ecologists have documented the presence of some 22 such species at Rocky Flats. These animals play a significant role in the redistribution and further dispersal of radioactive contaminants that remain in the ground. Despite all of this, in 2017 the re-named Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge is slated to open, complete with a visitors center, picnic areas and 20 miles of hiking, biking, and riding trails.

These cases clearly demonstrate that while a handful of corporations make profits from building the bomb, their workers and the surrounding public suffer immediate, direct health-related costs. Meanwhile the rest of the world lives under the risk of environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.

This is where the ban treaty comes in.

Banning nuclear weapons is a threat to the nuclear weapon complex. Several of the draft treaty’s proposed legal prohibitions—such as on assistance, development, production, manufacture, testing, and of course possession—will impact directly on the economic, political, and social sustainability of this enterprise. An explicit prohibition against the financing of nuclear weapons, as a form of assistance, would be significant in terms of putting pressure on the companies currently running the nuclear weapon labs in the United States and equivalents in other countries. Taking the profitability out of manufacturing weapons of genocide is critical for impeding “modernisation” programmes and diverting human and economic resources away from weapons and towards meeting social needs.

Right now, nuclear ban negotiators are waiting for the release of the revised draft treaty text from the conference President. This revised text will be the basis for the remainder of negotiations. We have eight days left to achieve a ban treaty by 7 July. Keeping in mind the physical, economic, operational context of nuclear weapons out in the world is important for shaping an effective treaty inside the conference room.

Thanks to Kathleen Sullivan for her contributions to this article.

Featured image from International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Last weekend ISIS launched a large-scale surprise attack against government forces in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Terrorists attacked the neighborhoods of al-Tanak, Nahrwan, and al-Yarmuk, engaging Iraqi security forces (ISF) in a series of intense firefights. While ISF was fighting terrorists in the Old Mosul area, ISIS used underground tunnels and sleeper cells to push the attack deep inside the government-held part of western Mosul.

By Tuesday, ISIS had allegedly captured the embattled neighborhoods despite ISF attempts to launch counter-terrorism raids in the area.

The ISIS advance disrupted the Iraqi government plan to liberate the entire city by the end of June, a plan which, although unofficial, was widely promoted in the media.

Meanwhile, two ISIS members opened fire on a police officer in Al-Jazar district in eastern Mosul. The militants were killed as a result of that clash.

Despite the recent developments, the ISF successfully advanced inside Old Mosul and captured the Al-Farooq neighborhood there.

ISIS does not have enough resources to change the course of the battle but it is still able to make serious problems for ISF troops operating in the city. ISIS claims that during the last month, its members killed 690 ISF servicemen, destroyed 2 battle tanks, 45 Humvees, 5 BMP vehicles, 13 bulldozers, and 29 other vehicles, as well as downing 26 drones and 3 helicopters belonging to the Iraqi military.

The recent developments demonstrate that even when Mosul is officially declared free from ISIS, the real security situation inside the city will remain very complicated.

In any case, the liberation of Mosul is an important step in a wider effort aimed at expelling ISIS from Iraq and Syria. This will allow the Iraqi army and the Popular Mobilization Units to focus on anti-ISIS operations in the border area with Syria and to clear western Iraq from ISIS terrorists.

Voiceover by Harold Hoover

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

The White House claims that the Syrian government is preparing “chemical weapon attacks”. This is clearly not the case. Syria is winning the war against the country. Any such attack would clearly be to its disadvantage. The White House announcement must thereby be understood as preparation for another U.S. attack on Syria in “retaliation” for an upcoming staged “chemical weapon attack” which will be blamed on the Syrian government.

In August 2013 Syria invited inspectors of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate chemical weapons attacks on the Syrian army. As soon as the inspectors arrived in Damascus a “chemical attack” was staged in Ghouta near Damascus. Lots of Jihadist video coverage of killed children was published and the “western” media blamed the incident on the Syrian government. It never explained why targeting a militarily irrelevant area with chemical weapons at the same time as inspectors arrived would have been a rational decision for a Syrian government that was just regaining control and international standing.

The “attack” was clearly staged by the opposition of the Syrian government and its foreign supporters. The Obama administration had planned to use it to launch U.S. attacks on the Syrian government but refrained from this when Russia arranged to remove Syria’s strategic chemical weapons, aimed at Israel, instead.

In early 2017 the new U.S. president Trump made positive comments about the Syrian government. Assad can stay, he said. The Syrian military and its allies had gained the upper hand and were victorious on all fronts. Two days later another “chemical attack” was staged in the al-Qaeda held town of Khan Sheikhun. Lots of Jihadi video coverage of killed children, likely prepared in advance, was spilled onto the “western” public. U.S. intelligence knew that no chemical attack by the Syrian government had taken place. But the Trump administration used the incident to launch a volley of cruise missiles against a Syrian military airport. The neoconservatives were delighted. They finally had Trump where they wanted him. The media coverage changed from damming Trump for his alleged “Russian connections” to lauding his decisiveness in response to the faked attack.

President of France Emmanuel Macron

Late May the new French president Macron ostensibly changed his position towards the Syrian government. The hostile position of France (and other EU countries) against the Syrian president Assad that had been eminent throughout the last six years changed on a dime:

Macron said that on Syria: “My profound conviction is that we need a political and diplomatic roadmap. We won’t solve the question only with military force. That is a collective error we have made. The real change I’ve made on this question, is that I haven’t said the deposing of Bashar al-Assad is a prerequisite for everything. Because no one has introduced me to his legitimate successor!

But Macron also added:

“I have red lines on chemical weapons and humanitarian corridors. I said it very clearly to Vladimir Putin. I will be uncompromising on that. So the use of chemical weapons will be met with a response, and even if France acts alone.”

This immediately set off my warning lights:

Moon of Alabama @MoonofA – 4:28 PM – 29 May 2017
You like fakes? Tune in to Macron announcing the next False Flag chemical weapon attack in Syria.

Like all “red lines” this one Macron set was an invitation to the Takfiris to launch more fake incidents. Others had a similar reaction to Macron’s (fake) turnaround.

The end of the war on Syria is in sight. One can start to tabulate the winners and losers. The U.S. military conceded that it had lost the race to occupy south-east Syria. All these turns in favor of Syria show that the war is practically won unless some of the outside sponsors of the Takfiri “rebels” again escalate.

Such an escalation is now happening. The White House claims to have information that the Syrian government is preparing a chemical weapon attack to kill “innocent children”:

In an ominous statement issued with no supporting evidence or further explanation, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the U.S. had “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.”He said the activities were similar to preparations taken before an April 2017 attack that killed dozens of men, women and children, and warned that if “Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

Several State Department officials typically involved in coordinating such announcements said they were caught completely off guard by the warning, which didn’t appear to be discussed in advance with other national security agencies. Typically, the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies would all be consulted before the White House issued a declaration sure to ricochet across foreign capitals.

Alleged ‘sarin’ attack in Khan Sheikhoun (Photo: Search For the Truth)

The White House claim is of course nonsense and not supported by any evidence or logic at all. No one but the White House, not the State Department nor the Defense Department, seems to be informed about this (though that could be a ruse):

Five US defense officials said they did not know where the potential chemical attack would come from and were unaware the White House was planning a statement.

The lunatic U.S. ambassador to the UN jumped in to make it clear that it does not matter who commits whatever crime in Syria, Takfiris, the U.S. or Israel, it will be the Syrian, Russian and Iranian governments who will held guilty of it:

Nikki Haley‏ @nikkihaley – 2:36 AM – 27 Jun 2017
Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.

A U.S. bomb attack on an Islamic State used building in Mayadin, Syria, just killed 57 prisoners of the Islamic State. Will Nikki Haley hold the Syrian government responsible for this?

Take note of Trump’s schedule today:

Laura Rozen‏ @lrozen 8:56 AM – 27 Jun 2017
Trump has call with France’s Macron first thing this morning, before intel brief. Then meeting w Nat. Sec. adviser McMaster

Intense U.S. military reconnaissances takes place along the Syrian coast.

The UK Defense Minister just announced that his government is “in full agreement” with any U.S. “retaliation” for a chemical attack in Syria.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Mattis announced that the U.S. will continue to arm its Kurdish proxies in Syria even after ISIS is defeated.

During the last three days Al-Qaeda attacks on Syrian army position near the Israeli occupied Golan heights were supported by Israeli air attacks.

This all is clearly a coordinated operation by the “western” supporters of the Takfiris in Syria. Their aim is to prevent the victory of Syria and its allies. The U.S. wants to split up the country.

The announced fake “chemical attack” and the “retaliation” it is supposed to justify will likely happen in the south-west of Syria around Deraa where all recent attempts by Israel and the U.S. supported Takfiris to dislodge the Syrian government forces have failed. The provocation, now prepared and announced by Macron and the White House and supported by the UK, is probably planned to happen shortly before or during the upcoming G-20 meeting in Hamburg:

President Trump and members of his administration are requesting a full bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany next month.
…
While some administration officials have pressed for a quick “pull-aside” meeting at the Group of 20 summit or lower officials talking privately instead of the heads of state, Trump wants an event that includes the media and time for work sessions, according to one government official.

Trump has to make a deal (or war) with Russia and the announced fake “chemical attack” will be the pressure point against Putin. The neoconservatives in his administration want to break up Syria and Trump is tasked to get the Russian agreement for that (… or else.)

Syria insists that its has no chemical weapons nor any intention to use any indiscriminate weapon. Russia warns of any further military aggression and calls such U.S. threats unacceptable.

When George Orwell published his famous novel “1984” in 1949, he wouldn’t have imagined how his fiction will be turned into a reality in the country of his birth only three decades later.

Orwell was born on June 25, 1903 in British India in the state of Bihar. His father was a civil servant posted with the Opium Department.

“1984” is about an imaginary totalitarian regime where any voice of dissent could be stifled and the society is expected to be homogeneous with no alternative thoughts ever allowed to exist.

Big Brother is a fictional character in Orwell’s novel, 1984 (credits to the owner of the photo)

The year 1984 marked the beginning of an era of majoritarian democracy in India when Sikh minority came under surveillance and constant attack. This all started with some genuine political demands of the Sikhs and Punjab. Not only these demands were ignored by the so called secularist Congress government in New Delhi, but the Sikhs were systematically targeted to attract the votes of the Hindu majority. The peaceful agitation of the Sikhs for some religious concessions and political rights was allowed to go out of hand.

This is not to defend the Sikh extremists who indulged in violence against Hindus in Punjab. But the overall response of the Indian state to the Sikh demands was very brutal. During Orwell’s birthday month of June in 1984, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar was invaded by the army to deal with handful of fanatics who had stockpiled arms inside the place of worship. The press censorship was imposed and any voice of dissent was crushed with an iron fist. Under these circumstances, the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh body guards for which the entire Sikh community was punished across India by violent mobs led by the Congress party supporters.

The state sponsored repression of Sikhs paid dividends to the Congress that won the national general elections with a heavy majority in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s murder. Her son Rajiv Gandhi rode to power by using the slogan of national unity and justifying the anti Sikh carnage by saying that when a big tree falls earth around it shakes a bit. Thus, a ground was laid for keeping minorities under boots to enjoy the fruits of governance.

In 2002, the Muslims were targeted by using similar techniques in Gujarat by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat back then was complicit in the anti Muslim pogrom that followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Over 50 people had died in the incident that was blamed on the Islamic extremists. Like Rajiv Gandhi, Modi also justified the violence against Muslims by using action verses opposite reaction theory of Newton. Not surprisingly he also won the election that followed the massacre with a thumping majority.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Source: NDTV.com)

Today under Modi, the whole of India has turned into an Orwellian state where all minority communities, especially Muslims, Christians, Dalits or the so called untouchables and tribals are being targeted both by the state agencies and vigilantes. So much so, any voice of dissent is aggressively curbed by using anti sedition laws. This has contributed to the expansion of embedded media and a virtual silence of the critics.

There is a feeling that an undeclared emergency has been now been clamped all over India that witnessed an official emergency in 1975 under Indira Gandhi. Ironically the emergency and press censorship was imposed on the birth anniversary of George Orwell after Indira Gandhi’s election was set aside by the courts. Modi at that time had gone into hiding to avoid getting arrested like other opposition leaders, whereas today his opponents also have to suffer for speaking their mind.

While Orwell is being remembered everywhere for encouraging critical thinking that is necessary for the progress of our society, the political leadership in the country of his birth is soon exactly the opposite. As Modi is trying to remind people of the emergency of 1975, the Bihar government has come under criticism for the encroachment of Orwell’s birth place that was declared museum. All we need to do is to keep his legacy alive by telling the truth and making those in power accountable by exposing their lip service.

Gurpreet Singh is a Canada- based journalist who publishes Radical Desi- a monthly magazine that covers alternative politics.

Featured image: Countercurrents

“These county lessons are significant because Medicaid is the largest funder of preventive health, births/pregnancy, drug recovery and mental health treatment services. When we talk about the growing costs of Medicaid, it is prudent to remember the population being served. Of the 80 million individuals covered by Medicaid today, more than 34 million are children under 18 years old, 7.3 million are low-income elderly and 11 million are disabled. Approximately one-third are very low-income adults between ages 19 and 64, yet these same adults account for less than 16 percent of Medicaid costs. By comparison, the elderly and disabled represent 61 percent of Medicaid costs, with children at around 20 percent. In fact, 50 percent of all U.S. births are covered by Medicaid.” Matthew D. Chase is the executive director of the National Association of Counties.

“Low income people—an estimated 23 million—will be stripped of all health coverage. Millions of people will suffer needlessly, and many thousands will die an early death. For the authors of these bills and their corporate backers, this is not an unfortunate byproduct, but the deliberate aim of their health care reform. For the richest 10 percent who tower above the lower orders and control the political system and its two major parties, the diversion of money from profits and private bank accounts to keep working people alive and reasonably healthy—especially those too old to serve as a source of surplus value and profit—is an intolerable affront. Life expectancy in America is already declining and mortality rates are rising for the working class, in tandem with the colossal growth of social inequality. The ruling class wants to accelerate this process.” Barry Grey and Kate Randall

Who, exactly, are the people that the Republicans in the US Congress represent? Or, should we ask, do they have the best interests of their local constituents in mind?

Protestors against the medical budget cut in San Francisco (Source: Main Street Alliance)

If constituent’s means insurance companies, donors and the financial fascist gods they worship, then they are wonderful representatives. They are doing what their masters seek and that is the elimination of 80 million non-economically productive old, disabled and young Americans who rely on Medicaid.

Eating Their Own

It is difficult to comprehend why Republican voters are so inclined to watch as their fellow citizens are likely to be cut off from the lifeline that is Medicaid. It is more appalling, I suppose, to see the Democrats and their constituents standing by, not fighting the Trump-Republican madness, offering no plan and playing it safe in hopes of winning congressional seats in the 2018 elections. In fact, they seem willing to sacrifice those 80 million Americans just to retain their house and senate seats.

If Americans who identify as Republicans–and by their silence Democrats–are willing to kill off, or cause the suffering of so many of their fellow citizens, what does that say about the state of the United States? We are told repeatedly that the economic recovery is on track, unemployment is down, and the stock market is soaring to historical heights. But you would not think that after visiting many of America’s cities, rural areas and many small communities. And now comes word from America’s economic and political overlords that there are not enough qualified employees in America to fill positions that are available. Who is to blame for that? Why, of course, the “little people”, not the financial and ideological savages who are ripping apart the country.

To force the minions to become qualified, Republicans and Democrats seek to privatize the entire US education system ensuring that corporate teachers will train “we the people” to become qualified for this and that job. But that will create two societies in the United States: One in which 30 percent of Americans fill all the “good” jobs and are gated off in their own communities protected by private security companies. The other 70 percent will include homeless tribes, squatters, the unemployed, the sick, the non-productive, and those 80 million Americans dumped off Medicaid. But, hey! For an $800 billion tax cut for the wealthy–thanks to crippling Medicaid–what is a few million unproductive lives?

If euthanasia became acceptable across the land, Trump and his Republican moneychangers would pass legislation containing standards staying alive on productivity, health, and taxable income. The Democrats would shrug their shoulders.

Thanks a Lot!

The fact is that the American people are the nation’s most important infrastructure. But with each passing day, they are being subjected to death on the installment plan. It took a few decades for the financial cannibals to eat the social programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. President Jimmy Carter kicked it off with a focus on urban areas.

“In 1978, Jimmy Carter released the United States’ first comprehensive national urban policy, A New Partnership to Conserve America’s Communities. With its emphasis on voluntarism, decentralization, and public–private partnerships, the national urban policy accelerated the devolution of social policy begun under the Nixon Administration and laid the foundation for Reagan’s retrenchment. Looking beyond the urban policy deliberations to the activities of two other Carter initiatives, the National Commission on Neighborhoods and the White Conference on Balanced Growth and National Economic Development, demonstrates that state and local officials and neighborhood advocates were complicit in establishing and legitimating urban policies predicated on privatization and devolution.”

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barak Obama took the baton from Carter and continued the destruction of American society. Trump has eagerly grabbed that baton. Now, the country is more notably vicious, partisan, politically paralyzed, at war, confused and, in some segments of the population, afraid. (As an aside, I was walking past an Indian family seated on benches in a park. There were five of them with two being teenagers. I overheard one of the adults and the two teenagers talking about being deported. “Where would we go,” one teenager asked. Another said, “You are from here, they won’t deport you.” Thanks be to President Donald J. Trump!)

Demonstrators at Los Angeles International Airport express anger over the travel ban imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order. (Source: cbc.ca)

On June 26, the US Supreme Court weighed in on Trump’s travel ban. The Court ruled that, absent a foreign national’s demonstrated connection to someone in the United States (family, employer, etc.), the person would not be allowed into the country. The Supreme Court will hear the case in October 2017. It is anyone’s guess what the court will ultimately rule.

Fight them There to Protect the Dystopia Here

Pentagon officials are fond of saying that the world is the most volatile that they’ve seen in their careers. Indeed it is, and they need look no further than their own homeland. A good comparison for the internal political, social and cultural dynamic of the United States homeland is the melting and crumbling ice sheets in West Antarctica. Scientists say there are “natural” processes at work on the ice sheets.Can we say that “natural” historical processes at work that are fracturing the American Republic? Is Trump the political version of Climate Change?

Trump and the Republicans—and their partners in crime the Democrats—are accelerating the crackup of the American Republic. Trump’s people are unrepentant liars, no more so than Trump himself. Disaster follows in Trump’s wake. The Boeing plant that Trump visited is dumping 200 workers. Saudi Arabia, with Trump’s support, seeks to turn Qatar into a Saudi protectorate. The Saudi’s, Egypt and the UAE have in place an economic embargo of Qatar underway that Trump supports. The Middle East and Persian Gulf countries seem to be headed for more violence, if that is possible. And now, the US is engaging in combat action against Syrian government forces that are supported by Russian and Iranian military forces. But all’s well at Trump’s properties.

That’s All Folks!

Blood is flowing from the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Lingchi, or death by 1,000 cuts, is the Republican’s preferred method for turning the American Republic into a corporate and security state while culling the non-productive human herd in America.

We were all taught as young kids that it was better to fight the bad guys over “there” instead of “here”. But what if “here” turns into a dystopian republic as portrayed in the novels We, Brave New World, and 1984? What if we are, God forbid, headed towards a version of Syria and Iraq?

So many years have passed since George W. Bush was president. I thought that was a dangerous time, and it was. But Trump and the Republicans—and their woeful Democratic “opponents”—have taken wickedness to a new levels of savageness. Civil rights enforcement are in jeopardy with Jeff Sessions as attorney general. The butchers in the Office of Management and Budget and Treasury could care less about 70 percent of the country’s populace. The Trump administration is nearly lily white in a land filled with Black, Brown and Hispanic, and LGBTQ populations.

The only cabinet member worth respecting is Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. He allowed open celebrations in the Pentagon for Black, Brown, Hispanic, LGBTQ and First Peoples.

Many say after an article like this, well, that’s nice, but what is your solution? The answer to that is in an article I wrote on July 25, 2005. I think it still applies 12 years later. Civil justice groups need to build seamless cross-cultural and political networks in communities around the land. If no new political party can be created, then the Democrats must be retrained to represent the people.

Maybe it would help if people stopped looking down into their mobile devices and take a look at the world around them.

John Stanton can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: Patrick Hubbard

Che cosa avverrebbe se l’aereo del segretario Usa alla Difesa Jim Mattis, in volo dalla California all’Alaska lungo un corridoio aereo sul Pacifico, venisse intercettato da un caccia russo dell’aeronautica cubana? La notizia occuperebbe le prime pagine, suscitando un’ondata di preoccupate reazioni politiche. Non si è invece mossa foglia quando il 21 giugno l’aereo del ministro russo della Difesa Sergei Shoigu, in volo da Mosca all’enclave russa di Kaliningrad lungo l’apposito corridoio sul Mar Baltico, è stato intercettato da un caccia F-16 statunitense dell’aeronautica polacca che, dopo essersi minacciosamente avvicinato, si è dovuto allontanare per l’intervento di un caccia Sukhoi SU-27 russo.

Una provocazione programmata, che rientra nella strategia Nato mirante ad accrescere in Europa, ogni giorno di più, la tensione con la Russia.

Dall’1 al 16 giugno si è svolta nel Mar Baltico, a ridosso del territorio russo ma con la motivazione ufficiale di difendere la regione dalla «minaccia russa», l’esercitazione Nato Baltops con la partecipazione di oltre 50 navi e 50 aerei da guerra di Stati uniti, Francia, Germania, Gran Bretagna, Polonia e altri paesi tra cui Svezia e Finlandia, non membri ma partner della Alleanza.

Contemporaneamente, dal 12 al 23 giugno, si è svolta in Lituania l’esercitazione Iron Wolf che ha visti impegnati, per la prima volta insieme, due gruppi di battaglia Nato «a presenza avanzata potenziata»: quello in Lituania sotto comando tedesco, comprendente truppe belghe, olandesi e norvegesi e, dal 2018, anche francesi, croate e ceche; quello in Polonia sotto comando Usa, comprendente truppe britanniche e rumene. Carrarmati Abrams della 3a Brigata corazzata Usa, trasferita in Polonia lo scorso gennaio, sono entrati in Lituania attraverso il Suwalki Gap, un tratto di terreno piatto lungo un centinaio di chilometri tra Kaliningrad e Bielorussia, unendosi ai carrarmati Leopard del battaglione tedesco 122 di fanteria meccanizzata.

Il Suwalki Gap, avverte la Nato riesumando l’armamentario propagandistico della vecchia guerra fredda, «sarebbe un varco perfetto attraverso cui i carrarmati russi potrebbero invadere l’Europa».

In piena attività anche gli altri due gruppi di battaglia Nato: quello in Lettonia sotto comando canadese, comprendente truppe italiane, spagnole, polacche, slovene e albanesi; quello in Estonia sotto comando britannico, comprendente truppe francesi e dal 2018 anche danesi. «Le nostre forze sono pronte e posizionate nel caso ce ne fosse bisogno per contrastare l’aggressione russa», assicura il generale Curtis Scaparrotti, capo del Comando europeo degli Stati uniti e allo stesso tempo Comandante supremo alleato in Europa.

Ad essere mobilitati non sono solo i gruppi di battaglia Nato «a presenza avanzata potenziata». Dal 12 al 29 giugno si svolge al Centro Nato di addestramento delle forze congiunte, in Polonia, l’esercitazione Coalition Warrior il cui scopo è sperimentare le più avanzate tecnologie per dare alla Nato la massima prontezza e interoperabilità, in particolare nel confronto con la Russia. Vi partecipano oltre 1000 scienziati e ingegneri di 26 paesi, tra cui quelli del Centro Nato per la ricerca marittima e la sperimentazione con sede a La Spezia. Mosca, ovviamente, non sta con le mani in mano. Dopo che il presidente Trump sarà stato in visita in Polonia il 6 luglio, la Russia terrà nel Mar Baltico una grande esercitazione navale congiunta con la Cina.

Chissà se a Washington conoscono l’antico proverbio «Chi semina vento, raccoglie tempesta».

Manlio Dinucci

Several articles have been published about the “legal limbo” in which Palestinian Jerusalemites exist and proposals as to what Israel ought to do about this 50-year old travesty, among them being righting “the wrong” of denying Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem Israeli citizenship.

In my view, such articles both define the injustice done to Palestinians deceptively and are meant simply to normalize the idea of Palestinian Jerusalemites becoming Israeli citizens, in the same way I might normalize the poll that American Jews are increasingly losing their connection to Israel by writing about it, especially if I were to headline my article “Breaking Taboo”, as Maayan Lubell does, or make the title echo a classified ad for the lovelorn, or question “Jewish identity” by “layering it with complexity” – i.e., by tying it to Israel.

Lubell’s article (Haaretz, Aug 5, 2015) is titled “Breaking Taboo, East Jerusalem Palestinians Seek Israeli Citizenship: In East Jerusalem, which Israel captured during the 1967 war, issues of Palestinian identity are layered with complexity.” It begins with this:

“I declare I will be a loyal citizen of the state of Israel,” reads the oath that must be sworn by all naturalized Israeli citizens.

Increasingly, they are words being uttered by Palestinians. In East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, a move not recognized internationally, issues of Palestinian identity are layered with complexity.

ATMs were shut down for Jerusalemites (Source: Anadolu Agency / Mustafa Hassona)

While Israel regards the east of the city as part of Israel, the estimated 300,000 Palestinians that live there do not. They are not Israeli citizens, instead holding Israeli-issued blue IDs that grant them permanent resident status. While they can seek citizenship if they wish, the vast majority reject it, not wanting to renounce their own history or be seen to buy into Israel’s 48-year occupation. And yet over the past decade, an increasing number of East Jerusalem Palestinians have gone through the lengthy process of becoming Israeli citizens, researchers and lawyers say.

So what is the reader to conclude from the “and yet” at the end of the quotation above? One way of looking at it is to see “the increasing number” of Palestinian Jerusalemites seeking Israeli citizenship as finally surrendering to the imperative of power and brutal facts on the ground, impelled by an otherwise unlivable life.

Another is to regard these Palestinians as traitors to the Palestinian cause, normalizing and legitimizing their enemy’s power, as there is often the implication in references to Palestinians seeking Israeli citizenship that Jerusalemites, through their applications for such citizenship, are signaling approval for the Israeli state, when in fact they seem to be doing it for practical reasons- so they can acquire some basic rights that Israel otherwise denies them.

A third is to see it from the point of view of Palestinian cartographer Khalil Tafakji – as yet another defeat for the Palestinian Authority in the context of Oslo’s so-called “peace process”.

Tafakji is quoted in this Haaretz report as saying,

“If this continues, what will the Palestinians negotiate about? They want to negotiate on the land – they have already lost the land. They want to negotiate for the population and the population is being lost.”

In other words the Palestinian view that Tafakji expresses is a lose-lose situation, not the win-win one espoused by another Haaretz article on the subject like the following.

Nir Hasson’s article (Haaretz, June 20, 2017) also has clues as to the function of such articles in the Israeli “liberal” media and co-dependent publications like the New York Times. These are often embedded right in the title or subheading – in this case:

“50 Years After Six-Day War, East Jerusalem’s Palestinians Remain Prisoners in Their City: Study shows how ambivalent Israeli policies and denial of the problem have created a status that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth: Native-born residents who are not citizens of the state in whose capital they live.”

One glance at the word “capital” in the subheading frames it all for us, hasbara style. What may lull the suspicions of the unwary reader is that the piece does, in fact, highlight the severe problems created for Palestinians by Israeli policies of judaization in the expanded municipality of Jerusalem. But in the end, this kind of article is Israeli “self-criticism” of the worst kind, meant to play games with one’s head.

The subtext you may miss is that, similar to the past and ongoing judaization of Israel proper, the goal behind Israel’s policies in Jerusalem is to create, expand and preserve the Zionist Jewish state.

Hasson describes Israeli policy in 1967 in East Jerusalem, when the population was 60,000, as follows:

The [Israeli] ministers assumed that, as in 1948, when a large number of Arabs likewise didn’t get automatic citizenship, over time the East Jerusalemites would request citizenship – an option granted only to them and not to other West Bank residents – and integrate into Israeli society. The ministers did not take into account the strong ties these Arabs had to the West Bank and Jordan, and the unwillingness of Israeli society to absorb a large Palestinian population …. After the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel recognized the ties East Jerusalemites had to the West Bank and allowed them to vote for the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah. This made their legal status even more complicated: permanent residents of the State of Israel with Jordanian travel papers and the right to vote in Palestinian Authority elections.

Notice the telling phrase in the above that is the blind spot of Zionism:

“The ministers did not take into account the strong ties these Arabs had to the West Bank and Jordan.”

It totally disregards the strong ties of Palestinian Arabs to an Arab Jerusalem, to an Arab Palestine, ties Israel has not succeeded in breaking seventy years after its establishment on a territory of Palestine as a settler-colonial Zionist Jewish state against the wishes of its native inhabitants.

Hasson goes on to say:

Another expression of the relatively enlightened policy of the early years was a law, finally passed in 1973, that enabled East Jerusalemites to be compensated for property they abandoned in western Jerusalem during the 1948 War of Independence, similar to the rights of Jews to get back the property they had to abandon in East Jerusalem during that same war. In the end, the compensation offered was paltry and very few Palestinians tried to claim it. But the debates on the law at least demonstrated an effort to right the wrong…. In recent years there has been considerable talk about the “Israelization” of East Jerusalemites, as reflected in the labor market, the desire to study the Israeli curriculum, and the increased number of requests to get full Israeli citizenship.

Again, notice the Israeli-centric formulation and framing. Palestinians are described as having “abandoned” their property in West Jerusalem, when, in fact, they were denied their right of return to their property by Israel.

Palestinians “abandoned” their property; but the reference to Jews is a reference to their “rights.”

Palestinians turned down “compensation” for no other reason than its paltry size, when, in fact, the Palestinian view on this issue is as Canadian professor Michael Lynk describes it in The Right to Compensation in International Law and the Displaced Palestinians.

“Palestinians advance the compensation issue as a right recognized in international law that would obligate Israel to return, or pay for, the refugee properties expropriated or destroyed in 1948 and afterwards. As well, they argue that Israel must pay damages for pain and suffering, and for its use of Palestinian properties over the past five decades.”

The dominance of Jewish companies in the labor market in East Jerusalem where many Palestinians are employed (See The Palestinian Economy in East Jerusalem: Enduring annexation, isolation and disintegration), the agonizing choice some Palestinians make in accepting a school curriculum for their children that denies Palestinian heritage and identity but allows them to get ahead at Israeli universities, and the application for Israeli citizenship (mostly denied by Israel) of a minority of Palestinians are all deceptively framed as “a desire” for “Izraelization” and a path to “correcting the injustice”.

Quoting Amnon Ramon of the Jerusalem Institute for Israeli [not for Palestinian] Studies, Hasson’s article also details the problems that Israel faces as a result of the “limbo” residency arrangement imposed on Palestinian Arabs by the Israeli Government – a “hollow sovereignty”, contributing to “instability and violent outbursts, as well as the international community’s refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy in Jerusalem.”

But ostensibly, the article is concerned with Israel “righting a wrong” by removing the “legal limbo” under which Palestinian Jerusalemites live, claiming that such a path, will not only relieve Israel’s problems, but is also a path to “justice” – justice as defined by Israel, the oppressor, not by the Palestinians themselves, Israel’s victims.

This brings us to the immediate present. On June 25, 2017, the New York Times published a piece by Isabel Kershner titled “50 Years After War, East Jerusalem Palestinians Confront a Life Divided.”

Again, we have to ask: What is Kershner’s point in this one? Is it really a concern for Palestinians whose lives have been “divided” by Israel or is it another deflection from the illegitimate existence of Israel as a Zionist Jewish entity in Palestine?

Israelis destroyed a water pipe in Palestine 

Even as Israelis mark the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem in the June 1967 war, the Palestinians and most of the world consider the eastern half under occupation, and the city remains deeply divided. But after five decades, dealing with Israel has become unavoidable for residents of East Jerusalem.

The deflection in the quotation above is blatant. Dealing with Israel did not “become unavoidable after five decades.” For Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and all other Palestinian Arabs who want to visit or do business there and for Palestinian Arabs denied return to their property there, or those whose property was seized and/or demolished, dealing with Israel became unavoidable the minute Israel occupied and annexed East Jerusalem.

It is true Palestinian culture and day-to-day life has been under severe assault by Israel for a long time – since 1948 to be exact. The 50-year anniversary of Israel’s brutal occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem (see Living Under Israeli Policies of Colonization in Jerusalem) is an occasion to extol and marvel at Palestinian resilience and sumoud (an Arabic word meaning “steadfastness” that has entered the English language, just as the word “intifada” has). It is not an occasion to normalize and indirectly extol “the reunification of Jerusalem,” whose Palestinian Arab population now accounts for 18% of the Palestinian Arab population of Israel.

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

Featured image: credits to the owner

The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar has been held in a weird kind of hostage situation since June 5. That’s when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and a few other countries decided to try to isolate and manipulate Qatar by cutting diplomatic relations and imposing an embargo and something of a blockade. A blockade is, by definition, an act of war, but the blockaders didn’t actually declare war, or send troops, or even make a clear statement of casus belli at the time. Qatar has long been a scapegoat for hardliners devoted to regional stability on their own terms only.

The hostage-taking, terrorist-supporting nations accused Qatar of supporting terrorists, expelled Qatari diplomats and Qatari citizens, called their own nationals home from Qatar, closed Qatar’s only border (with Saudi Arabia), and shut down air and sea routes to the tiny emirate, generally regarded as a near-absolute, hereditary monarchy with little freedom to begin with. Qatar is a small country, smaller than the state of Connecticut. Its military of 11,800 is the second-smallest in the region. Qatar has a population of roughly 2.6 million, only 300,000 of whom are citizens. The rest are foreign workers, a quarter of them from India, with other large contingents from Nepal and Bangladesh. Qatari citizens have the highest per capita income in the world.

This surprise hostage move was duly reported as the “biggest diplomatic crisis in years” in the region, as the Saudis acted with Egypt, Bahrain, and the UAE to de-stabilize the region in response to what they claimed was Qatar’s de-stabilizing of the region. So what kind of crisis is it when a coalition of dictatorships takes a neighboring state virtual hostage, for no coherently stated reason, and then takes more than two weeks to present any hostage demands (never mind how absurd)?

Let’s review the bidding here. The region, from Israel to Afghanistan, is not known for its stability in recent years, decades, centuries, or millennia. The current period of extreme de-stabilization was touched off by “I’m a war president” Bush, backed by a supine Congress (except for Rep. Barbara Lee). The Middle East of the past 14 years is a Republican-led, bipartisan master disaster that has destroyed millions of lives for nothing more apparent than the appearance of American “leadership.” But the US has had plenty of help in the worst sense of the word from just about every other country in the region, except possibly Oman, some of the time. Also pitching in to spread the carnage have been several NATO allies, as well as Russia. If that leaves out anyone, don’t worry, there’s more than enough blood to go around for every official hand and a good many feet.

The governments holding Qatar hostage now are mad because Qatar had the effrontery to offer some support to the democratic elements of the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, when there was some hope to rid the region of the brutal police states that stabilized the region. Only Tunisia has survived. Egypt’s present military dictatorship is mad at Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere and sees this hostage taking as a chance for revenge.

An aerial overhead view of”Ops Town”at at Al Udeid Air Base (AB), Al Rayyan Province, Qatar (QAT), taken from a US Air Force (USAF) KC-135 Stratotanker during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. (Source: Wikipedia)

Qatar is not exactly a stalwart defender of political freedom and human rights, but judged by its enemies, Qatar looks pretty good. And Qatar is also home to the largest US military base in the region, the Al Udeid Air Base. That air base runs the bombing campaigns in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, much to the benefit of the Qatari hostage-takers. Better yet, Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the other members of which are hostage-takers Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and UAE, as well as Oman. The US air base also runs the bombing campaign in Yemen, where Qatar is allied with its hostage-takers in the illegal, genocidal war that has brought Yemen to the verge of mass starvation. Presumably the aggressors believe that mass death in Yemen will help stabilize the region. The government of Yemen, housed in Saudi Arabia, is also a titular Qatari hostage-taker.

During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!

@realDonaldTrump tweet, June 6, 2017

With mad tweets like that, the president took credit for the hostage-taking, even as his secretaries of State and Defense would try to distance their country from the mess. Trump’s business history provides a clear basis for asking whether his decisions with regard to Qatar are shaped by conflict-of-interest. The Saudis have been doing millions of dollars of business with Trump for decades. The UAE has paid Trump millions of dollars for putting his name on golf courses. Qatar has not done business with Trump.

On June 14, the Defense Dept. signed a $12 billion deal to sell Qatar dozens of F-15 fighter jets. On the same day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed support for the arms deal approved by his department and said the Saudi-led blockade was creating problems for the US military effort against ISIS. Asked about the apparent gap between his comments and what Trump had been tweeting, Tillerson assuaged Congress,

“There is no gap between the President and myself or the State Department on policy,… there is no daylight between he and I.”

On June 20, State Dept. spokesperson Heather Nauert rebuked the Saudi-led hostage takers:

Now that it has been more than two weeks since the embargo started, we are mystified that the Gulf states have not released to the Qataris, nor to the public, the details about the claims they are making toward Qatar…. The more that time goes by, the more doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE…. At this point, we are left with one simple question: were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism? Or were they about the long-simmering grievances between and among the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries?

Noticeably absent from State’s official view was any mention of Iran, even though the hostage-takers complained about Qatar’s normal engagement with Iran. President Trump has long joined in demonizing Iran, regardless of the weight of evidence that Saudi Arabia (for example) has long been a greater supporter of terrorists than Iran. Iran, like Russia and Turkey, has called for a peaceful resolution to the hostage-taking.

Turkey has directly supported Qatar diplomatically, militarily, and with supplies in defiance of the embargo and blockade. Qatar, like Yemen, imports most of its food. Turkey has an army base in Qatar, with about 150 troops who train Qataris. Turkey, like Qatar, supported the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Spring and has taken in hundreds of political refugees from Egypt, which arrested and killed unknown numbers of people opposed to the military coup. Among the hostage-takers’ demands presented June 23 is that Qatar shut down the Turkish military base.

The demands viewed as a totality amount to a demand that Qatar hand over its sovereignty to Saudi Arabia and its fellow hostage-takers. The hostage-takers want Qatar to shut down Al Jazeera, the Qatari news organization that has been far too truthful about the region. The hostage-takers want Qatar to break off diplomatic relations with Iran, a regionally de-stabilizing act that is consistent with the suspected Saudi desire to bring on a full-scale religious war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Iran is Shiite. Qatar and its hostage-takers are all Sunni.

Given the nexus of contradictions and conflicts of interests surrounding the Qatar hostage situation, it’s no surprise the German foreign minister has referred to it as the “Trumpification” of regional politics:

“Such a Trumpification of relations with one another is particularly dangerous in a region that is already rife with crises.”

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Featured image: Wikipedia

Last weekend, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups from the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) launched a large-scale advance against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the province of Quneitra. The militants had formed an operation room named Jaysh Muhammad for the purpose and said that their aim was to capture al-Baath town and to reach the countryside of Damascus.

On Saturday, the joint militant forces made some gains against the SAA and even claimed that they seized over a half of al-Baath. However, further clashes showed that HTS and their allies were not able to break the government defenses.

Following a fail of the militant advance, the Israeli Air Force conducted airstrikes on government positions in the province claiming that some projectiles landed in the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights. The airstrikes targeted undefined number of artillery pieces and two battle tanks of the SAA.

On Sunday, the Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes on the SAA in Al-Baath in Quneitra province for the second day in a row under the same pretext. According to the Israeli military, the airstrikes hit artillery positions and an ammunitions truck.

Following the Israeli strikes, militants launched the second large-scale attempt to break government defense lines in al-Baath but failed to achieve any gains.

On Monday, the Israeli media reported that more projectiles landed in the Israeli-held area and that the Israeli Air Force responded with more airstrikes on SAA positions in the province. If confirmed, this was the third time in a row when the Israeli Air Force delivered airstrikes against Syrian government forces in the area.

At the same time, reports appeared HTS and its allies once again launched an attack against the SAA in al-Baath.

Syrian experts describe the Israeli actions as a clear assistance to the terrorist group fighting the legitimate Syrian government in the border area. According to them, Tel Aviv is deeply concerned over successful SAA operations against ISIS and other militants across Syria. Thus, it takes measures to undermine the Syrian war on terror.

Meanwhile, the SAA Tiger Forces have successfully advanced against ISIS at the Ithriyah-Resafa road. They liberated Bir Abu Alaj, the Syriatel checkpoint and some nearby points, becoming close to a full liberation of the road. This advance is an important step aimed at securing the whole area east of Khanasir.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have continued storming the ISIS-held city of Raqqah. They encircled the city from the southern flank and clashing with ISIS inside it, including the southern part of the 17^th Army Base.

ISIS terrorists used at least 3 VBIEDs against SDF units in Al-Jazra and Al-Idikhar districts of the city. Clashes are also ongoing in Al-Qadisiya and Al-Yarmouk districts.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Right after the U.S. government shot down a Syrian government plane in Syria, the Russian government broke off the coordination of its operations along with the U.S. and America’s allied forces in Syria (otherwise known as “deconfliction of forces” there), and warned that:

“In areas where Russian aviation is conducting combat missions in the Syrian skies, any flying objects, including jets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the international coalition discovered west of the Euphrates River, will be followed by Russian air and ground defenses as air targets” — meaning ordered out, or else immediately shot down. 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Marine Corps General Joseph F. Dunford, spoke at the National Press Club in Washington later that day. Only a video from the National Press Club is, as of yet, available of this important event (the first post-warning top U.S. government official public statement about it), no transcript yet; but here is what Dunford said (and the time he said it in the video), which struck this reporter as being important in his comments, at this historic moment when the likelihood of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia — World War III — was higher than it has been ever since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis between U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and U.S.S.R. Premier Nikita Khrushchev:

9:00- “prosecute the defeat-ISIS campaign in Syria, which is the reason why we are in Syria”

He said that to “defeat ISIS” is “the reason,” not “a reason,” we’re there. Very important word-choice. Profoundly meaningful in this context.

Gen Joseph F. Dunford (Source: Marine Corps Association)

His stating that “the reason why we are in Syria” is to “prosecute the defeat-ISIS campaign in Syria,” means that we are not in Syria in order to overthrow and replace Syria’s government — that we are not there in order to conquer Syria. That’s not “the reason,” nor even “a reason,” we’re there. People who have been following the Syria-war matter closely over the past few years will find this a shocking assertion from the U.S. government, because it is such a stark contrast to U.S. President Barack Obama’s constant demands that “Assad must go.” And, it is being made not by Trump’s U.N. Ambassador, nor by any other mere mouthpiece, but instead by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, who would not be saying it unless he had just previously communicated directly with the President after that extremely grave Russian warning. Trump, it now seems, knows that this is serious, and by allowing his CJCS to go public with this, he is overriding here the many neocons whom he has appointed to lead the Defense Department. Dunford represents the President, not merely the military of which the President is the Commander-In-Chief. (Dunford’s role, as CJCS, is purely advisory, both to the President and to the Secretary of Defense, but he is “the principal military advisor to the President, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense.”) That clause in a sentence — and especially its “the” instead of an “a” — means more than most officials’ entire speeches do.

12:25- “Even as we support their [the anti-Assad Arabs’ and the Kurdish] efforts to seize Raqqa, there is an ongoing effort, led by the State Department [Trump’s least neocon people] to put together a governance body so that as soon as Raqqa is seized, there is effective local governance, that governance will leverage Arab leaders who are from Raqqa and it will also establish a local security force made up of local personnel.”

Those “Arab leaders who are from Raqqa” will be raging for revenge against ISIS and any other fundamentalist-Sunni group that had grabbed Raqqa away from the protection of those residents by Syria’s government and subjected them to such hell for so long; and, so, when they “establish a local security force made up of local personnel,” that “security force” will certainly not be favorable toward either the jihadists — all of whom are fundamentalist Sunnis — nor toward any Kurds who want to break up Syria, such as the formation of a Kurdish republic would necessarily entail.

He was then asked about a forthcoming September Kurdish referendum on establishing a Kurdistan, which would mean breaking up one or more of three nations: Syria, Turkey, and Iraq. His answer focused only on Iraq, but no Kurdistan which is in only one of those three nations would be acceptable to Kurds, and so his answer needs to be understood in that light:

13:05: “Our stated objective at this point is a stable secure and sovereign Iraq and we are supporting Iraqi security forces in defeating ISIS inside of Iraq, and I think that the issue of a Kurdish referendum is one that will have to be worked out between President Barzani and Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi people.”

This means that Trump respects the sovereignty of each individual nation. He is asserting this in specifically the case of Iraq. But its meaning reverberates clearly also in Damascus, and in Istanbul, just as well as it does in Baghdad. It means: no Kurdistan.

The CIA, and Israel, and DC’s think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution, are all neoconservatives who favor breaking up Syria, and as part of that, establishing an independent Kurdistan across all three countries.

Trump’s Pentagon, under the neocon James Mattis, had blatantly violated Syria’s sovereignty on Syrian soil. But now, in Dunford’s totally unhedged statements, immediately after the U.S. government had perpetrated that blatant violation, Trump’s own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was, effectively, committing the man whom he directly advises on military-strategic matters, this President, against the neoconservatives whom this same President had brought in to run his Pentagon. On strategic matters, the Joint Chiefs Chairman stands even closer to the Commander-in-Chief than does the Secretary of Defense or, sometimes, even, than does the National Security Advisor (the neocon H.R. McMaster, who has thus-far been loudly silent on this matter).

A 3PM update on June 19th, the day of Russia’s warning — an update by this reporter to my news earlier that day which was headlined “Russia Announces No-Fly Zone in Syria — War Against U.S. There” — provided the earliest-published indications that Trump had turned away from the neocons whom he himself had appointed; and, here is that update, to provide broader context for Dunford’s remarks:

Source: National Press Club

***

UPDATE: 3PM in NYC:

Al Masdar News, the go-to site for the latest news regarding the Syrian war, headlines, as of 3PM Eastern time, “Pentagon changes disposition of US-led coalition aircraft in Syria”, and reports, from several reliable sources, such as Joseph Dunford, the head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicate a U.S. climb-down, and a desire to cooperate with Russia in Syria. If this is not a lie (as so much from the U.S. government has turned out to be), then the U.S. will stop protecting its jihadists in Syria; and, consequently, the war in Syria will end on terms which are suitable to Syria, Russia, and Iran, but which have not heretofore been acceptable to the U.S.-Saudi (and other fundamentalist Sunni) coalition. 

The signs, at least as of 3PM, are that Trump will quit the war against the Syrian government, regardless of how much this might disappoint the Sauds (and the Israelis). Looking at the way the Western press are reporting on the matter, they’re going to allow him to withdraw as quietly as possible. So, as soon as Russia made clear that it’s willing to go all the way to defeat the U.S.-Saudi-Sunni-fundamentalist invasion, the West, apparently, will simply quit. All the jihadists in Syria will soon be scrambling to escape from there. Without U.S. protection, they can’t win. But will Russia, Iran, and Syria, simply kill them all, right there? If not, then those jihadists will end up going back ‘home’, wherever that might happen to be, and far more dangerous in those countries than they had been there before.

***

However, some in the U.S. press are still continuing on with beating the war-drums against Syria. An example is the hyper-neoconservative newspaper the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, the chief owner and founder of Amazon — that’s the company which supplies cloud computing services to the Pentagon. The WP has subsequently been beating the drums for WW III. 

In an editorial on June 19th, “What happens after the Islamic State is defeated in Iraq and Syria?” Bezos’s hired editorial writers condemned “the drive by Iran and Russia, along with their Syrian and Iraqi Shiite clients, to dominate the space that will be left when the Islamic State is driven from its capital of Raqqa in eastern Syria,” as if Raqqa weren’t sovereign Syrian national government territory, but instead was just a spot of land that the U.S. has some kind of legal authority over — an authority to dictate to the sovereign Syrian government about that spot of land. 

To back that editorial up by ‘news’, his hired team of ‘reporters’ headlined on June 21st, “U.S. on collision course with Syria and Iran once de facto Islamic State capital falls”, again as if Raqqa were U.S. instead of Syrian territory and Iran isn’t defending Syria and U.S. attacking it; and they went on to report (from unnamed “senior White House officials” who are obviously selected neocons in the Trump Administration): “Officials said Syrian government claims on the area would also undermine progress toward a political settlement in the long-separate rebel war against Assad, intended to stabilize the country by limiting his control and eventually driving him from power.” Here were ‘reporters’, for Bezos’s ‘news’paper, enabling unnamed U.S. officials to propagandize to the ’news’paper’s dupes or subscribers, that the Syrian government had only “claims on the area,” instead of sovereignty over the area and over the entirety of Syria.

Basically, what has happened is that the neoconservatives are still being allowed to allege through all their media, that the U.S. government has sovereignty over the entire world, even after Russia has finally told the U.S. regime: no further in Syria — if you dare, it will be war between Russia and the United States: WW III.

Trump speaks out of both sides of his mouth but Washington promotes only the neocon side; and, now that Russia has issued a warning that the Washington Post’s editorial called “bluffing,” and that CNBC’s ‘reporter’ called ‘bluster’, the world will see whether Trump is as stupid as America’s unfortunately now permanent neoconservative government thinks he is. If Trump’s Chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff — who is neither an unnamed ‘senior White House official’ nor yet demonstrably a person who would lie for Trump — is to be believed, then Trump isn’t quite so stupid as that. The question right now is: Is the American public so stupid as to believe ‘news’media and ‘reporters’ such as that?

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.

Featured image: Strategic Culture Foundation

French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to have been in an advantageous position to govern Europe’s second most significant state in the aftermath of a resounding victory in the parliamentary elections on June 18 where La Republique en March (LaRem) won an overwhelming majority.

Nonetheless, in a matter of days Macron’s cabinet was marred by several resignations of ministers from the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem) which has supported the ruling party. The announcement that these officials were the focus of a corruption investigation assured their departure since one key aspect of the president’s campaign pledges was the promise to maintain a transparent government.

Amid the scandal Macron reshuffled his cabinet replacing the departing ministers with individuals who are far less known in French national politics. Justice Minister Francois Bayrou along with European Affairs Minister Marielle de Sarnez, both of whom are MoDem party leading members, submitted their resignations from the cabinet on June 21. The news of their departures came just one day after Defense Minister Sylvie Goulard‘s unexpected resignation on June 20. Goulard is also with the MoDem party.

Allegations have surfaced that the MoDem misused European parliamentary funds to hire aids that were stationed in France. Even with these resignations of MoDem officials, LaRem still maintains an absolute majority.

Former Socialist government functionary Florence Parly, who has been employed at major French transport companies, was appointed as defense minister. Nicole Belloubet, considered an expert in the legal field, was designated to take over the justice ministry. Switching from the Ministry of Agriculture, Jacques Mezard, is being assigned to territorial planning. Stephane Travert, a Macron loyalist, will serve as agricultural minister.

On June 25, Macron’s former Socialist Party decided to cast its vote against a motion of confidence in the new government. Therefore, the Socialists will become key players in the opposition although they have been decimated by the ascendancy of the centrist LaRem which was founded only a year ago.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and President Emmanuel Macron (credits to the owner of the photo)

Socialists hold less than 40 seats in the National Assembly posing no threat to the ability of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe to win approval of the cabinet and the policy initiatives which will be delivered in a speech on July 4. In addition to opposition from the Socialist Party, Macron will face ideologues in the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, the putative far-left MPs from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party and Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist National Front. One faction within the LR party, known as “the Constructives,” appears to be harboring a more moderate line on the new government.

Philippe, who is 47, is a member of the LRs, the center-right party. He was appointed by Macron as prime minister on May 15.

Macron, who has a background as an investment banker, and Philippe, a lawyer and member of the moderate right-wing, have made claims of bridging the traditional left-right political polarization in France. This notion of a third way, must be examined closely in regard to the actual policies that will be implemented inside the country and abroad.

Challenges to the French Labor Movement

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the LaRem majority government will be its efforts to institute reforms in labor law. These proposals will ostensibly make it much easier for employers to hire and terminate workers.

However, with high unemployment, miniscule growth rates and the decline in career jobs with unionized protection, the question remains whether the neo-liberal reforms will actually provide incentives for the creation of broader opportunities among working class people. In many ways developments in France are a reflection of the character of the labor markets in most western capitalist states since the mid-to-late 1970s.

French demonstrations against Macron a day after the May 7 elections (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Foreign Policy magazine noted in a recent article written by George Ross who speculated on the potential for labor unrest in response to the Macron reforms, saying:

“well-protected jobs have declined and less secure service jobs have expanded, the labor market has become segmented between a diminishing number of workers with stable contracts and an expanding group in more precarious situations, a trend accentuated by lower growth and higher unemployment. Union membership has declined from nearly 30 percent of the workforce in the 1970s to 11 percent today — and much of that is concentrated in the public sector. Strikes, for which France was once notorious, have declined in parallel.” (June 20)

In the United States which has the largest capitalist economy in the world where a series of recessions have occurred over the last 45 years, a similar situation for workers prevails. Unionization has gone down to 6.4 percent in the private sector and 34.4 percent in the public sector, totally 14.6 million workers.

This represents a dramatic downturn for representation of employees. In 1983, the first year that such statistics were compiled, 20.1 percent of workers were unionized constituting 17.7 million people. Consequently, the precipitous decline in union membership overall has weakened the capacity of the working class to challenge the imposition of draconian restructuring mandates that have resulted in the lowering of real wages in the U.S.

Since the public sector now has more than a 500 percent greater rate of unionization than private industry it is not surprising that large-scale attacks by the capitalist class have been leveled against civil servants and educational employees. Notions that privatization of municipal services and schools are inherently more efficient serves as a propagandistic cover for weakening and dismantling unions. This offensive against unionized employees coincides with the worsening of standards and social conditions within the large metropolitan areas related to educational quality and the maintenance of urban infrastructure.

In France, the trade unions could possibly wage the strongest resistance to the labor reforms proposed by the LaRem government. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has gone on record opposing the proposed efforts by Macron to further stifle the working class.

Although the CGT severed its links with the French Communist Party in 1995, the general strike of that year remains within the collective consciousness of the ruling elites. Protracted labor unrest in France would have a major impact on the European Union (EU) as a whole, potentially prompting public sector unions in other states to oppose further reforms and therefore dampening the efforts by both Paris and Berlin to forge closer ties in the absence of Britain’s departure (Brexit) from the continental economic project.

As Ross noted in the above-mentioned report in Foreign Policy,

“should the CGT decide to pull the trigger, it could push for public sector strikes, particularly in transportation, to try to bring France to a halt. It can anticipate at least some public support for this. France remains France: The country’s militant, left-leaning, and protest-prone subculture still exists, ready to be stimulated by labor action. La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), a coalition of radical left-wing groups led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who won just under 20 percent in the first round of the presidential election — about the same number that the now-eclipsed French Communist Party won in the 1970s — did reasonably well in the parliamentary vote and has talked of new resistance.”

“Centrist” Foreign Policy Merges with U.S. Imperatives on Russia

One significant indication of the international posture of the Macron-Philippe regime was the announcement that France will not recognize Crimea as being a part of the Russian Federation stemming from a 2014 referendum during the period of the aftermath of a right-wing coup in Ukraine which led to a civil war between Kiev and regions in the West of the country.

President of France Emmanuel Macron with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko (Source: Flipboard)

The new French president held talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, in Paris after the June 24 visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Crimea. Poroshenko condemned Putin’s visit as a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. EU member-states recently agreed to extend their sanctions against Moscow accusing the Putin government of not honoring the Minsk Accords ostensibly aimed at ending the fighting between anti-Kiev forces and the western-backed regime of Poroshenko.

With the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in November partly based upon his pseudo-protectionist “America First” rhetoric and the vote by the British people to withdraw from the EU in June of last year, France and Germany are attempting to close ranks in order to salvage the more conventional brand of 21st century globalization. Nevertheless, with the fracturing of the western capitalist leaders involving differences over how to proceed in the current period may pose serious obstacles to a much-desired economic recovery in France.

Featured image: credits to the owner

There is a growing movement brewing up in the country [India] regarding the dangers of Aadhaar and how it is being pushed through the backdoor without adequate security on unsuspecting Indians. While the general public is still in the dark about the dangers of biometric identification that is taking place in nearly every walk of life, even privacy defenders who have been closely following these developments don’t have sufficient information.

Like the Indians even the Americans are fighting a similar battle on their homefront. But unlike Indians the American public are far more informed and organized in their approach. It would do well for the defenders of privacy and the advocates of #DestroyTheAadhaar to follow up on a lawsuit that is filed against the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for running a Biometric ID program for years in secret. The FBI case could provide the Indian activists with a better reorientation and understanding of the process.

A shocking report came to light early this year about a massive FBI database that has been collecting millions of faceprints of American citizens – for years. Known as the Next Generation Identification system, since 2014 the FBI has amassed more than 50 million images scoured from facial recognition alone; and, as reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the images have merged into the FBI’s legacy database of fingerprints and other identifiers to create a centralized hub of surveillance:

As per a 2014 EFF report titled FBI Plans to Have 52 Million Photos in its NGI Face Recognition Database:

NGI builds on the FBI’s legacy fingerprint database—which already contains well over 100 million individual records—and has been designed to include multiple forms of biometric data, including palm prints and iris scans in addition to fingerprints and face recognition data. NGI combines all these forms of data in each individual’s file, linking them to personal and biographic data like name, home address, ID number, immigration status, age, race, etc. This immense database is shared with other federal agencies and with the approximately 18,000 tribal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Worst of all, the FBI has admitted that the system contains non-criminal identification as well as criminal, including:

• suspects and detainees,
• fingerprints for job applicants
• licenses
• military or volunteer service
• background checks
• security clearances
• naturalization

It’s been estimated that half of all adult Americans appear in a biometric database.

Despite what is clearly a sweeping program of surveillance and a violation of numerous Amendments to the US Constitution, the FBI has resisted all inquiries made by privacy organizations and even the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Now one of the most respected privacy defenders, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), is urging Congress to do its job and fully examine the secret FBI program. EPIC summarized the scope of the program, as well as measures taken by the FBI to exempt itself from privacy protections:

EPIC has sent a statement to the House Appropriations Committee in advance of a hearing on the FBI’s budget. EPIC urged the Committee to examine the FBI’s Next Generation Identification program. EPIC explained that the program “raises far-reaching privacy issues that implicate the rights of Americans all across the country.” The FBI biometric database is one of the largest in the world, but the Bureau proposed to exempt the database from Privacy Act protections. EPIC and others supported strong safeguards for the program. In an early FOIA case against the FBI, EPIC obtained documents which revealed high error levels in the biometric database. EPIC has recently filed a FOIA lawsuit against the FBI for information about the agency’s plans to transfer biometric data to the Department of Defense.

Has Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) done the privacy assessment of the entire Aadhaar project before awarding contracts to American firms? Have the Aadhaar activists asked the UIDAI to furnish the Privacy Impact Assessment Document if at all there is one? There is a lawsuit filed against FBI for information about the agency’s plans to transfer biometric data to the Department of Defense. It is now commonly known that American firms with links to CIA were given contract for Aadhaar and acknowledged by the Ministry of External Affairs itself, will Aadhaar database than be transferred to the US Department of Defense?

Featured image: DNA India

San Francisco.

The Twitter Building on Market Street, San Francisco, sounds like an aviary bustling with activity. With its bright open spaces and chirping entrepreneurs hatching the next project, it might as well be. Several floors are dedicated to what can only be described as a technological frontier, where the tech generation of pimply youths barely out of school are subscribing to what they believe to be a revolution.

This is where the incubator concept comes in, a place where an idea is kept warm and nourished for its release into a capital driven world. For it is here, in these open floor spaces without partitions, without privacy, where human agents perform to the tune of a business civilization keen on the bottom line and the next innovation.

There are colourful flags and sign posts at the end of each row of desks showing the brand label of the project, with its company promotions. Logos abound like military insignia. Designs vary: the next transporter drone; the next remarkable phone; search software that will identify the most accessible point to find medical marijuana and, at this particular event, an essentially fatuous pair of goggles simulating the sight of a fly. (In fairness to the fly, its vision would remain superior.)

The unfortunate parents of this device, the LucidCam Team, term it “the first true vr (virtual reality) camera.” It is designed to, “Capture moments from your perspective.”[1] The binocular vision “allows you to capture the world like your own eyes in true 3D VR. Advanced processing onboard merges like your brain right and left images into real-life-representation with true depth.”

LucidCam 3D Virtual Reality (VR) Camera (Source: iPhoneness.com)

Whether these “incubators” generate the next big idea of mind bending proportions, the next colossal feature that will alter human behaviour, even conditioning it, is unclear. That is almost beside the point. The quest for altering, adjusting, and patterning human behaviour to the machine, to make an invention that transforms the creator, is ancient. The gods, or God, remain humankind’s greatest creation, a machine of terrifying influence and affect to hold whole families, tribes and nations to ransom.

In a desperate effort to find another form of perception, the consumption of mind-altering substances along the lines of Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary was embraced. Huxley’s own words on taking psychedelics in 1955 was that it induced an awareness of “the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact.”

God was replaced by human-directed efforts at understanding consciousness, with a little help from mind expansion agents. The focus of conditioning still remained, only this time, it was induced by the consumer.

This army of impetuous youths, tempered by a naïve assumption about superiority, insist they are on to something. They wish to find their next narcotic, albeit through their next creation. They may be right, though the political and social context tends to evaporate the closer you get to these various ideas in incubation.

On the tables of employees of the various concerns lie books of varied quality: suggestions on appropriate management, how to strike it rich in quick rapid succession, and the occasional quirky title that seems to have no place at such a venue.

Rooftop of Twitter’s San Francisco HQ (Source: Designboom)

Those in attendance at this launch event range the fields of the Silicon Valley market, its props, is cogs, and its servants. There are those wishing to shop around for the right “space”, where they will advertise the relevant idea that will either perish or thrive, the appropriate venue to park the next offspring of the incubator project.

There are engineers from India who hover with a sort of forced curiosity, one resembling a declining professor with a stunning white shirt sullied by wine stains. “I’m an engineer,” he enthuses with a grin of teeth so pronounced they seem to be leaving his mouth.

Another more youthful, green-behind-the gills fellow from the southern reaches of the Subcontinent feels constrained to insist that the event is “brilliant” and “wonderful” though displays no insight into how a set of redundant, poorly manufactured sight finders can be such.

This launch gathering is typified by the smells of the technology pursuit: the grease and heavily floured base of over flavoured pizza by the dozens, the meat barely legible, the cheese so heavy it has become a mush of drowned desperation.

Further down the stretch of hall, a bit away from the launch event, a complete contrast is promoted: the healthy eater is encouraged with fanatical piousness; there are “organic” options for the desperate after working hours on end, and healthy approaches to coffee consumption. There are spaces to relax in, to escape the grind. One stands out with its “Zen” feel, equipped with bean bags, mats, sofas.

Then comes the culminating show, a discussion showpiece that demonstrates the limits of that youthful enthusiasm for open work spaces. Such a concept collapses when faced with what is otherwise termed the discussion of ideas. For launch organisers who have no idea what a room looks like – unless you are trapped in a box resembling the TARDIS from Dr. Who, or a closed office space, this is challenging. To be in such a space would be to repudiate the ideal of openness and offend the God of Transparent thinking.

A haphazard chairperson handles, poorly, three speakers from Silicon Valley enterprises who have “made it”, including the LucidCam entrepreneurs, probing them with the intellectual intensity of melting butter. This is the business of strut and show, not an analysis so much as a promotion.

The audience is also fairly nonplussed. Many soon peel off, repairing back to the wine and nibbles. Others scuttle for the exit in search of another launch. New arrivals, caring little for the discussion, loudly intervene to test the goggles. A gaggle of youthful Chinese girls are very keen to observe the world through these devices which, at this point, seem to be failing. As, in fact, is the vision.

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

Note

[1] https://www.lucidcam.com/

Featured image: Office Snapshots

The West uses chemical weapons in Syria, against Syrians. President al Assad does not.

U.S. forces use internationally-banned weaponized white phosphorous against civilians in both Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.

When white phosphorous hits civilians, it ignites the flesh, and burns it to the bone. The gases released suffocate and burn from the inside out. Wounds reopen when exposed to air. The intended purpose is to slaughter and terrify civilians.

U.S. forces also use MGM – 140B rockets in both cities. The rockets detonate in mid-air and scatter about 274 anti-personnel grenades, each of which kills any person within a 15 meter radius.

Coalition forces use these weapons to murder, to ethnically cleanse local populations, and to free up territory for Western-backed terrorist forces. In the case of Raqqa, Syria, the West hopes to integrate it into a separate “Kurdistan” polity – divide and conquer is the underlying strategy.

In both Mosul and Raqqa, the U.S. –led coalition provided escape routes for their ISIS proxies. Terrorists from Mosul were sent to Syria, and terrorists from Raqqa were re-directed to DeirEzzor.[1]

All of these terrorists are proxies/strategic assets for the West. They have different “brand” names: ISIS/IS/ISIL, FSA, Ahrar al-Sham etc., but they all serve the same function, which is to destroy and balkanize Syria at the behest of their Western employers.

Use of white phosphorous in Iraq by the US (Source: Murica Today)

All of the Western “interventions” in Syria amount to war crimes, but Western propaganda is ubiquitous, and powerful. It amounts to a Ministry of Propaganda, and it has reduced mainstream corporate messaging to being an agency for war and disaster. Hence, Western populations are for the most part oblivious to the crimes being perpetrated in their names.

The U.S-led coalition is trying to destroy one country after another so that the U.S can basically control what is left of the world … if there is anything left. Warmongering elites hope to have total control, to deny and negate international law and national boundaries, and to make people world-wide unwitting servants to international oligarch classes.

Elections will be held, but political rhetoric will be mostly meaningless. The recent elections of President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau bear witness to the fact that the deep/dark state and its agencies already have more power than elected officials. How many campaign promises did either of the two aforementioned politicians actually honor?

The “Axis Of Resistance”, which includes Syria, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, offers hope for international law, nation state sovereignty, self-determination, freedom and liberty. Should they succeed in Syria – which is very likely – then a multipolar world will have space to emerge.

A multipolar world will be more democratic in orientation (politically and economically), and more compliant with international law. It will offer more hope for wealth, prosperity, and life for broad-based populations, and not just for the international oligarchy.

It is very telling that the U.S government recently rejected Tulsi Gabbard’s Stop Arming Terrorists Act.[2] In a sane world, such a bill would have a 100% approval rating, but we do not live in a sane world.

The West’s rejection of sanity and its embrace of international criminality means that others will have to fight for us.

The Axis of Resistance is fighting for us right now. The Resistance is fighting for freedom and democracy, and against terrorism.

Their fight is righteous, whereas the West’s subservience to agencies of propaganda is pathetic.

Notes

[1] Bill Van Auken, “Washington’s War Crimes In Syria.” 15 June, 2017. (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/15/pers-j15.html0) World Socialist Web Site. Accessed 26 June, 2017.

[2] Matt Agorist, “US Government Proves ‘Love for ISIS’ as Bill to ‘Stop Arming Terrorists’ Gets Only 13 Supporters.” 23 June, 2017.  Global Research. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-government-proves-love-for-isis-as-bill-to-stop-arming-terrorists-gets-only-13-supporters/5595796) Accessed 26 June, 2017.

Featured image: credits to the owner

Introduction

The most striking feature of recent elections is not ‘who won or who lost’, nor is it the personalities, parties and programs. The dominant characteristic of the elections is the widespread repudiation of the electoral system, political campaigns, parties and candidates.

Across the world, majorities and pluralities of citizens of voting age refuse to even register to vote (unless obligated by law), refuse to turn out to vote (voter abstention), or vote against all the candidates (boycott by empty ballot and ballot spoilage).

If we add the many citizen activists who are too young to vote, citizens denied voting rights because of past criminal (often minor) convictions, impoverished citizens and minorities denied voting rights through manipulation and gerrymandering, we find that the actual ‘voting public’ shrivel to a small minority.

As a result, present day elections have been reduced to a theatrical competition among the elite for the votes of a minority. This situation describes an oligarchy – not a healthy democracy.

Oligarchic Competition

Oligarchs compete and alternate with one another over controlling and defining who votes and doesn’t vote. They decide who secures plutocratic financing and mass media propaganda within a tiny corporate sector. ‘Voter choice’ refers to deciding which pre-selected candidates are acceptable for carrying out an agenda of imperial conquests, deepening class inequalities and securing legal impunity for the oligarchs, their political representatives and state, police and military officials.

Oligarchic politicians depend on the systematic plundering Treasury to facilitate and protect billion dollar/billion euro stock market swindles and the illegal accumulation of trillions of dollars and Euros via tax evasion (capital flight) and money laundering.

The results of elections and the faces of the candidates may change but the fundamental economic and military apparatus remains the same to serve an ever tightening oligarchic rule.

The elite regimes change, but the permanence of state apparatus designed to serve the elite becomes ever more obvious to the citizens.

Why the Oligarchy Celebrates “Democracy”

The politicians who participate in the restrictive and minoritarian electoral system, with its predetermined oligarchic results, celebrate ‘elections’ as a democratic process because a plurality of voters, as subordinate subjects, are incorporated.

Academics, journalists and experts argue that a system in which elite competition defines citizen choice has become the only way to protect ‘democracy’ from the irrational ‘populist’ rhetoric appealing to a mass of citizens vulnerable to authoritarianism (the so-called ‘deplorables’). The low voter turn-out in recent elections reduces the threat posed by such undesirable voters.

A serious objective analysis of present-day electoral politics demonstrates that when the masses do vote for their class interests – the results deepen and extend social democracy. When most voters, non-voters and excluded citizens choose to abstain or boycott elections they have sound reasons for repudiating plutocratic-controlled oligarchic choices.

We will proceed to examine the recent June 2017 voter turnout in the elections in France, the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico. We will then look at the intrinsic irrationality of citizens voting for elite politicos as opposed to the solid good sense of the popular classes rejection of elite elections and their turn to extra-parliamentary action.

Puerto Rico’s Referendum

Ballot papers are seen at a polling station in Puerto Rico (Source: Public Radio International)

The major TV networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the prestigious print media (New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times) hailed the ‘overwhelming victory’ of the recent pro-annexationist vote in Puerto Rico. They cited the 98% vote in favor of becoming a US state!

The media ignored the fact that a mere 28% of Puerto Ricans participated in the elections to vote for a total US takeover. Over 77% of the eligible voters abstained or boycotted the referendum.

In other words, over three quarters of the Puerto Rican people rejected the sham ‘political elite election’. Instead, the majority voted with their feet in the streets through direct action.

France’s Micro-Bonaparte

In the same way, the mass media celebrated what they dubbed a ‘tidal wave’ of electoral support for French President Emmanuel Macron and his new party, ‘the Republic in March’. Despite the enormous media propaganda push for Macron, a clear majority of the electorate (58%) abstained or spoiled their ballots, therefore rejecting all parties and candidates, and the entire French electoral system. This hardly constitutes a ‘tidal wave’ of citizen support in a democracy.

During the first round of the parliamentary election, President Macron’s candidates received 27% of the vote, barely exceeding the combined vote of the left socialist and nationalist populist parties, which had secured 25% of the vote.  In the second round, Macron’s party received less then 20%of the eligible vote.

In other words, the anti-Macron rejectionists represented over three quarters of the French electorate. After these elections a significant proportion of the French people – especially among the working class –will likely choose extra-parliamentary direct action, as the most democratic expression of representative politics.

The United Kingdom :  Class Struggle and the Election Results

The June 2017 parliamentary elections in the UK resulted in a minority Conservative regime forced to form an alliance with the fringe Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a far-right para-military Protestant party from Northern Ireland. The Conservatives received 48% of registered voters to 40% who voted for the Labor Party. However, 15 million citizens, or one-third of the total electorate abstained or spoiled their ballots. The Conservative regime’s plurality represented 32% of the electorate.

Despite a virulent anti-Labor campaign in the oligarch-controlled mass media, the combined Labor vote and abstaining citizens clearly formed a majority of the population, which will be excluded from any role the post-election oligarchic regime despite the increase in the turnout (in comparison to previous elections).

Elections: Oligarchs in Office, Workers in the Street

The striking differences in the rate of abstention in France, Puerto Rico and the UK reflect the levels of class dissatisfaction and rejection of electoral politics.

The UK elections provided the electorate with something resembling a class alternative in the candidacy of Jeremy Corbyn. The Labor Party under Corbyn presented a progressive social democratic program promising substantial and necessary increases in social welfare spending (health, education and housing) to be funded by higher progressive taxes on the upper and upper middle class.

Corbyn’s foreign policy promised to end the UK ’s involvement in imperial wars and to withdraw troops from the Middle East. He also re-confirmed his long opposition to Israel ’s colonial land-grabbing and oppression of the Palestinian people, as a principled way to reduce terrorist attacks at home.

In other words, Corbyn recognized that introducing real class-based politics would increase voter participation. This was especially true among young voters in the 18-25 year age group, who were among the UK citizens most harmed by the loss of stable factory jobs, the doubling of university fees and the cuts in national health services.

In contrast, the French legislative elections saw the highest rate of voter abstention since the founding of the 5th Republic. These high rates reflect broad popular opposition to ultra-neo liberal President Francois Macron and the absence of real opposition parties engaged in class struggle.

The lowest voter turn-out (72%) occurred in Puerto Rico. This reflects growing mass opposition to the corrupt political elite, the economic depression and the colonial and semi-colonial offerings of the two-major parties. The absence of political movements and parties tied to class struggle led to greater reliance on direct action and voter abstention.

Class struggle (Source: Medium)

Clearly class politics is the major factor determining voter turnout. The absence of class struggle increases the power of the elite mass media, which promotes the highly divisive identity politics and demonizes left parties. All of these increase both abstention and the vote for rightwing politicians, like Macron.

The mass media grossly inflated the significance of the right’s election victories of the while ignoring the huge wave of citizens rejecting the entire electoral process. In the case of the UK, the appearance of class politics through Jeremy Corbyn increased voter turnout for the Labor Party. However, Labor has a history of first making left promises and ending up with right turns. Any future Labor betrayal will increase voter abstention.

The established parties and the media work in tandem to confine elections to a choreographed contest among competing elites divorced from direct participation by the working classes. This effectively excludes the citizens who have been most harmed by the ruling class’ austerity programs implemented by successive rightist and Social Democratic parties.

The decision of many citizens not to vote is based on taking a very rational and informed view of the ruling political elites who have slashed their living standards often by forcing workers to compete with immigrants for low paying, unstable jobs. It is deeply rational for citizens to refuse to vote for within a rigged system, which only worsens their living conditions through its attacks on the public sector, social welfare and labor codes while cutting taxes on capital.

Conclusion

The vast majority citizens in the wage and salaried class do not trust the political elites. They see electoral campaigns as empty exercises, financed by and for plutocrats.

Most citizens recognize (and despise) the mass media as elite propaganda megaphones fabricating ‘popular’ images to promote anti-working class politicians, while demonizing political activists engaged in class-based struggles.

Nevertheless, elite elections will not produce an effective consolidation of rightwing rule. Voter abstention will not lead to abstention from direct action when the citizens recognize their class interests are in grave jeopardy.

The Macron regime’s parliamentary majority will turn into an impotent minority as soon as he tries carry out his elite promise to slash the jobs of hundreds of thousands of French public sector workers, smash France ’s progressive labor codes and the industry-wide collective bargaining system and pursue new colonial wars.

Puerto Rico’s profound economic depression and social crisis will not be resolved through a referendum with on 27% of the voter participation. Large-scale demonstrations will preclude US annexation and deepen mass demands for class-based alternatives to colonial rule.

Conservative rule in the UK is divided by inter-elite rivalries both at home and abroad. ‘Brexit’, the first step in the break-up of the EU, opens opportunities for deeper class struggle. The social-economic promises made by Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing of the Labor Party energized working class voters, but if it does not fundamentally challenge capital, it will revert to being a marginal force.

The weakness and rivalries within the British ruling class will not be resolved in Parliament or by any new elections.
The demise of the UK, the provocation of a Conservative-DUP alliance and the end of the EU (BREXIT) raises the chance for successful mass extra-parliamentary struggles against the authoritarian neo-liberal attacks on workers’ civil rights and class interests.

Elite elections and their outcomes in Europe and elsewhere are laying the groundwork for a revival and radicalization of the class struggle.

In the final analysis class rule is not decided via elite elections among oligarchs and their mass media propaganda. Once dismissed as a ‘vestige of the past’, the revival of class struggle is clearly on the horizon.

Featured image: Proletarian Center for Research, Education and Culture

The TSA is testing new requirements that passengers remove books and other paper goods from their carry-on baggage when going through airline security. Given the sensitivity of our reading choices, this raises privacy concerns.

Tests of the policy are underway in some small airports around the country, and DHS Secretary John Kelly recently said that “we might, and likely will” apply the policy nationwide.

“What we’re doing now is working out the tactics, techniques, and procedures, if you will, in a few airports, to find out exactly how to do that with the least amount of inconvenience to the traveler,” he told Fox News.

The policy may also apply to food items.

The rationale for the policy change given by Kelly and the TSA is that the imposition of growing fees for checked baggage by the airlines has prompted passengers to more densely pack their carry-ons, and that this has made it harder for screeners to identify particular items amid the jumble of images appearing on their screens. Laptops must already be pulled out separately because they are regarded as a heightened threat and can be better examined if they are not scanned in a bag with many other objects.

It is not clear to me whether books are also regarded as a special threat or whether they are hard for the TSA to distinguish from explosives. I do know from a tour I was given of the TSA’s testing facility a few years ago that the scanners highlight items that are especially dense, and items that are organic (since explosives are made of organic, i.e. carbon-based, matter). That’s probably why the agency thinks it would speed things along to pull out food and books.

That said, books raise very special privacy issues. As my colleague Nicole Ozer has discussed, there is a long history of special legal protection for the privacy of one’s reading habits in the United States, not only through numerous Supreme Court and other court decisions, but also through state laws that criminalize the violation of public library reading privacy or require a warrant to obtain book sales, rental, or lending records.

Airport screening process (Source: Travel and Tour World)

And we know that in the airline screening environment in particular, there have been multiple cases where passengers have been singled out because of their First Amendment-protected expressions. For example, in 2010 the ACLU sued on behalf of a man who was abusively interrogated, handcuffed, and detained for nearly five hours because he was carrying a set of Arabic-language flash cards and a book critical of U.S. foreign policy. We also know that the DHS database known as the “Automated Targeting System,” which tracks information on international travelers, has included notations in travelers’ permanent files about controversial books in their possession.

A person who is reading a book entitled “Overcoming Sexual Abuse” or “Overcoming Sexual Dysfunction” is not likely to want to plop that volume down on the conveyor belt for all to see. Even someone reading a bestseller like “50 Shades of Grey” or a mild self-help book with a title such as “What Should I Do With My Life?” might be shy about exposing his or her reading habits. And of course someone reading Arab or Muslim literature in today’s environment has all too much cause to worry about discrimination. To at least one woman who experienced the new policy, “The scrutiny of my books, magazines and food feels even more invasive” than the body scanners, swabs, and pat-downs.

Is it justified?

Of course, it is true that TSA agents have long had the authority to search your bag if they see an anomaly or unidentifiable object in the x-ray, and such a search would include seeing any reading materials therein. The fact is, exposure of reading materials is part of the privacy that is lost when we allow bag searches. But this policy would lead to more routine and systematic exposure and, inevitably, greater scrutiny of passengers’ reading materials in the course of the screening process. (To be clear we’re talking strictly about physical reading materials here; there is no justification for a TSA screener to look through an e-book reader or other data-storage device. Users of e-books face different privacy concerns.)

While the TSA does have the authority to search our bags, it does NOT have the authority to do so for any purpose other than protecting the safety of airline transportation. That is why TSA agents swabbing your hands for explosives can’t also swab for drugs, for example, or detain and interrogate you about large amounts of cash you are carrying. TSA checkpoints are not general law enforcement stops.

So what is the threat to aviation that might justify an agent taking a book out of your bag and flipping through the pages? I can imagine the agency might want to check to ensure a traveler’s book has not been carved out to hold explosives or other weapons. I presume that such hidden materials would be detected by an x-ray machine, but where anomalies appear screeners might want to open a book to double check.

The second justification is to search for something called “sheet explosives,” which are apparently thin, flat explosives that can be hidden within sheafs of paper or photographs. In a case decided by the 9^thCircuit in 2011, a man was arrested after TSA screeners found child pornography in his checked baggage, and while a district court ruled that the agency’s search of a stack of the man’s photographs was invalid, the 9^th Circuit reversed, in the process accepting as justification the need to check for sheet explosives.

Recommendations

If the TSA is to begin implementing this practice, I would make two recommendations for them.

First, the agency and its screeners need to be sensitive to the potential privacy concerns at work here. That means training screeners to be aware of the privacy issues around books and papers, along with orders curbing any agents’ temptations to snoop through, draw attention to, comment on, or discriminate upon any books and papers they incidentally observe in the screening process. The agency should also think carefully about protocols where passengers may want privacy for their reading materials, such as giving passengers the choice to have their papers searched in private.

Second, given any rule or practice requiring the unpacking and separation of books and other papers, the TSA should allow those materials to be contained by themselves within another package. Passengers who want to should be able to shield paper materials’ covers and nature (such as whether the paper is a book, a diary, a bundle of magazines, a stack of photographs, an eccentric pile of papers with handwritten scribblings, or whatever else). All kinds of things could serve that purpose, from a brown paper bag to manila folder. We could even see the emergence of a product category of “book sleeves” or the like—compartmentalized bags that allow for things to be separated for the x-ray without visually exposing them to anyone. Since plain containers will accomplish the TSA’s stated goal of decluttering the x-ray images reviewed by agents, there is absolutely no reason the TSA should not accommodate passengers seeking privacy this way.

I would think same kind of logic would apply to food. I don’t see comparable privacy/discrimination threats with regards to making passengers show their food, though some people may have their reasons for not wanting others to see what they’re eating/carrying.

Of course if there is an anomaly on an x-ray of a sleeve holding books, the TSA is going to want to open such a package or sleeve to make sure there is nothing that poses a threat to aviation therein, just as with a backpack or any other carry-on item.

In this country we use x-rays instead of manual bag searches not just because they are faster and easier, but also because it helps to minimize the intrusiveness of searches. Despite the privacy invasion that such searches represent, we do preserve a fair degree of practical privacy when we are allowed to keep our bags closed as we submit them to the x-rays. Insofar as the agency is going to force passengers to unpack when being screened, it should be done in such a way as to minimize the invasiveness of that change.

Anyone who experiences discrimination based on their books or papers or invasions of their privacy that are not justified (per the criteria explained above) should consider filing a complaint with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and/or the TSA, and notifying the ACLU via this form.

Jay Stanley is a Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

Featured image: Joel Franusic / Flickr

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

The Big Lie refuses to fade away. Even Trump now believes it’s likely true, tweeting:

“Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?”

On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump believes Russia “probably” interfered in the 2016 election…Maybe some other countries did as well,” adding:

“(O)f course (he’s) concerned about any country or any actor that wants to interfere in elections.”

He created a commission to study the integrity of America’s voting process. In January, he said

“(a)s far as hacking, I think it was Russia (but) we also get hacked by other countries and other people.”

No evidence suggests any nation interfered in America’s electoral process, not last year or earlier. Washington does it repeatedly against many countries worldwide, seeking to influence who wins, showing contempt for the sovereign rights of all states.

On Friday, the neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post continued spreading the Big Lie about nonexistent Russian US election hacking, saying:

“Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House.”

“Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried ‘eyes only’ instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.”

“Inside was an intelligence bombshell (sic), a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the US presidential race.”

“But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives – defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.”

Fact: The so-called CIA “intelligence bombshell” was fabricated to bash Russia and denigrate Trump.

Fact: No Russian US election hacking occurred – or any other Moscow interference in America’s electoral process.

Fact: No US election hacking occurred by any source. DNC emails were leaked by one or more disgruntled party staffers. Russia had nothing to do with it.

Fact: WaPo is an instrument of CIA propaganda, truth-telling on major issues absent on its pages, especially on geopolitical ones.

Its so-called Friday “Exclusive: Hacking Democracy” report was fiction, not factual – continuing deception, manipulating public opinion to believe Big Lies are bona fide truths

Claiming “Putin was working to elect Trump” is utter rubbish. Not a shred of evidence suggests it. Nothing indicates Russian interference in the electoral processes of any of the 50 states – or any other countries.

Claims otherwise are bald-faced lies, including WaPo calling “Russia’s (nonexistent) interference…the (political) crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely destabilizing attack on American democracy.”

So-called “American democracy” is pure fantasy. None exists. Duopoly power with two right wings runs things. Ordinary people have no say whatever.

Russia’s electoral system shames America’s sham process. Putin’s overwhelming domestic popularity was earned by responsible governance.

It’s polar opposite how rogue state America is run, its major media, like WaPo, serving as propaganda arms.

Disinformation, fake news and Big Lies substitute for legitimate journalism. WaPo’s latest report on (nonexistent) Russian US election interference was willful deception – disgracefully and unjustifiably bashing the country and Vladimir Putin.

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

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

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

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

Featured image: credits to the owner

What might a future India look like? If current policies continue, it could mean dozens of mega-cities with up to 40 million inhabitants and just two to three hundred million (perhaps 15-20% of the population) left in an emptied-out countryside. It could also mean hundreds of millions of former rural dwellers without any work and thus anywhere decent to live in these cities.

And what about the countryside? Given the trajectory the country seems to be on, it does not take much to imagine vast swathes of chemically-drenched monocrop fields containing genetically modified plants or soils rapidly turning into a chemical cocktail of proprietary biocides, dirt and dust.

Thanks to the model of agriculture being supported and advocated by neoliberal ideologues under the banner of ‘growth’, it also does not take much to imagine a state of near-permanent drought, spiralling rates of illness throughout the population due to bad diets, denutrified food and agrochemical poisoning.

Monsanto-Bayer and other transnational corporations will decide on what is to be eaten and how it is to be produced and processed. From seed to field to plate, the corporate take-over of the food and agriculture chain will be complete. You can forget any notion of food sovereignty. The existing productive system based on livelihood-sustaining smallholder agriculture and small-scale food processing will be all but a memory as those remaining in the sector will be squeezed, working on contracts for market-dominating global seed and agrochemical suppliers, distributors and retail concerns. Independent agricultural producers and village level processors will have long been forced out of the system.

Industrial agriculture will be the norm (with all the social, environmental and health devastation and externalised costs that the models brings with it).

Source: Genetic Literacy Project

Since the 1990s, India seems to have decided to hitch a ride to the future by tying itself to a system of neoliberal globalisation. An unsustainable, crisis-ridden system that fuels national debt and relies on hand-outs (demonetisation) for banks and corporations. A system based on a credit/debt-based consumer economy, financial speculation, derivatives and bubbles, with nations no longer able to carry out their own policies, tied down by undemocratic trade deals, beholden to rigged World Trade Organization rules and following a path prescribed by the World Bank, regardless of any democratic will of the people. A system whereby governments are paralysed to act as both eyes are firmly fixed on ‘market confidence’ and fearful of scaring away companies.

In a future India, international corporations will have long destroyed any real notion of indigenous self-sufficiency, having made a mockery of long-forgotten sound bites about ‘make in India’. People might eventually ask, how did India let this happen to itself?

We do not have to move forward 50 years to look back to see what happened. We already have the answer to why the world has taken a wrong turn.

Economist Dani Rodrik notes how under the Bretton Woods regime nations put restrictions on the flow of capital both inwards and outwards, so that domestic firms and banks could not borrow from banks elsewhere or from international capital markets. They would ask for permission or they would not be permitted. Domestic corporations or banks could not put their money in other countries. They couldn’t simply take the money out. Domestic financial markets were segmented from international or financial markets elsewhere. Governments could run their own macroeconomic policy without being truly encumbered by monetary or fiscal policies elsewhere.

Rodrik argues that this meant governments could also have their own tax policies and own industrial policies without having to worry that capital and international capital would leave. It meant you didn’t have to try to seek market confidence for every policy or worry that if you didn’t have market confidence, capital would flee. There were also restrictions on domestic residents trading on foreign currencies.

However, the dismantling of Bretton Woods and the deregulation of international capital movement (financial liberalisation) has led to the greater incidence of financial crises (including sovereign debt) as well as their severity.

Across the world, ordinary people are reacting to the outcome of neoliberalism. From Greece to the US, people have taken to the streets to protest. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn has tapped into the popular sentiment that enough is enough. In India, farmers are protesting on the streets.

But what can be done to prevent a future full-fledged neoliberal dystopia taking hold in India?

The authors of this piece in India’s Economic & Political Weekly argue that in agriculture long-term measures could include land reforms and correcting rigged trade that is against the cultivating class. They add:

“Far-sighted and sustained policy initiatives to provide farmers dignified livelihoods are required. In an economy driven by jobless growth, compulsive migration to cities is often a case of distress transhumance. These migrants then become the new “serfs” of the informal services and construction sector, while the existing rural and agrarian problems remain unresolved.”

If such initiatives are not forthcoming, India should look to Mexico to see what is in store. Aside from destroying the nation’s health and home-grown food supply chain, ‘free’ trade under NAFTA allowed subsidised US corn to be dumped in the country, fuelled unemployment and transformed a former productive peasantry into a problematic group.

To avoid similar outcomes, India must delink from capitalist globalisation through capital controls, manage foreign trade to suit its own interests and expand domestic production, which it can achieve by protecting and encouraging indigenous small producers, including smallholder farmers. By encouraging localisation, self-sufficiency and investing in these types of producers, meaningful work can be generated for the majority. The exact opposite of the globalisation agenda (tens of millions of livelihoods are in danger as foreign corporations move in).

Despite the state’s neglect of agriculture, hundreds of millions of people still find sustenance from farming in India. Instead of driving farmers away to the cities, an approach to development must begin by recognising the situation, skills and knowledge already possessed within the agriculture sector. It should not demand that farmers mortgage their lives and wait for decades for jobs that may never arrive. It should not listen to neoliberal dogmatists whose only role is to seek to justify corporate plunder.

Featured image: credits to the owner

What might a future India look like? If current policies continue, it could mean dozens of mega-cities with up to 40 million inhabitants and just two to three hundred million (perhaps 15-20% of the population) left in an emptied-out countryside. It could also mean hundreds of millions of former rural dwellers without any work and thus anywhere decent to live in these cities.

And what about the countryside? Given the trajectory the country seems to be on, it does not take much to imagine vast swathes of chemically-drenched monocrop fields containing genetically modified plants or soils rapidly turning into a chemical cocktail of proprietary biocides, dirt and dust.

Thanks to the model of agriculture being supported and advocated by neoliberal ideologues under the banner of ‘growth’, it also does not take much to imagine a state of near-permanent drought, spiralling rates of illness throughout the population due to bad diets, denutrified food and agrochemical poisoning.

Monsanto-Bayer and other transnational corporations will decide on what is to be eaten and how it is to be produced and processed. From seed to field to plate, the corporate take-over of the food and agriculture chain will be complete. You can forget any notion of food sovereignty. The existing productive system based on livelihood-sustaining smallholder agriculture and small-scale food processing will be all but a memory as those remaining in the sector will be squeezed, working on contracts for market-dominating global seed and agrochemical suppliers, distributors and retail concerns. Independent agricultural producers and village level processors will have long been forced out of the system.

Industrial agriculture will be the norm (with all the social, environmental and health devastation and externalised costs that the models brings with it).

Source: Genetic Literacy Project

Since the 1990s, India seems to have decided to hitch a ride to the future by tying itself to a system of neoliberal globalisation. An unsustainable, crisis-ridden system that fuels national debt and relies on hand-outs (demonetisation) for banks and corporations. A system based on a credit/debt-based consumer economy, financial speculation, derivatives and bubbles, with nations no longer able to carry out their own policies, tied down by undemocratic trade deals, beholden to rigged World Trade Organization rules and following a path prescribed by the World Bank, regardless of any democratic will of the people. A system whereby governments are paralysed to act as both eyes are firmly fixed on ‘market confidence’ and fearful of scaring away companies.

In a future India, international corporations will have long destroyed any real notion of indigenous self-sufficiency, having made a mockery of long-forgotten sound bites about ‘make in India’. People might eventually ask, how did India let this happen to itself?

We do not have to move forward 50 years to look back to see what happened. We already have the answer to why the world has taken a wrong turn.

Economist Dani Rodrik notes how under the Bretton Woods regime nations put restrictions on the flow of capital both inwards and outwards, so that domestic firms and banks could not borrow from banks elsewhere or from international capital markets. They would ask for permission or they would not be permitted. Domestic corporations or banks could not put their money in other countries. They couldn’t simply take the money out. Domestic financial markets were segmented from international or financial markets elsewhere. Governments could run their own macroeconomic policy without being truly encumbered by monetary or fiscal policies elsewhere.

Rodrik argues that this meant governments could also have their own tax policies and own industrial policies without having to worry that capital and international capital would leave. It meant you didn’t have to try to seek market confidence for every policy or worry that if you didn’t have market confidence, capital would flee. There were also restrictions on domestic residents trading on foreign currencies.

However, the dismantling of Bretton Woods and the deregulation of international capital movement (financial liberalisation) has led to the greater incidence of financial crises (including sovereign debt) as well as their severity.

Across the world, ordinary people are reacting to the outcome of neoliberalism. From Greece to the US, people have taken to the streets to protest. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn has tapped into the popular sentiment that enough is enough. In India, farmers are protesting on the streets.

But what can be done to prevent a future full-fledged neoliberal dystopia taking hold in India?

The authors of this piece in India’s Economic & Political Weekly argue that in agriculture long-term measures could include land reforms and correcting rigged trade that is against the cultivating class. They add:

“Far-sighted and sustained policy initiatives to provide farmers dignified livelihoods are required. In an economy driven by jobless growth, compulsive migration to cities is often a case of distress transhumance. These migrants then become the new “serfs” of the informal services and construction sector, while the existing rural and agrarian problems remain unresolved.”

If such initiatives are not forthcoming, India should look to Mexico to see what is in store. Aside from destroying the nation’s health and home-grown food supply chain, ‘free’ trade under NAFTA allowed subsidised US corn to be dumped in the country, fuelled unemployment and transformed a former productive peasantry into a problematic group.

To avoid similar outcomes, India must delink from capitalist globalisation through capital controls, manage foreign trade to suit its own interests and expand domestic production, which it can achieve by protecting and encouraging indigenous small producers, including smallholder farmers. By encouraging localisation, self-sufficiency and investing in these types of producers, meaningful work can be generated for the majority. The exact opposite of the globalisation agenda (tens of millions of livelihoods are in danger as foreign corporations move in).

Despite the state’s neglect of agriculture, hundreds of millions of people still find sustenance from farming in India. Instead of driving farmers away to the cities, an approach to development must begin by recognising the situation, skills and knowledge already possessed within the agriculture sector. It should not demand that farmers mortgage their lives and wait for decades for jobs that may never arrive. It should not listen to neoliberal dogmatists whose only role is to seek to justify corporate plunder.

Featured image: credits to the owner

U.S. President Donald Trump, who during the election-campaign ferociously condemned Barack Obama’s foreign policies, while asserting nothing concrete of his own, has, as the U.S. President, committed himself quite clearly to continuing Obama’s publicly stated policy on Syria, which policy was to place, as the first priority, the elimination of ISIS, and as the policy to follow that, the elimination and replacement of Syria’s government. I have previously indicated that on June 19th “Russia Announces No-Fly Zone in Syria — War Against U.S. There”, and that the early indications are that Trump has changed his Syria-policy to accommodate Russia’s demands there; but, prior to June 19th, Trump was actually following Obama’s publicly stated Syria-policy.

As also will be shown here, Obama’s publicly stated policy — to destroy ISIS and then to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad — was actually less extreme than his real policy, which was to overthrow Assad and to use the jihadist forces in Syria (especially Al Qaeda in Syria) to achieve that objective. Trump, at least until 19 June 2017, has been adhering to Obama’s publicly stated policy. Russia’s warning was for him not to adopt and continue Obama’s actual policy (to overthrow Assad).

Here is the part, of the by-now-famous 12 August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysis of the intelligence regarding Iraq and in Syria, that the press (despite its extensive reporting about the document) has not yet reported from the Judicial Watch FOIA disclosures (which had included that document and many others), but which part of it shows even more than the part that has been reported from the document, Obama’s having made an informed choice actually to protect Al Qaeda in Syria, so as to bring down and replace the Syrian government — Obama’s actual prioritization (contrary to his publicly stated one) of overthrowing Assad, even above defeating the jihadists in Syria; and this was clearly also a warning by the DIA to the Commander-in-Chief, that he can have either an overthrow of Assad, or else a non-jihadist-controlled Syria, but not both, and that any attempt to bring down Assad by means of using the jihadists as a proxy army against him, would ultimately fail:

***

http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version.pdf

page 69 of 100

D. AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq], through spokesman of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) Abu Muhammed Al Adnani, declared the Syrian regime as the spearhead of what he is naming Jibha Al Ruwafdh (forefront of the Shiites) because of its (the Syrian regime) declaration of war on the Sunnis. Additionally, he is calling on the Sunnis in Iraq, especially the tribes in the border regions (between Iraq and Syria), to wage war against the Syrian regime, regarding Syria as an infidel regime for its support to the infidel party Hezbollah, and other regimes he considers dissenters like Iran and Iraq.

E. AQI considers the Sunni issue in Iraq to be fatefully connected to the Sunni Arabs and Muslims.

page 70

A. The [Syrian] regime will survive and have control over Syrian territory.

page 71

B. Development of the current events into a proxy war: with support from Russia, China, and Iran, the regime is controlling the areas of influence along coastal territories (Tartus and Latakia), and is fiercely defending Homs, which is considered the primary transportation route in Syria. On the other hand, opposition forces are trying to control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighboring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these [jihadist] efforts. …

***

And here is from the part that the press did report:

https://www.facebook.com/ayssar.midani/posts/10152479627582395

Ayssar Midani, May 23, 2015 · Paris, France

“C: If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

The “supporting powers” are: western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey The DIA warns that the creation of such an Salafist principality would have “dire consequences” for Iraq and would possibly lead to the creation of an Islamic State and: create the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi. 

These DIA folks really earned their salary.

The Obama administration, together with other supporter of the Syrian “opposition”, knew that AQ was a large part of that “opposition” from the very beginning. The U.S. and others wanted a Salafist [i.e., fundamentalist Sunni] principality in east Syria to cut Syria and Lebanon off from a land route to Iran. It was warned that such a principality would create havoc in Iraq and to the return of AQ in Iraq (today the Islamic State) to Mosul and Ramadi.

***

I quoted from that part in December 2016, which was the time when the two Presidents, Obama and Turkey’s Erdogan, began their joint effort to relocate ISIS from Mosul Iraq, into Der Zor Syria, in order to culminate their (and the Sauds’) joint plan to use ISIS so as to bring down Assad. Then, I headlined, on 30 April 2017, that they had actually completed this task of moving Iraq’s ISIS into Syria, “How Obama & Erdogan Moved ISIS from Iraq to Syria, to Weaken Assad”. That’s why the Syrian government is now fighting to take Der Zor back from ISIS control.

***

Other portions of the Judicial Watch FOIA disclosures which received little or no press-coverage (and that little being only on far-right blogs — not mainstream ‘news’ sites) add still further to the evidence that Obama was using Al Qaeda and its friends, as a proxy army of jihadists to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and replace him by a jihadist regime that would be loyal to America’s fundamentalist-Sunni ‘allies’, the Sauds who own Saudi Arabia, and the Thanis who own Qatar. (Of course, now, the Sauds are trying to destroy the Thanis, too.) These unpublished or little-published portions from the Judical Watch disclosures, also add to the ample published evidence that the Obama regime was transporting (as these documents acknowledged on page 4) “weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya” which “were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria,” for use by Obama’s ‘moderate rebels’ (a.k.a.: jihadists) in Syria. Specifically:

***

page 4:

18 Sep 2012

2. During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amounts of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

3. The weapons shipped from Libya to Syria during late-August 2012 [i.e., the period immediately prior to this memo] were sniper rifles, RPGs, and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles.

***

It’s now clear that Trump (at least until June 19th) has been continuing Obama’s stated policy of killing ISIS and then overthrowing Assad. But of course no one can yet know whether or not he would be continuing it in precisely the way that Hillary Clinton made clear that she would do, which is to announce a no-fly zone in Syria and thus grab control over some portion of the sovereign nation of Syria. That way would result, now after 19 June 2017 (Russia’s warning to shoot down U.S. aircraft that attack Syrian government-allied forces), either in U.S. retreat or else shooting down Russian planes in Syria, and war between U.S. and Russia, ending in nuclear war.

When I presented, in my December 2016 report, what I referred to above as “the part of the 12 August 2012 DIA analysis of the intelligence regarding Iraq and in Syria that the press has not yet reported from the Judicial Watch FOIA disclosures,” I didn’t mention then that one news-medium did report a part of that section, and it was a rabidly pro-Republican site, Glenn Beck and his “The Blaze,” which headlined about this matter, very appropriately, “‘It Is Damn Near Criminal’: Glenn Beck Says the U.S. Is Using Islamic State as a ‘Pawn’,” which point, Beck presented rather well in the video accompanying it. Unfortunately, however, closed-minded ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ paid no attention to this and to the other evils perpetrated by Obama (such as these). Regardless of how untrustworthy Beck is, his statements about that particular matter were actually spot-on.

President Obama talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during the 70th United Nations General Assembly Sept. 28, 2015. (Source: kgou.org)

Obama was using ISIS in this way, but after Russia started bombing ISIS in Syria on 30 September 2015, Obama joined in so as not to make obvious to the world that he had been protecting and even arming ISIS until that date, and that prior to Russia’s bombing ISIS, the U.S. had actually ignored ISIS. 

Now that ISIS in Syria seems to be on its last legs there, only Kurds and Al Qaeda in Syria (and their backers especially the U.S. and Sauds) remain as big threats to Syria’s sovereignty, and the evidence at least till June 19th, has been that Trump definitely backs the Kurds there, and might also be backing Al Qaeda there as well. If he continues backing the Kurds and Al Qaeda there, after Russia’s warning on June 19th (which the neoconservative Washington Post called only “bluffing” and the neoconservative CNBC called “bluster”), then the U.S. will be at war not only against Russia, but also against Turkey, and also against Iran, and it would be World War III because it would be U.S.-v.-Russia. Turkey is already at war against the Kurds; and, if America is fighting for the Kurds, to break up Syria, then Turkey — a member of the NATO anti-Russia alliance — will paralyze NATO; and the U.S. will then be waging its war without NATO’s support. Trump would need to be very stupid to do such a thing. It would be an intelligence test which, if Trump fails, the world will end, in nuclear winter — with or without support from the rest of NATO. But, nonetheless, some in the American ‘elite’ and its employees, say that it would merely be a recognition of Russia’s “bluffing” and “bluster.” One wonders what objective this ‘elite’ believes to be worthy of taking the risk that they’re wrong. What do they actually hope to ‘win’, fighting on the side of the Sauds (and their Israeli agents), in order to conquer Syria? Why are they so desperate, to do that?

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.

Featured image: credits to the owner

On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.

The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack,  including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.

Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president’s determination to ignore the evidence.

“None of this makes any sense,” one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth … I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.“

The provenance of the photos was not clear and no international observers have yet inspected the site, but the immediate popular assumption worldwide was that this was a deliberate use of the nerve agent sarin, authorized by President Bashar Assad of Syria. Trump endorsed that assumption by issuing a statement within hours of the attack, describing Assad’s “heinous actions” as being a consequence of the Obama administration’s “weakness and irresolution” in addressing what he said was Syria’s past use of chemical weapons.

To the dismay of many senior members of his national security team, Trump could not be swayed over the next 48 hours of intense briefings and decision-making. In a series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect between the president and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4. In an important pre-strike process known as deconfliction, U.S. and Russian officers routinely supply one another with advance details of planned flight paths and target coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk of collision or accidental encounter (the Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian military). This information is supplied daily to the American AWACS surveillance planes that monitor the flights once airborne. Deconfliction’s success and importance can be measured by the fact that there has yet to be one collision, or even a near miss, among the high-powered supersonic American, Allied, Russian and Syrian fighter bombers.

Russian and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the carefully planned flight path to and from Khan Shiekhoun on April 4 directly, in English, to the deconfliction monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which was on patrol near the Turkish border, 60 miles or more to the north.

The Syrian target at Khan Sheikhoun, as shared with the Americans at Doha, was depicted as a two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town. Russian intelligence, which is shared when necessary with Syria and the U.S. as part of their joint fight against jihadist groups, had established that a high-level meeting of jihadist leaders was to take place in the building, including representatives of Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The two groups had recently joined forces, and controlled the town and surrounding area. Russian intelligence depicted the cinder-block building as a command and control center that housed a grocery and other commercial premises on its ground floor with other essential shops nearby, including a fabric shop and an electronics store.

“The rebels control the population by controlling the distribution of goods that people need to live – food, water, cooking oil, propane gas, fertilizers for growing their crops, and insecticides to protect the crops,” a senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, told me.

The basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons and ammunition, as well as products that could be distributed for free to the community, among them medicines and chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial. The meeting place – a regional headquarters – was on the floor above.

“It was an established meeting place,” the senior adviser said. “A long-time facility that would have had security, weapons, communications, files and a map center.”

The Russians were intent on confirming their intelligence and deployed a drone for days above the site to monitor communications and develop what is known in the intelligence community as a POL – a pattern of life. The goal was to take note of those going in and out of the building, and to track weapons being moved back and forth, including rockets and ammunition.

One reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the jihadist leadership was forewarned not to attend the meeting. I was told that the Russians passed the warning directly to the CIA. “They were playing the game right,” the senior adviser said. The Russian guidance noted that the jihadist meeting was coming at a time of acute pressure for the insurgents: Presumably Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were desperately seeking a path forward in the new political climate. In the last few days of March, Trump and two of his key national security aides – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley – had made statements acknowledging that, as the New York Times put it, the White House “has abandoned the goal” of pressuring Assad “to leave power, marking a sharp departure from the Middle East policy that guided the Obama administration for more than five years.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a press briefing on March 31 that “there is a political reality that we have to accept,” implying that Assad was there to stay.

Russian and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was special because of the high-value target.

“It was a red-hot change. The mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked,” the senior adviser told me. “Every operations officer in the region” – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – “had to know there was something going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wingman.”

The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given the highest possible score inside the American community.

The Execute Order governing U.S. military operations in theater, which was issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  provide instructions that demarcate the relationship between the American and Russian forces operating in Syria.

“It’s like an ops order – ‘Here’s what you are authorized to do,’” the adviser said. “We do not share operational control with the Russians. We don’t do combined operations with them, or activities directly in support of one of their operations.  But coordination is permitted. We keep each other apprised of what’s happening and within this package is the mutual exchange of intelligence.  If we get a hot tip that could help the Russians do their mission, that’s coordination; and the Russians do the same for us. When we get a hot tip about a command and control facility,” the adviser added, referring to the target in Khan Sheikhoun, “we do what we can to help them act on it.” “This was not a chemical weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a weapon that people can run away from?”

This photograph by the Syrian opposition (Edlib Media Center) shows the aftermath of a strike against the town of Khan Sheikhoun. A large building was hit, but it’s unclear were the strike took place exactly. (Source: picture alliance / ZUMAPRESS.com/Shalan Stewart)

The target was struck at 6:55 a.m. on April 4, just before midnight in Washington. A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered  a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. According to intelligence estimates, the senior adviser said, the strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders, and an unknown number of drivers and security aides. There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have put the figure as high as 92. A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that “eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.” MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there “smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.

The internet swung into action within hours, and gruesome photographs of the victims flooded television networks and YouTube. U.S. intelligence was tasked with establishing what had happened. Among the pieces of information received was an intercept of Syrian communications collected before the attack by an allied nation. The intercept, which had a particularly strong effect on some of Trump’s aides, did not mention nerve gas or sarin, but it did quote a Syrian general discussing a “special” weapon and the need for a highly skilled pilot to man the attack plane. The reference, as those in the American intelligence community understood, and many of the inexperienced aides and family members close to Trump may not have, was to a Russian-supplied bomb with its built-in guidance system. “If you’ve already decided it was a gas attack, you will then inevitably read the talk about a special weapon as involving a sarin bomb,” the adviser said. “Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria.”

At the UN the next day, Ambassador Haley created a media sensation when she displayed photographs of the dead and accused Russia of being complicit.

“How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” she asked.

NBC News, in a typical report that day, quoted American officials as confirming that nerve gas had been used and Haley tied the attack directly to Syrian President Assad.

“We know that yesterday’s attack was a new low even for the barbaric Assad regime,” she said.

There was irony in America’s rush to blame Syria and criticize Russia for its support of Syria’s denial of any use of gas in Khan Sheikhoun, as Ambassador Haley and others in Washington did.

“What doesn’t occur to most Americans” the adviser said, “is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?”

Trump, a constant watcher of television news, said, while King Abdullah of Jordan was sitting next to him in the Oval Office, that what had happened was “horrible, horrible” and a “terrible affront to humanity.” Asked if his administration would change its policy toward the Assad government, he said: “You will see.” He gave a hint of the response to come at the subsequent news conference with King Abdullah:

“When you kill innocent children, innocent babies – babies, little babies – with a chemical gas that is so lethal  … that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line . … That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. Big impact … It’s very, very possible … that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

Within hours of viewing the photos, the adviser said, Trump instructed the national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against Syria.

“He did this before he talked to anybody about it. The planners then asked the CIA and DIA if there was any evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a nearby airport or somewhere in the area. Their military had to have it somewhere in the area in order to bomb with it.”“The answer was, ‘We have no evidence that Syria had sarin or used it,’” the adviser said. “The CIA also told them that there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian SU-24 bombers had taken off on April 4] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.”

Everyone involved, except perhaps the president, also understood that a highly skilled United Nations team had spent more than a year in the aftermath of an alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria, removing what was said to be all chemical weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical weapons depots.

At this point, the adviser said, the president’s national security planners were more than a little rattled:

“No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.”

The intelligence made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead. And yet it was impossible for the experts to persuade the president of this once he had made up his mind.

“The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity,” the senior adviser said. “It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’”

In this photo released by the White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Twitter, President Trump receives a briefing on the Syria military strike in a secured conference room at his Mar-a-Lago resort. (Photo: White House Photo)

The national security advisers understood their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded. They were dealing with a man they considered to be not unkind and not stupid, but his limitations when it came to national security decisions were severe.

“Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts,” the adviser said. “He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: ‘Do it.”’

On April 6, Trump convened a meeting of national security officials at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The meeting was not to decide what to do, but how best to do it – or, as some wanted, how to do the least and keep Trump happy.

“The boss knew before the meeting that they didn’t have the intelligence, but that was not the issue,” the adviser said. “The meeting was about, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do,’ and then he gets the options.”

The available intelligence was not relevant. The most experienced man at the table was Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who had the president’s respect and understood, perhaps, how quickly that could evaporate. Mike Pompeo, the CIA director whose agency had consistently reported that it had no evidence of a Syrian chemical bomb, was not present. Secretary of State Tillerson was admired on the inside for his willingness to work long hours and his avid reading of diplomatic cables and reports, but he knew little about waging war and the management of a bombing raid. Those present were in a bind, the adviser said.

“The president was emotionally energized by the disaster and he wanted options.”

He got four of them, in order of extremity. Option one was to do nothing. All involved, the adviser said, understood that was a non-starter. Option two was a slap on the wrist: to bomb an airfield in Syria, but only after alerting the Russians and, through them, the Syrians, to avoid too many casualties. A few of the planners called this the “gorilla option”: America would glower and beat its chest to provoke fear and demonstrate resolve, but cause little significant damage. The third option was to adopt the strike package that had been presented to Obama in 2013, and which he ultimately chose not to pursue. The plan called for the massive bombing of the main Syrian airfields and command and control centers using B1 and B52 aircraft launched from their bases in the U.S. Option four was “decapitation”: to remove Assad by bombing his palace in Damascus, as well as his command and control network and all of the underground bunkers he could possibly retreat to in a crisis.

“Trump ruled out option one off the bat,” the senior adviser said, and the assassination of Assad was never considered. “But he said, in essence: ‘You’re the military and I want military action.’”

The president was also initially opposed to the idea of giving the Russians advance warning before the strike, but reluctantly accepted it.

“We gave him the Goldilocks option – not too hot, not too cold, but just right.”

The discussion had its bizarre moments. Tillerson wondered at the Mar-a-Lago meeting why the president could not simply call in the B52 bombers and pulverize the air base. He was told that B52s were very vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the area and using such planes would require suppression fire that could kill some Russian defenders. “What is that?” Tillerson asked. Well, sir, he was told, that means we would have to destroy the upgraded SAM sites along the B52 flight path, and those are manned by Russians, and we possibly would be confronted with a much more difficult situation.

“The lesson here was: Thank God for the military men at the meeting,” the adviser said. “They did the best they could when confronted with a decision that had already been made.”

Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were fired from two U.S. Navy destroyers on duty in the Mediterranean, the Ross and the Porter, at Shayrat Air Base near the government-controlled city of Homs. The strike was as successful as hoped, in terms of doing minimal damage. The missiles have a light payload – roughly 220 pounds of HBX, the military’s modern version of TNT. The airfield’s gasoline storage tanks, a primary target, were pulverized, the senior adviser said, triggering a huge fire and clouds of smoke that interfered with the guidance system of following missiles. As many as 24 missiles missed their targets and only a few of the Tomahawks actually penetrated into hangars, destroying nine Syrian aircraft, many fewer than claimed by the Trump administration. I was told that none of the nine was operational: such damaged aircraft are what the Air Force calls hangar queens.

“They were sacrificial lambs,” the senior adviser said.

Most of the important personnel and operational fighter planes had been flown to nearby bases hours before the raid began. The two runways and parking places for aircraft, which had also been targeted, were repaired and back in operation within eight hours or so. All in all, it was little more than an expensive fireworks display.

“It was a totally Trump show from beginning to end,” the senior adviser said. “A few of the president’s senior national security advisers viewed the mission as a minimized bad presidential decision, and one that they had an obligation to carry out. But I don’t think our national security people are going to allow themselves to be hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump had gone for option three, there might have been some immediate resignations.”

After the meeting, with the Tomahawks on their way, Trump spoke to the nation from Mar-a-Lago, and accused Assad of using nerve gas to choke out “the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many … No child of God should ever suffer such horror.” The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war. Trump, who had campaigned as someone who advocated making peace with Assad, was bombing Syria 11 weeks after taking office, and was hailed for doing so by Republicans, Democrats and the media alike. One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word “beautiful” to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said:

“I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.”

A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

U.S. cruise missile attack on Syrian air base, direct assault on Assad (Source: jamunanews24.com)

Five days later, the Trump administration gathered the national media for a background briefing on the Syrian operation that was conducted by a senior White House official who was not to be identified. The gist of the briefing was that Russia’s heated and persistent denial of any sarin use in the Khan Sheikhoun bombing was a lie because President Trump had said sarin had been used. That assertion, which was not challenged or disputed by any of the reporters present, became the basis for a series of further criticisms:

• The continued lying by the Trump administration about Syria’s use of sarin led to widespread belief in the American media and public  that Russia had  chosen to be involved in a corrupt disinformation and cover-up campaign on the part of Syria.
• Russia’s military forces had been co-located with Syria’s at the Shayrat airfield (as they are throughout Syria), raising the possibility that Russia had advance notice of Syria’s determination to use sarin at Khan Sheikhoun and did nothing to stop it.
• Syria’s use of sarin and Russia’s defense of that use strongly suggested that Syria withheld stocks of the nerve agent from the UN disarmament team that spent much of 2014 inspecting and removing all declared chemical warfare agents from 12 Syrian chemical weapons depots, pursuant to the agreement worked out by the Obama administration and Russia after Syria’s alleged, but still unproven, use of sarin the year before against a rebel redoubt in a suburb of Damascus.

The briefer, to his credit, was careful to use the words “think,” “suggest” and “believe” at least 10 times during the 30-minute event. But he also said that his briefing was based on data that had been declassified by “our colleagues in the intelligence community.” What the briefer did not say, and may not have known, was that much of the classified information in the community made the point that Syria had not used sarin in the April 4 bombing attack.

The mainstream press responded the way the White House had hoped it would: Stories attacking Russia’s alleged cover-up of Syria’s sarin use dominated the news and many media outlets ignored the briefer’s myriad caveats. There was a sense of renewed Cold War. The New York Times, for example – America’s leading newspaper – put the following headline on its account: “White House Accuses Russia of Cover-Up in Syria Chemical Attack.” The Times’ account did note a Russian denial, but what was described by the briefer as “declassified information” suddenly became a “declassified intelligence report.” Yet there was no formal intelligence report stating that Syria had used sarin, merely a “summary based on declassified information about the attacks,” as the briefer referred to it.

The crisis slid into the background by the end of April, as Russia, Syria and the United States remained focused on annihilating ISIS and the militias of al-Qaida. Some of those who had worked through the crisis, however, were left with lingering concerns.

“The Salafists and jihadists got everything they wanted out of their hyped-up Syrian nerve gas ploy,” the senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community told me, referring to the flare up of tensions between Syria, Russia and America. “The issue is, what if there’s another false flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.”

The White House did not answer specific questions about the bombing of Khan Sheikhoun and the airport of Shayrat. These questions were send via e-mail to the White House on June 15 and never answered.   

Featured image:  Picture alliance / Robert S. Pri

It should be clear by now to even the most disinterested global spectator to the protracted carnage of the Syrian Civil War that the governments of the Western world led by the United States of America have instigated and sustained an insurrection against a sovereign country through the use of Islamist proxies. It should also be clear to those who are adequately informed by a suitable range of media sources, that many of the terror attacks which have occurred in both American and Western European locations have been carried out by individuals who have been under the radar of Western security agencies.

Further, the Syrian and other conflicts instigated by the West have created the basis for influxes of refugees as well as new avenues of transit for economic migrants bound for Western Europe. The incessant bombing of Muslim lands for a continuous period of over a decade and a half continues to provide the basis for radicalising segments of the Muslim world. America’s role in the Syrian conflict is risking a war with Russia, a nuclear armed power, which at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, is part of a coalition involving both Iran and Hezbollah that is attempting to suppress the Islamist insurgents.

Yet, among the population of Western countries, there remains a perplexing mixture of ignorance and indifference about the policy of their governments calculated use of “Islamic militants” both at home and abroad. Unless a strong consensus arises in the form of dedicated mass protest movements by informed members of their populations and pressure is brought by coalitions of principled and non-partisan political actors, the West will continue to embroil itself in an enduring series of conflicts in the Muslim world.

The moral, financial and security ramifications are clear: the continuing cycle of human destruction, the ever increasing risk of terror atrocities, the burdens imposed by military expenditure as well as the threats to social cohesion caused by migration from affected countries, cumulatively represent a self-inflicted conundrum from which it will become difficult to be extricated unless there is a radical overhaul of Western foreign policy.

In August 2012, President Barack Obama declared the use of chemical weapons in Syria to be a ‘red line’. (Source: World Tribune)

Much of the public debate in the United States about the rise of groups such as the so-called Islamic State often takes a partisan slant. For those to the political Right, former US President Barack Obama is the author of the Syrian crisis, while others prefer granting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the dubious accolade of being the ‘Godmother of ISIS’. On the other hand, those on the political Left blame George W. Bush for the Syrian conflict on the basis that the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent sectarian-orientated turmoil led to the development of a range of extremist Sunni Islamist militias. Many of them were linked to the al Qaeda franchise and metastasized most prominently into the Jabhat al Nusra Front and IS.

Another important part of the public discourse, inevitably heightened in the aftermath of the occurrence of each terror atrocity committed in North America or in Western Europe, relates to the issue of whether Islam can be considered to be an ethically sound religion. The consensus among many in the political classes and the media is to insist that terror attacks are perpetrated by a tiny minority of the earth’s reputed 1.6 billion Muslims, while a significantly vocal part of the public contend that the history of Islamic expansion as well as the philosophy of violence expressed by prominent Islamist groups mark it out as anything but a ‘religion of peace’.

The debate on Islam is frequently concerned with whether Muslims are assimilable in Western society with the microscope firmly focused on the amount of Muslim refugees seeking or gaining entrance to North American and Western European destinations.

While each aspect of these debates are important in their own right, the compartmentalized nature of the discourse arguably serves as a useful device which distracts the public from grasping the broader picture.

For one, attempting to fix the blame for the rise of certain notorious Islamist militias on particular political figures for partisan reasons only serves to obscure the very lengthy history of Western support for militant Islamic groups.

The often bitter exchanges after terror attacks are dominated by issues related to whether Muslim communities resident in the West are sufficiently loyal to their countries of residence. Getting lost in the thicket of argument and counter-argument is a disturbingly consistent feature of many perpetrators having been monitored by relevant state intelligence agencies.

In a similar vein, the worries about Western-bound Muslim refugees tend to disconnect from Western culpability in what may be termed coercive engineered migration.

Thus the overall effect of these partisan accusations and disputes present a useful distraction from scrutinising the prevailing overarching policy as well as enabling politicians and security officials to escape accountability for creating the conditions which have brought Islamic fundamentalist terror to the streets of their towns and cities.

Understanding history is important. The role of the United States and its allies in facilitating the weaponising of Islam as a means of obtaining dubious geo-political advantage is a longstanding one. When Wesley Clark, a retired US four-star general admitted that ISIS had been created “with funding from our friends and allies to fight Hezbollah to the death”, on the basis that only fanatics and not idealist-minded recruits could be sufficiently motivated to do so, he was harking to a sentiment long-held by the West in its dealings with the Middle East.

The use of Islamic soldiers was one embraced by Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, who in a January 1944 speech referred to Islam as a “practical and attractive religion for soldiers”. Its promise of paradise and beautiful women to the martyrs of battle was, Himmler felt, “the kind of language a soldier understands”.

Three decades earlier, the use of “medieval thinking” and “superstitious” Mahometans as guerrilla proxies was an idea latched onto by Kaiser Wilhelm II during the First World War as part of the German strategy of revolutionspolitik. This was a policy aimed at encouraging subversion and revolution in the vulnerable regions within the empires against which Germany was waging Welt Kreig.

It was applied by allowing Vladimir Lenin to travel through German territory on a sealed train so that he could reach Russia where he could foment chaos through a Bolshevik uprising and give Germany an advantage on its eastern front. The Germans also scored their prisoner of war camps for Ukrainian prisoners whom they trained and indoctrinated to form an anti-Tsarist ukrainian nationalist army.

The Germans unsuccessfully attempted to apply it by inciting rebellion among the millions of Muslims living under British rule and in the areas bordering British territories. Pamphlets calling for Muslims to form cells which would kill combatant and non-combatant Christian Europeans in the name of jihad were produced.

It was a theme which was fictionalised in the John Buchan novel Greenmantle which was published in 1916. In the book, the character Sir Walter Bullivant, claims that “Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other”.

But it did not end in fiction and would not be the exclusive preserve of Germany geo-strategy. British policy-makers saw jihad as means through which Britain could advance its interests against its adversaries. It would use the Ikhwan, the formidable fighting force of the second Saudi emirate to weaken the Ottoman hold on the Arabian Peninsula. The fact that Ibn Saud’s followers were, according to Winston Churchill, “bloodthirsty” and “intolerant” underscored the Ikhwan’s fitness for purpose. The intelligence services of Britain would go on to establish an enduring relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood soon after it was created in the late 1920s.

American support for militant Islamism goes back at least to the 1950s when the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the Muslim Brotherhood as a proxy force in the United States’ ideological war against Soviet communism. The Egyptian-originated organisation was utilised in an effort to undermine the secular government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser which had gravitated to the Soviet Union to acquire military arms and technical expertise for development projects.

The Soviet-Afghan war (December 24, 1979 – February 15, 1989) (Source: WideShut.co.uk)

This ploy of using Islamic combatants lay at the heart of ‘Operation Cyclone’. Among the longest and most expensive of covert operations undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency, it involved funding, arming and training Afghan Mujahideen as a means of weakening the Soviet military after the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

It was the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US National Security Advisor to the administration of President Jimmy Carter, but continued by the succeeding administration of President Ronald Reagan. Reagan extended an invitation to key members of the Mujahideen to visit the Oval Office of the White House where they were given a cordial reception at which they were photographed with the president.

While on a state visit to Pakistan in October of 1981, the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, made her way to the Pakistani-Afghan border where she told a gathered group of Mujahideen leaders that “the hearts of the free world are with you”.

A few years after the September 11 atrocity, the Bush administration formulated a re-direction in a Middle Eastern policy geared towards aiding Sunni militants espousing the same Pan-Islamic ideology as al Qaeda as a means of undermining the secular government of Bashar al Assad of Syria.

The Obama administration followed this policy first in its support for the Nato action that led to the overthrow of the secular government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and secondly, in the decision to utilise jihadists in the attempt to overthrow the Assad government under the cover of the so-called Arab Spring. The latter enterprise was undertaken over the objections of several senior military officers at the Pentagon including the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency.

It is important to note that the French government, then led by President Nicolas Sarkozy, took the lead in instigating the Libyan uprising and that the Cameron government of Britain provided special forces soldiers to train and direct operations undertaken by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and al Qaeda-affiliated organisation.

This policy is still intact under the Trump administration. After all, any attack against the Syrian military such as was the case with the launch of Tomahawk cruise missiles after a dubious allegation of a chemical attack on civilians and the recent shooting down of a Syrian Air Force jet by an American warplane, is intended to weaken it in the fight against Islamist insurgents. These actions by the United States, including the episode of the alleged mistaken killing of over 60 soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army while it was attempting to dislodge al Nusra fighters from the city of Aleppo all tend to confirm the thesis of the United States functioning as the unofficial air force of the Islamist insurgents.

It is a policy that will be sustained given the continuing priority accorded to the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump’s decision to make his first foreign visit as president to the desert kingdom, the home of the Wahhabi doctrine of Islam which serves as the inspiration for Islamist death squads in Syria and Islamic terrorists striking at innocent people in the West, is rather telling.

Trump’s castigation of the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran as the “world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism” reeks of deceit and hypocrisy. It is contradicted by a 2013 report by the European Parliament which identified Sunni Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism and a leaked admission by Hillary Clinton that the Saudis “have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth”. Indeed, none of the bombs, bullets or blades used in any of the terror attacks carried out in the West since 9/11 have been done in the name of Iran or Hezbollah. They have been carried out by Sunni extremists influenced by Wahhabist teachings.

The United States has of course acted as the overseer of Saudi funding for Syrian jihadists even though Iran, together with the Syrian Arab Army and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have soldiers dying every day in the fight against extremists of the sort US Senator John McCain has cosied up to during illegally arranged visits to Syrian territory.

Abdel Hakim Belhadj (credits to the owner of the photo)

McCain, who serves as the Chair of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, was photographed handing Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the leader of the now defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, with an award in recognition for his part in the overthrow of the Gaddafi government. Echoing Margaret Thatcher’s words of support for the Mujahideen, McCain heaped praise on Belhadj and his group for being fighters in the cause of freedom. And just as several of the groups headed by the warlords Thatcher addressed would form the basis of al Qaeda and the Taliban, so it has been the case that Belhadj became a leading commander of ISIS in Libya.

The Saudis are not alone among America’s Middle Eastern allies in having enabled the Syrian insurrection. Other Gulf Cooperation Council states, most notably Qatar, have played a part as indeed has Turkey – all confirmed by the former US Vice President Joseph Biden. The Syrian rebels have also received support from the state of Israel through cash disbursements, arms supplies and medical assistance.

The motivation for the West’s seeking to destroy secular governments such as that of Syria further than the banal rationale of overthrowing a ‘brutal dictator’ skirts over the issue of wanting to build a pipeline from the Gulf through to Turkey via Syria. The fundamental objective of the West in ensuring Israel’s continued regional hegemony is rarely mentioned even though this has been attested to by Roland Dumas, a former French foreign minister, and a leaked email of Hillary Clinton’s which revealed her thinking to be that the overthrow of Assad would help the Israelis in so far as combating the perceived threat posed by Iran.

The debates which center on Muslim extremists growing into a security threat fail to maintain a decent level of scrutiny on the performance of Western intelligence services in the preventing such threats. It should be of great concern to any American citizen that a report published three years ago by Human Rights Watch and Columbia University claimed that all but four of the domestic terrorist incidents occurring in the United States in the decade after the 9/11 attacks were carried out during sting operations conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In other words, most of the attacks involved people who were informers or double agents working for the FBI.

The report did not cover the dubious circumstances involving a paid informant infiltrating the group which built the bomb used for the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and it excluded the case of Tamerlan Tsarmaev who had not only been on a watchlist and surveilled by the FBI, but who many suspect to have been an informer.

A similar pattern can be seen in Britain where the security services under the watch of Theresa May as both home secretary and prime minister allowed Islamists whose names were on terror watchlists, under surveillance and in some circumstances under control orders (a form of house arrest under UK anti-terror laws), to travel around the European Union and the Middle East with impunity so long as they promised to overthrow secular Arab leaders such as Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria.

This is mirrored in France where, for instance, Mohamed Merah, the man who allegedly carried out terror shootings in Toulouse and Montauban, was claimed by the former head of France’s now defunct Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) to have been a double agent and informer for Direction Centrale du Renseignement Interieur (DCRI), the state intelligence organisation tasked with counter-terrorism and counter-espionage.

It is also worth noting that the terror outrages in London in July of 2005 and in Madrid in March of 2004 involved suspected radicals belonging to al Qaeda-inspired cells who had previously been under state surveillance. While the official argument of strained resources is often brought up as a blanket excuse, the recurrence of these scenarios point to a criminally negligent pattern of handling the surveillance of potential terrorists as well as the reckless managing of informers who ‘go rogue’. And given what is known of certain ‘black operations’ conducted in Western Europe during the Cold War era which had the purpose of manipulating public feeling through acts of terror, a more sinister interpretation cannot be ruled out.

The issues of state facilitation of islamist militias as well as the mishandling of terror suspects ought to raise the concerns of politicians and citizens sufficiently enough to form the basis of hearings by state legislative bodies and pave the way for the setting up of public inquiries. Instead the discourse, with the aid of the mainstream media, is guided towards whether the aftermath of each terror attack should result in the incremental loss of the hard won rights and freedoms of the citizenry of the West.

In Britain, the recent spate of attacks have raised the ante to the extent that there have been calls to introduce internment as well as to censor the internet. France is effectively in a permanent state of emergency. All of this despite the fact that despite the blood and pain inflicted by terror, the statistics continue to show that the average person has a far higher chance of being electrocuted by a bolt of lightning or breaking their neck when getting out of bed.

The history of the West’s dalliances with terror groups is pregnant with instances of blowback. It is widely accepted that the implementation of Operation Cyclone as a means of using Islamists as a tool in weakening the Soviet enemy contributed to the formation of al Qaeda and the development of global jihadism. Those who berate others who link the outrages perpetrated by Islamist terrorists in the West to Western foreign policy are not being realistic. Indeed, there is an ineluctable logic to President Assad’s rebuke to the Turkish President Recep Erdogan for supporting the Islamist insurgents who the Turkish authorities allowed to infiltrate Syria:

It is not possible to put terrorism in your pocket and use it as a card because it is like a scorpion which won’t hesitate to sting you at the first opportunity.

The state is compromised but the continued ignorance of many and the seemingly wilful insouciance of the others mean that the people will stand compromised in the judgement of history if they refrain from pressuring their political leaders to change the state of affairs.

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer. He can be followed on Twitter @AdeyinkaMakinde.

Featured image: Adeyinka Makinde